The buck never stops

The United States has been caught with Uncle Sam's arm crammed deep into the cookie jar. In our quest to listen in on the world (purportedly we have been reading the Mexican President's emails, listened to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's telephone calls, bugged the shit out of the French and Brazilians, etc.) we have royally pissed off our friends and neighbors. We must remember, gentlemen do not read other gentle men and gentle women's emails.

Obama and his minions had the standard Obama retort; the Obama administration "is reviewing the way that we gather intelligence to ensure that we properly balance the security concerns of our citizens and allies with the privacy concerns that all people share."

This is a lot like the answer to Snowden, all of a sudden we are having this great national "conversation." Which by the way we would never have had if Obama had had his way and we stayed stupid. Rush Limbaugh, who I can't stand but is occasionally sort of prescient, and sometime even gets it right, has a theory about our President, the Limbaugh Theorem.

“Obama has positioned himself as an outsider…That’s one of the reasons why the constant campaign,” he said. “So he doesn’t appear to be governing, so he doesn’t appear to be part of Washington. So he appears to have this mysterious, powerful bunch of forces that are opposing him and stopping him from creating jobs and stopping him from giving people proper health care…but he is constantly out there fighting.”

There is some truth to this. Obama never holds himself accountable. Not with spying, not with drones, not with the Patriot Act, not with overzealous U.S. Attorneys and marijuana prosecution. Now the rest of the world wants to know what is up? Just because Al Gore invented the internet, do we have some divine right to now suck up everybody else's communications? Frankly, the rest of the world is getting sick of us and I don't blame them.

James Clapper says that reports that we hoover approx. 70 million French phone calls a month is false, inaccurate and misleading. Right James, you have so much credibility at this point. Is it only 69 million?

It would be refreshing if we had a President who could take his lumps once in a while and say, yeah, I did it, this is why I did it, it's on me. Own it and not be so mealy mouthed and equivocating. Always sounds so reasonable even when his policies are decidedly not.