From Pat Lang’s blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis:
“- DNI Clapper perjured himself before the US Senate and was allowed to apologize and stay on.
– General Keith Alexander has gone into business in retirement for the purpose of selling cyberwarfare knowledge that rightly belongs to the American people.
– John Brennan is now revealed as yet another liar. He told everyone who would listen that CIA had not hacked its way into computers belonging to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). Now the CIA IG has produced a report that states the opposite. Brennan has apologized to the senate. That is not enough. The SSCI’s role is oversight of the CIA. Under Brennan’s command CIA tried to escape that oversight.”
The national security state is a bureaucracy that is rapacious, it grows and never slows in its growth; politicians, reporters, analysts, retired military, retired civilian bureaucrats, routinely trade on connections and insiderism and then go on television and basically say whatever comes to mind, precious little of it correlating with reality. But you have to look for it, you can’t assume that you know if you don’t look. I’m not saying I’m right, but I am saying that I’m tired of closing my eyes to the phenomenon.
Glenn Reynolds has an unhappy commentary on this in USA Today. It’s hard hitting and appropriately so, I only wish he was as hard hitting on the politicization of Bush admin intelligence on Iraq and Team B. Team B was outmaneuvered by Musharraf, mostly because they were ignoramuses of actual regions. They had theoretical airy-fairy University of Chicago Wohlstetter knowledge, but they lacked hard knowledge of the regions they pontificated about. Ahmad Chalabi didn’t know anything, and then there are the rumors of his being associated with Iran.
I regret discovering milblogs in 2003. I propagandized myself.
I’ve seen conflicting reports of the CIA Senate spying. The most interesting was a comment at PJ Media that what actually happened was the CIA looked into reports that Dem Senators were accessing classified intel for political reasons. The CIA got into their computers to see if that was true. That Sen Feinstein was apparently involved should not surprise anyone.
On your larger point, however, I agree that the security apparatus in the country is out of control. We have reached police state levels of monitoring. It’s scary. It needs to stop. It’s unconstitutional and counterproductive. It’s unamerican. However, it won’t stop until people elect people who want it stopped and those responsible are tried and imprisoned.
The US government is beginning speak and act like a nascent dictatorship.
Not only is the “national security apparat” out of control; so are all the Coercive Organs of the State™, and indeed the entire government.
When is the last time that you can remember the government screwing up, and those who did the act AND those responsible actually being held personally accountable and suffering ill consequences?.
If it is longer than a political generation [18 years], one can make a cogent argument that the government is not accountable. And a government that is not accountable for its actions is not legitimate under the Constitution. Q.v.: Mandate of Heaven, loss thereof.
Beginning?
It would be a good idea to try to get presidential candidates to pledge, if elected, to destroy any data the NSA has collected on Americans via warrantless intercepts.
I was in high school during Watergate, but remember it very well, and the consequences for many of those involved. Brought up by lefties/socialists, there was a smug sense of justice in my neck of the woods after “those bastards got theirs”. Now, I’ve changed, come 180 degrees, and find it difficult to sit and watch as the opposition flounders. Unprecedented action begets unprecedented reaction. Will it happen? I find it difficult to believe so at this point.
Nothing good will be done that has any true and lasting effects upon the over-arching administrative autocracy that has assumed power in this country over the last half century until the current cowardly and corrupt political elite has been removed, and replaced by citizens who actually believe in this country as a constitutional representative republic.
This will be a multi-generational task, as the participants in the current corrupt travesty are removed, and the administrative structure they have created is dismantled. It would be best if this was done carefully and thoughtfully, so as to minimize the shocks to the economy and vulnerable people caught up in the process, but it may be that sudden action will prove to be the only feasible course of action.
What we need more than anything else are the kind of citizens who understand, and truly emulate, the devotion to the country that people like Washington and Marshall epitomized. Presented with the opportunity to seize autocratic power, they declined, and deferred to the true needs of the Republic.
Such men and women are there in our midst. They must be found, and given the opportunity to dismantle the Frankenstein that the power accumulators have put together from the dead ideas of collectivist theory.
We have faced and defeated the lions of fascism and Marxism. It would be a true historical tragedy if this great and powerfully creative culture were to succumb to an infestation of rats and termites.
“Such men and women are there in our midst. They must be found, and given the opportunity to dismantle the Frankenstein that the power accumulators have put together from the dead ideas of collectivist theory.”
I think we had one in 2012 and failed to elect him. I remember Alan Greenspan’s comment about all the presidents he had known. The only “normal man” was Gerald Ford. Then there was the description of Eisenhower as a candidate. There is the “fire in the belly.” There is the analogy of “the man who can ride the horse.” The problem is to find both in the same man. I think we missed him. Maybe not enough “fire in the belly,” but we have had enough of that the past 22 years.
Romney was not much of an alternative. He is another guy who is there to service the machine. Plus his team were a bunch of arrogant, inept insiders who were convinced they could win without committing to anything so they would be able to do nothing once Romney got in. He was a wretched candidate and would have been a rotten president, though not on the same scale as this current guy.
Plus, he never came near to having a chance to win. He polled behind Obama the entire election. Intrade showed him behind Obama the entire election. His vaunted debate victory did not move the needle on Intrade at all. He was the wrong candidate and he never had a chance as a result.
Let’s not idolize Romney. He was the same old crap the GOP always wants to hand out, pretending it significantly different from the same old crap we get from the Democrats. It isn’t.
Romney was better than Obama and might have won if there were less cheating. Better a third-rate fireman than a first-rate arsonist.
“Let’s not idolize Romney. He was the same old crap the GOP always wants to hand out, pretending it significantly different from the same old crap we get from the Democrats. It isn’t.”
Disagree and believe he was the last chance to stop the rot. I am pretty fatalistic now and that is assisted by the fact I will be 77 next birthday.
I have largely quit listening to talk radio and reading newspapers. I do follow current events as can be seen here and at Althouse but I am giving serious thought to a Great Courses program on learning Latin. That should keep my brain from atrophying and distract from the news of coming disaster. I do worry about my children and grandchildren but three of my children voted for Obama.
My medical students this year are all engineers and are doing a biomedical engineering program in the medical school. I had one in that program last year and he recommended me. He comments here occasionally. That will keep me interested even if Obama and the idiots wreck medicine.