Saying Boo To A Ghost: It's No Secret Why Congress Fears Crossing The NSA

[n2doc]

By David Sirota

Credit where credit is due: President Obama promised to end partisan gridlock and bring Republicans and Democrats together. Congratulations, Mr. President - six years into your presidency, you have at last succeeded.

Yes, a new Washington Post/ABC poll shows a majority of voters in both parties are unified in opposition to your NSA surveillance regime. Meanwhile, Congress's refusal to even modestly curtail that surveillance suggests a majority of leaders in both parties are unified in support of it.

Bipartisanship!

Of course, while we've (temporarily) overcome party divisions, there's still that pesky problem of a wide gap between public sentiment and congressional (in)action. That seems as permanent as ever. Sure, there have been some valiant efforts to force the legislative branch to at least pretend to represent public hostility to mass spying, but let's be honest: even the most "holy shit!"-worthy of the NSA disclosures are still met with at best shoulder shrugs, and more often bird flipping, from those who run Congress.

One example: when the Washington Post last week reported that the NSA "overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year," loyal NSA apologist Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) responded only with a non-committal statement that her Intelligence Committee "should" do more oversight - but no attempt to actually do any.

What accounts for the disconnect between public outrage and Washington nonchalance? Is it money? Ideology? Or is it something even more sinister? In fact, it's almost certainly a combination of all three - with the third apparently so taboo almost nobody dares mention it.

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[CincyDem]

1. We, as a population, own some of this issue.

We expect our politicians to have the facade of gods and goddesses. We're looking for perfection since birth. For a politician (at least democratic policitians) it seems like we're all waiting for the slighest reason to dump on them.

Instead of looking at the effect, we're getting caught up in the little shit. Spitzer was eating wall street alive and where is he now. As a population - did we make a good trade on that one ?

The hypothetical Rep John Doe in this article is scared shit-less about the NSA because he knows his entire career goes up in smoke on some inuendo that has nothing to do with getting the right thing done in congress.

We've trained these guys to be scared of their own shadows and now, when the shadows start to threaten...we're surprised they're scared ???

I don't have an answer but it seems like a little higher bar of accepting humanity in these jobs might be a start.

[Wilms]

2. Great post, Cincy. n/t

[GoneFishin]

5. Or put another way, start judging politicians based on the job they do, instead of their personal

lives. And develop contempt for snitches who obviously have ulterior motives and axes to grind that are not motivated by the public good.

[LWolf]

6. I don't expect my politicians

to have the facade of gods and goddesses.

I expect them to work FOR me; win or lose, I expect them to stand up and fight for the issues I elected them to advance, tooth and nail, without reservation. I expect them to keep the end goals on the table at all times, whether or not they are achieved with this attempt, or the next, or the next.

That's what I expect. Those who do that are winning my support and my appreciation. Those that don't, aren't.

[Blue_Tires]

3. Fear has nothing to do with it...

The NSA and all its affiliated arms and contractors provide a multitude of JOBS that so many districts in so many states are dependent on...Congress isn't about to pull the wheels off the gravy train, no matter how much public posturing we see...

[AngryAmish]

4. This is my fear also

Hoover was feared since he had the dirt on so many people. When he died they burned his files. NSA computers are the equivalent of Hoover's files.

Please remember that the NSA is populated by people. People by and large protect themselves and those people who they care about. People can do very bad things when they think they are doing good things. So the NSA is corruptible like every other institution. Without accountability it only gets worse.

I'm sure early in his national political career Obama found out about the power of the NSA. And if there was anything he wanted to hide, I'm sure that the NSA knows about it.

BTW, something along these lines happened to Spitzer. May not be the NSA but he was set up. (He did a bad thing and resigned honorably. It was better he resign then rather than when he was in national office.)

[GoneFishin]

7. Yeah, the way the scandal coincided with him aggressively going after banksters stinks. And the fact

that they were even investigating him at all smells like they already had dirt on him all ready to go. I would venture a guess that some dirty NSA work was done at the request of someone powerful.

[AngryAmish]

8. My non-NSA theory

Spitzer regularly used hookers. One recognized him, told another client, a Wall Street-type, and the Wall Street type got the ball rolling with a complicit FBI/US Attorney. High end escort services exist and are not terribly hard to find and take down. Why this one?

[GoneFishin]

11. Yep. That sounds credible too. nt

[Octafish]

9. Blackmail.

[geek tragedy]

10. or maybe David "Ron Paul is less racist than Barack Obama' Sirota

is exaggerating the public outrage on the subject.

[MisterP]

12. state within a state: that's were coups--including paper ones--come from