We'll admit that over the week, we've softened on our hardline attitude toward former Security Gates, but not on Governor Chris Christie, nor on Edward Snowden, really.
For Governor Christie, it's actually become worse for him as the week has progressed with city mayors in the state coming out and accusing the Christie administration of quid pro quo deals with private developers, leveraging Hurricane Sandy relief funds as bargaining chips. And as for today's program, Rudy Giuliani didn't make any impact in defense of Mr. Christie. In fact, he made the same mistake as many other Republicans are making and that is trying to deflect attention away from Mr. Christie's situation by referencing President Obama in terms of Benghazi and the I.R.S. What that does is elevate the bridge lane closings to the same level of Benghazi and the I.R.S. Politically, Republicans should be trying to diminish the situation by focusing Mr. Christie's policy accomplishments, and Mr. Christie should keep the politically mega-fundraising to a minimum from now. As Newt Gingrich said, it's not going away any time soon and you know where we stand.
As for the former Security, we greatly appreciate that he cares for the troops so deeply but he admitted that it sometimes clouded his judgement and we're uncomfortable with that because that also means that he was perceiving others decisions through a clouded lens as well. Our one question for Mr. Gates, would be simply this: At the end of the day, can you honestly say that you did everything in your power as Secretary, given your deep concern for the troops, to get them home as quickly and as safely as possible while bringing about an effective [a vague term, admittedly] military conclusion?
Americans can handle and accept war if necessary, but what they've learned is that they have a real distaste for preemptive war.
Lastly, Mr. Gates said the president has the right temperature in terms of what he feels should be done about the NSA's bulk collection of data that it will continue but with strict oversight domestically and that the government should not store the data. Sure, the president has the right temperature, but on which planet?
If the government isn't going to store the data but the government insists that it in fact needs to be collected - bulk data collection is not stopping - then who does store it? Just as someone can ask of Edward Snowden, who are you to decide what state secrets everyone knows or not; someone could ask of the government, if you're not storing the information, who gets to decide who stores it if not you? All of this doesn't even include the overriding question of why they are collecting your information in the first place.
Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian said it's a false choice between security and privacy; we agree with that, but he made the distinction between the government collecting data vs. Google or Amazon because you opt-in for those. That's a false choice as well. You know how many times you have to do a Google search or buy something on Amazon for those companies to get your information? Answer: once. As we've said before - you're privacy these days comes by being one of a million faces walking down Broadway in New York City - you can see them all but nothing specific about any. That's the new reality in terms of your online identification.
And as for the call for stricter oversight, we heard Congressional Intelligence Committee Chairs Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) both said that there have been no abuses and everything the NSA has done has been legal. Yet, we still need stricter over? That doesn't sound right.
One could answer, as Secretary Gates did, that we're talking about things that might happen, as opposed to things that have happened. In this case, if one can imagine that something 'might' happen, it certainly will happen. And the reason we know this is because they were happening without our knowledge and we didn't know it until Mr. Snowden informed the world about it.
We always contended that Mr. Snowden did the right thing, but in the wrong way. If Mr. Snowden went to work at the NSA strictly for the purpose to disclose secrets or unknown governmental agency operations, as Senator Feinstein explained, then he's technically not a whistleblower as Mr. Ohanian explained how Mr. Snowden will eventually be viewed.
Are we glad, we know what we know because of Mr. Snowden, no doubt. Did Mr. Snowden leak this information then go to China then Russian, also no doubt.
The reason we bring this up is because Mr. Rogers eluded to something even more serious and that was the question of if Mr. Snowden acted alone. Mr. Rogers obviously thinks that the answer is that Mr. Snowden did have help (see the clip below):
Though it would certainly affect the labeling of Mr. Snowden, whether he had help or not doesn't change the fact that someone at the NSA, a relatively low level contractor, could have access to so much sensitive information, so much so that the United States government has stated that it will never know the extent of how much. How does this not show us that abuse is not only probably, but easy as well.
Round Table: Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, NBC political analyst and
former Obama adviser David Axelrod (actually it was Harold Ford), The Washington Post’s Nia-Malika
Henderson and NBC Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell.
Date of Note (thanks to Andrea Mitchell): June 15th. This is the date by which Congress has to reauthorize this mess.
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