Why Are We Surprised?

One of my favorite scenes in Star Wars is where Obi Wan uses his "Jedi mind tricks" to con  a weak-minded Imperial Trooper that "these are not the droids you are looking for." I am reminded of this scene by the recent disclosures of massive government surveillance on everybody.  

 
"Nothing to see here. Move along." 

 
It does not matter for whom you voted--someone surnamed Bush or Clinton (blessed be her name) or a half-African citizen of Indonesia (Obama was born in America and is not a Muslim, but he was an Indonesian citizen in his youth). My point here is that someone profoundly "different" like Obama still oversees such surveillance. The surveillance will continue--think J. Edgar Hoover. The story may be apocryphal, but one District Attorney bragged that he could go in front of a Grand Jury and get a ham sandwich indicted.  In the same way the government nakedness will be covered in the future by assembly line fig leaves called warrants even under a President Rand Paul. 

If you want more details about the long-standing nature of such surveillance read Karl Denninger's blog post. 

So there really is nothing to see here, politics is a waste of time, you might as well move along to something of more lasting importance ...

How 'bout them Cowboys?