[badman_ting]

Sadly, I think this is part of our problem. "Obama".

Attaching his name to this just makes it so that we all vote for a Republican next year, congratulate ourselves for getting rid of the guy who loved spying on us all, and everything stays exactly the same.

I'm not trying to defend him or say he is blameless here. I'm saying that it's bigger than who is in the President's chair at the moment, and I wish we could think about these things in a more systemic way.

[SkyMarshal]

Exactly. The problem is so far beyond partisan now that people still framing it in terms of "Bush" or "Obama" have the blinders on.

The problem is systemic and cultural, the federal bureaucracy is more influential on elected officials than elected officials are on the federal bureaucracy, at least in matters of intelligence and national security.

Every politician elected into this system faces extraordinary forces of compliance, and only a few on both the left and right (Wyden, Paul, etc) seem able to resist.