I don't like Russia as much as the next guy, but the US doesn't really have moral high ground here. The repeating argument in NSA revelations was that intellig

I don't like Russia as much as the next guy, but the US doesn't really have moral high ground here. The repeating argument in NSA revelations was that intelligence agencies are here to gather intelligence outside the country and on their own citizens. Well then it follows, outside the country it would be pretty weird if Russia spied on US citizens, but not political parties. This goes both ways of course. Once you see that having an intelligence agency necessarily means you're going to snoop on internals of another government, it would be even more weird if you don't meddle with it when you have the chance. I mean why not? Nation states are out for themselves. In particular if the stakes are high such as when the nation happens to have a good portion of the world's nuclear arsenal, why not take a shot?