I can tell this is getting serious by the increasing number of articles mentioning "Obama" or "Bush" in the headlines. Now is the time for the blame game to beg

I can tell this is getting serious by the increasing number of articles mentioning "Obama" or "Bush" in the headlines. Now is the time for the blame game to begin! I've said it before, and it bears repeating: this is a systemic problem. The system is set up so that it is so secret there can be no public oversight. There's no feedback loop. The most you could ask from any president is simply to air it all out in the open and let the public begin a debate. This is something that no president has done so far. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting on it to happen, either. I'm willing to cut Bush a tiny amount of slack for historical reasons. The US has traditionally temporarily restricted liberties and trampled on parts of the constitution when it was under attack. Therefore, looking at 9-11, there's no reason not to expect the pattern to continue. The problem here is the word "temporary". 9-11 wasn't just a terrible tragedy that opened a huge war effort that lasted several years and ended. It was used to create permanent changes in the way the entire system worked. In that area -- making it all permanent -- I completely blame Bush and the Congress, neither of which could have fucked things up this much by themselves. Obama walked into a mess, but he seemed to know he was walking into a mess. Why he didn't actually fix anything is anybody's guess. I'm not buying that he couldn't do it. I just don't know. I don't want to put the paranoid hat on, but I would note that members of various military agencies have been known to thoroughly "research" Congresspeople and executive branch staff in order to know how to pitch them on various issues. I firmly believe the NSA did not do this, but with all of the revelations lately, it's not beyond the realm of possibility. Can you imagine how persuasive and argument you could make to a Senator, or even a President, if you had all their emails, chat logs, cell phone records, and so forth? Like I said, I don't think it happened. But it could happen, and that's freaking scary.