Gambling? At Rick's? I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on! For those missing the reference, this is from the movie "Casablanca" It's an Engli

Gambling? At Rick's? I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on! For those missing the reference, this is from the movie "Casablanca" It's an English idiom used when an official becomes conveniently outraged or overly surprised at something they had known was going on all along. The outrage expressed is a pro forma statement meant for public consumption -- it doesn't necessarily make sense if you examine it closely, and in fact can be quite funny given the context. There is a generic problem here: the legislature in the United States has decided that instead of overseeing the government, it was going to grant huge swaths of power to various agencies, then swoop in for various high-profile investigations when anything went wrong. That way they get to play the hero without actually having to do a lot of work. Well, the problem with this theory of separation of powers is that pretty soon you have dozens or hundreds of agencies, all without much adult supervision, all wanting to do more and more to "help". Without oversight, they turn to the next best thing: in-house legal advice, which tells them what is legal or not. So now we have multiple intelligence agencies doing things their lawyers say are legal, but the majority of the American people are pretty pissed about (or getting that way). The way to fix this is NOT to single out CIA or NSA or become outraged or not at any one incident. Geesh, there are dozens of agencies just like them that could be doing the same thing, and it's playing whack-a-mole. We need a reform of Congressional oversight, along with clear criminal laws about what can be gathered or not gathered. These agencies need guidance and oversight, not political posturing and outrage. (Although I'm never one to turn down politicians bloviating on issues I care about).