Politics

Jimmy Carter Reveals Secret NSA Plan to Keep Post Offices Relevant

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What can you say when formal newswire services refer to physical mail as "snail mail" without the ironic quotes? Like it's the actual term used for mail sent through the United States Postal Service. That's how wire service Agence France-Presse calls mail in the lede of its piece describing how former President Jimmy Carter is now using letters, envelopes and postage to correspond with foreign leaders, thanks to revelations of National Security Agency surveillance:

"When I want to communicate with a foreign leader privately, I type or write a letter myself, put it in the post office, and mail it," Carter said with a laugh, as he was questioned on the matter on NBC's Meet the Press program.

"I have felt that my own communications are probably monitored," he said on the Sunday show. …

Asked whether the programs were necessary, Carter said he thought they had "been extremely liberalized and, I think, abused by our own intelligence agencies."

It was only a small part of the interview by Andrea Mitchell. Watch the rest below.

Special awful anti-bonus: Earlier in Meet the Press Sunday, GOP Rep. Mike Rogers, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, promoting vague "do-something"-ism in Ukraine (send them small weapons and medical supplies!) and insisting that everybody in the intelligence community believes that Edward Snowden is "under the influence of Russian intelligence services today," despite not actually being able to provide any evidence that supports his claim. Watch below:

Full transcript of the episode is here.