"No Spy Should Have That Big a Tell": Daily Show on Clapper's Senate Testimony Lies

"No spy should have that big a tell," notes John Oliver, the temporary host of The Daily Show, in a very funny bit about recent revelations about state surveillance.

Didn't James Clapper get the Costanza Memo?

Watch and laugh (before you cry).

Via Instapundit via Althouse Blog.

Also notable from Instapundit recently, this thought on "unmediated man":

When David Brooks complains that Edward Snowden is an unmediated man, I must note that in the civil society Brooks invokes, Presidents and other leaders were also mediated; they were not merely checked by Congress, courts, etc., but they were also checked by themselves, and a sense of what was proper that went beyond "how much can I get away with now?" Obama, too, is unmediated in that sense. That Brooks couldn't see beyond his sharply-creased pants to notice that when it was apparent to keen observers even before the 2008 election is not to his credit. If the system of civil society has failed, it is in no small part because its guardians — notably including Brooks — have also failed.

Comments

[n8]

Not all liberals are sycophants

[Eduard van Haalen]

Remember when it was, like, this horrible crime to deny that a blow job was sex?

Now you get to lie about spying, and won't even risk your job, much less endanger your liberty.

[Eduard van Haalen]

Remember when Alger Hiss went to *prison* for lying about spying to a Congressional committee?

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Dude, that was like a 100 years ago

/Ezra

[Rrabbit]

Alger Hiss does not count - he was living with a huge target on his back as people thought that he was a member of an underground communist cell.

[Rich]

Now you get to lie about spying, and won't even risk your job

Ah, but it was an *unwitting* lie.

[Longtorso, Johnny]

Govt crushes and/or absorbs any institution standing between it and the average citizen, then complains about our 'atomizing' belief system that holds that there is just the individual and the govt. The left's long march thru the institutions has made any gathering of two or more (church, school, media, etc) an arm of govt and/or govt propaganda.

[Suthenboy]

"The left's long march thru the institutions ..."

It is worth pointing out that it isnt just the left responsible for getting us where we are now.

For example, the drug war is often blamed on the right and the republicans. This meme arises from the fact that they are vocal about prosecuting and expanding the drug war in order to cater to their constituency. The left and the dems prosecute the drug war just as vicously, if not more so, but they arent vocal about it in order to cater to their constituency. The left squawks about ending the drug war, the right screeches about small government, but nothing ever changes.

Looking at a graph of either government spending increases or increase in size and power of the government it is impossible to tell which party is in power at any given point. There are essentially no blips, just steady increases.

[Longtorso, Johnny]

He left out this part of the quote:

WHEN WOMEN COMPLAIN ABOUT THE DISAPPEARANCE OF CHIVALRY, I'm prone to point out that chivalry was a system, one that imposed obligations of behavior on women and girls as well as on men.

[John]

And even today, women who meet those standards of behavior tend to receive the same kind of treatment in return. Women who act like men are often treated like men.

[Fist of Etiquette]

So without Stewart, there's no one there to blame NSA surveillance on Congressional Republicans and Fox News?

[Ken Shultz]

With liberals, I guess it's all about the messenger?

If Sarah Palin got up and said the exact same thing, ...

But you put it on the Daily Show, and all of a sudden, they understand everything.

[HazelMeade]

Weren't all of the founding fathers essentially "unmediated men"?

Fuck mediation.

If mediation means you have to keep your mouth shut and work through a "system" that denies you a voice, then fuck mediation.

[ant1sthenes]

The government itself is unmediated. It is expected to be held in check by public debate, inside and outside of Congress, and an informed electorate. It has undermined this indirectly in many ways, but unnecessary secrecy directly avoids the system created to mediate government actions. Secrecy basically is to the government what leaking is to the public. There's a time and a place, but abuse leads to chaos.

[radar]

In the sense Reynolds is using "unmediated", no, the Founders were not unmediated. If George Washington had been this kind of unmediated man, he would have assumed the mantle of a king or emperor rather than a president. He was restrained by his sense of what level of power was moral and just for any man in a republican society. He refused to make himself a king because he rejected the concept that any man has a right to hold the powers of a king.

Anyone doubt that Obama would make himself king if he were able to do so?

[HazelMeade]

Well, is Snowden claiming the powers of a King?

No.

People like Brooks and Althouse etc. are arguing that because he acted unilaterally, as an individual outside the system, that somehow makes him an "unmediated man". That suggests that somehow ALL circumvention of the system is morally tainted.

I really find it bizarre that all these people are finding excuses to condemn Snowden's actions, either calling him a "narcisist" (as if they can't fathom a person making a self-sacrificing act for the sake of principle), or implying that his actions were somehow illegitimate because he didn't follow procedure or whatever.