Gene Healy on Obama's Word Games
On August 9th, with his approval rating at a near all-time low of 41 percent, and while facing sharp scrutiny over the National Security Agency's dragnet data-collection plan, President Obama held a press conference where he insisted: "I want to make clear once again that America is not interested in spying on ordinary people." It's ironic that the public case for so many of Obama's policies depends on doing violence to plain language. To our various "wars" on drugs, crime, and terror, writes Gene Healy, we must now add Obama's war on words.