Shocked, shocked we are that…

Crazy thought for the night, and because I'm seeing some twitter traffic about it, I guess Director James Clapper is getting the nod to run the review of our surveillance programs.

And people are up in arms.

When last we saw Dir. Clapper, he was lying to Congress on C-Span (and then on all the news programs) about the extent of the NSA classified eavesdropping programs.

Read that again. Director Clapper was asked, live on C-Span, to out a classified program of surveillance in front of a Congressional committee (that could have held their meeting, or part of their meeting, behind closed doors).

People are shocked. Shocked he lied and he hasn't been thrown out on his boney arse.

Obviously we don't understand what "Classified" means, anymore. Seriously. Has it been that long since the end of the Cold War that we can't comprehend the very basic necessity of 1) not asking the Director of National Intelligence the scope of NSA data gathering on live TV (that's what closed door meetings are made for) and 2) not comprehending on how, if Dir. Clapper had said, "Oh, yea, NSA is pulling down a lot of this stuff and storing to use for future data mining", that he would have been committing a) a felony with possible jail time, b) betrayal of trust and c) violation of his oath? Are we totally confused by the effort to put Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden in jail?

Is this the effect of all those Perry Mason and Matlock shows where the lawyer has a witness on the stand and turns the whole court case around by asking pointed questions and showing the witness is actually the guilty party? Real life doesn't work that way.

Director Clapper knows secrets. That's his job. Keeping those secrets is also his job.

Overall, it's good to be upset that he lied to us (well, to Congress actually). But to really have expected him to answer that question, in front of cameras, truthfully and fully is a degree of naiveté that we really shouldn't have these days.