TheObiBlog

There are folks who are at their happiest when the Bush administration (or any powerful conservative) gets knocked around. They tend to detest having any sort of label applied to them, so for the sake of ease, I’ll just call them “flooglehornists”.

There are many flooglehornists in the media. Many reporters, columnists, newspaper editors, and staff are flooglehornists.

The under-noticed thing: The flooglehornists figure, by exposing an administration tactic of gathering intelligence on terrorists via violating their privacy, they will get the administration knocked around. The flooglehornists are wrong. The relevant national debate isn’t over whether Bush did anything wrong or not, because nobody is really making that case. The relevant debate is about whether the media flooglehornists are treasonous enemy-comforters, or just clueless and dangerous patriotic constitution-supporters.

Now, the debate can only take place when flooglehornist-supporters actually understand concepts like national security and the importance of secrecy in intelligence gathering. Tons of them just can’t for the life of them understand what’s wrong with distributing information on how the government catches terrorists. So, much of the noise you’re hearing is not actually the relevant debate, but a bunch of arguing about why important things are important.

Conclusions:
* The louder the Flooglehornist-supporter, the less likely he is to have a grasp of the relevant realities.

* Flooglehornists can’t be trusted with national security, so for pete’s sake, don’t vote them into federal office.