COMMENT | SATIRE
All Forest, No Tree A BY ANDY BOROWITZ
U.S. intelligence agency was so busy spying on 300 million Americans that it failed to notice one dude who was working for it, a spokesman for the agency acknowledged this week. “I guess we were so busy monitoring the everyday communications of every man, woman and child in the nation that we didn’t notice that a contractor working for us was downloading tons of classified documents,” the agency spokesman said. “It’s definitely embarrassing, for sure.” Despite having an annual budget in the neighborhood of $10 billion, the agency had no idea that a dude who was working for it five days a week was getting ready to send those classified documents to a journalist who would then tell everybody in the world. “Maybe if we hadn’t been so busy keeping our eye on those other 300 million people, we would have noticed that this one guy who was working right under our noses was up to something totally fishy,” the
spokesman said. “But you know what they say about hindsight.” As for where that guy who leaked the documents was planning to go next, the spokesman admitted, “We don’t have a clue. “I know what you’re thinking — an intelligence agency probably should know that Hong Kong has an international airport and that its departures board lists flights to Moscow and whatnot,” the spokesman said. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe we need a bigger budget or something.” Elsewhere, supporters of the 12-year quagmire in Afghanistan cheered the news that the United Stats would strive to achieve a seamless transfer of that quagmire to Syria. n For more fake news from Andy Borowitz, visit borowitzreport.com.
COMMENT | POLITICS
Repeal the Patriot Act I BY JIM HIGHTOWER
t’s back. The Patriot Act — a grotesque, ever-mutating, hydraheaded monstrosity from the Bush-Cheney Little Shop of Horrors — has risen again, this time with an added twist of Orwellian intrusiveness from the Obamacans. Since 2006, Team Bush, and now Team Obama, have allowed the little-known, hugely powerful National Security Agency to run a daily dragnet through our phone calls — all on the hush-hush, of course, not informing us spyees. Now exposed, leaders of both parties are pointing to the Patriot Act, saying that it makes this wholesale, everyday invasion of our privacy perfectly legal. When the story broke, Obama dissembled, calling these massive and routine violations of the Fourth Amendment “modest intrusions” that are “worth us doing” to make us more secure. He added disingenuously that Congress is regularly briefed about the program. In fact, only a handful of members are briefed, and they have been flatly lied to by Obama’s director of national intelligence. Yet Sen. Dianne
Feinstein loyally defended spying on Americans, claiming it protects us from terrorists. She then admitted she really doesn’t know how the mountains of data are being used. This is nothing but a bottomless “Trust Us” swamp, created by the panicky passage and irresponsible reauthorization of the Patriot Act. Secretly seizing everyone’s phone records is, as the ACLU put it, “beyond Orwellian.” As a New York Times editorial flatly and rightly says, “The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue.” But no administration can be trusted to restrain itself from abusing the unlimited power of the Patriot Act. It’s not enough to fight NSA’s outrageously invasive spying on us — the Patriot Act itself is a shameful betrayal of America’s ideals, and it must be repealed. n For more from America’s populist, check out jimhightower.com.
JUNE 27, 2013 INLANDER 11