Little to do about something...

Some days you have to wonder if you're a bit character in a novel in some other universe, watching on as what you thought were basic ideas of right and wrong are shredded by the people who lead us as they look on confused as to why we're making a fuss.  As many of you are aware a London newspaper broke a story today about the NSA collecting 'metadata' from Verizon about the traffic on their cellphone network.

The best part of this is the response from both the senate leaders, which basically amounted to 'What?  It's legal."  Now in all fairness under the Patriot Act it does appear that indeed that this is legal.  Now, many people, including myself, wonder at the Constitutionality of it, but I think that given the current climate in Washington it would most likely be upheld in the courts.  

I can't help but think that if our ancestors are looking down on it they are deeply saddened by this.  We sit here and claim that our freedoms are worth sending our people around the world to defend on one hand, and gleefully give them up for a little more security on the other.

Make no mistake, there's many people out in the world who would love to kill Americans at any turn.  I want to believe that our Government would never use this information for anything other then protecting it's citizens.

I also want to believe that the IRS would be fair and impartial when evaluating groups for non profit status, and would never do something as questionable as place extra burdens of proof on groups with certain words in their name.

Ultimately, power corrupts.  The more there is, the more it corrupts.  Until we as Americans decide to reign in our government it will continue to get more and more corrupt and you will see more and more stories like this.

Until you don't.  Then we really have a problem.