What Edward Snowden has done is an amazingly brave and courageous act of civil disobedience.

As a Whistleblower like me, he became discomforted by what he was exposed to and what he saw: the industrial-scale systematic surveillance that is scooping up vast amounts of information not only around the world but in the United States, in direct violation of the fourth amendment of the US constitution.

I feel a kinship with Snowden: he is essentially the equivalent of me. He saw the surveillance state from within and saw how far it's gone. The government has a pathological incentive to collect more and more and more; they just can't help themselves - they have an insatiable hoarding complex.

Since the government unchained itself from the constitution after 9/11, it has been eating our democracy alive from the inside out. There's no room in a democracy for this kind of secrecy: it's anathema to our form of a constitutional republic, which was born out of the struggle to free ourselves from the abuse of such powers, which led to the American Revolution.

That is what's at stake here: to an NSA with these unwarranted powers, we're all potentially guilty; we're all potential suspects until we prove otherwise. That is what happens when the government has all the data. 

[This was originally in To The Point for July 4, 2004. This is the version for 2007.  We at To The Point wish all of you an exceedingly happy Fourth of July.]

July 4th is Freedom's Birthday. My suggestion is, amidst the fireworks and barbeques and flag-waving fun - all of which are great - that you take the time to feel good about America.

You travel around the world and you see the remnants of history's great civilizations. You walk through the preserved wreckage of Rome's Imperial Forum or the Acropolis of Ancient Athens and you wonder -- what was it really like to be here when these civilizations were at their peak? You can do that today in Washington DC -- or your hometown.

We Americans are privileged to live in one of history's supreme moments. We Americans are participants in one of history's greatest civilizations in its prime.

Someday in some future epoch, history will have moved on, and there will be distant centuries between that time and the American Era. People will then look upon America as we do upon ancient Egypt or Greece, and will do so with same wonder and awe.

I suggest you look upon America with that wonder and awe now.

We are happy to announce a new feature for To The Point.

A lot of you have expressed frustration that they could not easily forward a Members Only article to their friends.  There is an email function, but to access an emailed article, you had to be a TTP member yourself.  The only other way was to copy and paste an article into the text body of an email message.

Our problem was that an emailed link to one article in To The Point would open up access to the entire site.  We solved this with software providing a "one-time use" for just that article.

Here's how it works.  All TTP articles have two small icons in the top right corner, one for Print, one for Email.  For any article you'd like to email to a friend or friends, just click on the icon and enter your friend(s) email address(es).  Add your name, address, and whatever message subject you want.  Push send.  That's it.

Your friend will get a link which will bring up the article on the To The Point webpage when he clicks it.  Your friend has full access to that article - but only that article.  He or she is in the site for just this "one-time use."

Hopefully, they will benefit so much from the article they will be persuaded to subscribe themselves!

But there's no sales pitch attached, just the article itself.  So many of you have asked for this - wanting to share the wealth of To The Point - and now we can oblige.  So feel free to forward away!

Shortly before the second-term inauguration of Barack Obama this January, I wrote the following of my worries over the Obama way of doing business:

But the untruths and hypocrisy hover in the partisan atmosphere and incrementally and insidiously undermine each new assertion that we hear from the president - some of them perhaps necessary and logical.

Indeed, the more emphatically he adds "make no mistake about it," "let me be perfectly clear," "I'm not kidding," or the ubiquitous "me," "my," and "I" to each new assertion, the more a growing number of people will come to know from the past that what follows simply is not true.

Does this matter? Yes, because when the reckoning comes, it will be seen as logical rather than aberrant - and long overdue.

House Speaker Pelosi Galore has suffered a bombardment of criticism for pushing a vote for the Armenian Genocide Resolution, H. Res. 106.  Note its date of introduction to the relevant committee with a registered bill number:  January 30, 2007.  Over eight months later, she starts flogging this dead historical horse.  Why now?

The criticism has all been for Pelosi's "ignorance" of Turkish sensitivities in the matter and her "incompetence" for her embroiling the House in a pointless debacle.  As Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) said in the Orlando GOP presidential candidate debate (10/22):
 
"Nancy Pelosi is not a very good Speaker and is a lousy Secretary of State."
 
But what if she's much worse than that?  What if she is pushing the Armenian resolution for the conscious purpose of damaging America's increasingly successful war in Iraq? 

And there is an even more frightening question.

Oh well, oh well, I feel so good today,
We just touched ground on an international runway
Jet propelled back home, from overseas to the USA.

Did I miss the skyscrapers, did I miss the long freeway?
From the coast of California to the shores of Delaware Bay
You can bet your life I did, ‘till I got back to the USA.

Looking hard for a drive-in, searchin' for a corner café
Where hamburgers sizzle on an open grill night and day
Yeah, and a juke-box jumpin' with records like in the USA.

Well, I'm so glad I'm livin' in the USA.
Yes. I'm so glad I'm livin' in the USA.
Anything you want, we got right here in the USA.

--Chuck Berry, "Back In The USA," 1962.