Two whistle-blowers

Not everyone took the weekend off.   Two whistle-blowers were on duty with regards to the scandals swirling around our government.

First, Edward Snowden requested that the Guardian release his identify as the NSA whistleblower.   He was a former CIA technical assistant who had been employed for about four years by a private firm under contract with NSA.   Snowden, who fled to Hong Kong before revealing his identity, says he did it as an act of conscience "to protect the basic liberties for people around the world."

Now perhaps we will have this national debate about privacy vs safety.   In the meantime, an elaborate, costly program that many senators in the know say has helped avert terrorist attacks has been rendered less effective.    But do we really need that level of scrutiny to prevent a relatively small number of deaths?   (See previous post:   "All the infrastructure . . ")

On the other hand, 9/11 did far more to this country than the 3,000 people who lost their lives.  But how much of "what it did" was our (understandable) over-reaction out of fear?

Second, the IRS non-scandal still creaks along, kept alive by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and his House investigative committee.   Perhaps the worst job in Washington belongs to the ranking Democratic member of that committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD).

Issa had previously released an excerpt from the hearings on the IRS matter which stated that "some IRS workers believed that the targeting of Tea Party groups was being directed by officials in Washington."   No evidence or documentation was supplied.  That's all Issa wants to hear.  End of discussion.  It's all Obama's doing.

Cummings has called on Issa to release the entire transcript rather than selected portions that fit his agenda.    Lacking that, Cummings has now released his own excerpted portion, which concerns the testimony of a manager in the Cincinnati IRS office.   He says that it was he, not the White House, who set the extra scrutiny in motion.   One of his workers brought him an application from a Tea Party group that he felt should be investigated further for political activity.   He tagged the application and notified the Washington office.  That is what set it in motion.

The manager's personal political stance:   He's a conservative Republican who says he was doing his job, and it was not politically motivated.

Thanks to Cummings, we now know that, if there's any political perfidity going on here, it's in the person of Darrell Issa himself.

Ralph