Call Me, They'll Never Know

Tonight on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Obermann they did a segment on the idiotic way the White House is trying to parse and manipulate language to obsfuscate. They showed a clip where White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan tried to prove that the recently disclosed NSA wiretapping operation does not represent domestic spying by explaining the difference between the words "domestic" and "international". To prove his point he used the example of your phone bill where a call from the U.S. to a foreign phone is listed as an international call, not a domestic call. Therefore, spying on these calls is not "domestic" spying.

Egad! Did he realize he gave away the underlying secret that has made the White House so touchy on this subject? A call made from a U.S. phone to a foreign phone shows up on your bill as an international call, but what about a call made from a foreign phone to a U.S. phone? Aha, it doesn't show up at all! Using McClellan's analogy we now know that the NSA can't snoop on calls coming into the U.S. from foreign phones! To hide from the NSA all al Qaida has to do is call the U.S. from some other country and we'll never know!

Anyone else would be fired immediately for such a gaff, but no one else would take his thankless job, so he is probably safe.

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