Don't You Go Peeking At My Dirty Underwear....

This cartoon by Clay Bennett of the Chattanooga Times Free Press hits on something - how our government will happily ignore the rights and privacy of ordinary citizens, despite having a complete absence of evidence that its new privacy-invasive policies will do anything to improve security, but pretty much blows a gasket when it's our political leaders who might be embarrassed.

I find it interesting that, despite the furor over the Wikileaks disclosures relating to the military's activity in Iraq, the U.S. government did not come down on him full bore, nor did they assign a team of government lawyers to scour the statute books looking for a way to criminally charge Assange, until it was the State Department and, by extension, the political leadership of the nation that was being embarrassed. From a legal perspective, why are leaks of low-level State Department memoranda worse than leaks of military documents and video?

The people making these choices on our behalf are the same individuals who, of course, don't have to go through regular airport security - and whose wealthy supporters don't go through anything approaching a frisk or body scan even when they go to events where the President is present.

How does it feel to be one of the little people?