Jon Snow on the eavesdropping thing

One of the highlights of my day is receiving the latest Snowmail. Jon Snow is a presenter for Channel 4 News in Britain, and he sends out a daily news update around midday (well, it's evening in Britain, but midday here). There's always a little commentary, but mostly it's a quick headline grab.

I love it for how quickly he sums up the news and throws a common-sense take into it. Essential for those days when I skip reading the newspaper and/or can't follow the news all day.

An item in today's Snowmail summed up Bush's defense of eavesdropping quite simply. It's good to take a step back and look at this rationally from an outsider's perspective (outside the US, at least), absent the rationalizations of the kneejerk defend-Bush crowd. And I quote:

Bush defends the listeners
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George Bush is in an ever deepening mire about tapping people's phones without permission.

It's a long and sordid tradition that US presidents tap themselves - remember Nixon?

But tapping others? An American's home is his castle as are the wires running in and out of it, people don't like it - can Bush recover?

Amazing to think that his second term is not even 12 months old and it has come to this.

'Nuff said.