If you read this page, you know I consider the government’s spying one of the greatest threats to freedom we face. Even wars we enter with some intent to stop some day, but I don’t see anyone who wants to increase the spying acknowledging any intent to scale it back. It looks to me a one-way increase in the executive branch’s power at the expense of the other two branches’, one of the major risks the founders tried to guard against. They were rebelling against the tyranny that results from unaccountable centralized authority.

Even if you don’t agree on my perspective, you probably agree the issue is important enough for people to discuss. Even if you don’t agree you’d value discussing it, you probably agree at least people in the government should talk about it publicly. If so, you probably agree the news should cover it.

Below is the news doing just that, only to interrupt itself, interrupting a former legislator mid-sentence, in what at least some viewers consider one of the greatest topics of our time to describe a minor update in Justin Bieber’s court proceeding!

I avoid watching and reading the news, always remembering the media wants to sell ads. Years ago I would have recoiled from the idea, but after trying it out and finding myself no less informed of things that matter after the experiment, I stopped.

I would have thought the news would try to stop this impression, but apparently not. It’s forcing its irrelevance on us. I wonder what kind of shame the people involved in that report feel, seeing that video at over six million views and counting.

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