NSA, Presidents......

OK, I'm bothered that NSA can spy on us through computers, cell phones, and other personal technology.  (Yet another reason not to have a cell phone!)  I'm bothered that NSA does spy on US citizens, too.  But what really is bothersome and frightening is the denials.  It begs the question of "why?"

I know people who are worried about government spying on citizens are marginalized and written off as paranoid.  But I think it's a legitimate concern.  And where are our elected representatives on this?  Like those who voted for ObamaCare, they are noticeably silent.

Speaking of ObamaCare, as more and more becomes known, it is becoming clearer why there was nary a peep of protest from the pharmaceutical companies and large health insurance provides.  Yep, they, unlike those who passed the darn thing, must have have read it.

I'm reading a book about Presidents.  It's easy reading, fun to find tidbits I didn't know (or had forgotten!), and interesting to analyze, not the Presidents, but the author.  He seems to have tipped his biased hand in ranking Presidents.  For instance, FDR is rated "A Champion," along with Washington, Jefferson, and, of course, Lincoln.  And, in considering the magnitude of change FDR brought to both the Presidency and to the nation, he belongs there.  But unlike the author, I don't agree that the changes FDR brought were good for either the nation or the Presidency.  The author claims that FDR saved the US from the Depression.  The evidence has pretty much piled up disproving that.  Now, he might well have eased it for some, at least temporarily, but he didn't end the Depression, didn't bring us out of it.  That's something this author must have picked up from high school and other textbooks, which still maintain that FDR did.  And the author does something I caution my students against when rating Presidents.  Consider what the man did as President, not what he did before (or even after).  For instance, Washington is a "Champion," deservedly. But the author spends a lot of time with Washington during the American Revolution--he wasn't President yet and wouldn't be for some years.  Now the personal characteristics he displayed during the American Revolution might have served Washington well as President, but that he was the singular most important person in the US victory (and I still maintain that "victory" was really more Britain quitting), with due respect to Ben Franklin, did not make him a great President.  Was, then, US Grant also a "Champion?"  Likewise, much time is spend on Jefferson's role with the Declaration of Independence, Virginia religious freedom statutes, etc. in rating him as a "Champion."  But he wasn't President yet.  Why, then, isn't Madison a great President, considering his role at the Constitutional Convention?  And let's toss in Madison as author of the First Amendment.  Maybe I think too much when I read??????