Sorry, Wrong Numbers: A D.C. Horror Story

You have to love the NSA's excuse that it "accidentally" spied on Americans in Washington, D.C. environs when it mixed up its area code with Cairo, Egypt's. (Hey, it could happen to anyone, right?) It strikes me that what's happening with the NSA is what happened here in Canada with our corrupt and intrusive state "human rights" apparatus. The NSA scandal occurred/is occurring on a much larger scale, of course, but, like our "human rights" bureaucracies, it goes to show what can happen when, with the best of intentions you create something over which you lose control, something that ends up being monstrous. And it becomes monstrous because it had serious design flaws from the get-go, ones which you either failed to foresee or chose to overlook. So why should anyone be surprised when these Frankenstein's monsters--the NSA and IRS in the U.S.; the "human rights" system here in Canada--run amuck and terrify the villagers?

Here's what Mark Steyn has to say about the NSA's "oopsy":

The Egypt/Washington industrial-scale wrong number is almost too perfectly poignant a vignette at the end of a week in which hundreds are dead on the streets of Cairo. On the global scene, America has imploded: Its leaders have no grasp of its national interests, never mind any sense of how to achieve them. The assumption that we are in the early stages of “the post-American world” is now shared by everyone from General Sisi to Vladimir Putin. General Sisi, I should add, is Egypt’s new strongman, not Putin’s characterization of Obama. Meanwhile, in contrast to its accelerating irrelevance overseas, at home Washington’s big bloated blundering bureaucratic security state expands daily. It’s easier to crack down on 47 Elm Street than Benghazi.