The following conversation between a drone and its operator was intercepted by Wikipedia (or is it Wikileaks?) during a seek-and-destroy mission somewhere in Pakistan.

... fill in the blanks: Teapot Dome, Watergate, Iran Contra, Lewinsky... Benghazi? You may have noticed that every time one erupts, it's compared in heinousness to the last really big one.

I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU, a strong proponent of press freedom and a staunch believer in both a robust First Amendment and a vibrant Fourth Amendment. But I also care about rational public discourse, and the furious condemnation of the Department of Justice in this situation is way over the top.

Three scandals have converged in the past week to preoccupy Congress and the press. Benghazi was the first to come, and it has surprised by its staying power. The abuse of power by the IRS may be, in the long run, the most damaging of these cases for the Obama presidency, but its outlines are only beginning to emerge. But the ugliest of the scandals has come from the revelation of the justice department's seizure of two months of phone calls by 100 AP reporters. This was done to investigate the leak of a thwarted terrorist plot which the government itself had already decided to disclose in public. Different as they are, the scandals all point to a single disorder that afflicts the Obama White House and the Holder justice department. The name of the disorder is paternalism, and its leading symptoms are suppression and secrecy.

Security is a real need, of course, but know-nothing security flouts that need, often enough both ignoring and aggravating the real dangers we face while, at the same time, inflicting massive inconvenience on people innocently caught in its web.

Do we listen to the DoD or to the PRC government and Senior Colonel Wang XinJun, a researcher at the Academy of Military Sciences in Beijing, who recently stated, "The Chinese government and armed forces have never sanctioned hacking activities"?

History shows that each of the presidents of the past few decades have had to deal with embassy attacks and bombings but for some reason, I don't ever recall there being so much unrest following an attack as there is now under President Obama.

"Boston exposes antiterror frailties," says the Washington Post. Last Thursday, I arrived early for a breakfast meeting at a New York hotel, placed m...

he prospect of national decline looms not from external forces, but from internal fragmentation exacerbated by global instability. The two, in fact, are intertwined.

The International Committee of the Red Cross told congressional staffers that the level of desperation amongst Guantanamo detainees is "unprecedented,...

Unfortunately, what happened to these whistleblowers underscores the growing secrecy in America's national security state. Nowhere is that more evident than the Obama administration's unprecedented prosecution of whistleblowers under the Espionage Act.

Why do we continue, more so now than ever before, to exaggerate the military threats that we face? For it is undeniable that our massive national security complex has spawned its very own enemy-industrial complex. And the reason for this is simple: threat inflation makes good business sense. Just like sex, it sells.

So let's hear from you, Mr. President. Since it's so hard to put carbon back in the smokestack or to put the pieces back after our super-storms, let's have a national conversation about climate change in the coming months rather than the coming years. Don't worry about us.

Director Dror Moreh's 2012 documentary film, The Gatekeepers, currently being screened in Washington, D.C., has a true Shakespearean quality about it. It is a well-told drama, making the audience appreciate the tragic quality of the unfolding narrative.