If the NSA is reading your e-mails to your buddies about where you're going to meet up and play pool tonight, I'd say that's pointless and a violation of your rights. If the NSA is reading Jimmy Carter's e-mails to pals like Nicolas Maduro and Mahmoud Abbas, I'd say this is what digital surveillance is all about, bunky.
Perhaps the bigger headline may be that we've finally found a good decision Obama has made, which is not to seek advice from Jimmeh. Then again, why do you need to get his advice when your own instincts are pretty much exactly the same as his? Besides, you don't really need to call him when you can just read his e-mails.
The only problem here is that I don't believe a word Carter says. Obama doesn't ask his advice but previous presidents did? Really? There have been four presidents in between Carter and Obama. Which of the four do you suppose was seeking advice from Jimmeh? I guess the obvious guess would be Clinton because he was the only Democrat in the bunch, but do you really think so? If Clinton needed to know what the Carter team would do, he had people like Warren Christopher on board to tell him - and that's assuming he saw any wisdom in the Carter way of thinking, which Carter's antics in North Korea and the resulting headaches they created for Bill would tend to suggest he did not.
Do you really think that either Bush was running to Jimmy Carter for advice?
And that brings us to Ronald Reagan, who according to Carter wasn't even paying attention during the transition briefings.
Coming full circles here, maybe Carter simply assumes that all this spying they're doing on him is really just to gain his wisdom so they can think and act like he would. It's really the highest of compliments, which is why he wants to make sure everyone knows about it.
And that would make sense, because if Obama's goal is to have a presidency that's as spectacularly disastrous as Carter's, he's doing a pretty good job of it.
