Elliot Spitzer wasn’t an enemy combatant. Yet the US government wire-tapped his phone anyway. Elliot Spitzer was not a terrorist, yet the government decided it was o’kay to wiretap his phone anyway. Elliot Spitzer was an American citizen, yet the US government thought it o’kay to wiretap his phone.

In the late 60s the same action, one political party using recording devices to hear what another was doing, was called Watergate. It took down Nixon and became a scandal for the republican party.

After 8 years of the US government bashing against it’s own citizens, we’re so shell shocked that when the same thing happens now, we blame the victim, instead of the perpetrator – the US Justice department that now thinks it’s legal to spy on it’s own citizens. We’re to titillated by the salaciousness of Spitzers fall from grace, that we don’t see our own descent into a world where spying on normal American citizens, is both legal, and morally right.

Shame on Spitzer, but perhaps more importantly, shame on us.