I was going to start this blogging off a little slower, but with such gems in the news I feel I have to come out swinging. Welcome!

National security. It is a very important concept, and one of the only things the federal government should have charge over. Yet the term is being used to hide every blunder the federal government makes.

The newest is blocking the release of CIA interrogation tapes and photos. But it is even worse than that, the ACLU is trying to get the memos and emails regarding the interrogations because, get this, the interrogation tapes were destroyed. Nothing screams guilt like destroying evidence, just ask the Enron executives.

But that isn't how government works now, and it seems like the Obama administration is hoping to change this---but progress is very slow. The mentality in Washington says that any mistake the American government has made must be hidden from the world to remain credible. And this is what they really mean by "National Security", not the protection of the American people, but the protection of an image. A who's who in the hit tv show International Idol. The problem is, we are Spencer Pratt.

Our history with the CIA isn't the most righteous one. This has been well documented in the released classified documents Legacy of Ashes  by Tim Weiner, and it all boils down to this: we torture.

When President Bush went out publicly and stated that we aren't doing anything that hasn't been done before, he wasn't lying. Instead what had happened is everything the CIA used to do--nation building/destroying, interrogation techniques and espionage--has been moved to the US military. In doing so, it should have been more regulated by Congress, instead it ran wild. And that is what we are trying to hide.

So why does winning "International Idol" mean so much to national security and to save face? For one, we start to lose a voice in the international panel. But thanks to the work leading up to the Iraq war, the past administration deemed the UN useless and did its best to discredit the institution. Now Obama has a job to do, to keep his promise to us and the world of a more transparent government, while taking the flack for something he personally (hopefully) hasn't condoned himself.

But this leads to one difficulty, our cry outs for injustice of the world. Most recently, the two American reporters in North Korea sentenced to labour camps. It is this that should triumph as the sole reason to be an open and honest government, because saving Americans from irrational sentences around the world is a far more national security problem than how we look at the next "Leaders of the World Kegger".