Rant on.

One of my favorite political morons has been kind enough to provide me with a little fodder for today’s rant.  Sarah Palin has once again declared the Obama administration is clueless, this time about the situation in Egypt.  According to her, the leaders of this country aren’t telling the American public all that is known about what’s going on over there.  She also says we should find out who is “behind all the turmoil.”

Wait, what?  First, she says the country isn’t being told everything and then she says the leaders don’t know everything anyway.

Okay, let’s set that second point aside for a moment as I think the real issue here is with the first part.  According to Ms. Palin, President Obama should apparently hold a press conference and give out all the details of everything we know about what’s going on in Egypt.  Apparently she is of the belief President Obama is really Julian Assange, the CEO of WikiLeaks.  No, Sarah, that’s not the way our government works.

Let’s look at it a different way.  Let’s imagine you’re a desk jockey in some major corporation.  Do you expect the company’s board to tell you all the nitty gritty details of what the company is doing in its day-to-day business?  Should you be kept informed of all the things the R&D department is doing?  Perhaps you’re an honest person, loyal to the company, somebody who would never give out this wealth of information if you learned it, but somebody else in your company might be naughty and give the data to the competition.  This is the core of the problem, by the way:  There may be reasons for keeping secret the information our government has not passed on.  Those who provided our government such information might be in danger if it is revealed we know it.

In short, the government has the right to keep things secret.  Well, they have right to try to keep secrets.  The whole WikiLeaks thing is about the right of the media to try and uncover such things and publish such things.  In other words, Sarah, if you can uncover secrets, more power to you, but the government is under no obligation to tell you everything.

Rant off.