F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote....................................

" The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

Kevin Drum writes:

"You might not know this if you subsist on a diet of cable news shouting matches, but it really is possible to believe two things at once:

• Intelligence agencies are a necessary fact of life and governments have a legitimate interest in keeping their operations secret. Anyone who works in the intelligence community knows this, and knows that security breaches are a serious business that will lead to prosecution.
• Americans have recently learned a lot about how pervasive our surveillance operations are, and it's laughable to think we would have learned any of it if Snowden hadn't done what he did. In the end, even if he's made some mistakes along the way, he's done a public service.

I believe both these things."

Me too.