who back then represented hope. he was someone everybody believed in, trusted, never for a second thought that somehow he would abuse government power for personal gain, which in some quarters is the view, particularly among the germans. you got to remember the germans are the ones who are most monitored of any european country by the nsa and they're very anxious about this. there is, you know, a very unfou unfortunate in german and old czech and east german, intelligence agencies which they're very aware of, but at the same time i think it's pretty notable angela merkel the chancellor and other bigtime intelligence officials in germany have gone out of their way to defuels the whole situation to essentially support obama. because just in the last weekend we learned that the german intelligence agency has poured 100 million euros into their own internet monitoring. i thought it was a really interesting juxtaposition of