Last year Senator Ron Wyden asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper a simple question: Does the NSA collect data on millions of Americans? Clapper answered "No, sir ... not wittingly." This was a lie. We now know the NSA was collecting Verizon call records of every customer under a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order.

Clapper later claimed his statement was the "least untruthful" answer possible, using a bizarre definition of "collection." Under Department of Defense regulations, data is only "collected" after being processed into intelligible form. This means the NSA can intercept, store, and algorithmically analyze communications without considering them "collected" - a semantic trick that lets them claim they're not collecting data they clearly are.

When pressed on Meet the Press, Clapper compared the NSA database to a library where books aren't part of the "collection" until read. This is absurd - when you add books to a library, they become part of the collection regardless of whether anyone has read them. Wyden had given Clapper advance notice and a chance to correct his answer, but Clapper declined. Democracy cannot function when Congress is "informed" through deliberately misleading statements using unusual definitions designed to convey the opposite of the truth.