By Richard Hébert

“Paranoia is what people do instead of thinking.”

I wish I could lay claim to that apt perception, but the credit goes to Time magazine’s Joe Klein. He said it to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Hardball on June 12. They were, of course, discussing the leak of information about the National Security Agency’s “secret” surveillance programs, a leak that has Washington and the media all tried up in knots of paranoia.

Could we please take a deep breath and step back into the real world?

We are quite accustomed to paranoia emanating from the far right fringes … Read the rest