One  wonders if the White House knows what is going on when they trot out people like James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, who apparently enjoys the taste of his own shoe leather.  I’m of the mind that he just likes giving his bosses massive heart attacks every time he speaks.

Mr. Clapper has held his position since June of last year and in that short time has had not three strikes as Lindsey Graham believes, but four verbal missteps that the White House has had to ether correct or clarify. This man is head of our national intelligence!

We have the entertaining moment of Clapper being befuddled on ABC with the other two stooges, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and Chief Counter-terrorism Advisor John Brennan, when asked by Diane Sawyer about the 2010 arrest of 12 men in an alleged terror plot in London. The reason behind that little mistake? He had not been briefed.  In a world of 24 hour news where anyone with a cell phone, television or internet knew about the arrests in London, including the two people sitting next to him, he asserted that he had not been briefed.

Our second display of intelligence with a small “i” was when Clapper claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood, who looked poised to take over in the wake of the uprising in Egypt, was a “largely secular” group. That’s like saying  elections are largely non-political events. Perhaps he just misspoke or maybe he just doesn’t know the meaning of the word “secular”.

Of course, I’m sure Mr. Clapper had the White House hitting their foreheads this week when he informed the Senate Intelligence committee that the regime of Muammar Ghaddafi “will prevail” in Libya and that our greatest “Mortal Threat” were China and Russia, the latter being the country we just happened to sign the START treaty with. It was nice to see even Senate democrats scratch their heads, including Dianne Feinstien and Carl Levine mention that they would have picked someone like, Iran or perhaps North Korea.

While I can see the Lybian comment as Clapper speculating that Ghaddafi would be able to overtake the uprising in his own country, why he would blatantly disregard the White House’s statement on the subject is troubling. Implicating two countries, China and Russia, that we have uneasy relations with while ignoring the two countries which most of the world considers a threat, North Korea and Iran, brings me into agreement with Senator Lindsey Graham that Mr. Clapper needs to go.

Should the White House choose to keep Mr. Clapper, they will have to continue to revise or rebuke his comments, and U.S. Intelligence will continue to look, well, unintelligent.