Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Holy Crap
And I'm not talking about my beloved Packers losing 48-3 last night. Only because I turned it off after halftime am I up and blogging so early in the morning. That, and because this blows my mind:
Over at Political Animal, Kevin Drum is speculating--credibly, it seems to me--that the reason the administration didn't go to the FISA court to get approval for its wiretapping program is that it doesn't involve wiretaps in the conventional sense. The program may be some kind of massive data-mining operation that involves monitoring e-mails and telephone calls by the millions, thus making it impossible to get individual warrants, as the FISA court requires. (The Poor Man has more on what it might involve.)
Remember Total Information Awareness--the data-mining program formerly headed by disgraced Iran-Contra figure John Poindexter, that was supposedly abandoned a couple of years ago? Remember how we guessed it wasn't dead, but would simply go underground? It looks to me like that's precisely what's happened--and that for the last year or two, the administration has been conducting an international fishing expedition that presumes anybody who's made an international phone call, or perhaps even sent an e-mail from an IP address in one country to an IP address in another, might be a terrorist.
Recommended Reading: Newsweek lays the stomp and whipsong on He Who Shall Not Be Named for, among other things, meeting with the publisher and editor of the New York Times two weeks ago and asking them to lay off the story about the wiretaps--not out of concern for national security, Jonathan Alter writes, but to keep the paper from revealing his illegal act. (At Attytood, Will Bunch lays some stomp and whipsong of his own on the Times.)
Quote of the Day: (Actually, yesterday, since it's only 6:00 in the morning right now, and today's likely to be another long and interesting day.) From the Rude Pundit, during yesterday's press conference: "Talking to Iraqi ex-pats who visited him in the Oval Office after voting, and who demanded the head of Saddam Hussein instead of a trial, Bush says that he told them that it's important to follow the rule of law, that the legal process is what distinguishes Iraq now from tyranny. Man, can this motherfucker lay down the sarcasm or what?"
And I'm not talking about my beloved Packers losing 48-3 last night. Only because I turned it off after halftime am I up and blogging so early in the morning. That, and because this blows my mind:
Over at Political Animal, Kevin Drum is speculating--credibly, it seems to me--that the reason the administration didn't go to the FISA court to get approval for its wiretapping program is that it doesn't involve wiretaps in the conventional sense. The program may be some kind of massive data-mining operation that involves monitoring e-mails and telephone calls by the millions, thus making it impossible to get individual warrants, as the FISA court requires. (The Poor Man has more on what it might involve.)
Remember Total Information Awareness--the data-mining program formerly headed by disgraced Iran-Contra figure John Poindexter, that was supposedly abandoned a couple of years ago? Remember how we guessed it wasn't dead, but would simply go underground? It looks to me like that's precisely what's happened--and that for the last year or two, the administration has been conducting an international fishing expedition that presumes anybody who's made an international phone call, or perhaps even sent an e-mail from an IP address in one country to an IP address in another, might be a terrorist.
Recommended Reading: Newsweek lays the stomp and whipsong on He Who Shall Not Be Named for, among other things, meeting with the publisher and editor of the New York Times two weeks ago and asking them to lay off the story about the wiretaps--not out of concern for national security, Jonathan Alter writes, but to keep the paper from revealing his illegal act. (At Attytood, Will Bunch lays some stomp and whipsong of his own on the Times.)
Quote of the Day: (Actually, yesterday, since it's only 6:00 in the morning right now, and today's likely to be another long and interesting day.) From the Rude Pundit, during yesterday's press conference: "Talking to Iraqi ex-pats who visited him in the Oval Office after voting, and who demanded the head of Saddam Hussein instead of a trial, Bush says that he told them that it's important to follow the rule of law, that the legal process is what distinguishes Iraq now from tyranny. Man, can this motherfucker lay down the sarcasm or what?"
