[ Posted Thursday, June 6th, 2013 – 15:59 UTC ]
I realize that the news Glenn Greenwald just broke on the National Security Agency glomming onto the records of everyone who made a phone call through Verizon is what I really should be commenting on today, but then I realized I had written an article a long time ago which is germane to this debate. Back in August of 2007, I wrote the following piece on warrantless wiretapping, which poses a few questions that have not only never been answered but indeed never even really discussed. Now, I realize that the situations between now and what I was commenting on then are not clearly parallel, since actual wiretapping (recording or analyzing the content of phone calls) is different (and much more intrusive) than merely accessing the records of who called what phone (which is what apparently happened with Verizon). But the wider picture brings up the same basic question this article asks: should vacuuming up all available data and then weeding it out with computers be legally-admissible evidence in a court of law? So I thought it was worth re-running this column today to examine an aspect of governmental communications intercepts that never seems to get talked about.
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[ Posted Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 – 17:29 UTC ]
Mister Attorney General, the reason I have such a problem with issuing warrants or subpoenas for news reporters is because I am aware of the history of the laws being used to do so. I have a hard time believing that you or your boss (a former constitutional professor) are completely unaware of these precedents in American history, but I haven't heard anyone else mentioning them, so I thought it fell to me to bring them up.
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[ Posted Friday, May 17th, 2013 – 16:31 UTC ]
Things have gotten so bad in Washington that both pundits and Republicans are beginning to use the "N-word" to describe the president. No, no... not that N-word! Instead, Obama is now actively being compared to Nixon. This comparison is patently...
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[ Posted Wednesday, May 15th, 2013 – 16:05 UTC ]
Is it time for Attorney General Eric Holder to (as is frequently said in politics) "spend some more time with his family"?
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[ Posted Monday, May 13th, 2013 – 17:29 UTC ]
The scandal currently unfolding at the Internal Revenue Service is actually being downplayed by some who feel that tax investigations into groups advocating an anti-tax attitude is more than justified on the face of it. Admittedly, all the facts are not yet in, but the scandal started when the IRS itself actually publicly admitted wrongdoing. So while there's a question of who knew about it (and who should be fired), the fact that scandalous behavior was happening isn't really even in question. Because it was, indeed, scandalous behavior. Any time a federal agency decides to intimidate those in the political arena in any way, large or small, it should be seen as a scandal by everyone -- no matter your political leanings. Because we've seen what happens when this sort of thing is allowed and encouraged, and it isn't a pretty sight.
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[ Posted Friday, April 26th, 2013 – 17:35 UTC ]
That was all a prelude to the breaking news today: "Congress moves at lightspeed, to fix a problem that would have hit them personally, as they take yet another weeklong vacation instead of doing the nation's business." Could've knocked me over with a feather. Ahem.
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[ Posted Monday, March 25th, 2013 – 16:48 UTC ]
No matter what the Supreme Court decides, after hearing this week's arguments, I think America has reached the tipping point on the subject of gay marriage. I say that because I think that gay marriage is going to win, in the end -- even if the Supreme Court ducks the issue this year. As civil rights battles go, the country has moved extraordinarily fast to where we find ourselves now: the point of no return. Victory for gay rights activists is not assured this time around, but it should now be seen as almost inevitable. Which makes this a very historic point in American progress.
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[ Posted Friday, February 22nd, 2013 – 18:47 UTC ]
We've got a number of oddities to dispense with before we get started this week.
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[ Posted Friday, February 8th, 2013 – 18:03 UTC ]
We begin with cats and birds this week. Iron-lovers across the land were dismayed by the news that the Monopoly folks were discontinuing their favorite token, but cat-lovers were enthused by the feline token which will take its place. Being America, this was done via online voting. In avian news, the Baltimore Ravens won the Super Bowl. The bird is the word!
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[ Posted Thursday, January 24th, 2013 – 17:00 UTC ]
The Republican House just scored a political victory. While meaningless in financial fact, they successfully co-opted a dandy slogan -- which may have real political consequences for Senate Democrats -- and they also managed to pull the wool over the eyes of a large portion of the mainstream media while doing so. Which, as I said, has to be chalked up as a big political victory for the House Republicans.
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