Michelle Malkin: "You can’t connect the dots if you don’t gather them."
Kevin Drum, Matt Yglesius, the FBI and many others too numerous to mention: "If you gather way too many useless dots, you can’t connect anything correctly."
MLK’s Ideals
George W. Bush, 1/16/06:
Martin Luther King lived on that admonition to call our country to a higher calling, and today we celebrate the life of an American who called Americans to account when we didn’t live up to our ideals.
How true. Unfortunately, if MLK were alive to day, he would be asking President Bush for an accounting. King was an anti-war activist, suspicious of an administration that lets loose the dogs of war, while ignoring domestic problems. Recall Martin Luther King Jr.’s November 1967 speech at the National Labor Leadership Assembly for Peace, and see how relevant they are to today’s events:
Now what are some of the domestic consequences of the war in Vietnam? It has made the Great Society a myth and replaced it with a troubled and confused society…It has given the extreme right, the anti-labor, anti-Negro, and anti-humanistic forces a weapon of spurious patriotism to galvanize its supporters into reaching for power, right up to the White House. It hopes to use national frustration to take control and restore the America of social insecurity and power for the privileged.
…It is disgraceful that a Congress that can vote upwards of $35 billion a year for a senseless immoral war in Vietnam cannot vote a weak $2 billion dollars to carry on our all too feeble efforts to bind up the wound of our nations 35 million poor. This is nothing short of a Congress engaging in political guerilla warfare against the defenseless poor of our nation.
When I first decided to take a firm stand against the war in Vietnam, I was subjected to the most bitter criticism, by the press, by individuals, and even by some fellow civil rights leaders. There were those who said that I should stay in my place, that these two issues did not mix and I should stick with civil rights. Well I had only one answer for that and it was simply the fact that I have struggled too long and too hard now to get rid of segregation in public accommodations to end up at this point in my life segregating my moral concerns.
H/T Think Progress
Photo shamelessly ripped off from Shakespeare’s Sister, who indulges in a justified rant here.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Is Either A Bad Lawyer Or A Liar
From last night’s CNN interview by Larry King of Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez:
KING: General, isn’t there a happy medium? Isn’t there a way to get quickly to a judge who signs off on a warrant to tap or listen in? Isn’t there a way to do that quick?
GONZALES: Larry, whenever you involve another branch of government in an activity regarding electronic surveillance, inherently it’s going to result in some cases in delay. Perhaps in straightforward cases we can get authority relatively quickly but not all of these cases are straightforward and it’s very, very important that the president has the agility and the speed to gather up electronic surveillance of individuals that may be in contact with the enemy.
Now, if Larry King was up on his facts, the proper follow-up would be pointing out to Gonzales that "agility and speed" are not compromised under the law, since FISA allows the Administration to begin eavesdropping immediately without a warrant, and then get approval from the FISA Court retroactively.
Larry King, not a stellar journalist by any means, can perhaps be forgiven for not knowing this aspect of the law. But Gonzales should know better. And his blatently unsupportable argument should be pointed out at every turn.
Post 9-11 Wiretapping Yields Tons Of Useless Info
In the months following the September 11 attacks, the National Security Agency sent a torrent of names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses to the FBI that swamped the agency but led in virtually every case to dead ends or innocent Americans, The New York Times reported on Monday.
FBI officials complained repeatedly to the secretive spy agency, which was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on the international phone and Internet communications of targeted Americans.
The unfiltered data swamped FBI investigators, the newspaper reported on its Web site in an article written for its Tuesday editions.
Some FBI officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on the privacy of law-abiding Americans.
The bureau’s then-director, Robert Mueller, raised concerns about the legal basis for the eavesdropping program, which did not seek court warrants, the Times reported, citing an unidentified government official. Mueller asked senior administration officials "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," but ultimately deferred to the Justice Department legal opinions.
Matt Yglesius comments about what might be going on – a "cover your ass" factor at the NSA:
If an attack comes, and someone involved was fingered by something the NSA had going on, and the NSA didn’t forward it to the FBI, the NSA is going to get the blame. If the NSA just forwards tons and tons of stuff to the FBI which, overwhelmed, can’t follow-up on everything properly, then the NSA gets to say they fingered the right dudes and blame the FBI for not picking up the ball. So the incentive is to overestimate the amount of stuff that should be dumped on the other guy’s desk.
Based on the Times story, this worry looks more real than theoretical. Again, it’s hard to pronounce definitively about a secret program, run by a secret agency, fighting a secretive terrorist network. But there’s plenty of reason to be suspicious that this is just a plain old bad idea along with being illegal and open to abuse.
RELATED: Don’t get sucked in by this headline. It’s not just the ACLU doing the suing. Other plaintiffs include conservative columnist Christopher Hitchens and others across a wide political spectrum.
Breaking News: SCOTUS Upholds Physician Suicide Law
With all this talk about Alito, people seem to forget that the U.S. Supreme Court is actually in session.
CNN is reporting that it just upheld Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide law. Here’s the blurb from SCOTUSBlog:
The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the U.S. attorney general does not have the power to bar doctors from prescribing lethal drugs for use in doctor-assisted suicide. The ruling, allowing Oregon to continue as the only state to permit that medical practice, divided the Court 6-3; Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., was one of the dissenters — his first dissent.
While this opinion is sure to drive some right-to-lifers nuts, it essentially follows conservative principles of "states’ rights". Of particular note is Roberts’ dissent, one which gives a slight indication that he might be a results-oriented justice. The other dissenters were Scalia and Thomas. Uh-oh. Now there’s three of them.
Of course, it’s too early to conclude that; hopefully, he wrote a dissent.
UPDATE: He didn’t pen a dissent, but he joined Scalia’s dissent. Again, uh-oh.
UPDATE 2: Okay. I should have read the majority opinion before I opined. This isn’t just about states’ rights, but also about the degree of deference given to the executive branch (specifically, the Attorney General) to "interpret" statutes broadly. Apparently, the majority of the Court was not happy with the AG’s "Interpretive Rule" wherein he used the Controlled Substances Act to go after physicians’ who assist patients with suicide. This bodes well for other things, seeing as how the executive branch tends to interpret other statutes (i.e., FISA) to mean whatever they want it to mean. From SCOTUSBlog (again):
The Court conceded that the attorney general does have the authority to write rules for enforcing federal laws on illegal drugs. But, it said, federal law "does not authorize the Attorney General to bar dispensing coontrolled substances for assisted suicide in the face of a state medical regime permitting such conduct."
While allowing doctor-aided suicide to continue when a state allows it, the Court made no sweeping declarations about patients’ or doctors’ rights. The decision, rather, was based almost entirely upon the Court’s interpretation of what Congress had done in giving the federal government the authority to regulate the prescription of drugs by doctors.
In a bow to states’ rights, the majority commented: "The background principles of our federal system…belie the notion that Congress would use such an obscure grant of authority to regulate areas traditionally supervised by the states’ police power." Thus, the Court said, it was unnecessary to determine whether Congress had made a clear statement of intent to interfere with state authority over medical practice, or whether Congress had intended to preempt that state authority.
This is an important point when it comes to Bush’s justification for wiretapping. Bush’s argument was that Congress’ Authorization for Use of Military Force "implicitly" gave him the power to conduct warrantless wiretaps. Of course, there is no clear statement to that effect in the AUMF (it merely says that the President shall use "all necessary force" with regard to al Qaeda — something which does not clearly mean that they were conferring domestic wiretapping powers to the President.
The federal Controlled Substances Act "and our case law," the Court said, "amply support the conclusion that Congress regulates medical practice insofar as it bars doctors from using their prescription-writing powers as a means to engage in illicit drug dealing and trafficking as conventionally understood. Beyond this, however, the statute manifests no intent to regulate the practice of medicine generally….Tbe structure and operation of the CSA presume and rely upon a functioning medical profession regulated under the State’s police powers."
"It is difficult," the Court added, "to defend the Attorney General’s declaration that the statute impliedly criminalizes physician-assisted suicide."
I suspect (hope) this will not be the first time that the Supreme Court will have serious doubts about the AG’s interpretations of statutes.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, thus illustrating that he will continue to have a major role to play as a centrist on the Court after Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s retirement, which appears to be imminent. O’Connor joined in the Kennedy opinion. Others on the opinion were the Court’s more liberal members, Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H. Souter and John Paul Stevens.
Dissenting, along with Roberts, were the Court’s two most conservative members, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Scalia, in an opinion joined by the other two dissenters, said the Court distorted the Controlled Substances Act and disregarded "settled principles" on how to interpret statutes. Thomas, in a separate opinion speaking only for himself, accused the majority of making a constitutional decision "under the guise of statutory interpretation."
Yuck Story Of The Week
Imagine that you’re a doctor treating a patient for back pain.
Imagine telling that patient that the cause of his back pain is a tumor.
Imagine performing surgery on the patient’s back to remove the tumor.
Imagine opening up the patient’s back, and seeing . . . . tiny human feet and hands.
Yup. A 35 year old truck driver in Russia was experiencing chronic back pain. The cause of the back pain turned out to be a fully developed (but obviously dead) "parasitic twin" that he never knew he had. Full story here.
TV Sends Out Distress Signal
British military choppers searched the English Channel for hours this month after receiving a distress call relayed from space.
A military base in Scotland — 650 miles away — picked up the signal on Jan. 5, relayed by satellite. Something terrible had surely happened, and rescue teams were rushed out to find the victims.
But there was no downed plane and no sinking ship. The emergency call was eventually traced to a common television receiver in a Portsmouth home.
The surprised owner of the television receiver was soon visited by the authorities.
Royal Air Force spokesman Michael Mulford said the incident was just plain weird.
"This is very, very unusual, it’s a complete freak and the odds of a digibox sending out such a signal must be astronomical," Mulford told the BBC.
The unidentified owner in Portsmouth was asked to give up his TV receiver and he complied. Experts will test the device to see how it happened to produce a Mayday signal that could be heard in space.
Consumer TV equipment sometimes just goes nuts.
In October 2004, an Oregon man’s Toshiba television sent a distress signal that was picked up by satellite and relayed to the Air Force Rescue Center at Virginia’s Langley Air Force Base.
The freak TV’s owner was 20-year-old Chris van Rossmann. This being America, he didn’t get off so easy.
The military thugs threatened him with a $10,000 fine should he use the defective TV again. Toshiba showed a bit more humanity and replaced his screwy set.
President Bush, Gore On Wiretapping
There’s an unwritten rule that ex-Presidents don’t criticize sitting Presidents. Comity, or something like that.
That doesn’t apply to Vice-Presidents (apparently).
called on Congress and the public to resist what he called "a gross and excessive power grab" by the Bush administration amid the war on terrorism, declaring that "our Constitution is at risk."
Gore said the use of the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans without a court order shows that President Bush "has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently."
"A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government," he said.
Sing it, Al!
Pornography Assignment Canned
A high school research assignment on Internet pornography was canceled after parents in this Cleveland suburb complained.
Superintendent Jeff Lampert said that although the teacher’s apparent goal to discuss the harmful effects of pornography was well-intentioned, he agreed with parents that the assignment was inappropriate for 14- and 15-year-old freshmen at Brooklyn High.
The assignment asked students to research pornography on the Internet and list eight facts about pornography. Students also were asked to write their personal views of pornography and any experience they had with it.
Another Cronkite Moment
Too bad he doesn’t have the clout with America that he had 40 years ago:
Former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, whose 1968 conclusion that the Vietnam War was unwinnable keenly influenced public opinion then, said Sunday he’d say the same thing today about Iraq.
"It’s my belief that we should get out now," Cronkite said in a meeting with reporters.
Now 89, the television journalist once known as "the most trusted man in America" has been off the "CBS Evening News" for nearly a quarter-century. He’s still a CBS News employee, although he does little for them.
Cronkite said one of his proudest moments came at the end of a 1968 documentary he made following a visit to Vietnam during the Tet offensive. Urged by his boss to briefly set aside his objectivity to give his view of the situation, Cronkite said the war was unwinnable and that the U.S. should exit.
Then-President Lyndon Johnson reportedly told a White House aide after that, "If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America."
The best time to have made a similar statement about Iraq came after Hurricane Katrina, he said.
"We had an opportunity to say to the world and Iraqis after the hurricane disaster that Mother Nature has not treated us well and we find ourselves missing the amount of money it takes to help these poor people out of their homeless situation and rebuild some of our most important cities in the United States," he said. "Therefore, we are going to have to bring our troops home."
From The Sublime To The Ridiculous
Sublime: The great Shelley Winters who passed away this weekend:
Several actors have won more than one Academy Award. But Shelley Winters was the only star who scored multiple trophies–and an underwater rescue of Gene Hackman.
Winters, the unsinkable two-time Oscar winner who worked and worked and worked, whether the job came in a prestige picture (Lolita), a disaster epic (The Poseidon Adventure), an exploitation flick (Bloody Mama) or a Pauly Shore vehicle (Jury Duty), died Saturday of heart failure at a nursing home in Beverly Hills, reports said.
Winters, who suffered a heart attack last October, was 85.
In all, Winters’ on-screen career spanned 56 years and 130 films and made-for-TV movies, per the stats at the Internet Movie Database. Key credits included: 1959’s The Diary of Anne Frank and 1965’s A Patch of Blue), for which she won Best Supporting Actress Oscars; and 1951’s A Place in the Sun and 1972’s The Poseidon Adventure), for which she received a Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress nomination, respectively.
Ridiculous: Michael Jackson interviewing for a "real job".
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Michael Jackson seems to be settling in to the Persian Gulf. He has shopped for real estate here, been spotted in glitzy malls — and now it appears that Jackson is interviewing for a job.
The singer, his reputation in tatters at home after winning a grueling molestation trial in California last year, is negotiating a position as a consultant with a Bahrain-based company that plans to set up theme parks and music academies in the Middle East, according to a press release.
AAJ Holdings Ltd., owned by Bahraini businessman Ahmed Abu Bakr Janahi, said it wanted to hire the 47-year-old Jackson to give advice on setting up entertainment businesses.
No, Clinton Didn’t Do It
Former President Clinton said Thursday that he never ordered wiretaps of American citizens without obtaining a court order, as President Bush has acknowledged he has done.
Clinton, in an interview broadcast Thursday on the ABC News program ”Nightline,” said his administration either received court approval before authorizing a wiretap or went to court within three days after to get permission, as required by law.
”We either went there and asked for the approval or, if there was an emergency and we had to do it beforehand, then we filed within three days afterward and gave them a chance to second guess it,” Clinton told ABC.
Quote Of The Day
Conservative Ann Coulter lobs her usual grenades at the Democratic Party in her column today, and contrasts it with the Republican Party.
The title of her column is "Fork Replaces Donkey As Democratic Party Symbol", although I don’t understand (and Coulter never explains) the fork reference. Maybe it has something to do with abortion, but frankly, that doesn’t make much sense. The Democratic Party supports safe and legal abortions, as opposed to dangerous back-alley self-abortions committed with . . . um, forks. So, I really honestly don’t understand what she’s thinking with the "fork" thing.
Anyway, in the course of her incoherent rambling, she tosses out this gem:
Andrew Jackson, the father of the Democratic Party, may have had some unpalatable goals, but at least they were big ideas. Wipe out the Indians, kill off the national bank and institute a spoils system. Love him or hate him, he never said, "I’ll be announcing my platform sometime early next year." The Whigs were formed in opposition to everything Jackson stood for.
The Republican Party emerged from the Whigs when the Whigs waffled on slavery. (They were "pro-choice" on slavery.) The Republican Party was founded expressly as the anti-slavery party, which to a great extent remains their position today.
How’s that for a political slogan? "Today’s Republican Party: Still Against Slavery For The Most Part".