Open thread

It's almost Christmas...

So, I got back from my cousin's place a bit ago, he was having a Christmas eve party, and he hands me a Merry Fitzmas mug and t-shirt, which was very cute, especially since cuz is a Republican (though a sane one, this being Illinois and all). Too bad, cuz says to me, that you're not getting to meet Patrick Fitzgerald in person? What do you mean, I ask. Well, it seems my cuz is friends with the Fitz. He says Fitz has been at the house before and would have been at the party, but it being Christmas and all, he's obviously with his family.

Damn. Can you imagine spending Fitzmas with Saint Fitz? How much I'd have paid for that photo op! A very small world... Read the rest of this post...

I do wish Senator Hutchison could keep her pants on...

Check out the two ads in the right hand column.... Read the rest of this post...

NSA Web site says it's a violation of the 4th Amendment to spy on Americans

Well, they say it on their own Web site, so I guess that issue is settled. It's a violation of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution for the NSA to spy on Americans. End of discussion.

Bush violated the constitutional rights of every single American.

Read the rest of this post...

Wayne Besen Reviews Brokeback Mountain

Good review of Brokeback Mountain by Wayne Besen in PlanetOut. (Note, there are spoilers in this review.) One item of particular note:

What has not been talked about is the profound effect the movie is having on the gay community. It has caused many people I know to reevaluate their lives and ponder the meaning of life, love and relationships. Watching the struggle of the two protagonists, Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar, makes today's gay people stop and think, "I really have it easy. Given this freedom, have I lived true to myself and opened myself to the possibility of love?"

Here's to hoping Brokeback Mountain does, in fact, take some of the shallowness out of urban gay living. Read the rest of this post...

It's the Constitution, Stupid - Part II

With today's New York Times revelation, it's almost certain that the President has willfully violated the Constitution. As I pointed out in an earlier posting, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution is unambiguous:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

-- United States Constitution, Amendment IV

What the New York Times article confirmed today (and was speculated in yesterday's Boston Globe) is that the President's spy program is a data mining operation of massive scale. From the Boston Globe:

"The whole idea of the NSA is intercepting huge streams of communications, taking in 2 million pieces of communications an hour," said James Bamford, the author of two books on the NSA, who was the first to reveal the inner workings of the secret agency.

"They have a capacity to listen to every overseas phone call," said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, which has obtained documents about the NSA using Freedom of Information Act requests.

The NSA's system of monitoring e-mails and phone calls to check for search terms has been used for decades overseas, where the Constitution's prohibition on unreasonable searches does not apply, declassified records have shown.

Except now the New York Times has confirmed that it's not just international, it's also domestic (hint hint - that means you):

As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.

For a lot of people this story isn't shocking - you THINK that you already knew this was happening. If you think this, you are fundamentally clueless. This is spying of a scale that would make a wiretap the equivalent of putting your ear up to a door to hear a conversation on the other side of the door. This program is the electronic equivalent of the Government posting someone at every single door in the nation and then recording every single conversation behind every door. (Now they'll tell you they only listened when you called or emailed your Uncle in Paris, but if you believe that you probably believe that 140,000 troops are in Iraq to look for Osama bin Laden.)

Senator Rockefeller's letter raised these very concerns when it referenced the Poindexter TIA program. (TIA, or Total Information Awareness, was described by some as a vacuum cleaner of electronic data, sucking up every phone call, email, and financial transaction to accomplish much the same style of data mining operation eluded to here.) Again from the Times article:

The use of similar data-mining operations by the Bush administration in other contexts has raised strong objections, most notably in connection with the Total Information Awareness system, developed by the Pentagon for tracking terror suspects, and the Department of Homeland Security's Capps program for screening airline passengers. Both programs were ultimately scrapped after public outcries over possible threats to privacy and civil liberties.

Bush ignored those concerns and, as far as we know short of the financial networks, made it a reality. From the Times:

Phil Karn, a computer engineer and technology expert at a major West Coast telecommunications company, said access to such switches would be significant. "If the government is gaining access to the switches like this, what you're really talking about is the capability of an enormous vacuum operation to sweep up data," he said.

If you've made a phone call overseas, if you've sent an email overseas since 9/11 it's been opened, read, and recorded by the U.S. Government. Now, you, personally, may be willing to let the Government do this in the name of protecting you. I am not. And while we could have a reasonable debate about whether this type of data mining should be allowed, it's crystal clear that the United States Constitution does not allow it. Period. Oh that pesky Constitution. As John said below, you're either with the Constitution, or you're against it.

George Bush has stolen not just the very principles on which this country was built, but the faith of billions of people around the world that the United States Constitution means anything. Impeachment isn't enough to pay for that crime. Read the rest of this post...

NORAD is tracking Santa

This is the first time I've written that and it's given me the creeps.

NORAD's Santa tracker.

(They know if he's been sleeping...) Read the rest of this post...

Barron's editorial: Congress should consider impeaching Bush

This is big. I asked around about Barron's and found out that they're a BIG deal in the business community, every CEO reads them, and they're about as reputable in the eyes of America's top business leaders as the Wall Street Journal, if not more so. As for politics, Barron's doesn't it touch it, and no one thinks Barron's is even vaguely liberal.

Now with that as background, we find Barron's editorializing (entire editorial here) that what Bush did is potentially an impeachable offense. And that Congress needs to review what happened and either pass legislation giving Bush full authority to spy on Americans at will without a search warrant or they should impeach him.

Willful disregard of a law is potentially an impeachable offense. It is at least as impeachable as having a sexual escapade under the Oval Office desk and lying about it later. The members of the House Judiciary Committee who staged the impeachment of President Clinton ought to be as outraged at this situation. They ought to investigate it, consider it carefully and report either a bill that would change the wiretap laws to suit the president or a bill of impeachment.

I really appreciate the option Barron's has presented. Either you're with the Constitution or you're against it. If Congress thinks Bush has the power to do what he did, then pass legislation that explicitly lets him spy on us without any judicial check - stop playing games with this inferred and implied crap. Give him the power directly and let the American people know it (then see what happens). And if you don't want him to have the power, impeach him. But there's no in between. Either be man enough to give the man the power outright or charge him with high crimes against the Constitution.

Bush is in serious trouble if conservatives are starting to wake up to the fact that the un-Conservative no longer represents them, no longer represents Republicanism, and worse, is now a threat to everything Republicans supposedly hold dear.

Their base is now our base for any campaign on this issue. The final lines from Barron's:

[The President] said: "It was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy."

Wrong. If we don't discuss the program and the lack of authority for it, we are meeting the enemy -- in the mirror.

(Hat tip to Stoller at MyDD) Read the rest of this post...

Bush's Domestic Spying was way, way more extensive

The NY Times has yet another update that shows how far the Bush team has gone with their illegal spying operation:

The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said.

As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.

The government's collection and analysis of phone and Internet traffic have raised questions among some law enforcement and judicial officials familiar with the program.

Nothing is sacred with Bush. Not the rule of law. Not civil liberties. Read the rest of this post...

Open Thread

I'm in Rhinebeck, NY with my friends, Judy and Emily....putting up the tree today.

Any news today so far? Read the rest of this post...

Why does Republican party chair Ken Mehlman hate Christmas?

This is the current home page of the Republican Party:



(Big hat tip to reader Tom for catching this.) Read the rest of this post...