OMG!!!

I started reading New York Magazine Online to read Jon Chait.

But Dan Amira is pretty funny:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/06/misao-okaw-jiroemon-kimura-oldest-person.html

This Is Somewhat Interesting

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/most-americans-support-nsa-tracking-phone-records-prioritize-investigations-over-privacy/2013/06/10/51e721d6-d204-11e2-9f1a-1a7cdee20287_story.html

A majority of Americans (56%) think what the NSA is doing is appropriate, 41% find it unacceptable.  In fact, 45% think the government should go further.

Now, polls - as Mitt Romney can attest - are tricky things, and I wouldn't put too much credence into one poll.  But if this is consistent, it does raise some interesting questions.

Critics of the NSA program have rightly targeted the lack of transparency in these programs.  And certainly everyone is waiting for another shoe to drop.  But very few people if any have said that this program is illegal.  Instead, they have raised issues of constitutionality and transparency.  Needless to say, the NSA is not the EPA or OSHA, they can't be transparent all the time, but they can report to Congress.  There is some question as whether they have done a good enough job doing that, but ultimately, these practices can only be curtailed through Congress or the Courts.  The national security apparatus is not going to walk away from these powers because Glenn Greenwald has a sad.

But if the public is willing to trade some liberty for some safety, then Congress simply isn't going to move on this.  Witness the spectacle of cowardice involving the closing of Gitmo.  The risk of moving the detainees from Gitmo to a Supermax in the US is close to zero.  But 99 Senators voted against it, including Bernie Sanders and Russ Feingold.  If the public's position is "keep us safe" and we're willing to tolerate the collection of phone records and peeking into international emails, then lawmakers aren't going to touch this with a ten foot microphone (except Rand Paul, who has another agenda).

It would be nice to see some sort of firewall put in place between what the NSA is doing and any non-lethal crimes committed here in the US.  I have no idea if that exists, but the rules of a FISA court are different than those of a civil court and the FBI shouldn't be able to use the NSA database to target pot dealers.

So while there are certainly concerns about what we don't know, looking at what we know the public's response has been "meh".

Greenwald

John Cole yesterday told all of us concerned that the messenger in the NSA story is Glenn Greenwald to go pound sand.  I get his point, in that just because Greenwald has a bit of the libertarian narcissistic personality disorder doesn't mean he's a liar.

But Greenwald - to his credit and fault - is a civil libertarian absolutist.  There are no encroachments on liberty that are acceptable.  Let's take his recent statement:

"The reality is that U.S. government officials for many decades now — and certainly over the last ten years — have been abusing their secrecy power to shield from the American public, not programs that are designed to keep America safe and not to prevent disclosures that would help the terrorists, but to conceal their own actions from the people to whom they're supposed to be democratically accountable," Greenwald said. "What we disclosed was of great public interest, of great importance in a democracy that the U.S. government is building this massive spying apparatus aimed at its own population, and it harms nobody. Anyone who wants to say that any of these stories or disclosures have harmed national security, I defy anybody to say anything that we've published that does that in any way. The only people who have been harmed are those in power who want to conceal their actions and their wrongdoing from the people to whom they're supposed to be accountable."

OK, let's unpack this.

The programs were deliberately designed to stop terrorist attacks.  These programs have swept up terrorists in the US, including some guy who was on his way to New York to bomb the subway system there.  That's what it was designed to do and it did it.  Perhaps, as Greenwald has noted, there are more allegations to come that show that these programs were used to spy on domestic groups, too. But if he has that evidence - that the US is using these programs to deliberately spy on US citizens not involved in terror cells - why hasn't he shown it?

As for the "concealing their own actions" again it would be helpful if there was evidence of them doing this.  If there is a "massive spying apparatus aimed on its own population" presumably this is more than storing phone records or peaking at international e-mails.  The program is no doubt massive, but how is it aimed at the US population?

Has this harmed national security?  I think Al Qaeda leadership has known that their electronic communications have been compromised for years.  So I don't think we've told Ayman al-Zawahari anything he didn't know.  It's more about would be jihadists like the Tsarneav brothers.  In fact, BECAUSE this dragnet that Greenwald claims is aimed at US citizens DIDN'T pick up these domestic terrorists, wouldn't that suggest it isn't targeting US citizens without links to overseas groups?  So perhaps this makes it less likely that some amateur jihadists use their G-mail accounts. And that could compromise security.  Not in a huge way, but some.

The idea that this illegal hasn't be broached yet, really.  John Judis says this reminds him of the harassment he got from COINTELPRO during his radical days in the '60s.  That would be troubling indeed. But again, where is the evidence of this?  He spoke of harassment by the FBI.  Are there any examples of this?  If there are, then that's a big deal.  But again, I haven't heard any.

President Obama has said he welcomes the debate over the trade-offs between national security and civil liberties.  I would add that this debate is long overdue.  We strenuously avoided having that debate in 2001-3 when the Pile was still smoking and we were passing the PATRIOT Act. Good, let's have the debate.

But if the programs was legal, then what we have is less a "scandal" than a policy debate.  One that we should absolutely have.  But I guess policy debates are boring and only scandals have any juice.

And that's why I am reticent to give Greenwald too many laurels yet.  He sees a scandal, precisely because he's a civil libertarian.  These programs to him, though apparently legal, are de facto wrong.  Until he can produce examples of this power being abused in the way some have argued it could be, then again we have a needed policy debate, not criminal wrong doing.

Greenwald is a hammer.  So everything looks like a nail.

Your Democracy At Work

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/6/9/173129/4964

Why gerrymandering leads directly to dysfunction.

Not A Bad Point

http://davidsimon.com/we-are-shocked-shocked/

As Simon notes, we asked for this.

There is a pattern to these "scandals".  First there is breathless outrage.  Maybe Benghazi was mostly confined to the Wingnut Wurlitzer, but as Benghazi became "Benghazi!" the regular media sense, well, maybe there's something there.  Then you had Freaky Friday where the Benghazi emails, the IRS thing and the Rosen thing all break.  Of the three, only the IRS things rises to the level of scandal.

Same with this data mining thing, at least the phone stuff.  There's just a lot more heat than fire so far.  While it definitely requires more digging, at this point I'm still not seeing anything illegal.

Maybe THAT'S the scandal, that the Executive Branch has such easy access to this data mining stuff, but that's different.

(On a personal note, it's so awesome to be home...)

Perfect End To The Week

Southwest lost my luggage....

Fin

Finished the reading.  It's a relief to be over and out of here.

Louisville is full of reflected surfaces.  I don't need to see myself this much...

UPDATE: As I've said, I dunno, every post since I've gotten here, this reading in particular sucked.  But tonight I went out with some really good guys I've known for a few years and the one cool guy from my table and watched a phenomenal US soccer game.  They had the lead, gave it up on sloppy play in the 89th minute and then won it in stoppage time.  Sublime.  We were singing God Bless America and America the Beautiful at the top of our lungs.

I really needed that.

Obamanation

So, I'm just catching bits and pieces of the phone records/e-mail thingee from the news at the gym and a few internet stories.

I think John Cole asks the right question.  Was it legal?  Yes.  It sure seems to be legal. So did the Justice Department's pursuit of the leaks surrounding the State Department's source in the North Korean incident (known as the Rosen Incident).

Nothing that has been done here is illegal.  I can't find any illegality, but maybe it exists.

This is the National Security State we put into place and increased for the most part after 9/11.  We asked for this, just like we asked for Guantanamo Bay.

We had Andrew Bacevich speak the other night and he made a number of (generic) points about the limits of American power.  And the first question was "How do you square with what needs to be done with the realities of American politics?"  And Bacevich punted.

The fact is that we were and probably still are a nation of bedwetters.  All this data mining has probably made us marginally safer.  Keeping all these guys in Gitmo has probably made us even more marginally safer.  Want to change it?  Change American politics.

I get livid when I see press people wonder if Obama will "keep his promise and close Gitmo".  He tried.  But the reality is that 99 Senators, including Bernie Sanders and Russ Feingold voted to prevent him from doing so, because we are a nation of bedwetters.

The Justice and Defense Department have too much power to collect data.  Local police departments have too much power over us. We live in the greatest police state since... ever in American history.

Want to change it?  Change the rules.  Right now, the government is doing what it has been empowered to do by our elected representatives.

Change begins there first.

A Few Terms From The AP Reading

(FYI: A "3" is a pretty bad grade.)

The Mel Gibson 3: Start out pretty interesting then becomes shockingly racist.

The Gary Busey 1: Dude, that's just nuts.

AP Predestination: You get a folder of 25 essays and they're all from Texas and Florida.  And you know that no matter what sort of good works you may have done in the past, you're going to hell.

Love Me. LOVE ME!

Today, I asked to be considered for table leader.  Because I hate being away from home for a week so much, I want to be away for ten days.

Am I that desperate for validation?

Maybe I'll just get it so I can turn it down.

Two more days....

I did learn that Margaret Thatcher wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, which is nice.

Pedagogy

You can learn a lot from watching a great teacher work.

I'm learning you can also learn something from watching a terrible teacher work.

Quick Post While The Internet Works

This Sucks

The food is inedible. They are working us an extra half an hour a day. The exams are poor. And the hotel Internet is so slow I'm blogging on my phone right now.

I miss my kids. I miss my wife. If it weren't for the good people you meet here, I'd start hitch hiking home.

Big Man

Whenever I say, "I'm fat." my kids say, "You're not fat, Daddy." And I think, That's sweet of them.

But then I look around and realize that what they see on the streets of America is their frame of reference.  And in that frame of reference I'm just burly.

On a related note, when I say "I'm bald." they say, "You have a little hair."  So it's not like they're just pandering liars.

Oh, yeah, I miss my kids.  Obviously, I miss my wife, but I can actually talk to her on the phone and it makes sense.  Kids are a more tactile, environmental experience.

The College Bored

The big preoccupation here is the coming change to the AP US exam.

As near as we can figure they are working hard to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

It's not just government bureaucracies that suck...