Burn ’em if you got ’em. Meanwhile, there’s delusions at the Corner. John Podheretz to fellow Cornerite Jonah Goldberg: Jonah, I also oppose the flag-burning amendment. But as a strictly Machiavellian matter, as a sheerly political stunt, you have to admit that it’s one of those peculiar gifts that keeps on giving. Republicans can bring it up every few years … Read More
The Fine Print
The Citizen’s Flag Alliance is a public interest group with one cause: a constitutional amendment forbidding the desecration of the U.S. flag. To support their outrage, they informed the Senate that the incidents of flag burning has increased 33% in the past year. Thirty-three percent. Sounds alarming, don’t it? What the CFA hides is this fact: Yeah, it went up … Read More
SCOTUS News
Lot of things coming from the Supreme Court today. I’ll combine it all here: (1) In Hudson v. Michigan, a recent controversial decision involving the "knock & announce" tactics of police raids, Scalia apparently "twisted the words" of an eminent criminolgist to reach his conclusion. The criminiologist complains here. (2) SCOTUS announced today that it will hear a case about … Read More
Can’t Believe This Guy Is A Law Professor
Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds, on the issue of the New York Times leaking news that the government is monitoring bank transactions: The founders gave freedom of the press to the people, they didn’t give freedom to the press. [NYT Editor] Keller positions himself as some sort of Constitutional High Priest, when in fact the "freedom of the press" the Framers described … Read More
First Amendment Primer
Dear AgapePress: This is very simple. Try to wrap your pea-brains around it. When a school prevents a student from talking about God, that is a violation of the student’s First Amendment rights. However, when the school provides the microphone for the student to speak about God, that too is a violation of the First Amendment. In other words, public … Read More
Federalist 69
In the legal realm, neo-conservatives talk a good game about the Founding Fathers and how we should be true to their original intent. That grounding falls apart when it comes to the subject of presidential powers. There is simply no way that Bush’s "President-as-King (during wartime)" arguments can be reconciled with the writings of the Founding Fathers, a point brought … Read More
Hudson v. Michigan
Like many, I haven’t read the SCOTUS opinion regarding the knock-and-announce case, but I’ve read intelligent summaries. My view of it mirror that of Glenn Reynolds, with whom I usually disagree: I think, though, that it’s defensible legally, but not morally. That is, it’s not much of a stretch from the existing caselaw, but it produces a rule that seems … Read More
Why Datamining Doesn’t Work
Forget the civil rights implications — data mining simply doesn’t work. Bruce Schneier, an expert on data systems and privacy, explains why: Collecting information about every American’s phone calls is an example of data mining. The basic idea is to collect as much information as possible on everyone, sift through it with massive computers, and uncover terrorist plots. It’s a … Read More
Room 641A
A whistleblower talks to Wired about the secret room at AT&T where call data is forward to the NSA. Meanwhile, Seymour Hersh has a pretty sensible guess as to how the whole NSA wiretapping thing works: The N.S.A. also programmed computers to map the connections between telephone numbers in the United States and suspect numbers abroad, sometimes focussing on a … Read More
ThinThread
Unbelieveable. Back in 1999, the NSA developed a phone/email "monitoring" program (called ThinThread) that was (a) more efficient than the (illegal) wiretapping program they have now; and (b) had technology that "provided a simple solution to privacy concerns". This involved encrypting the phone numbers before it got to analysts. Then, if something got red-flagged, the intelligence officials would get a … Read More
Freedom of The Press? Here?
The U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services website has handy flashcards teaching new citizens about American civics. Flashcard 80 asks about the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. The answer lists them all, except one: freedom of the press. Guess that was taken out of the Constitution when nobody was looking.
Update on NSA Phone Record Collection
Strange. Both BellSouth and Verizon are denying they gave telephone records to the NSA, as USA Today reported last week. Is it word-parsing or lying on the part of the telecoms, or did USA Today simply get the story wrong? And why has AT&T remained silent? And if the story is incorrect, why did it take Bellsouth and Verizon so … Read More
Qwest Sees Boom
Last week it was revealed that Qwest Communications was one of the few major telecom companies that didn’t voluntarily provide customers records to the NSA, insisting instead that the NSA get a court order or at least an opinion from the Attorney General first. The blogospheric fallout was predictable. Liberals and civil libertarians applauded Qwest. On the right, pundits accused … Read More
The Week Ahead
So much to write about, so little time. I don’t have much to say about Bush’s approval rating breaking the 30% mark (last week’s Harris poll puts him at 29%). And the fallout over the NSA datamining of telecom records continues. But I’m looking forward to this week. There are two rumors which are getting the buzz: (1) Rove indicted … Read More
Preliminary Legal Analysis On The New NSA Database Revelation
For the right: Orin Kerr For the left: Glenn Greenwald Both are polite and coherent, even for non-lawyers. Neither takes a firm stance, but together, they make a nice starting primer on the issue. I’m not sure Greenwald one-ups Kerr on the legal analysis, but he ends with an indisputable truth about the lay of the legal landscape: Ultimately, however, … Read More