Plead the First

In discussing issues surrounding the NSA eavesdropping scandal and the more recent revelations about the monitoring of financial transactions, I’ve heard people argue that as long as a person isn’t a terrorist, he has nothing to worry about, and shouldn’t complain about the programs. This argument completely misses the point.

If that’s really the litmus test, then any government action becomes permissible. The federal government begins reading everyone’s mail? What are you worrried about, unless you’re talking to terrorists? Bush orders the FBI to perform warrantless searches of every home within major cities? Only criminals have cause for concern. Government agents break into homes at random and hide cameras and microphones throughout? Only a terrorist would complain about that.

Obviously, those are (hopefully) extreme examples, but the point is that the issue shouldn’t be whether you actually have cause to be concerned about being caught doing something, but rather the issue should be whether the actions in question are legal and Constitutional. Objecting to complaints because only criminals should be worried is a bankrupt argument that suggests a person doesn’t have any other defense for the action in question. It also ignores a long history of governmental abuse and deception which serve to point out that it isn’t only the criminals and terrorists who need to be concerned.

This week’s cartoon. The Guilford County school system budget isn’t quite what the Board of Education was hoping for.

One of Bubba’s first blog posts tries to claim that you can’t support our troops without supporting their mission. He of course tries to wave away all the badmouthing Clinton and his Kosovo mission received in the 90s. He mentions this Tom Delay quote from around the time of the Kosovo invasion:

You can support the troops but not the president.

Agreeing with it, Bubba says:

…you don’t have to support the President to support the mission.

Meanwhile, on another thread, Jaycee, a conservative commenter in the same vein as Bubba (who seems to be playing the part of Bubba’s bulldog on a few of the threads so far) upbraids a commenter who criticized Bush, and makes a post containing the following comments:

President Bush IS one of the troops, he’s the head military man in our government. The boss. If you support “our troops” then you necessarily support the boss.

… The whole “support the troops but not the leaders” is just silly and naive.

… If you don’t support our President then you don’t support the country or any of it’s leaders. You may not agree with every decision of our leaders, but please have the moral courage to support your country.

I can’t wait to see Bubba and Jaycee argue about which one of them is right. Oh wait, I’m sure they’re both right, because whenever a Democrat does something, it’s bad, but whenever a Republican does something, it’s good. Fred Gregory jumps in on the thread to put me in my place, saying:

Stew, You have crossed that line between denial and delusion.

However, I’m not the one trying to hold a different standard based on whether someone is a Republican or a Democrat. The Republicans were perfectly within their rights at the time to criticize Clinton and his mission if they saw a problem with it. In fact, I would consider them negligent if they didn’t speak up. Critics of the Iraq war should receive the same respect for their point of view without having their dedication to the troops and loyalty to our country questioned.

Bubba, longtime commentor at Ed Cone’s blog and the News and Record LTE blog now has his very own blog: Noteworthy.

It’ll be nice to have another conservative blog around – Greensboro area blogs do tend to lean left a bit, so it’s good to have the other side represented a little more. However, it would be nice if Bubba’s knee jerked a little less. He seems like a smart guy, and I think his blog could host some really good conversations if he could just manage to be a little more Boydacious or Guarinoso and a little less Chairmanesque.

Both the North Carolina House and Senate voted recently to ban video poker. This week’s cartoon has a few suggestions for recycling the now-useless machines.

This is my first four-panel cartoon, and I’ve packed in plenty of jokes (an average of over two per panel!) plus a gratuitous Vernon Robinson reference for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Ed Brayton on Bush’s NSA wiretapping program and the sidelining of the FISA court:

In order to decide whether the program is or is not constitutional, the court has to know who is being spied on, by what means, and for what purpose. But the administration’s position is that the courts cannot even look at such evidence, even if the court operates in secret (which is why they refuse to go to the FISA court). This isn’t about secrecy. If they wanted to, they could submit for warrants to the FISA court, which has turned down far less than 1/10th of a percent of all warrant requests in its history.

That court operates in secret, so none of the factual information they would have to file to justify their warrant would be made public. The fact that they refuse to do so strongly suggests two things. A) they’re lying when they claim that secrecy is the reason for their policy of ignoring the proper court authorities for issuing warrants for the gathering of foreign intelligence; and B) they know that the facts don’t support a finding of probable cause and thus they won’t get approval of the warrants.

There’s no good reason not to go to FISA for warrants – the fact that the administration refuses to do so suggests that things are not quite on the level.

I just ordered Glenn Greenwald’s How Would a Patriot Act?, so I’m looking forward to reading in more detail the ways in which Bush seems to be dismantling the Constitution (and wishing that there wasn’t enough material on that subject to fill a book).

For those who don’t think the situation is quite that dire, I think that Colin Lindsey – one of the reviewers of the book at Amazon – had a sobering view:

While reading this I couldn’t help but see the similarities between these current events and the long slide of the Roman Republic into Empire and dictatorship. That slide too, although it took ninety years, also began with small floutings of law for expediency and convenience, then larger floutings for personal gain and factional control of the senate. The powers Bush claims now are corrosive to our traditional notions of a three branch government with checks and balances and are a step upon a slippery slope that ends in a totalitarian state. Many Americans will think such claims inflated or hyperbole, but unfortunately Rome went from a society much more virulently opposed to monarchy than ours even, and by a series of initially small compromises, like we are seeing with Bush, found itself in a dictatorship that lasted in one form or another for nearly 1500 years. This is a lesson we ignore at our peril and every American should examine whether the arrogation of powers the Bush presidency has claimed are constitutional and whether, short term benefit or no, they are justified or wise in the long run for our nation.

What is it they say about boiling a frog?

The International Home Furnishings Authority is trying to step up its game to compete with the new Las Vegas furniture market, but Greensboro and Winston-Salem seem reluctant to help out.

Although the governments were receptive, most said they wanted to see more concrete numbers on how the market — which pumps an estimated $1 billion into the Triad’s economy and creates about 12,500 jobs regionally — impacts their communities.

For example, how many visitors stay in hotels, eat at restaurants and shop outside of High Point.

But since the meeting, one local government said it is still waiting for the numbers.

“We haven’t heard anything from them yet,” said Winston-Salem’s assistant city manager Derwick Paige, who attended the initial meeting with High Point leaders.

As a result, none of the surrounding communities — except for Guilford County — has included additional money for the market in their upcoming budgets.

However, according to the article, a similar study was done as recently as 2004. That seems rather recent to me, and according to an article written about that study, it sounds like it addressed many of the relevant questions:

The new study, for the first time, takes into account spending by businesses that serve those directly involved in market, said Andrew Brod, a professor at UNCG and author of the study. As just one example, the study takes into account the money spent renovating showrooms between markets and it factors in the jobs created from this.

It seems a bit strange that Greensboro and Winston-Salem are dragging their feet on this in the face of the Vegas Market’s potential threat. They are certainly benefitting from the furniture market, and it’s got to be easier to stay ahead of the competition, rather than have to play catch up.

Around the beginning of this year, the office where I work purchased a new hardware/software package designed to have an impact on workplace productivity. Throughout the year we’ve been hard at work mastering the machine’s protocols and entering data into the system for dozens of projects.

Earlier this week, we found that our data for one of the more heavily used projects had become corrupted – strings of meaningless numbers had replaced an orderly sequence of letters and digits.

A few coworkers gathered around as my boss tried to fix the problem. Rebooting the machine had no effect, and it became clear that we would need to erase the data for that project. My boss scrolled through the operational menus and found an option that sounded like it would clear out the data.

“But can we clear out the data just for this one project, or will it clear the data for all our projects?” someone asked.

“I don’t know – we’ll have to see,” replied my boss, as he pressed the button to select the option on the screen.

“Done,” he said.

“Done?” we asked. “What’s done?”

“That’s what it says – ‘Done’.”

“No confirmation dialog? No warning or alert?” we asked incredulously.

“Nope,” he replied. “Nothing.”

Because of a poor interface design – specifically a vague menu item and the lack of any sort of confirmation or alert screen – the system had just unceremoniously erased everything we had done up to that point. Nearly six months of effort was gone.

Interface design is important stuff. We have a lot of work ahead of us to restore all the lost data. But we are dedicated employees.

The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission recently released its report on the events of November 3, 1979. Many people have weighed in on how helpful they think the report will be in addressing the problems resulting from the shootings that day, and their aftermath. Some opponents of the process deny there is even any problem to address.

I’ve started making my way through the report, and am hopeful that some good will come of it.

Update: Some of the dynamics shown in this cartoon seem to be on display in the comments to one of today’s Letters to the Editor.

The Dixie Chicks’ new album is doing pretty well:

As Taking The Long Way debuts at #1 on the Billboard Top 200 best-selling albums chart this week, with first week’s sales of 525,829, the Dixie Chicks have become the first female group in chart history to have three albums debut at #1, breaking the record the Chicks established in 2002 when the group’s last studio album, Home, debuted at #1 and made them the first female group ever to have two albums debut at #1.

A friend of mine pointed this out to me today, and wondered why 107.5 KZL wasn’t playing anything from the album. I know that some radio stations have boycotted the Dixie Chicks, but I don’t know how our local radio stations feel about them. Anyone feel like calling in to a few stations and requesting “Not Ready to Make Nice”?