Whatever you do, don't say "BOMB"

It's taken me nearly until the last minute to discover a topic that has had the right blend of absurdity, asininity and annoyance for my tastes. Thankfully, there is this from the Washington Post.

As it is widely known, the White House and the Pentagon have been monitoring emails, text messages and telephone calls that are entering or leaving the country under the suspicious Protect America Act (PAA). This becomes a very serious issue because it is very possible that the person on the US end of the transmission could, in fact, be a US Citizen with all the rights and good stuff that have been guaranteed by that pesky Constitution and its silly Bill of Rights.

Did I mention that all of this monitoring is down without any warrants? Just so we're clear: The United States Federal Government is monitoring the communications of US Citizens without constitutionally required warrants. This issue is disconcerting on a number of levels, paramount is the possibility for guilt by association. If one person on US Soil receives a call from overseas do his friends, family and business associates become fair game as well?

The ACLU, in another valiant attempt to preserve and protect the rights of the American Individual took their case to the US Supreme Court to prove that the actions of the White House are unconstitutional and therefore illegal. The Supreme Court decided, in a vote of 8-1, to stick their collective fingers in their ears and shout "LA LALA LALA LALA LA LA" and then refused to hear the case.

The Supreme Court's refusal is on the grounds that no individual can prove that they have been monitored. This is because, while the White House openly brags about wiretapping, they refuse to divulge the names of anyone that has been monitored for "National Security Reasons." Citing the aforementioned PAA.

Ignoring all of the potential political, industrial and financial abuses that one could slip under the PAA radar, the Bush Administration is now trying to extend the Protect America Act indefinitely while also expanding it to protect telecom companies from litigation for violating the rights of US Citizens.

What could possibly go wrong?

My New Favorite Part of the Statesman

Doing this assignment I stumbled upon the Austin American-Statesman's Secrecy Files where they report the growing trend in the US Government toward closing off the public from the real dealings of the US Government.

In the Secrecy Files, there is a cool story about President Bush's attempts to cripple a new law that would strengthen the already enacted Freedom of Information Act.

With this, it would appear that Senators John Cornyn(R-Texas) and Patrick Leahy(D-Vermont) drafted a piece of legislation titled the OPEN Government Act (OPEN is an acronym for Openness Promotes Effectiveness in our National [Government]). This piece of legislation would create a new government agency titled the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) who would be responsible for resolving disputes between people exercising their rights under Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the agencies who resist their lawful requirements through an individual known as the FOIA Ombudsman.

The Ombudsman is crucially important because this office would assume the resolution responsibilities currently resting at the Department of Justice who is also responsible for representing the agencies in the disputes. This action and this position would clear up a huge and messy conflict of interest and would actually be in the best interest of the citizenry, if you can imagine that.

As one should expect, President Bush line item vetoed the ombudsman position relegating this duty back to the Department of Justice and ensuring that the people who represent the non-compliant agencies are effectively the same folks who decide whether or not they have to comply with the law.

Oh, and for the record: Senators Cornyn and Leahy scored some not-so-blatantly-corrupt points today. Way to go guys!

Speaking of the House

Thanks to my favorite ridiculous news aggregator, Fark.com, I happened upon this lovely article over at Variety.

It is fair to say that the events that unfolded last night during the Super Tuesday event will almost certainly affect the next few years of our lives, our economy, our children, our soldiers, the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and if the crap really hits the fan the people of Iran. Despite the huge importance of this, the Nielsen ratings report that we'd frankly rather watch Hugh Laurie portray the hobbling, pain-killer-addicted House and regular Americans who've been deceived by their friends and families to believe they have talent on American Idol.

In total, Fox had 25.5 million viewers during the primary whereas ABC, CBS and NBC (who chose to carry the election) were only able to maintain the attention of 18.6 million viewers between them (5.3m, 6.1m, 7.2m respectively).

This is particularly relevant to recent class discussions regarding the disturbing levels of ignorance to public matters displayed in our citizenry .