…to explode in an Earth-shattering, ka-BOOM!

Joyeux Noel, y’all.

It’s funny — akirlu and I were talking about this last night. How, in America, officials hardly ever quit over principle. Because if they did, you’d think one of the FISA judges would quit, since the administration’s NSA orders make them superfluous.

Well, one of the FISA judges appears to agree (without saying so). Here’s the beginning of the piece:

“WASHINGTON — A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush’s secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources.

Word of Robertson’s resignation came as two Senate Republicans joined the call for congressional investigations into the National Security Agency’s interception, without a court warrant, of telephone calls and e-mails to overseas locations by U.S. citizens suspected of links to terrorist groups. They questioned the legality of the operation and the extent to which the White House kept Congress informed.”

[insert THX sweep tone here]

One of the things that keeps happening with this administration is how they keep breaking the rules without realizing how those rules benefit them. In other words, without realizing how much of a gunshot to the foot such breaking is.

For example, if I had been on Air Force Two the other day when Mr. Cheney was entertaining questions, mine would have been, “Mr. Vice-President, how do you know you yourself haven’t had an NSA wiretap ordered against you?” He would have harrumphed and harrawed, and my follow-up would have been, “Mr. Cheney, as Mr. Rumsfeld has said, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Really — How do you know?”

Because, let’s face it folks… If’n I was Dubya, Cheney’s number one on my who to spy on list — just out of self-preservation.

But you can extend the principle any direction you like. Has John McCain been wiretapped? Hillary Clinton? Pat Robertson? Michael Moore? Elliot Spitzer?

John Kerry, during the 2004 campaign?

What the administration doesn’t seem to realize is they’re now in the same pickle we put the Iraqis in. Having admitted they used extra-legal means to extend these wiretaps, how can any response to those questions be credible? Had they always followed the rules, they could point to the lack of a paper trail, or to a set of procedures that needed to be followed and wasn’t… But now? They junked those procedures, they deliberately avoided the paper trail.

The most damning thing of all is how obedient the FISA Court has been in the past to their requests. Given the very high probability the FISA Court would have given them their wink and a nod, the question presents itself, “What would be so egregious the FISA Court wouldn’t go along, so they had to do this end run?”

Mull that one over for a while, and you may realize my potential subjects for wiretaps aren’t too hypothetical after all.

One of the ways I feel most geeky (in the bad sense), and least socially adept, is when it comes to small talk. With that in mind, I really liked this interview with Debra Fine on NPR’s Morning Edition when I heard it. She’s very good at illustrating with examples — in this instance, the interview hook was what on earth to say during an office holiday party.

Fine’s also written a book, The Fine Art of Small Talk (which just got re-issued in October, that’s probably a part of why NPR got her).

Sirs:

When Mr. Giuliani writes (on 12/17), “Americans must use every legal and constitutional tool in their arsenal to fight terrorism and protect their lives and liberties,” he leaves out an important consideration: Effectiveness.

According to the Department of Justice’s own statistics, there have been 401 criminal prosecutions under the USA PATRIOT Act in the four years since it was passed. The results have been only 212 convictions. This is a conviction rate of 53%. As Mr. Giuliani surely knows as a former prosecutor, this rate is barely better than the 50% of flipping a coin to determine guilt or innocence, and dismally below the 85-95% most prosecutors think necessary to get re-elected.

It is simply false to claim, as some of its proponents do, that the PATRIOT Act is either constitutional, or effective. It enhances our security not one whit. It failed on its merits.

Sincerely,
etc.

*^*^*^*

NOTES NOT SENT: This is largely a follow up to this post of July, 2004, for all that the topic has been in the news recently. But the numbers are not only no better than then, they’ve gotten decidedly worse. Since that post, there would appear to have been 91 additional prosecutions under the PATRIOT Act, but only 33 more convictions, even though those convictions were drawing upon the full four year pool. That’s why the aggregate conviction rate has dropped since 2004, from 57.7% to 52.9%, or nearly five full percentage points.

So this would seem to be yet more evidence that it is also simply false to claim, as some do, that this administration gives a damn about combating terrorism. They simply want to play with their toys, and rescinding any portions of the PATRIOT Act qualifies mostly as taking toys away from them, friovolous and ineffectual as they may be. (The toys, not the administr——- oh, never mind.)

Sez Dave Winer:

“Here’s a feature I’d love. A grid of public radio station schedules with links to their streams. That way I could choose a station based on the programming that’s on right now.”

OK, Dave, your wish is my command. Here you go. And here’s a page of links to their podcasts.

I originally saw these on Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools, just to give credit.

Got another one?

{UPDATE: Damn. I can’t send mail to Dave pointing him to this, because he has you send mail through http://www.reallysimplesyndication.com/ , and I can’t get through to that. For that matter, http://archive.scripting.com/ appears to be down. Damn.}

{FURTHER UPDATE: Looks OK, now. I wonder how many others pointed him that way? }

I’m somewhat surprised none of the usual UK suspects have mentioned this, but it turns out Ricky Gervais is doing a podcast at the Guardian. It just started yesterday, is about 30 mins in length, and will allegedly update weekly.

The ‘cast is basically Gervais hanging out with his mates, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington. Fans of The Office will recognize Gervais’ laughter from yards away.

But the most revealing things, especially if you liked The Office: It’s painfully yet deliciously clear that Gareth was based on a real person, and that person is Pilkington. As such, the ‘cast is almost like having a Yet Another Ridiculous Story From Gareth Festival, with Gervais and Merchant taking their turns at playing Tim both goading and deflating him. Enough so, in fact, that I suspect we can now guess that huge swaths of script for The Office are just transcriptions of these three guys talking.

Which says interesting things about what we may expect over the coming weeks.

Recommended.