Month: May 2006

No doubt by now you’ve read about or heard otherwise about the USA Today story with the screaming headline, “NSA HAS MASSIVE DATABASE OF AMERICANS’ PHONE CALLS”. As can be predicted, the left has gone completely apey over the news, or rather, LEAKED INFORMATION about the classified program. Democrats and weak-knee’d Republicans in Congress are demanding an investigation, and the president addressed the story a few minutes ago

“Our intelligence activities strictly target al-Qaida and their known affiliates,” Bush said. “We’re not mining or trolling through the private lives of innocent Americans.”

Bush said any domestic intelligence-gathering measures he’s approved are “lawful,” and he says “appropriate” members of Congress have been briefed.

The story contains important points that we need to understand.

— This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations.

— Customers’ names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over.

— This kind of data collection from phone companies is not uncommon; it’s been done before.

John Hawkins illustrates the most likely scenario for how the phone numbers are listed, compared, and if necessary, further investigated.

The phone companies, other than Qwest, are voluntarily providing phone numbers to the government. What they provide probably looks something like…

555-555-5555 called 666-666-6666 for 5 minutes at 11:23 AM on May 10, 2006

Then NSA is then probably putting that info in a database and using it to create a spiderweb of connections between terrorist suspects. For example, if a call from an al-Qaeda cell phone comes into 555-555-5555, they’re then probably looking at the numbers 555-555-5555 is calling, and then checking to see which numbers those people are calling, and looking for repeating numbers. If they find a number of interest, then they can use other databases to gather more information and try to put names and other info with those numbers.

Would that be useful in order to help uncover sleeper cells and al-Qaeda agents in the US? You bet.

And like John, I believe it’s highly likely that this program has curtailed al-Qaeda plots since September 11, 2001. The privacy issue is one that should be looked at and debated. In my opinion, what little privacy that is lost through a program like this one is no more harmful than the risks involved when Americans voluntarily give away personal information by filling out surveys or signing up for Internet services. Again, as John notes, your ISP can tell you each and every time you logged on to the Internet. And, if needed, they could probably come up with a log noting each and every IP address you visited while online. The data is out there, and we agree to give it to these companies when we sign up for membership.

If this NSA program stops the next terrorist strike in the U.S., it’s worth it.

MORE: Orin Kerr – Thoughts on the Legality of the Latest NSA Program

Contrary to public reports, rumor has it that Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones may never play guitar again.

Doctors fear the worse for the Rolling Stones guitarist who underwent a second brain operation last night (05/09/06) following his dramatic 15ft fall from a coconut tree.

A source revealed to Britain’s The Sun newspaper: “Everyone is worried sick. This is serious.”

Doctors carried out emergency surgery remove a piece of skull after the rocker suffered what medical experts described as a “complete midline shift”, meaning one part of his brain was collapsing on the other, causing dangerous swelling.

Wife Patti Hansen has been anxiously waiting by the star’s bedside in Auckland, New Zealand, with his two children by Anita Pallenburg, Marlon and Angela.

Last week, doctors drilled a hole into the 62-year-old’s skull to relieve a brain haemorrhage caused by the fall which took place during his holiday at Fiji’s exclusive Wakaya Club resort.

Initial reports suggested Richards was recovering well but he soon started suffering from blackouts and now medics fear he may be brain damaged or partly paralysed putting an end to his rock ‘n’ roll performing days.

A spokesman said: “The band are very concerned. It is obvious he is going to need a lot of time to recover.”

The rockers were scheduled to perform in Barcelona on May 27 but bandmates Mike Jagger, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts have decided to postpone the show until June.

Here’s hopin’ that things turn around and Keith recovers. After all, how can a man who has spent 40+ years ingesting every chemical substance known the world over while drinking fifth after fifth of Absolut really be silenced from something as innocuous as a coconut tree?

I mean come on! Look at him. This man is gonna live forever!

h/t FemaleFirst

UPDATE: Good news. Richards reportedly discharged from hospital. Will remain in Wellington as an outpatient.

The blogosphere is up in arms over an article published yesterday in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin about the U.S. tipping Mexico to Minuteman Patrols. The story, if completely true, is disturbing. It demands further investigation. It demands a response by the president. Hopefully, all this will happen soon and questions will be answered. I’m going to refrain from making up my mind on the whole thing pending further information. I’m not going to go where other bloggers have gone. La Shawn Barber asks “Should George Bush Be Impeached?”, and she’s gone so far as to draft articles of impeachment. Confederate Yankee echoes the call. Bill Quick turned on Bush long before the Daily Bulletin story came out.

Democrats and most modern day liberals, still smarting from the impeachment of Bill Clinton, have been calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush ever since he was elected in 2000. By associating the word impeachment with every allegation made against this president and his administration, the left has cheapened the act. Our founding fathers ensured that the process would be extremely difficult, so as to prevent the removal of a leader for being accused of nothing more than trivial matters of disagreement. Unfortunately, bloggers on the right are now tossing around the word as recklessly as their counterparts on the left. Perhaps their clarion call is nothing more than a competitive attempt to increase their Site Meter stats? In all seriousness, I’m calling for all right sided bloggers to restrain themselves (for now). Let’s get the facts straight before we summon the hangman. 

Calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush right now, today, is irresponsible and wrong. It’s premature. Conservatives have plenty of valid reasons to be upset with the president, his administration and the GOP majority. Let’s discuss those issues and press for answers. But let’s not join arm in arm with the left and carelessly call for the head of our president. Impeachment is too great a consequence to be taken so lightly.

MORE: Malkin

A broken bureaucracy with a human rights council made up of thugs ushers in their newest member, Cuba, that shining city upon a hill whose beacon of light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.

Actually, I like Publius Pundit’s characterization.

Cuba is the biggest human rights violator in the hemisphere. It is one of the few tyrannies in the world that refuses its citizens the right to leave, effectively turning it into an island prison. It has one of the world’s highest suicide rates. Its locals without party connections get no health care, and in fact are denied education if their parents are dissidents. Its residents are not allowed to keep dollar remittances sent by relatives, and instead must accept vile Cuban pesos at rates determined by Castro. Its dissidents are tortured, imprisoned and beaten. It is one of the most horrible places on the face of the earth. Its residents brave shark-infested waters to reach someplace, any place, where they can at long last breathe free air.

The United Nations is a joke.

Did you know that Saddam Hussein is a victim of ‘Sectarian Persecution’? His moonbat lawyer, former U.S. attorney general under Lyndon Johnson Ramsey Clark says so, and is calling for the abolition of the tribunal hearing the case.

Riiiiiight…

“The U.S. is using the Iraqi Special Tribunal to vindicate its invasion and validate its occupation,” said Clark. “The trial is clearly the planned continuation of the essentially unilateral war of aggression waged by the Bush administration against Iraq.

“The trial of President Saddam Hussein and other officials of his administration and political party by the Iraq Special Tribunal is a direct threat to international law, the United Nations, universal human rights and world peace,” Clark added.

Clark’s opinion wasn’t changed by his discussions with Saddam. Nope, he’s been an anti-war leftist for a long, long time.

And the man is clearly insane, along with his buddy Saddam. What a perfect match.

He sends a compromise letter to George W. Bush that actually contains no compromises knowing that it will be dismissed by the administration but treated with reverence by the MSM who will write negative stories about the snub thereby portraying Ahmadinejad as the guy who wanted to work with the U.S. but got denied by the U.S.

Well, it worked.

UPDATE: Nick Wadhams of the AP bought Ahmadinejad’s letter hook, line and sinker. His slanted story is sickening to the stomach.

For some reason, the AP has decided to raid the closet of old stories to rehash the mess FEMA made out of Katrina. Today, it’s the same ‘ol song and dance about old emails sent to aides by former FEMA head Mike Brown.

Gee, thanks for the reminder AP.

This is the saddest story I’ve read all day.

Atrios spills the beans on the Democratic Party’s agenda for governing, should they come back into power in November or beyond. Here’s the condensed version.

— Eliminate Bush

— Increase taxes

— Outlaw conservatism

Oh, and jail Jeff Goldstein.

Big tent?

Heh.

Richard Cohen, meet the Kos Kids.

The Washington Post columnist shares an experience most of us on the right side of the blogosphere know all too well. He recently wrote about Stephen Colbert and his rather unfunny performance at the White House correspondents dinner.

And then the roof caved in.

The word went out around the blogosphere and quickly ignited the already overly combustible moonbat blogs. Their counter-strike was swift and sure. Cohen was declared the new enemy and deserving of a hate-filled email carpet bombing.

The strike against the target was successful.

Cohen now knows a thing or two about the looney left, and he writes about it today.