April 22, 2004

W o'C Blog Gossip A new feature.  Somebody Needs to Be InstaGrounded:  What overgrown third grader keeps throwing spit balls at the smart kid in a lame effort to impress the new girl?  [BTW, that Smart Kid is running a World's Worst Actress Poll.  Wo'C endorses Melanie Griffith, the only actress to: win WWII, thanks to her fluent German; infiltrate an Orthodox Jewish street gang in order to save the Pink Panther diamond (or something -- we kinda lost the plot of that one); and end segregation in the South by carrying around a human head in a hat box.]  Okay, that's all I have so far.  But I'll keeping working on developing some snitches. 5:07:55 AM

Lose Bush Now, Ask Me How From Slate's "In Other Magazines" : New York Times Magazine, April 25 How is the Bush campaign like a Tupperware party? The cover story argues that the re-election effort is one big "multilevel marketing scheme"—like Amway, which, the author notes, "has often been compared to a cult." And that reminds me: you're all invited to a party on National Party for the President day -- it will be a a party for the President!  Except he won't be there.  Cheney will, though, via a conference call.  But only if I get 5 RSVPs. Here, just read the email: Dear World O'Crap: The most powerful tool in politics is neighbor-to-neighbor campaigning.  This local, person-to-person campaigning is so important, Vice President Dick Cheney is personally asking for your help.  On April 29th, the Vice President will host a special conference call for National Party for the President Day. This event will show President Bush's strong support in neighborhoods and communities across the country and bring in thousands of new supporters. The President is counting on you.  Will you and your friends join the party and be on the call? REMEMBER: For parties with 5 or more guests who RSVP at GeorgeWBush.com, National "Party for the President" Day will include an exclusive conference call with Vice President Dick Cheney.  The Vice President will answer questions and deliver a political briefing on the progress of the campaign at 8:30pm Eastern. So, yes, the Bush campaign IS like a Tupperware party, but at Tupperware parties you get a free pill container or pie server for attending, which is a way better incentive than a political briefing from Dick Cheney. 4:22:08 AM

He Doesn't Care! Let's let Rush do the intro for Bush's latest speech and pseudo press conferance: Bush is speaking to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington right now. Now, he could not be facing a more hostile crowd. He knows that the group of people he's speaking to despises him. He knows that they think he's an idiot. He knows that they think that he's the absolute scourge of the planet. He is speaking to these people as though they are contributors to his campaign. This is the thing that is admirable. I love this. I got to tell you, I love Bush because he doesn't care. He doesn't care what they think, it doesn't affect what he says. He is going to go out there and he's making his case with who he is, what he believes, and how he views government. He's smiling at them just like it was a bunch of $250,000 donors in the audience. He's as comfortable as he is anywhere talking to this room of vipers. He isn't defensive about it, he doesn't care! He doesn't care what they say, just like at the press conference, he just doesn't care. It is so admirable. Hey, that could be his new campaign slogan: "Bush.  He Just Doesn't Care."  I mean, Geroge Bush, a guy who has famously admitted that he doesn't read newspapers, is addressing the American Society of Newspaper Editors -- what more proof of his not caring do you need? And Rush is right about another thing: Bush DID speak to these people as though they were campaign contributors -- he gave them the stump speech.  I guess he figured, why bother to have the speechwriters come up with a new talk when the audience already thinks he's an idiot?  The White House website titled the speech President Outlines Path for Lasting Prosperity.  And I think you know that path: tort reform, medical liablity reform, free the free market, broadband for everybody, no taxing zombies, permanent tax cuts for rich people, take freedom to the brown-skinned peoples (who are called "Arabs" this time), free trade, and magic beans. Rush goes on to say that Woodward's book proves that the President is, despite what Hillary may imply about him, "intellectually curious."  (You might recall Woodward saying on "60 Minutes" that Bush is "not an intellectual. He is not what I guess would be called a deep thinker,” but Rush claims that Woodward just made up a bunch of stuff to hype his book on TV, knowing that nobody would actually read said book and discover that it's really a paean to Bush.)  Anyway, while Bush may or may not be curious (defination 3: "strange, novel, or unexpected"), he is sadly ill-informed.  Take just this portion of the speech to the newspaper editors: We've got a Patriot Act -- which needs to be renewed, by the way, and strengthened, in my judgment -- that is really important to allow the criminal division and the intelligence division of the FBI to share information, which they could not do before.  And by the way, any provision in the Patriot Act that enables us to collect more information requires court order, just like it does when you're dealing with a mobster, or a doctor that's creating criminal problems, or white collar crime. Well, to be technical, the criminal and intelligence divisions of the FBI could share some information pre-Patriot Act, and they did.  However, "the wall" was erected because the procedures permitted for foreign intelligence collection were seen as being possibly unconstitutional if the info was used for prosecution -- and so it was decided that, in order to protect prosecutions, that the two divisions would not pool information.  But the criminal people could have given the intelligence people everything they had, if they had wanted to.  Which they didn't, because to the FBI, prosecution is the only goal.  Because that's what gets your name in the papers. And by the way, the President is flat-out wrong in claiming that "any provision in the Patriot Act that enables us to collect more information requires a court order." Let me quote a portion from Slate's Sept. 2003 A Guide to the Patriot Act (bolding added): Section 505 authorizes the use of what's essentially an administrative subpoena of personal records. The subpoenas require no probable cause or judicial oversight. The law before and how it changed: Before Patriot, these letters could only be issued against individuals who were reasonably suspected of espionage.  [I believe that a similar procedure was allowed for a specialized investigation of doctors involved in Medicaid fraud -- which is why Ashcroft pitched the Patriot Act as just allowing antiterrorism investigators to have the same tools as the agents investigating doctors were given.]  But Patriot loosened the standard by allowing the letters to be used against anyone, including U.S. citizens, even if they themselves are not suspected of espionage or criminal activity.These letters may now be issued independently by FBI field offices, rather than by senior officials. And unlike Section 215 warrants, they are not subject to even perfunctory judicial review or oversight. [The ASAC, the number two person in an FBI field office, can sign off on these administrative subpoenas.] The records that can be obtained through the letters under Patriot include telephone logs, e-mail logs, certain financial and bank records, and credit reports, on the assertion that such information would be "relevant" to an ongoing terrorism investigation. They cannot be used in ordinary criminal investigations.  Unlike 215, no court order—not even a rubber-stamped order—is required. Those forced to turn over records are gagged from disclosing the demand. How it's been implemented: According to documents turned over to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of their FOIA lawsuit, the FBI issued enough national security letters since October 2001 to fill more than five pages of logs. What precisely those letters compelled is unknowable, since virtually every page of those logs were blacked out, ostensibly for security reasons. The government has refused to provide further information on how the letters were used.  And let us also look at Section 215 (the "Library Gestapo" section): Previously the government needed at least a warrant and probable cause to access private records. The Fourth Amendment, Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, and case law provided that if the state wished to search you, it needed to show probable cause that a crime had been committed and to obtain a warrant from a neutral judge. Under FISA—the 1978 act authorizing warrantless surveillance so long as the primary purpose was to obtain foreign intelligence information—that was somewhat eroded, but there remained judicial oversight. And under FISA, records could be sought only "for purposes of conducting foreign intelligence" and the target "linked to foreign espionage" and an "agent of a foreign power." Now the FBI needs only to certify to a FISA judge—(no need for evidence or probable cause) that the search protects against terrorism. The judge has no authority to reject this application. DOJ calls this "seeking a court order," but it's much closer to a rubber stamp. Also, now the target of a search needn't be a terror suspect herself, so long as the government's purpose is "an authorized investigation ... to protect against international terrorism." So, if you're an FBI agent and you use the phrase "to protect against terrorism," then you don't have to have the same kind of court order you would if you were investigating a mobster, doctor, or white collar criminal.  And you can use section 314 of the PA (which doesn't require a court order either) to collect info about guys who might be trying to bribe Vegas officials to change stripper laws.  Or you could use it against suspected drug trafficers.  Or money launderers.  Or both (not that this is the reason that Rush Limbaugh has been praising President Bush, of course).  You know, if the President WAS intellectually curious, he could read the Patriot Act for himself, instead of just letting Ashcroft tell him what it means.  And maybe those newspaper editors could read it too, since I haven't seen any papers mentioning Bush's misstatement about it. 3:54:42 AM