Chris Boese's Weblog

In case you were wondering what one big media company wants most...

Link: Democracy Now! | Headlines for August 27, 2007.

Time Warner Spends $1.7M on Lobbying In media news, the media giant Time Warner has reported spending nearly two million dollars in government lobbying so far this year. The funds were spent to sway politicians on issues including high-speed internet access, patent reforms, and digital television. Earlier this year Time Warner backed a postal rate hike that raised mailing costs for small periodicals.

Spacey Gracey hits Huffington Post!

Link: Grayson Daughters: Government In Exile - Off The Bus on The Huffington Post.

Whoo hooo! My buddy, Grayson Daughters, is taking up a gig for NewAssignment.net and filing political reports for Huffington Post! Go gettum Grayson!

And even better, she goes wandering around my favorite Atlanta watering hole, Manuel's Tavern. So watching the video clip is a bit like being back at the old haunt. Made me want to order a draft beer and find my old Sunday night trivia team.

You know you really want to watch it now, right?

Is the Justice Department's long national nightmare over?

I just couldn't go with another "Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead" headline, much as I wanted to.

Let me ask, were you ever so happy to see someone go?

I could be cynical and suggest that actually watching Gonzales twist in the wind, after having perjured himself before Congress (I first called it here), and then after subsequent witnesses failed to back up his concocted stories before Congress, so that he was literally dancing around on the thinnest of thin ice, had its entertainment value.

But I can't be entertained by the travesties of justice visited on US society because of Gonzales, through the politicization of the Justice Department, through the butt-wiping with the Constitution visited upon us all through the so-called "Patriot Act," and through the pathetic rationalization of torture by agents of the US government, both military and spook-based.

Much as his resignation stops some of the braying over how badly he screwed up the country (I hope it doesn't stop too much of it), far better that the housecleaning at the Justice Department begin! Here's to hoping the Senate Democrats have the guts to demand it, which the House can continue to hold Gonzales' feet to the fire..

Link: Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales Resigns - The New York Times - Politics - Washington - New York Times.

Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales Resigns

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales delivered a statement on his resignation on Monday at the Justice Department.

By STEVEN LEE MYERS and PHILIP SHENON

Published: August 27, 2007

 

WACO, Tex., Aug. 27 — Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose tenure has been marred by controversy and accusations of perjury before Congress, announced his resignation in Washington today, declaring that he had “lived the American dream” by being able to lead the Justice Department.

Mr. Gonzales, who had rebuffed calls for his resignation for months, submitted it to President Bush by telephone on Friday, a senior administration official said. There had been rumblings over the weekend that Mr. Gonzales’s departure was imminent, although the White House sought to quell the rumors.

[...]

Mr. Bush has not yet chosen a replacement but will not leave the position open long, the senior administration official said early this morning. Among those being mentioned as a possible successor were Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security who is a former federal prosecutor, assistant attorney general and federal judge; Christopher Cox, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission; and Larry D. Thompson, a former deputy attorney general who is now senior vice president and general counsel of PepsiCo Inc.

Mr. Bush repeatedly stood by Mr. Gonzales, an old friend and colleague from Texas, even as Mr. Gonzales faced increasing scrutiny for his leadership of the Justice Department over issues including his role in the dismissals of nine United States attorneys late last year and whether he testified truthfully about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.

[...]

But Democrats cheered Mr. Gonzales’s departure. “Alberto Gonzales was never the right man for this job,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader. “He lacked independence, he lacked judgment, and he lacked the spine to say ‘no’ to Karl Rove.”

Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who sits on the Judiciary Committee and has been calling for Mr. Gonzales’s resignation for months, said this morning: “It has been a long and difficult struggle, but at last the attorney general has done the right thing and stepped down. For the previous six months, the Justice Department has been virtually nonfunctional, and desperately needs new leadership.”

Senator Schumer said that “Democrats will not obstruct or impede a nominee who we are confident will put the rule of law above political considerations.”

Another Democrat on the Judiciary Committee who has been highly critical of Mr. Gonzales, Senator Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, said the next attorney general must be a person whose first loyalty is “to the law, not the president.”

[...]

 

Get ready for the new government-sponsored high colonics

The New York Times has more details about what we can expect of the federal government's new unsupervised surveillance powers, at least until this version of the recently passed legislation expires. At least I do think it still expires in six months. God, I hope so.

Either that or the next administration had better start cleaning house on this kind of crap from the instant it takes office... if it expects to get elected in the first place, that is. (emphasis below is mine)

Link: Concern Over Wider Spying Under New Law - New York Times.

Concern Over Wider Spying Under New Law

By JAMES RISEN  and ERIC LICHTBLAU

Published: August 19, 2007

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 — Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include — without court approval — certain types of physical searches on American soil and the collection of Americans’ business records, Democratic Congressional officials and other experts said.

Administration officials acknowledged that they had heard such concerns from Democrats in Congress recently, and that there was a continuing debate over the meaning of the legislative language. But they said the Democrats were simply raising theoretical questions based on a harsh interpretation of the legislation.

They also emphasized that there would be strict rules in place to minimize the extent to which Americans would be caught up in the surveillance.

The dispute illustrates how lawmakers, in a frenetic, end-of-session scramble, passed legislation they may not have fully understood and may have given the administration more surveillance powers than it sought.

It also offers a case study in how changing a few words in a complex piece of legislation has the potential to fundamentally alter the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a landmark national security law. The new legislation is set to expire in less than six months; two weeks after it was signed into law, there is still heated debate over how much power Congress gave to the president.

“This may give the administration even more authority than people thought,” said David Kris, a former senior Justice Department lawyer in the Bush and Clinton administrations and a co-author of “National Security Investigation and Prosecutions,” a new book on surveillance law.

Several legal experts said that by redefining the meaning of “electronic surveillance,” the new law narrows the types of communications covered in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, by indirectly giving the government the power to use intelligence collection methods far beyond wiretapping that previously required court approval if conducted inside the United States.

These new powers include the collection of business records, physical searches and so-called “trap and trace” operations, analyzing specific calling patterns.

[...]

It is possible that some of the changes were the unintended consequences of the rushed legislative process just before this month’s Congressional recess, rather than a purposeful effort by the administration to enhance its ability to spy on Americans.

“We did not cover ourselves in glory,” said one Democratic aide, referring to how the bill was compiled.

[...]

Some civil rights advocates said they suspected that the administration made the language of the bill intentionally vague to allow it even broader discretion over wiretapping decisions. Whether intentional or not, the end result — according to top Democratic aides and other experts on national security law — is that the legislation may grant the government the right to collect a range of information on American citizens inside the United States without warrants, as long as the administration asserts that the spying concerns the monitoring of a person believed to be overseas.

[...]

“This shows why it is so risky to change the law by changing the definition” of something as basic as the meaning of electronic surveillance, said Suzanne Spaulding, a former Congressional staff member who is now a national security legal expert. “You end up with a broad range of consequences that you might not realize.”

The senior intelligence official acknowledged that Congressional staff members had raised concerns about the law in the meetings this week, and that ambiguities in the bill’s wording may have led to some confusion. “I’m sure there will be discussions about how and whether it should be fixed,” the official said.

[...]

The measure, which President Bush signed into law on Aug. 5, was written and pushed through both the House and Senate so quickly that few in Congress had time to absorb its full impact, some Congressional aides say.

Though many Democratic leaders opposed the final version of the legislation, they did not work forcefully to block its passage, largely out of fear that they would be criticized by President Bush and Republican leaders during the August recess as being soft on terrorism.

Yet Bush administration officials have already signaled that, in their view, the president retains his constitutional authority to do whatever it takes to protect the country, regardless of any action Congress takes. At a tense meeting last week with lawyers from a range of private groups active in the wiretapping issue, senior Justice Department officials refused to commit the administration to adhering to the limits laid out in the new legislation and left open the possibility that the president could once again use what they have said in other instances is his constitutional authority to act outside the regulations set by Congress.

At the meeting, Bruce Fein, a Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration, along with other critics of the legislation, pressed Justice Department officials repeatedly for an assurance that the administration considered itself bound by the restrictions imposed by Congress. The Justice Department, led by Ken Wainstein, the assistant attorney general for national security, refused to do so, according to three participants in the meeting. That stance angered Mr. Fein and others. It sent the message, Mr. Fein said in an interview, that the new legislation, though it is already broadly worded, “is just advisory. The president can still do whatever he wants to do. They have not changed their position that the president’s Article II powers trump any ability by Congress to regulate the collection of foreign intelligence.”

[God, this presumption makes me simply ill]

[...]

Mr. Bush issued a so-called signing statement about the legislation when he signed it into law, but the statement did not assert his presidential authority to override the legislative limits.

At the Justice Department session, critics of the legislation also complained to administration officials about the diminished role of the FISA court, which is limited to determining whether the procedures set up by the executive administration for intercepting foreign intelligence are “clearly erroneous” or not.

That limitation sets a high bar to set off any court intervention, argued Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, who also attended the Justice Department meeting.

“You’ve turned the court into a spectator,” Mr. Rotenberg said.

Ding Dong, is TimesSelect Dead?

Let there be rejoicing in the land, if this is true. One of the most ridiculous decisions in the history of the Internet could be reversed, and, below, a catchy phrase is uttered, the idea of the "Internet of Record," used in the same way that public notices are required to be "published in the newspaper of record."

Great idea. One step away from a human imitation of the Akashic Records, the Book of Life. The place where, as both Confucious and Edgar Cayce say, "It is Written..." Plato might shudder, and those with ears to hear may call it a Tower of Babel (WWW, as any Chaldean numerologist would point out, is 666), man making himself god, but let's keep fiddling!

Hey, it's better than the Stay-Puf Marshmallow Man. Choose your destructor!

Link: Threat Level - Wired Blogs.

Threat Level Predicted Death of New York Times Firewall

By Ryan Singel August 07, 2007 | 11:32:11 AM

The New York Times is preparing to "bring down that wall" that hides its old stories and its OP-ED columnists, according to the New York Post. The TimesSelect service, which hid the paper's popular columnists to all but the 200,000 or so online subsribers, will be dropped soon, according to the piece.

THREAT LEVEL saw this coming. Saving The New York Times archives so only paying LexisNexis users could get at them was a retrograde decision in an age where search engines have deep indexes. And how are largely hidden columinists going to maintain their power when its easier for someone to read a blogger than it is to find a Maureen Dowd piece.

That's why in December, THREAT LEVEL submitted this prediction for inclusion in Wired News's predictions for 2007:

NYT Goes Free

The New York Times opens its archives from behind the paid firewall, realizing it's more lucrative to be the internet's paper of record than charging readers for individual stories. Thankfully, Thomas Friedman's clichés and mixed metaphors remain behind the pay firewall for at least two weeks.

I've not heard if the Times will actually keep Friedman behind the firewall, so as to spare us from further sloppy war cheerleading and non-sensical declarations that the world is flat, but one can dream or even start an online petition.