First, I'd like to gloat that Anne and I had dinner last night at Charlie Trotter's, to celebrate our anniversary. Wow. I mean, wow. We've decided to save up to go again, which we hope we can do before our children graduate college.
Now back to the program.
Frank Rich (sub.req.) today reminds us that, despite the new story making the rounds about how the Administration (919 days, 3 hours) is trying a new foreign policy, the fact remains the Administration does not have now and has never had a foreign policy of any kind:
The only flaw in this narrative—a big one—is that it understates the administration’s failure by assuming that President Bush actually had a grand, if misguided, vision in the first place. Would that this were so. But in truth this presidency never had a vision for the world. It instead had an idée fixe about one country, Iraq, and in pursuit of that obsession recklessly harnessed American power to gut-driven improvisation and P.R. strategies, not doctrine. This has not changed, even now.
And yesterday, Josh Marshall summed up the differences between Republicans and Democrats:
Democrats seem to have a highly evolved (and perhaps misplaced) sense of sportsmanship: magnanimous in victory; chastened in defeat. Whereas Dems will rise to a political fight when they deem circumstances warrant, Republicans consider politics nothing but a fight, with peace the exception, not the rule.
I think this hypothesis has legs. We Democrats want to live in peace and not be bothered, pretty much. The Republicans claim the same things, but to them, the fight is never done. Even if they got everything they wanted, they'd still fight, because that, more than the things they're fighting for, is more important.
Fortunately, I think most people just want to be left alone, which is why the Republican strategy always over-reaches.
Finally, I'd like to complain that Chicago weather has taken a turn for the worse, with temperatures expected today around 37°C (99°F). This will not stop me from going to Wrigley Field this evening.
Excellent. I hope she takes them for millions, because in the immortal words of Billy Ray Valentine: "You know, it occurs to me that the best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people."
The Washington Post also has the story:
In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court, Valerie Plame and her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador, accused Cheney, Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby of revealing Plame's CIA identity in seeking revenge against Wilson for criticizing the Bush administration's motives in Iraq.
Update, 20:30 UTC: Talking Points Memo has the entire complaint online.
The President (922 days, 4 hours remaining) still has not yet appointed an Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Cyberterrorism, despite computer security problems up the ying since before the post was created:
Critics say the year-long vacancy is further evidence that the administration is no better prepared for responding to a major cyber-attack than it was for dealing with Hurricane Katrina, leaving vulnerable the information systems that support large portions of the economy, from telecommunications networks to power grids to chemical manufacturing and transportation systems.
"What this tells me is that [Chertoff] still hasn't made this a priority," said Paul Kurtz, formerly a cybersecurity adviser in the Bush administration and now a chief lobbyist for software and hardware security companies. "Having a senior person at DHS...is not going to stop a major cyber-attack on our critical infrastructures," he said, "but [it] will definitely help us develop an infrastructure that can withstand serious attacks and recover quickly."
Just to expand on the notion that computer security is a big problem right now, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse has estimated that 88.9 million identity records have been compromised since Choice Point announced its security breach in February 2005. That's just in the United States, by the way.
For my part, I nominate Bruce Schneier to be our top cyber-security official. I wonder if he'd even take the job, given its total lack of administration support.
This is too funny, and too sad:
It reads like a tally of terrorist targets that a child might have written: Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo, the Amish Country Popcorn factory, the Mule Day Parade, the Sweetwater Flea Market and an unspecified "Beach at End of a Street."
The National Asset Database, as it is known, is so flawed, the inspector general found, that as of January, Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich place in the nation.
Now, don't you feel more secure? By the way, Illinois has only 2,059 assets listed, which list presumably does not include the Lincoln Park Zoo Farm. Too bad, because those moo-cows are sitting ducks! Or something like that...
The New York Times on Tuesday ran an excellent summary (sub.req.) of what we know about global climate change. Strange that they put it in the Opinion section.
Also, a thought cheered me this morning: throughout history, political groups have always seemed strongest right before collapsing. I believe there is a correlation between effots to appear strong and a loss of true strength. I'll have to think about this some more.
I think smacking Ann Coulter because of plagiarism is almost the same as getting rid of Al Capone because of tax evasion. It rather misses the point, and it takes her way, way too seriously.
Better: let's all ignore her, the way we would ignore any other clown or annoying child. Commenting on Coulter wastes air. Figuring out what she plagiarised wastes time. Paying any attention to her at all wastes brain cells, and has the unwelcome side-effect of making her seem worth the trouble.
Bruce Schneier links to the Annual Report of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. It's possibly more relevant to Americans than Canadians, as almost everything the Commissioner points to in Canadian law, and more, exists in U.S. law. And our government uses the same rationales as theirs:
The fundamental human right of privacy in Canada is under assault as never before. Unless the Government of Canada is quickly dissuaded from its present course by Parliamentary action and public insistence, we are on a path that may well lead to the permanent loss not only of privacy rights that we take for granted but also of important elements of freedom as we now know it.
We face this risk because of the implications, both individual and cumulative, of a series of initiatives that the Government has mounted or is actively moving toward. These initiatives are set against the backdrop of September 11, and anti-terrorism is their purported rationale. But the aspects that present the greatest threat to privacy either have nothing at all to do with anti-terrorism, or they present no credible promise of effectively enhancing security.
The Government is, quite simply, using September 11 as an excuse for new collections and uses of personal information about all of us Canadians that cannot be justified by the requirements of anti-terrorism and that, indeed, have no place in a free and democratic society.
It's good stuff. And, as Schneier also highlighted, it contains this great passage:
Imagine, then, how we will feel if it becomes routine for bureaucrats, police officers and other agents of the state to paw through all the details of our lives: where and when we travel, and with whom; who are the friends and acquaintances with whom we have telephone conversations or e-mail correspondence; what we are interested in reading or researching; where we like to go and what we like to do.
A popular response is: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."
By that reasoning, of course, we shouldn't mind if the police were free to come into our homes at any time just to look around, if all our telephone conversations were monitored, if all our mail were read, if all the protections developed over centuries were swept away. It's only a difference of degree from the intrusions already being implemented or considered.
The truth is that we all do have something to hide, not because it's criminal or even shameful, but simply because it's private. We carefully calibrate what we reveal about ourselves to others. Most of us are only willing to have a few things known about us by a stranger, more by an acquaintance, and the most by a very close friend or a romantic partner. The right not to be known against our will - indeed, the right to be anonymous except when we choose to identify ourselves - is at the very core of human dignity, autonomy and freedom.
If we allow the state to sweep away the normal walls of privacy that protect the details of our lives, we will consign ourselves psychologically to living in a fishbowl. Even if we suffered no other specific harm as a result, that alone would profoundly change how we feel. Anyone who has lived in a totalitarian society can attest that what often felt most oppressive was precisely the lack of privacy.
Not that I'm drawing any meaning from it, but today is the birthday of a famous entertainer who realized early on that he could make a fortune through bamboozlement. Tomorrow is the birthday of a famous person with a nearly-identical philosophy. P.T. Barnum was born 5 July 1810, and G.W. Bush was born 6 July 1946.
I love meaningless coincidences, don't you?