When given the choice between advancing (admittedly troubled) counterterrorism operations in Pakistan, or making sure that Lockheed Martin gets a couple hundred million dollars, it’s an easy call for the Bush Administration.
Category: Policy Page 24 of 35
Here’s an interesting analysis of Google’s approach to privacy. The author, Scott Cleland, summarizes his testimony before Congress thusly:
Why Google’s the single biggest threat to Americans’ privacy today.
Case Study: How Google Systematically Threatens Americans’ Privacy:
1. Google’s radical “publicacy” mission is antithetical to privacy.
2. Privacy is not a priority in Google’s culture.
3. Google gives privacy “lip service.”
4. Google threatens the privacy of more people than most any other
entity.
5. Google collects/stores the most potential “blackmail-able”
information.
6. Google’s track record does not inspire trust.Information is power. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts
absolutely. Google’s market power over private information is corrupting
Google, just like former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was corrupted by
his power and mastery of personally-sensitive information. Google’s
unprecedented arbitrage of privacy law combined with its exceptional
lack of accountability is fast creating this era’s privacy-invading,
unaccountable equivalent: “J. Edgar Google.”
More on this from me later, but I wanted to pass it on lest it get lost in the ever growing Draft Posts folder . . .
Who better to opine on his plan for Iraq than the Iraqi Prime Minister?
(this kinda sweeps away the “general horizon” shellgame that the Bush Administration tried to float, doesn’t it?)
I knew that we could expect some really ridiculous stuff getting shoveled out during the waning days of the Bush Administration, but this surprised even me.
A post to Dave Farber’s IP listserv just brought this to my attention:
While the U.S. oil industry wants access to more federal lands to help reduce reliance on foreign suppliers, U.S.-based companies are shipping record amounts of gasoline and diesel fuel to other countries.
A record 1.6 million barrels a day in U.S. refined petroleum products were exported during the first four months of this year, up 33 percent from 1.2 million barrels a day over the same period in 2007. Shipments this February topped 1.8 million barrels a day for the first time during any month, according to final numbers from the Energy Department.
The surge in exports appears to contradict the pleas from the U.S. oil industry and the Bush administration for Congress to open more offshore waters and Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.
I knew all the “Drill ANWAR Now!” clowns in the blogosphere were getting played for fools, but I didn’t realize just how foolish they really were.
I try not to spend too much time thinking about George Bush these days, but he’s really outdone himself today:
The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”
He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock
Hey, don’t look at me – Vivian’s the one who proposed it.
Among the most effective tools the US has (had?) are the assumptions about its capabilities and reach in military and intelligence matters.  And the gap between the assumption and the reality is often the asset that’s being protected when the public is told that something can’t be revealed to them, so that sources and methods aren’t jeopardized.
Well, over in Italy, they’re trying (in absentia) 26 Americans involved in kidnapping (and then lying about it) a suspected terrorist in Milan (all without the Italian gov’ts approval, natch). Seems like the Italians got ahold of the laptop of the CIA station chief.  And what super stealth secret means did they use to position their people and do recon on the best path between the abduction point and dropping the kidnapped guy at a US air base? Expedia. Oh, and they know this because it seems there was a plethora of unsecured info on the laptop.
Mind the gap, please.
Virginia State Sen. Chap Peterson concisely summarizes the options currently facing the special session down in Richmond. Earlier this year, I’d had some resolve to better follow and understand the transportation debate. But then I put it away after the usual GOP clowning over it made it pointless. If I can find that resolve again (I might have thrown it out), I’ll try and post more about the special session.
This is something I’ve long suspected, but soon we’ll be sure about it:
High-ranking political appointees at the Justice Department labored to stock a prestigious hiring program with young conservatives in a five-year-long attempt to reshape the department’s ranks, according to an inspector general’s report to be released today.
The report will trace the effort to 2002, early in the Bush administration, when key advisers to then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft moved to exert more control over the program to hire rookie lawyers and summer interns, according to two people familiar with the probe.
The honors program, which each year places about 150 law school graduates with top credentials in a rotation of Justice jobs, historically had operated under the control of senior career officials.
[ . . . ]
Critics in the department had argued that hundreds of high-quality applicants had been rejected because of their ties to left-leaning nonprofit groups or clerkships with Democratic judges and lawmakers, according to correspondence at the time.
They’ll be there long after this Administration is gone.
Update: TPM is finding lots of fun stuff in the report, but I think this email (which is sent by a US Attorney to a DOJ official vetting the applications) illustrates it pretty well:
My initial reaction is that the guy is probably quite liberal. He is clerking for a very activist, ATLA-oriented justice. His law review article appears to favor reintroduction of wolves on federal lands, a very controversial issue here which pits environmentalists against lots of other interests, including virtually all conservative and moderate thinkers. I know of better candidates through our internship and clerkship programs who have applied to the honors program.