Questioning the Authorities

A lot of people are saying that the New York Times essentially committed treason by writing about a secret government program to monitor financial transactions. Dan Froomkin helps put the hysteria in perspective:

It's a monstrous charge for the White House to suggest that the press is essentially aiding and abetting the enemy. But where's the evidence?

The White House first began leveling this kind of accusation immediately after a New York Times story revealed a massive, secret domestic spying program conducted without congressional or judicial oversight. See, for instance, Bush's December 17, 2005 radio address, in which he said the disclosure put "our citizens at risk."

But not once has the White House definitively answered this question: How are any of these disclosures actually impairing the pursuit of terrorists?

Terrorists already knew the government was trying to track them down through their finances, their phone calls and their e-mails. Within days of the Sept. 11 attacks, for instance, Bush publicly declared open season on terrorist financing.

As far as I can tell, all these disclosures do is alert the American public to the fact that all this stuff is going on without the requisite oversight, checks and balances.

How does it possibly matter to a terrorist whether the government got a court order or not? Or whether Congress was able to exercise any oversight? The White House won't say. In fact, it can't say.

By contrast, it does matter to us.

This is exactly right. If the only thing you care about is greater safety from terrorism, then, by all means, give the government absolute, unchecked power to wage the "war on terror" using any and all means it deems necessary, and make it a crime say anything about what the government is doing. If, on the other hand, you care about such things as freedom, democracy, checks and balances, equal rights, civil liberties, privacy, etc. — you know, the things that we are fighting the terrorists to preserve — then you might find that kind of totalitarianism contrary to the principles you hold dear.

Sadly, some people will let their fear get the better of them and opt for the police state. But at least those folks should muster the courage to focus the debate on the real issue — not whether the NYT is a bad actor, but whether the Bill of Rights is a good thing to have.

Flag Burning

Thank fucking god.

And shame, shame, shame on the following 14 Democrats who decided that it was a good idea to make a symbol more important than that which it symbolizes:

• Max Baucus
• Evan Bayh
• Mark Dayton
• Dianne Feinstein
• Tim Johnson
• Mary Landrieu
• Blanche Lincoln
• Robert Menéndez
• Bill Nelson
• Ben Nelson
• Harry Reid
• Jay Rockefeller
• Kenneth Salazar
• Debbie Stabenow

Timetable? What Timetable?

So, after a week of beating up the Democrats for being a bunch of cheese-eating cut-n-runners, it turns out that the White House has been planning for troop reductions in Iraq the whole time, and — gasp — even has a timetable that conveniently coincides with the fall elections.

The response from the Democrats is justifiable outrage at the political low-blow, and the reaction of the White House is, basically, that their timetable isn't really a timetable.

"We are entering a phase where discussions with the Iraqis will begin to practically define what 'stand up, stand down' will look like over the next two years," said this [White House] official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal conversations.

…"A conditions-based strategy outlined by our generals on the ground is a far cry from politicians in Washington setting an arbitrary date for withdrawal," the official said.

It's truly remarkable that anyone takes the "as the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down" line seriously anymore. Bush has been using this phrase for at least a year, during which our troop levels have remained basically unchanged. The charitable take on this fact is that either the Iraqis haven't done any standing up, or things have gotten so much worse that we can't do any standing down. Neither option really represents freedom being on the march and stuff.

As for that whole "conditions-based strategy" that the White House keeps going on about… oh, please. As long as Bush refuses to tell us exactly what those conditions are, that's just another throw-away line. Every couple of months Bush stands behind his podium in the Rose Garden and tells us how corners are being turned and milestones have been reached, and yet, all that "progress" leaves us in the exact same place.

Thus, Bush's conditions-based standing-up-and-down policy means exactly nothing. There are no public criteria in place, no advertised situational triggers, no leading indicators to drive policy. As Bush so eloquently put it, he is the "decider", which means he gets to decide about those conditions and the standing around and all that — not you. You don't even get to second-guess those decisions, because Bush alone claims to know when the time is right to act. It's all one big "trust me", and if you don't, you're a traitor.

So while the White House tries to figure out how to act on a timetable without really having one, how to pull out of Iraq while still staying the course, and how to convince the public that it's doing something when it really isn't, the bad stuff just continues to happen every damn day. Oh wait — we've reached a turning point, and the next six months will be key. I guess I was wrong — thank goodness there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Rainy Days and Mondays

Having spent over 8 years in DC, there are times when I miss the place. This is certainly not one of those times.

Friday Cat Blogging

Sometimes I like to help with the laundry.

Bush in Baghdad

Well, what a surprise — Bush is in Baghdad to meet with the Iraqi PM. And a nice big happy picture of a smiling Bush shaking hands with a smiling al-Maliki on CNN's homepage. No wonder the previously announced video conference had to be canceled — it's not as good a photo-op.

No doubt this trip is meant to reassure the home front that freedom is on the march, etc., but until the President can publicly announce a state visit a month in advance and not swoop in secretly, until he can tour the country instead of staying embedded deep in the Green Zone, and until he can actually stay in country for more than 5 hours and give his host more than 5 minutes notice before he arrives, then this trip is just a rather stupid publicity stunt, and should be reported as such. It doesn't show how much progress we've made — just the opposite.

Shilling for the Telcos

The Washington Post today published an amazingly brain-dead editorial on network neutrality, and comes squarely down on the side of the telecom companies, even to the point of using their main talking point as their sub-headline ("Congress should stay out of cyberspace."). But as bad as the conclusion is, it is a very good example of the disinformation and dishonest argumentation that characterizes the corporate side of the debate, so let's take a closer look and the Post's arguments one by one.

Point 1: Competition in the broadband market will prevent abuse:

More than 60 percent of Zip codes in the United States are served by four or more broadband providers that compete to give consumers what they want — fast access to the full range of Web sites, including those of their kids' soccer league, their cousins' photos, MoveOn.org and the Christian Coalition. If one broadband provider slowed access to fringe bloggers, the blogosphere would rise up in protest — and the provider would lose customers.

OK, so the other 40 percent is screwed, but how vibrant is the competition for the other 60% of us? I imagine that most of that 60% only see two options: the phone company and the cable company. A few will see a third — satellite. But after that, you're really talking about companies with access to someone else's network. For example, I use Speakeasy for DSL and VOIP, but all that runs through BellSouth's network. Which means that whatever BellSouth decides, I have to live with that too. So what we have isn't competition, it's oligopoly.

Point 2: Tiered service won't have much of an impact on internet innovation:

Cyber-upstarts already face barriers: The incumbents have brand recognition and invest in tricks to make their sites load faster. The extra barrier created by a lack of net neutrality would probably be small because the pipe owners know that consumers want access to innovators.

I'm not going to discount the problems that internet startups face, but the Post shouldn't discount the benefit of having equal access to consumers, in terms of speed or even availability. How successful would Google have been if the phone companies already had a profitable search service and were allowed to slow or block access to their competitors? Would YouTube have climbed to the top of the online video pile if the telcos were shipping video themselves? Let's face it — claiming that the free market will ensure equal access when you've already incentivized large established companies to discriminate for profit just isn't going to cut it. And those profits actually form the basis of the Post's next argument.

Point 3: Telcos need incentives to invest in network infrastructure:

If you want innovation on the Internet, you need better pipes: ones that are faster, less susceptible to hackers and spammers, or smarter in ways that nobody has yet thought of. The lack of incentives for pipe innovation is more pressing than the lack of incentives to create new Web services.

If we need better network tech, then we should be prepared to pay for it directly. Let's send out some NAS grant money, and let's tack on a broadband surcharge that must be used for network expansion. But no, that's too easy: according to the Post, we should come up with a scheme which doesn't actually insure that any extra network capacity will be built, and allows acceptable delivery speeds to go to the highest bidder instead of to those content and service providers chosen by consumers. Which brings us to the punchline:

The weakest aspect of the neutrality case is that the dangers it alleges are speculative. It seems unlikely that broadband providers will degrade Web services that people want and far more likely that they will use non-neutrality to charge for upgrading services that depend on fast and reliable delivery, such as streaming high-definition video or relaying data from heart monitors.

Wow, talk about speculative! What tiered service actually accomplishes is exactly the opposite — it encourages telcos to keep their networks small enough to justify the premium pricing for fast delivery. And that's the real problem here — network bandwidth is still a scarce commodity. It shouldn't be. We've reached a point where the cost of practically every other computing resource is ridiculously low — storage is pennies per GB, you can double your RAM for $50, etc. All that is good for consumers, and good for innovation. Network access should be no different, and that's only going to be possible if we begin with a commitment to network neutrality. If the network providers want to compete, that's fine — let them compete with the size and speed of their networks. It's the absolute wrong approach to allow these companies to make a healthy profit from a few large content providers while simultaneously encouraging them not to build enough capacity for everyone.

Logic Problem

The problem is that Congress should be using its resources to provide better email filtering and management tools to its members. Installing another barrier to deter or prevent citizens from emailing their Representatives in the first place is a pretty undemocratic approach.

Net Neutrality Fails in House

Yesterday, the House voted 269-152 to kill Rep. Markey's network neutrality amendment, and then proceeded to vote 321-101 to pass COPE, which makes it much, much easier to the telcos to get into the TV business. As Larry Lessig pointed out on Thursday, this is not good:

The implications of permanently losing network neutrality could not be more serious. The current legislation, backed by companies such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, would allow the firms to create different tiers of online service. They would be able to sell access to the express lane to deep-pocketed corporations and relegate everyone else to the digital equivalent of a winding dirt road. Worse still, these gatekeepers would determine who gets premium treatment and who doesn't.

Their idea is to stand between the content provider and the consumer, demanding a toll to guarantee quality delivery. It's what Timothy Wu, an Internet policy expert at Columbia University, calls "the Tony Soprano business model": By extorting protection money from every Web site — from the smallest blogger to Google — network owners would earn huge profits. Meanwhile, they could slow or even block the Web sites and services of their competitors or those who refuse to pay up. They'd like Congress to "trust them" to behave.

I'm particular disappointed in the votes of my Representative, Melvin Watt. He voted for the Markey amendment, but also voted in favor of COPE. By the numbers, he's 1 for 2, but that doesn't mean he should get half-credit. Indeed, the only explanation I can find for voting this way is a rather shallow political calculation on his part. Watt can now claim that he sided with both sides — in effect, he voted for network neutrality before he voted against it.

If you really believe the argument for network neutrality, then it makes absolutely no sense to vote for COPE. The telcos would like you to believe that this is all about being able to compete with cable companies, but the implications go way beyond that. This bill uses TV as the wedge that undoes the fundamental principle that has enabled the internet to be what it is today: a democratic platform that encourages social, political, and commercial innovation. What COPE does is trade all that in for another way to get TV in your living room. That's not a good trade.

Bad Deal

Senator Specter has a habit of making a lot of noise about some of the more egregious Bush administration power grabs, and then going silent and doing nothing as soon as the White House talks back. Yesterday was no exception. After Cheney told Specter that he wouldn't get any cooperation from any witnesses he wanted to subpoena to investigate the legality of NSA surveillance operations, Specter caved.

Phone company executives won't be grilled by a Senate panel anytime soon about their roles in the Bush administration's eavesdropping program.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said Tuesday he will hold off subpoenaing the telecommunications chiefs while he works with the White House on his legislation that would ask a secretive federal court to review the constitutionality of Bush's surveillance operations.

In return for giving up any pretense of public oversight or accountability, Specter got Cheney to promise to support his legislation that would have a secret court to do some kind of legal review. Even if that "review" were to mean anything substantively, given the way things have been going, I doubt it will even happen — and Specter and Cheney know that, too.

So thanks for the grandstanding, Senator Specter — you gave a power-mad White House everything it asked for and made it look like a compromise.

Getting the gist, Senator Leahy made a "modest proposal":

"Why don't we just recess for the rest of the year?" the committee's top Democrat, Sen. Pat Leahy of Vermont, asked sarcastically. "Vice President Cheney will just tell the nation what laws we'll have."

Indeed he will, as he has always done, thanks to senators like Specter.

Celine Dion is Totally Insane

If you watched Deal or No Deal tonight, you know what I'm talking about. And if you didn't see the show, don't worry — her bizarre cameo performance will no doubt be on YouTube by morning.

Update 6/30/06: I haven't found the video yet, but Michelle Collins has the stills.

Best of the Web, Not

When I met James Taranto, author of the WSJ's "Best of the Web" column, at the October 2003 BloggerCon, he struck me as a pretty smart guy. While we don't agree on much politically, the discussion we had over dinner after the first day's sessions was very interesting and engaging. I've never really been able to reconcile the person I met with the rather angry and arrogant tone of his online work, but public and private personas can and do sometimes differ, so I never worried too much about it.

Today, however, I read about his recent "challenge," and I'm rethinking my assessment. Taranto asked:

Can you find a similar article — that is, a news story, not an opinion column, preferably written months before the election — speculating about the possibility of a Republican landslide in 1994, when there actually was one? How about in 1980?

Now, most readers aren't going to do the research to confirm or deny this, and Taranto no doubt knows this. He's implying there aren't any such articles, therefore there must be liberal bias in the media, blah blah blah.

But shouldn't Taranto already know that a lot of these articles were, in fact, written? He works for a big media company — surely he has Lexis/Nexis. Wouldn't you suppose that he would run a couple of quick queries before asking the world this question, if only out of curiosity?

It's certainly possible Taranto was being lazy and careless, making a half-assed argument for a premise that he could have easily confirmed or denied if he had only bothered to spend a couple of minutes at the computer. But as I said, he struck me as a smart guy, so I can only conclude that he was trying to be a little too clever by half, implying, but never claiming explicitly, something which he knows to be false. After all, being smart doesn't make you good.