Full Blogosphere Alert

Bloggers in Egypt arrested for "Insulting the President" that is Mubarak.

Free Alaa Seif al-Islam
Free Ahmed Droubi
Free Malek Mostafa
Free Moahmmed al-Sharqawi.

No US aid to Egypt while they are in prison.


I was struck by the case of Malek Mostafa

Another blogger, Malek Mostafa, is also in jail for insulting the president, as well as for blocking traffic and endangering public order. His blog was notable for its tolerant take on religious issues.

Mostafa belongs to al-Wasat, a religious party that broke from the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and bills itself as a liberal alternative within Islamic-based politics. Recently, Mostafa defended members of the Bahai religion demanding official recognition for their sect; the Brotherhood, which wants to apply Islamic law in Egypt, opposes the Bahai, calling them apostates.

Why did I only hear about al-Wasat when one of their blogging members was arrested ? There is a liberal alternative within Islamic-based politics ! Is the US supporting them ? I mean at least their right to protest and "insult the President" ? Fat chance.

I Also noted a bit of humor in a grim article "Seif al-Islam's parents were well-known political activists whose approach to bringing about change in Egypt centered on long meetings with like-minded militants" ah yes long meetings. I hope the blogosphere can be more effective.

update: current link I think

Readers of this blog will notice that I have recently sold out and added a google ads button. So far I have raked in $1.33. However, I just notice that, for the first time, I have used an apparently valuable word in a post. I mean it's not "mesothelioma" but my post denouncing H-1B visas and calling for complete international freedom of movement of academics (and everyone else) pulled an ad for, you guessed it, H1-B visas (ok it was easy to guess especially since, for all I know, the ad is still up there as you read this).

If that ad gets clicked then I will have done well by doing good. Only a few cents but my good deed was very very cost free.

I think That Tony Blair needs professional help

Fresh from his pleasant joint press conference with George Bush (as clever a political move as it would have been for Carter to hold a joint press conference with Khomeini), Blair visited with ex Prime minister Berlusconi (they probably chatted about David Mills).

Silvio Berlusconi al suo arrivo in Toscana per una cena con Tony Blair e con la moglie Cheril nella villa dei principi Guicciardini Strozzi di Cusona...

"Berlusconi on his arrival in Tuscanny for a dinner with Tony Blair and his wife Cheril in the villa of the princes Guicciardini Strozzi di Cusona ..."

Berlusconi is an absolutely loathsome person who is currently out of power and who was being hammered in local elections as they dined. Blair voluntarily chose to subject himself to Berlusconi in a bad mood (second worst thing possible after Berlusconi in a good mood).

Also, the only Guicciardini who ever had anything to say about statesmen was the Guicciardini who wrote about politics in the 16th century. I once read something along the lines of "Guicciardini who viewed politics as an expression of self interest in contrast to the more philisophical views of his contemporary Machiavelli"
A very appropriate place for Berlusconi to have dinner no doubt, but what is Tony Blair doing there ?

Blair is undoubtably not Machiavelli, but just who might he be in renaissance Italy is lost to history. Any such (...) wouldn't have lasted 15 minutes
(mildly naughty Italian anatomical reference elided).

Nexus and the Olive Tree IV ?

Nexus projects a tie in the mayoral election in Milan

MILANO: 1 PROIEZIONE NEXUS RAI- MORATTI 48,9% ,FERRANTE 48,9%


In the past three elections, Nexus projections have shown a marked bias in favor of the right (in this case Moratti). I will refrain from making a prediction about the result in Milan, since Carlo Ciccarelli threatens to spray pain "Iatatore" on my new house (except for the fact that he can spelll).

Update: Note I did *not* make a prediction in the post above. The final NEXUS projection shows Moratti winning without a runoff with a predicted 51.3% of the vote
also

02:13 Moratti al 51,2%

Sono state scrutinate, secondo Palazzo Marino, 816 sezioni su 1.253 (il 65,12%): Letizia Moratti, candidato della Cdl, ha ottenuto finora il 51,22% delle preferenze. Il candidato dell'Unione, Bruno Ferrante, il 47,72%.

The same link gives the current data.

I definitely *did* make a prediction about the elections and I admit it. I predicted that no matter what happened Berlusconi would say that the results showed that the Italians have rejected the center left so there must be new elections.

"Bisogna incrociare le dita", dice il Cavaliere e si riferisce ovviamente allo scrutinio di Milano che comunque già gli ha riservato l'amarezza della storica roccaforte che inespugnabile certo non appare più. E infatti l'ex premier si limita ad aggiungere di essere "soddisfatto per il risultato del Polo in Lombardia". Con un nuovo appuntamento consegnato ai suoi collaboratori: la spallata ci può essere ancora, ora bisogna "puntare tutto sul referendum".

Oops

Looks like the guys at Nexus have learned their lesson. I prefer not to predict if and when I will.

arwen has left a new comment on your post "5/29/2006 05:35:00 PM":

no, no, non "Iatatore" ma IETTATORE !!!!

I hereby call on all governments to allow free mobility of university professors. All universities and other institutions of higher education should be allowed to hire whoever they want to reside, teach, and do research at their universities, without let or hindrance by any government whatsoever.

Answering Matthew Yglesias and following Brad DeLong

Yglesias wrote "I'll believe that this is all about altruism when I see an open letter from economists demanding that we scrap the complicated H1B visa system and instead allow unrestricted immigration of foreign college professors without all these requirements about prevailing wages, work conditions, non-displacement, good-faith recruitment of natives, etc." Let's convince him. I think his point is that such a gesture would help economist convince a politician or maybe even two.

I am sure that most economists consider H1B visas a hassle and barrier to recruiting the best colleagues (although really a very minor barrier). I don't think that young US citizen economists would be willing to tacitly accept protection from non US citizens by refusing to sign such an open letter. They might get a slightly nicer house by remaining silent, but they wouldn't want to look at themselves in any of the mirrors in it. Now it is true that policy makers don't care about economists' sincerity but what's better than a chance to make an self sacrificing offer that no one will accept ?

I admit that I, being an emmigrant economist, can obtain only benefits from my adherance, however they are trivial. National borders have only been a problem for me when I couldn't get out of the USA because my passport had expired and the US government was shut down for lack of funds. I'm pretty sure that I was an undocumented alien in Italy in 1989-90 but no Italians, including those who were paying me, seemed interested in the question, so I didn't bore them with it.

Idiots

The Second Time as Farce

This too is bad news. It turns out that our lawgivers our conscript fathers have no problem with an executive which regularly breaks the law rendering them irrelevant, but searching a congressman's offce (with a warrant) is going too far.

The message seems to be that it is OK to ignore the principles enunciated by Thomas Jefferson so long as you also ignore the crimes of William Jefferson.

Legislators who accept anything but a search of a colleagues office are begging us to save the republic by voting them out of office. If we re-elect them, what will we tell our children ?

This is Horrible News

"Senate Panel Backs Hayden as CIA Director"

General Hayden was head of the NSA and clearly broke the law. The Bush adminstration's utter contempt for the US consitution and the rule of law can only cause permanent damage to the republic if it is accepted. If senators, congressment and judges defended the constitution, a criminal President would be like a sore on a healthy body.

The senate intelligence committee overwhelmingly voted to approve the appointment of a known criminal to a highly sensitive position. Thus they submitted to presidential lawlessness. Thus they created a precedent which will damage the USA forever.

George Bush could not do this. Our traditions can be saved by condemnation of Bush. A broad consensus against the constitution can not be remedied for generations.

Long ago, I argued that criminal methods might be morally acceptable and even morally necessary but that the criminals must be punished even if they did the right thing. General Hayden is a criminal. Respect for the law and respect for the idea of law, should have impelled the Senate intelligence committee to vote against his appointment.

The wound inflicted yesterday will not heal in my lifetime.

Supercomputers and Palmistry

The NSA is attempting to find something useful in the records of which US number was called from which US number and how long the conversation lasted. They never got Qwest data. Someone at the NSA anonymously boasted that they were analysing the worlds largest data set. This implies either that they have more data than they admit or that someone at the NSA is incompetent. However they are analysing a huge data set using extremely powerful computers and the latest available algorithms and estimators.
Given that, I would guess that the program is not only a crime but also a mistake.

I am atracted to an analogy. Let's say they had data on the palm prints of everyone in the USA and attempted to find suicide bombers by careful analysis of life lines. This would be an even larger data set and require very sophisticated algorithms. It would also be idiotic, because all of the analysis would be based on a false assumption.

Now with a large sample of palm prints of suicide bombers and non suicide bombers, one can draw valid inference about the association between creases on the palm and suicide bombing. Of course, I am sure the null hypothesis of no association is valid. However, my point (if any) is that without a sample of suicide bombers it would be impossible to test the null hypothesis that there is nothing to palmistry vs the alternative hypothesis that suddenly ending life lines are correlated with suicide bombing.

If someone at the palm print data mining program guessed that life lines mean something, that guess would never be abandoned. A huge amount of data with no data on the phenomenon of interest can not be used to determine correlates of the phenomenon of interest. The fact that between the NSA guess about pattern typical of al Qaeda operatives and the NSAs suggestion that the FBI investigate a particular Pizza Hut there may be trillions of floating point operations. Torturing a computer will not, sad to say, make a bad guess a good guess.

I think that the considerable patience Americans have with NSA law breaking is, of course, partly based on general contempt for the rule of law, but is also based on a mystical faith in powerful computers. They can come up with answers following processes much too tedious for us to reproduce with pen and paper, but they can't make a guess about al Qaeda sleepers a well supported hypothesis without data on al Qaeda sleepers.

Kevin Drum continues to stress the illegality of the NSA operations (the important issue) and stimulate me to argue that he shouldn't seriously consider the possibility that the program is effective.


I don't understand why you seem willing to believe that the NSA program might actually work. The NSA has powerful computers and a huge data base, but their guess that "flurries of calls to U.S. numbers placed immediately after the domestic caller received a call from Pakistan or Afghanistan." are indicative of an Al Qaeda operative is just a guess. There is, as far as I know, no evidence whatsoever which supports this hypothesis. In particular, since there are, as far as I know, no known al Qaeda sleepers in the USA the association of the pattern and al Qaeda sleepers is based on a sample of zero observations. The fact that after making that guess the NSA crunches terabytes does not reduce their reliance on the original guess. A calculation based on a bad assumption will not yield an accurate conclusion (this is a case of gigo). I really think that many people are awed by the power of computers and willing to believe that they can do the impossible, that is, accurately describe something which has never been observed.

Now, as to the case of Kevin Drum, I understand that you always write that the NSA approach *may* work, *might* be useful, and must be regulated by law *if* it works. Still, persistent interest in the implications of the assumption that their approach works, hints at a belief that there is a serious possibility that it does work.

I think that, by now, it is clear that the NSA approach is both illegal and ineffective. Someone who leaks to reporters has attempted to point to examples of useful applications of the program. Thus not all people in the know are restrained by respect for the secrecy of sources and methods. This is obvious by now. Exibit A was the Brooklyn Bridge Blowtorch Buffoon who really did consider destroying the bridge with a blowtorch. In that case there was a warrant authorising a phone tap. Obviously pattern analysis had nothing to do with that detection of a threat to the USA, since warrants are not issued based on illegally obtained data.

Also the FBI complains about "another investigation of Pizza Hut" (see the very first comment). The FBI will always complain about expending resources doing leg work for other organisations, but the evidence so far is that the NSA program is a total failure.

Dear Mr Drum

(in a comment on his blog I dared call him Kevin)

It seems to me obvious that terrorists will not create obvious patterns. If activity looks a lot like al Qaeda communications, al Qaeda operatives will refrain from that activity. That's game theory. The examples of useful pattern analysis (pedophiles, who is in the super bowl noted on this blog) are examples in which there is a large enough sample of the phenomenon of interest that the association of a pattern and the phenomenon is based on evidence not guess work. The NSA might have the worlds largest data set, but without a sample of al Qaeda sleepers in the USA, they can't possibly learn about patterns typical of al Qaeda sleepers in the USA.

Kevin Drum is very smart, but I think the older of two successive posts undermines the analogy in the newer post.

First Drum quotes Seymour Hersh being outstanding as always. Hersh has sources who confirm the general guess of what the NSA was doing with calling records

The N.S.A. also programmed computers to map the connections between telephone numbers in the United States and suspect numbers abroad, sometimes focussing on a geographic area, rather than on a specific person — for example, a region of Pakistan. Such calls often triggered a process, known as “chaining,” in which subsequent calls to and from the American number were monitored and linked.

The way it worked, one high-level Bush Administration intelligence official told me, was for the agency “to take the first number out to two, three, or more levels of separation, and see if one of them comes back” — if, say, someone down the chain was also calling the original, suspect number. As the chain grew longer, more and more Americans inevitably were drawn in.

Drum simply comments "Hersh's source says that this eavesdropping is a 'violation of the spirit of the law.' But if the program works the way Hersh says it does, it doesn't violate the "spirit" of anything. It just flatly violates the law" and of course he is right.

My thought is that the statistical analysis is not only illegal but also almost certainly ineffective. It makes sense to "chain" calls to someone the NSA has good reason to suspect is an NSA operative. The FISA court would almost certainly approve such analysis (remember the FISA court had never ever denied a requested warrant when the program began).

It makes much less sense to "chain" calls to a region in Pakistan or to numbers suspected of being related to al Qaeda with very little evidence. The initial guess is feeble. The analysis is based on that guess. The data available to the NSA can't help them if their guess is wrong. Consider the region in Pakistan. First it is possible that al Qaeda operatives in the USA avoid calling Pakistan, since the NSA strategy is obvious (and they surely have what turns to be a not so paranoid distrust of US privacy protections). They might call, say Hamburg instead. Second, they might use one phone for calls up the hierarchy and one for calls down the hierarchy making chaining useless.

Third, the main point is that many people in the USA call that region in Pakistan for perfectly innocent reasons. They might be immigrants or temporary migrants from that region, they might be US born calling a US expat (betcha the NSA did a good bit of spying on private calls of CIA agents) they might be someone in the USA who met a Pakistani at college or something. The initial evidence of Al Qaeda affiliation is clearly very week. A pattern of calls found by chaining makes it no stronger. Say there are a group of people in the USA who call each other and the region in Pakistan. The innocent explanations all still apply. You have something which al Qaeda operatives might or might not do which many other people definitely do. No huge data set nor powerful computer can get around that problem.

Now consider individual suspect phone numbers. You can find a group of people who call each other some of whom are al Qaeda suspects. The pattern of a group of people who call each other so the chains of calls instersect is perfectly normal. Members of the same terrorist organisation might or might not do that, but groups of friends and acquaintances certainly do that. The analysis has not added discriminating capacity to the original guess.

I think the only way to find an al Qaeda specific pattern is with a lot of data on al Qaeda operatives. They might be careless and call according to simple rules. With data on thousands of al Qaeda operatives in the USA it might be possible to learn those rules. This clealy has nothing to do with the real world. However, it has a lot to do with the unfortunate analogy in Drum's next post

Take a different, but equally incendiary example. Suppose that we could semi-reliably create a statistical portrait of child molesters: their age, geographical location, gender, and calling and buying patterns. Suppose they tend to rent certain kinds of videos, make phone calls to certain kinds of chat lines, and call up other known child molesters.

Needless to say, the FBI could track these patterns using the same methods as the NSA and then exploit the results to create lists of "possible child molesters." And it might work. But would we be OK with the FBI tapping someone's phone just because they fit a statistical profile? Or staking out their house? Or investigating their friends?

He asks if we would find such a use of statistics acceptable (I say yes except for using race, ethnicity, religion etc as variables). However the analogy is totally faulty. Sad to say, we have a huge known sample of child molesters. With that sample, we can find patterns (one commenter claims that child molesters are more likely than non molesters to be Star Trek fans). We do not have a huge sample of al Qaeda sleepers in the USA. In fact, I'm not sure any have been identified. We can't use any available data set to estimate typical behavior of al Qaeda operatives in the USA. The NSA can make wild guesses based on other data (like they call a region in Pakistan) but it can't evaluate those guesses and improve on them.

To me this point is blindingly obvious but no one seems to mention it. Aside from whether we want to pry with statistics, statistical analysis is useless without data on the phenomenon of interest.

Sebastian Mallaby wrote an excellent column, but I have two objections. Mallaby makes his point concisely
"By their serial dishonesty, Republicans have created a market for "An Inconvenient Truth" -- the title of Gore's movie." He also says the movie (which I haven't seen) is very boring.

I object to two claims in the last paragraph

Six years ago, Bush narrowly defeated Gore, apparently because voters thought he'd be a nicer guy to have a beer with. But after years of governmental bungling, of willful indifference to truth, the national mood seems to be changing. Voters have seen that nice guys can screw up. And technocrats with diagrams and charts have never seemed so interesting.

Nice guys can screw up, but George Bush is not a nice guy, although he may be a pleasant fellow. Niceness isn't just smiles and jokes. It also implies genuine kindness and decency underneath. Bush has the intellect of Reagan and the decency of Nixon.

Also, of course, he didn't win the election, or at least he didn't win it by convincing Americans who are not supreme court justices. I don't want to go back to that, but Mallaby should have added "in the electoral college" after "defeated Gore." Gore won the popular vote. This is an uncontested fact (a kind of fact which as Mallaby notes has gotten rare lately). That's all in the past and isn't worth much more than 2 words of 70, but, come on Sebastian, two words for 500,000 votes is stingy enough.

Mallaby doesn't say anything about Mallaby, but Margaret Carlson seems to be offering to drink a beer with Gore as penance. She also has the right word "likeable" not "nice." The dread thing which reminds me I better not even try to give advice to politicians (not that any are reading this blog) is that I would much rather have a beer with someone like Gore than with someone like Bush totally aside from the horrors of Bush the politician. I'd rather talk about global warming than whatever Bush chats about, and, I swear, I am lazier than George W Bush.

Bit embarassed about forgetting the word likeable. Over here we say "simpatico" and I have lost touch with my native language (although does anyone anywhere know how to say "outsourcing" in Italian Giovanni Vecchi says "apalto" which is, I'm afraid, correct but sounds like public contracting (as in is the word which comes before bribe in the Italian political dictionary). Of course, all Italians say "outsourcing." Come on NSA guys give me a hand here.

The post below is a bit brief. I would like to explain why I am so thrilled that Clement Mastella is minister of Justice.

First the phrase "Francesco Tiratore" is a brilliant pun which I am still kicking myself for not inventing. It refers to 3 senators who voted for "Francesco Marini" for president of the Senate, thus showing their votes were definitely needed for "Franco Marini" to be elected President of the Senate. A franco tiratore is a sniper, but the word is used for members of parliament who vote against their nominal allies with a secret ballot.

Oddly 3 is the number of senators of the UDEur, one of the fragments of the Christian Democratic party. One of those Senators, not to mention the head of the party, is the Clement Mastella. I'm afraid I will be writing about those three often and I'm afraid that I will call them the holy trinity.

They are, as demonstrated by the votes for Francesco Marini, necessary to the center left's majority in the Senate. After the election, Mastella demanded a ministry. He was outraged that his allies told him that, given the majority of 2 in the Senate (3 counting an independent) working in a ministry was inconsistent with being a senator. He actually complained that no one told him that before the election.

I am now more confident than before that the three Franceschi tiratori are the three UDEur Senators. There was an argument that the Center left could not make Mastella a Minister, because then he wouldn't be present in the Senate often enough and they would lose one critical vote. Somehow his allies were convinced that it was better to give him a ministry and lose one vote than to not give him a ministry and lose three. hmmm.

The ministry is interesting as the minister of justice has a unique position under the Italian constitution. All other ministers are expected to be collegial. The Minister of Justice, serving the cause of Truth and Justice, is not expected to follow the government line. On the other hand, the justice minister has little actual power because prosecutors, like judges, are magistrates independent from the executive. The odd role of the minister of justice can, perhaps, be understood by considering the first minister of justice of the Italian Republic, Palmiro Togliatti (who learned about due process in Moscow). He was part of a very very broad coalition which wrote the constitution and formed the first Republican government. Thus a role for him where he does not have to agree with non Communists but has little actual power. Thus also the tendency for the Italian Constitution to argue with itself (it tends to lose those arguments).

It is appropriate that Clement Mastella is presented as fitting into this coalition like the Communists fit into the post War coalition. Unfortunately the main role of the justice minister in practice has been to harass magistrates who are trying to prosecute politicians and advise the parliament on how to change the law in order to stop them (the justice minister in the first Prodi government refused to do this and was thus considered a colossal failure).

Mastella is ideally suited to the job of protecting slimeballs from justice. I consider his nomination to be a sign that the center left is seaking a justice truce with the opposition. Another hint might be the proposal to reject the first letter of resignation from Cesare Previti who will not be able to legislate full time, since he is under house arrest for bribing judges. The letter hasn't arrived as Previti refuses to resign, so counting on him to insist and send two resignation letters is ... like hoping that Mastella is now satisfied and will behave like a loyal ally.

Still could be worse. In Iraq political debates involve real Franchi Tiratori.

Joke's on me. Clement Mastella detto Francesco Tiratore is minister of Justice.

Could have been worse. I'm not sure how, but it could have been worse.

David Ignatius attempts to argue that the NSA monitoring of all US calls is useful.

To do so he attempts to escape into a fantasy world. The absurdity of his argument is made clear from the 4th word in his column "hypothetical". It is possible to imagine a world in which the program were useful as it is possible to imagine a world in which pigs fly. In this world, it is clear that Ignatius's argument is nonsensical.

Let's take a hypothetical problem: An al-Qaeda operative decides to switch cellphones to prevent the National Security Agency from monitoring his calls. How does the NSA identify his new cellphone number? How does it winnow down a haystack with several hundred million pieces of straw so that it can find the deadly needle?

The problem may seem hopelessly complex, but if you use common sense, you can see how the NSA has tried to solve it. Suppose you lost your own cellphone and bought a new one, and people really needed to find out that new number. If they could search all calling records, they would soon find a number with the same pattern of traffic as your old one -- calls to your spouse, your kids, your office, your golf buddies. They wouldn't have to listen to the calls themselves to know it was your phone. Simple pattern analysis would be adequate -- so long as they had access to all the records.

This is almost too obvious to need arguing. I only do so because Kevin Drum seems to be semi convinced by Ignatius. The hypothetical example assumes something we know not to be the case and is irrelevant to the real world. It assumes that there, on September 11, there was a known al Qaeda operative in the USA and that the problem was to find out which cell phone he was using. We know there was no such operative. He would undoubtably have been arrested if his location was known. If it wasn't his photo would be in every post office in the country. Sometimes known criminals are allowed to remain free in an effort to catch conspirators. 9/12/01 was not one of those times.

Any effort to argue that the program is useful requires the definitely false assumption that al Qaeda operative calling patterns are known. They can only be learned by observing the calling behavior of known al Qaeda operatives. It is obvious that there were no known al Qaeda sleepers in the USA when the program began. It is almost as clear that none have been found since then, because the event would have been trumpeted for political reasons. Thus the hypotheical example of how the program might be useful is clearly irrelevant to the real world. The worlds largest data base and the worlds most powerful computers can not identify a pattern typical of something without examples of that thing. This is obvious.

Uh oh I am having trouble respecting fair use limits. I only want to highlight the clearly absurd passages in the column but I find myself quoting the whole thing.

This, in simple terms, is what I suspect the NSA has done in tracking potential sleeper cells in the United States. The agency can sift through the haystack, if (and probably only if) it can search all the phone and e-mail records for links to numbers on a terrorist watch list. The computers do the work: They can examine hundreds of millions of calls to find the few red-hot links --

Here he claims that having all phone and e-mail records, the NSA can "sift" through them. The hypothetical example of how it could sift is clearly purely hypothetical as it is based on a counterfactual premise. Yet Ignatius asserts definitely that the NSA can sift through phone records not that, for all we know, they might have the necessary sample of al Qaeda operatives but that they can. Having a lot of something does not imply the ability to sift it. You need a sifter to do that. The computers can do a lot of work, but if there is no data on typical al Qaeda operatives, their output is only as good as the human guess as to what al Qaeda operatives do. The assertion that computers have magical powers and can tell which links are red hot is techno mysticism. If you can't tell a plausible story about how to find the al Qaeda operative in a sample of three people using pen and paper, you can't convince me that a computer can find the al Qaeda operative out of 280 million people. Computers can solve problems which require too many calculations for a person. Computers can not solve problems which aren't scaled up versions of problems which we can solve.
The proof that the explanation of what is really happening is hypothetical is that Ignatius assumes the existence of a valid "terrorist watch list". I ask how was that obtained ?

Ignatius does not even attempt to defend his really crucial claim "(and probably only if)." The claim is simply stated. Since Ignatius feels free to assert that his conclusion (the NSA can sift) is true, his use of the word probably can probably be interpreted to mean "certainly not". To justify the program it is necessary to assert that the NSA needs all phone and e-mail records to "search all the phone and e-mail records for links to numbers on a terrorist watch list." Clearly Ignatius knows perfectly well that this is nonsense. If there is a terrorist watch list, the NSA would need the records of calls to and from numbers on that list. The idea that it would need to have all records on in ft Meade in order to find calls too and from those numbers is totally absurd.

That hack (sorry I can't name him, since I don't have the DC phone book with so I can't search for people named David Ignatius so I don't have the name) must know that if you want records of the calling activity of a number on a hot list you do not need to take records of calls too and from all numbers to then search for calls to and from that number. That's crazy. Ignatius is trying to convince us that the NSA but not the phone companies can generate a reverse phone bill with calls to a number (notice I live in Italy and can conceive of the idea of local calls appearing on a phone bill).

If there is an arguably valid "terrorist watch list" the NSA could easily obtain all calls to and from numbers on that list with a FISA warrent. Recall that by )/11/01 the FISA court had never ever denied a requested warrent.

Ignatius tries another example (which he got straight from Gen Hayden)

To explain the basic concept of pattern analysis, Hayden has told audiences that if you could monitor, say, the timing and pattern of calls on Super Bowl Sunday, you would know which teams were playing, how the game progressed and perhaps even who won

. OK see we have a sample of super bowls. The NSA has a large sample of calls made during super bowls involving a known team and victor. The super bowl is about the most public thing in the USA. Al Qaeda sleeper cells are quite different. The example illustrates again that with tons of data including zero data on the group of interest you have, in effect, zero data.

It is amazing really that people argue about the NSA program given that it is impossible to present a plausible hypothetical example in which the program could be useful and legal means would not work just as well. This is not at all a usual phenonmenon in policy debates. The illegal NSA program might be the most obviously worthless waste of public money on record.

Marshall Metaphor Watch

"If it's true, it puts us a big notch further down the creeping police state road. And we already passed the toll booth a while ago."

Some of Josh Marshall's metaphors have been excellent. I think, after this, they are on average about average. I understand that the creeping police state is Orwellian but remember what Orwell wrote and please please do not use a metaphor without calling an image to mind

Magari Fosse lo Stesso Partito da sempre

If only it were the same Republican party it always was

Digby starts an excellent post in an absurd way

Same As It Ever Was

by digby


[snip] Rick Perlstein has given me permission to publish an excerpt from his forthcoming book "Nixonland".

The trust in President Nixon might have been shaken somewhat on Day 101, when the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee repeated something he first said in October of 1966: time to declare victory and go home.

I knew Aiken was a Republican Senator (one of my memories of childhood was hearing that a Republican senator said we sould "declare victory and go home" again and again and again). I didn't know he was the ranking member of the foreign affairs committee. Ahhh those were the days the jingle jingle jingle of the ice cream man's truck and Republican ranking members and even rational intelligent honorable Republican ranking members.

Aiken was extraordinary even in his own time, but think has any organisation sunk so far as the party of Lincoln and Bush ? And don't make me try to imagine who they will nominate in 2140.

Monitoring the Bush Administrations use of "Monitoring"

The Bush administration's utter contempt for the truth is revealed when they lie when a technically true statement would have served their purposes almost as well. For example, White House spokesman Trent Duffy lied about NSA domestic spying "This is not about monitoring phone calls designed to arrange Little League practice or what to bring to a potluck dinner,".

In fact, the NSA was monitoring all telephone calls. They were not intercepting all calls, since, for most calls the monitoring consisted only of recording the number called and the duration of the call. Thus Duffy (and many more prominent others) lied when a careful choice of words would have created the same false impression without a lie.

In particular "monitor" sounds less threatening than "intercept" or "eavesdrop" so they denied monitoring, which was taking place. This shows that they haven't noticed that the intelligence community is leaking like a sieve. It also shows an extreme short term bias. Finally it shows complete contempt for the true, but we knew that.

What Is To Be Done

by the Democratic Majority in the House of Representatives if one is elected November ?

The quote should make it clear that I am advocating class war. Some smart people and some dumb people (listed below) discuss how the Republicans will welcome a target, since all they are able to do is attack and how Democrats will have to be careful to choose which crimes and misdeeds to investigate first and to keep their individual egos in check. All true.

I think I have something to say about another issue. It is alleged that it is useful to be in opposition, because the opposition doesn't have to actually design policies that work. Policies that sound good but are voted down by the majority are fine. Also the opposition doesn't have to count noses. They lose in any case so they don't have to compromise with members of the delegation who are beholden to special interests (that means you Sen Carper).

All true. On the other hand, they don't get to schedule hearings and no one pays attemtion to bills that don't get into committee let alone out of committee. If the Democrats control the house, they should be able to pass bills that will be excellent policy, wildly popular and blocked by Republicans in the Senate or vetoed by Bush. The Republican priorities are so awful that it is easy to find excellent popular reforms which they will not accept. The reforms are likely to be so popular that bought Democrats will be afraid to vote against the caucus. The only risk (near certainty) is that the party leadership will not promote such reforms because donors or inside the beltway pundits disapprove.

What is to be done ?

1. Class War. As a policy matter it is urgently necessary to make the tax code more progressive. This policy is wildly popular. Evidence from past tax reforms shows that it is easy to cut taxes of 95% of Americans, reduce the deficit and improve the economy. This is a no brainer. Why am I sure the Democrats won't use the issue to crush the Republicans.

2. Medicare Plan D. It is obvious that paying private insurance companies more per patient than Medicare costs to convince them to compete with Medicare is insane. The Republicans can't stand a debate on this issue. Also, of course, it is insane to forbid the medicare administration from bargaining with drug companies. Again no way the Republicans can stand debate on this issue and no way they can keep the debate out of the press if the Democrats control a house of congress.

3. Immigration. The Republicans are tearing each other to pieces on this issue. The Democrats are divided too, but not too divided to keep the debate going and mainly watch the Republicans denounce each other.

4. Port Security and Chemical Plant security. Wide open waiting for an attack.

5. The Bridge to Nowhere. Republican pork is not the main cause of the deficit, but it can be a bridge to the Whitehouse.

6. Oversight and investigations. Not the only thing the House is for but very nice, very exiting. Maybe a bit too exiting as argued at length by 2 smart people and some others below.






Digby, Ad Nags and Billmon discuss the possible disadvantages of a Democratic Victory in the House. Billmon's point is that "having control of all three branches -- with a opposition party that's virtually invisible -- has clearly caused a major malfunction in the Rovian attack machine. Right now it's spinning around like a heat-seeking weapons system without anything to lock on to." An excellent point as always.

He also recalls the Iran Contra hearings, which remind me of Michael Kinsley's prescient column written when the scandal broke in which he asked a series of questions that last of which was something like "but the biggest most puzzling question is 'how are the Democrats going to manage to blow this one'." Somehow they managed and Billmon is clearly both right to be concerned and able to think of a relevant analogy.

In contrast the crook and the killer quoted by Nagourney warn the Democrats not to make the same mistakes the Republicans made by shutting down the government and impeaching an extremely popular president. As Digby pithily puts it "Lord knows the Republicans have suffered in the wilderness ever since then."

Depithing Digby, I note that, while the Republicans hurt the country and damaged their reputation with pundits and reporters (who couldn't help feeling a bit guilty about participating in the insane idiocy) they also went on to almost win a Presidential election against a serving Vice President during an almost unprecedented boom (and with a depraved idiot for a candidate too). Only a fool (or a Republican) would argue that it would be a bad idea for the Democrats to aggressively investigate the Bush administration if and when they get the power of the suppoena.

However, it is certainly true that the docket will be crowded. I agree with everyone that it would be better if the Democrats focused (also I wouldn't mind if chickens had lips). The press and public can't handle more than 2 or 3 scandals at a time and the press will only go into feeding frenzy if they have one main juicy scandal to sink their teeth into. Clearly various chairpeople of various committees will insist that the scandal under their jurisdiction is the key scandal. Thus they will fight each other for attention and, quite likely, begin repeating Republican talking points about each other. Their behavior will be probably be less pathetically attention seeking if said chairmen are all representatives. As Billmon puts it "Grabbing the Senate would help, although the advantages -- in terms of having a more high-profile platform for investigations -- are offset by the increased attention it would bring to Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden and (if he survives his primary) Joe Leiberman. To my way of thinking, any day those three aren't on television is a good day for the progressive movement -- and we don't have enough good days as it is."

Man, just cutting and pasting Digby and Billmon makes me feel smart. Ah yes, avoiding narcissism will be a problem, but I'm sure we can handle it.

But I mean really with so much appalling misconduct to investigate and with a public already convinced and eager for proof, even the Democrats are going to have trouble blowing these ones.

Hshorter Hsu

Bush's plan to put the National Guard on the border is just political theater.

His aim is to play dress up soldier again. We can be sure he won't be AWOL from this national guard mission.