Andrew McCarthy dismantles the Times' newest attempt to get the public fussed about the NSA intercept case.

Short version: He rides them harder than he rode Molly Ringwald at the end of the unrated director's cut of Pretty In Pink.

Longer version: They attempt to stir flagging public interest by revealing that the NSA has been harvesting all sorts of information without warrants... like what calls were placed, from what number, to what number, and for how long.

The trouble is: this information has never been constitutionally protected -- a 1979 decision held that a person could not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such information, and thus the Fouth Amendment, and its warrant provisions, simply don't apply. The content of a call is protected by the 4th A (usually), but not the simple fact that a call was made at all.

The Times never gets around to mentioning that.

Those who rely on the putative "Paper of Record" will not know that. That important fact -- dispositive upon the whole question of the data-harvesting's legality -- has been withheld from them entirely. And they won't ever hear of it, unless they read the alternative/conservative media.

Which most people simply do not.

We're living in two entirely different universes of information now. This partly explains David Letterman's cluelessness about Cindy Sheehan calling Iraqi terrorists -- the same men who killed her son -- "freedom fighters," and guessing that that was "crap." The MSM simply doesn't report such things-- if they mention them at all, they do so obliquely and vaguely, like conceding that Sheehan has "made controversial statements which have angered the right wing." (That's an invented quote, by the way, as an example of the sort of thing they write.) They don't often report precisely what she's said, so that the average news-consumer can decide for himself whether the statement in question is odious. More likely than not, he'll simply assume she expressed some mild criticism of Bush's Iraq policy which the "extreme right wing" has gotten itself in a lather over.

I find it more and more difficult to talk to my non-conservative friends about politics. Not because of anger -- we don't fight over such matters -- but simply because I find myself telling them facts that they've never read before, never seen on Brian Williams before, and simply do not believe to be true. The assumption is that they are simply made up out of whole cloth by disreputable right-wing fabulist propagandists spreading complete fictions to the gullible right wingers.

Any intelligent discussion must at some point move beyond the facts. The facts must be more or less conceded by both parties so that the more interesting part of the discussion -- what those facts may mean, what relevance and disposition to attach to any fact, what values are in play and how each should be weighed -- may procede.

For years the MSM provided a common universe of facts for the country to discuss and debate. True, those facts were highly selective and often strongly biased towards the liberal side of the debate, but most people accepted them as the nucleus of any political discussion.

That's changed. With a proliferating alternative media and a MSM becoming more desperate and dishonest in presenting its one side of the issue, we now are separated not merely by beliefs, assumptions, values, and priorities, but by a very wide gulf over what the factual matrix of the political universe even looks like at all.

This is not helping debate, but simply making it more contentious, as the words "liar" ("I don't believe you") or "idiot" ("How could you not know that?") are tossed out with greater frequency, and people retreat more and more into the particular fact-universe they're more comfortable in, rarely sampling what other less-reported facts might be out there to consider.

It's worse on the liberal side. Conservative news-junkies have to know the basics of the MSM fact-pattern, because we spend all of our time critiquing it, contextualizing it, and sometimes disproving it entirely. We're not as up on some stuff as early as we should be (for example, I'm still catching up on this whole Abramoff business; I have little doubt a liberal news-junkie could school me in it at this point), but by the time issues become ripe, we have a good working knowlege of both the "official" MSM-championed line and the unofficial, Shadow Media critique of that line. Liberals -- actually, all non-conservatives who rely almost exclusively on the MSM for what news they get -- know only the former.

Going back to the old way of doing business -- with the MSM simply selecting which facts are to be known, and which are to be kept secret, for fear of "confusing" the masses -- is intolerable, and will not happen in any event. But we find ourselves now more separated than ever, like Britain and America, two countries divided by a common language.

I guess the only resolution to this problem is for the MSM to begin -- finally! -- doing its actual job and reporting all relevant facts, no matter which way they might cut, in a neutral and dispassionate manner.

Which is to say: there's no near-term resolution at all.

And, as I always suspected, it's largely Andrew McCarthy's fault.

Posted by: Ace at 08:22 AM | Comments (95)
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There's an awful lot of careful consideration and confirmation before the "engage" orders are given.

Correction: A poster says it's not a Specter, it's an Apache helicopter. I'm not sure, but it the aircraft doesn't seem to move much at all, suggesting it's a helicopter. I thought maybe it was circling in such a large circle that its movement wouldn't be noticeable, but I realize now that the video is like four minutes long, and it would have had to have change angles at some point if it were a plane.

The poster says it's also -- get ready for a shock -- old.

Why We Fight: Okay, I don't know if I should post this. For one thing, it's kinda old. For another thing, it's not safe for work. It's a music video, but it's, um, not really very wholesome. Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas sings about "My Humps," and rhymes it with "My lovely lady lumps," which is just brilliant.

Well, not Mozart brilliant nor Einstein brilliant nor, even, Craig T. Nelson brilliant. But, well, she's hot. It sounds brilliant from her.

Maybe wait for later. Maybe when the kids are asleep. And the wife is out of town.

Posted by: Ace at 07:20 AM | Comments (30)
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Yes, this is all very silly, but if dose guys are going to do it, why shouldn't we?

Thanks to Dave.

Posted by: Ace at 06:29 AM | Comments (6)
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Yeah, showing someone your dirty naked ass is about the same as a hot young chick wearing a thong in a (semi) appropriate venue like the beach:

Acquitting a Germantown man who exposed his buttocks during an argument with a neighbor, a Montgomery County Circuit Court judge ruled yesterday that mooning, while distasteful, is not illegal in Maryland.

"If exposure of half of the buttock constituted indecent exposure, any woman wearing a thong at the beach at Ocean City would be guilty," Judge John W. Debelius III said after the bench trial, reversing the ruling of a District Court judge.

...

The case arose from a June 7 argument between the defendant, Raymond Hugh McNealy, 44, and a neighbor, Nanette Vonfeldt. Vonfeldt pressed charges against McNealy after he allegedly yelled and, according to Vonfeldt, threatened to "blow up my building" as she and her 8-year-old daughter walked out of their apartment, in the 20200 block of Shipley Terrace in Germantown.

"Then, for whatever reason, in full view of my daughter, he mooned us," Vonfeldt wrote in a court document.

Is there any way that defense could fly for me? I'm currently fighting some trumped-up sexual battery beef just because I took out my junk at a Bennigan's and used it to slap this supercillious waiter named "Chip." Gave that button-suspenders nachos-bitch a good dork-whap right in the frigging temple.

And, in a way, that's really no different than a woman breastfeeding her child in public... and then slapping you in the head with one of her mommysacs. And really, isn't that what America is all about?

Thanks to JackStraw.

Posted by: Ace at 06:12 AM | Comments (11)
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You've got to be kidding me. Pelosi's own letter indicates she knew:

In the October 2001 letter, Pelosi said she was told in a briefing that month that the agency "had been operating since the Sept. 11 attacks with an expansive view" of its authorities "to the conduct of electronic surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and related statutes, orders, regulations and guidelines."

"I am concerned whether, and to what extent, the National Security Agency has received specific presidential authorization for the operations you are conducting," Pelosi, then the top Democrat on the intelligence panel, wrote Hayden.

Notice her problem doesn't seem to be with the program itself. It seems to be over whether it was lawfully approved by the President. Which it seems to have been.

Either that or her only real concern was whether or not she could later use this disclosure to make an opportunistic attack on Bush.

And she didn't say anything before now, did she?

Posted by: Ace at 04:24 AM | Comments (16)
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Albino two-headed snake!

Albino. Two-headed. Snake.

Sold for $150,000. Man, I can just imagine the faces of that dude's friends when he springs that on to the battle-mat at their next Dungeons & Dragons game.

What's the AC for that kind of thing? You see what I'm saying? Who knows. Worth every penny.

Posted by: Ace at 04:19 AM | Comments (11)
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Advanced freak-out advisory for you-know-who.

The lawsuit by the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) said the state's attorney general erred when he ruled in September that Massachusetts voters could decide in a 2008 poll to redefine marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

They said the decision by Thomas Reilly, a Democrat who is likely to run for governor this year, was unconstitutional because ballot initiatives cannot reverse judicial decisions under the state's Constitution.

Imagine! A democracy allowing the people to choose their laws! Why there'd be anarchy! Food riots! Atonal music!

Posted by: Ace at 04:14 AM | Comments (37)
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Content warning on link. It's as clinical as one can be given the subject matter, but it's not for the faint of heart, or the sensitive of duodenum.

The strange things people have discovered in their, ummm, darkest nethers, I guess is how a Harlequin romance would put it.

All apparently culled from medical journals. The reports, I mean. Not the inserted objects themselves. Those are sold separately.

...a six-by-five-inch tool box weighing 22 ounces...

I'd been wondering where that went. That had my favorite 6-in-1 screwdriver in it. I guess it was a seven-in-1, as it turns out. Who knew.

Sometimes people even wind up finding a book contract back there.

I keep checking myself. Nope. Not there yet. But maybe soon.

Thanks to Craig.

Posted by: Ace at 03:08 AM | Comments (12)
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I had to think hard about this one for a while. Plausible or just outlandish?

I've decided it's plausible. Not necessarily correct, but plausible.

With troops currently in Afghanistan and Iraq, and with accusations that Bush lied us into the war in Iraq, it makes perfect sense for the President to be on record as receiving input from former administrations on Iran. Democrats have been howling for years now that Bush should have done something on Iran or North Korea, rather than Iraq. Maybe he will try to make them put their money (or their reputations anyway) where their mouths have been.

Bogged down in Iraq (not a quagmire, but we're bogged down for the moment), and with none of the usual politics-stops-at-the-water's-edge foreign policy consensus, and with his credibility damaged by faulty intelligence on Iraqi WMDs -- it does make sense that, if Bush were going to order a strike, he'd have to seek input, and gain the blessings of, a bipartisan group of defense-policy wise men.

It would be harder for Bush to make the case himself for such a drastic (although, I fear, quite necessary) action. It would be somewhat easier if a group of graybeards from different administrations came forward to echo the solemnity of his case for an Iran strike.

No reconstruction this time. And no occupation. No nation-building, no peace-making.

Let's specify that from the outset. This is not a you-broke-it-you-bought-it situation. If the Iranian people cannot restrain their maniac rulers, we'll have to hit at their power and plunge the country into chaos and misery.

But we don't have the troops to occupy such a large country (three times the population of Iraq), not even if we didn't have so many of our boys currently committed, in one way or another, to Iraq.

Posted by: Ace at 02:48 AM | Comments (12)
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Not lucky, just that damn good:

Rhys Meyers, who stars in Woody Allen's movie that explores the nature of luck, "Match Point," believes it comes to those who seize opportunity. Those who wait, lose their chance.

"Lucky people recognize opportunity ... unlucky people let it pass them by," he said in a recent interview.

"You can be lucky by having a talent, but if you do not have the mental preparation to use that talent and push it as far as it will go, that luck is wasted on you," he added.

So, Meyers dedicated himself to his craft and toiled in obscurity for years before his break?

Well... kinda:

He was raised by a single mother in County Cork, Ireland, left school as a teen-ager and "discovered" by a British casting agency while it was scouting for new faces.

He was born good-looking and plucked off the street by a casting agency. And then two or three years later, he's in major movies. What a trooper. What a soldier of sheer perserverence. He's like Andrei Sakharov, but with cheekbones to die for.

Posted by: Ace at 11:23 PM | Comments (7)
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