Small Talk

One of the ways I feel most geeky (in the bad sense), and least socially adept, is when it comes to small talk. With that in mind, I really liked this interview with Debra Fine on NPR's Morning Edition when I heard it. She's very good at illustrating with examples -- in this instance, the interview hook was what on earth to say during an office holiday party.

Fine's also written a book, The Fine Art of Small Talk (which just got re-issued in October, that's probably a part of why NPR got her).

The NSA Is Listening

[insert THX sweep tone here]

One of the things that keeps happening with this administration is how they keep breaking the rules without realizing how those rules benefit them. In other words, without realizing how much of a gunshot to the foot such breaking is.

For example, if I had been on Air Force Two the other day when Mr. Cheney was entertaining questions, mine would have been, "Mr. Vice-President, how do you know you yourself haven't had an NSA wiretap ordered against you?" He would have harrumphed and harrawed, and my follow-up would have been, "Mr. Cheney, as Mr. Rumsfeld has said, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Really -- How do you know?"

Because, let's face it folks... If'n I was Dubya, Cheney's number one on my who to spy on list -- just out of self-preservation.

But you can extend the principle any direction you like. Has John McCain been wiretapped? Hillary Clinton? Pat Robertson? Michael Moore? Elliot Spitzer?

John Kerry, during the 2004 campaign?

What the administration doesn't seem to realize is they're now in the same pickle we put the Iraqis in. Having admitted they used extra-legal means to extend these wiretaps, how can any response to those questions be credible? Had they always followed the rules, they could point to the lack of a paper trail, or to a set of procedures that needed to be followed and wasn't... But now? They junked those procedures, they deliberately avoided the paper trail.

The most damning thing of all is how obedient the FISA Court has been in the past to their requests. Given the very high probability the FISA Court would have given them their wink and a nod, the question presents itself, "What would be so egregious the FISA Court wouldn't go along, so they had to do this end run?"

Mull that one over for a while, and you may realize my potential subjects for wiretaps aren't too hypothetical after all.

Judge quits FISA Court

It's funny -- akirlu and I were talking about this last night. How, in America, officials hardly ever quit over principle. Because if they did, you'd think one of the FISA judges would quit, since the administration's NSA orders make them superfluous.

Well, one of the FISA judges appears to agree (without saying so). Here's the beginning of the piece:

"WASHINGTON — A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush's secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, sent a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts Monday notifying him of his resignation without providing an explanation.

Two associates familiar with his decision said Tuesday that Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable.

Robertson, who was appointed to the federal bench in Washington by President Clinton in 1994 and was later selected by then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist to serve on the FISA court, declined to comment late Tuesday.

Word of Robertson's resignation came as two Senate Republicans joined the call for congressional investigations into the National Security Agency's interception, without a court warrant, of telephone calls and e-mails to overseas locations by U.S. citizens suspected of links to terrorist groups. They questioned the legality of the operation and the extent to which the White House kept Congress informed."