Political

Two things struck me as odd in Illinois legislation today. They're completely separate stories, though, so this entry may seem a little disjoint.

First, the news that Illinois congresspeople made Pluto a planet, by law. The piece of fine legislative handiwork notes (falsely) that the discoverer of Pluto was the "only American to ever discover a planet," and (truly) that the discoverer was "born on a farm near the Illinois community of Streator."

Obviously this is enough to officially make Pluto a planet again. I mean, forget about those astronomers, right? And never mind all that educational merchandise that got updated to only have eight planets, that will have to be updated again now that Pluto's a planet again, but only in Illinois. I mean, we have to have our state pride.

I ran across the other fun bit of law when I was being ordained as a reverend. (That's right.) Continue reading "Illinois legislation"

This week's little rant is about the recently passed amendments to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It's been in the news a lot lately, as the amendments were passed in the Senate less than a week ago and signed into law on the tenth. The most prominent piece of this particular bit of legislation is something called "retroactive immunity."

This bit requires a brief history. After 9/11, President Bush began what's called warrantless wiretapping - basically, eavesdropping on citizens' phone calls without warrants or due process of law, in the name of national security. This went on for a few years, and the FISA amendments specifically address telecommunications companies' involvement in this program. The act itself, in Title II, protects any Electronic Communication Service Provider from civil suit if the Provider's actions in question were "designed to detect or prevent a terrorist attack, or activities in preparation for a terrorist attack."

This is where it starts to get questionable. The act also specifically mentions that the Provider must be in collusion (my word, not theirs) with a member of the "intelligence community." The problem? This is the very same intelligence community that either decrees something is about to be a terrorist attack, or provides information to the president that leads him to conclude something is a terrorist attack. In effect, our government can wave a magic wand, shout "national security" a few times, and the crimes committed by companies in the government's name are forgotten.

As if this isn't bad enough, the current leading Democratic presidential contender has quite a few questions to answer about his stance on the amendments. Originally, Barack Obama had promised to filibuster any bill that came to the Senate floor that included the retroactive immunity provision. While there was a filibuster, it wasn't led by Obama, nor did he participate - Chris Dodd and Jeff Birmingham spearheaded the effort instead. And when it came to the vote, Obama voted yes, despite the continued existence of the provision in the bill. He wrote a letter explaining his positional switch, calling the version of the amendments that got passed a "compromise law" and an "improved but imperfect bill."

I'm not the only one taking note - several other media outlets have all condemned Obama on this subject. And though the kansascity.com article does make a good point (that Obama is far better than the alternative, and most Democrats will vote for him in November regardless), it still rankles.

Let's count the number of times I've been called a terrorist.

There were these comments about how engineers are terrorists. I'm an engineer, or at least I like to think so. And I guess it's better for whoever's accusing me to go full-out and just call me a terrorist than for them to just say I have a terrorist mindset.

Then there was the time a L.A. County Sheriff testified that copyright pirates have terrorist links. I'm not saying I'm necessarily a copyright pirate, but they have some good ideas about copyright law and freedom of information.

Then there was the House bill that called the Internet a terrorist tool. Admittedly that's a bit of extrapolation, but the actual language isn't far off.

And finally (and this is my favorite) the pamphlet that called people who "make repeated references to the U.S. Constitution" and people who practice "computer penetration" terrorists.

That makes four in recent memory. Good times.