"birth control is selfish"

So says this year's student commencement speaker at St. Thomas University. The speaker, a recipient of the "Tommy of the Year" award, picked his moment to lead a tirade on "selfishness," apparently in reference to a controversial school policy forbidding unmarried employees from rooming together on student trips.

If you want to hear the speech (and get an idea of the crowd reaction):

A portion of the controversial speech has been posted online at YouTube (be forewarned that several loud expletives from audience members are also audible). The speaker is Ben Kessler, who was elected by students and faculty members as “Tommie of the Year,” earning the right to address his fellow graduates. Kessler was a 4.0 student and a star on the football team. He is moving to Rome to study for the priesthood.

It's probably out of line for me to say this, but a boy that righteous has had own share of "selfishness," and Rome may not be far enough for him to get away from it.

Attorney general thinks we are idiots

Abu Gonzales has an answer for all of you who think you have some expectation of privacy when it comes to your phone records: shut up:

But Gonzales told reporters that, under the Smith v. Maryland ruling, "those kinds of records do not enjoy Fourth Amendment protection. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in those kinds of records."

He seems to think we are idiots, because the FISA statutes were passed in direct response to Smith and include a provision specifically intended to address the nature of business records (50 U.S.C. § 1861):

Section 1861. Access to certain business records for foreign intelligence 
and international terrorism investigations

  (a) Application for order; conduct of investigation generally
    (1) The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or a
  designee of the Director (whose rank shall be no lower than
  Assistant Special Agent in Charge) may make an application for an
  order requiring the production of any tangible things (including
  books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an
  investigation to obtain foreign intelligence information not
  concerning a United States person or to protect against
    international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities,
  provided that such investigation of a United States person is not
  conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the
  first amendment to the Constitution.
    (2) An investigation conducted under this section shall -
      (A) be conducted under guidelines approved by the Attorney
    General under Executive Order 12333 (or a successor order); and
      (B) not be conducted of a United States person solely upon the
    basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the
    Constitution of the United States.
  (b) Recipient and contents of application
      Each application under this section -
        (1) shall be made to -
          (A) a judge of the court established by section 1803(a) of
        this title; or
          (B) a United States Magistrate Judge under chapter 43 of
        title 28, who is publicly designated by the Chief Justice of
        the United States to have the power to hear applications and
        grant orders for the production of tangible things under this
        section on behalf of a judge of that court; and

My reading of Sec. 1861 seems to include a judge, but hey, I'm not the attorney general, so I don't get to interpret the rules how I please, nor do I get to break them whenever it seems expedient.

Update: ThinkProgress adds not only a violation of FISA, but also the SCA.

NSA update

I haven't had much to add in the last few days, mostly because I keep running across other blogs covering NSA issues as well. As I'm still new to this whole blog scene, it's sometimes hard for me to see what I could possibly add. Nonetheless, I plunge on.

I've found a treasure trove of information on the NSA wiretap controversy over at DefenseTech.org. It's going to take me a little while to sort it all out, but as I delve more deeply into this, I find some common themes emerging:

1. This program is bad from the legal perspective. The program flies in the face of the separation of powers, violates a whole host of laws, and has exposed several large corporations to legal liability.
2. This program is bad from the PR perspective. Recent polls show that people are quite skeptical of the program, and are concerned potential invasions of privacy.
3. This program is bad from the security perspective. It is counterproductive, and is diverting resources from more effective means to track, thwart, and capture terrorists.
   

Iranian elephant interceptors planned for Poland

According to a recent article in the New York Times, the U.S. is offering a couple of very special European countries their very own interceptor missiles, designed to prevent Iranian elephant strikes. I myself have one of my own, sitting on my desk. I also have one that is designed to prevent North Korean tiger attacks. I got it back when I lived in Hawai`i, because I heard that soon the North Koreans would have the ability to launch ferocious, man-eating predators halfway across the Pacific Any Day Now. So far, I'm happy to report they've performed flawlessly.

In seriousness, I'm supposed to believe we are going to launch an untested but nonetheless operational theatre missile defense system in Eastern Europe, presumably to defend them against non-existent Iran ballistic missiles. And yet, for some mysterious reason, the Russians are not so thrilled about it.

Huh.

They have got to be kidding:

To improve the coverage against a potential Iranian threat, the Pentagon is upgrading a radar complex at Fylingdales, a British air base, and plans to begin similar work at the American Thule Air Base in Greenland. By building an antimissile base in Europe, the Pentagon is seeking to position the interceptors close to the projected flight path of Iranian missiles that would be aimed toward Europe or continue on a polar route to the United States.

I seem to remember that Saddam had nuclear-tipped drone aircraft poised to destroy us with poisoned tree frogs contaminated with anthrax or something, but I don't recall any attempt to beef up radar installations at the North Pole. Now suddenly the Iranians are building missiles that could hit us Any Day Now:

As far as we can tell, Iran is many years away from having the capability to deliver a military strike against the U.S.," said Gary Samore, vice president of the MacArthur Foundation and a former aide at the National Security Council. "If they made a political decision to seriously pursue a space launch vehicle it would take them a decade or more to develop the capability to launch against the U.S."

So what is this really about?