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There's noise about the government trying to secure the right to read anyone's e-mails any time without any kind of warrant. Since this is still in the works and nothing concrete has happened yet, I'll wait before saying much about it. You're free to read up on the issue using that link though.

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Schneier has a great summary article of how citizen informants combined with officials who won't take responsibility for over-reacting over the last few years is making America look dumber and dumber every day.

Here's an excerpt:

Causing a city-wide panic over blinking signs, a guy with a pellet gun, or stray backpacks, is not evidence of doing a good job: it's evidence of squandering police resources. Even worse, it causes its own form of terror, and encourages people to be even more alarmist in the future. We need to spend our resources on things that actually make us safer, not on chasing down and trumpeting every paranoid threat anyone can come up with.

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I don't know what authority or notoriety this group has, but if you want to have a say in what their recommendations for e-voting guidelines are, now's your chance.

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Blackwater, a private security firm (read: mercenaries) is in trouble for having shot some people (I apologize for the huge over-simplification).

Anyway, the State Department is offering them immunity. Here's the problem: immunity means that it doesn't matter if they're guilty or innoncent, there will be no consequences for their actions. Even if you were to assume that the Blackwater guards were put there with little actual training and couldn't be held to the same standards as our military, there should be consequences for the people who made the decision to send them there in the first place.

Finally! Some guts!

Senator Chris Dodd will block the FISA renewal bill as long as it grants retroactive immunity for their involvement in the illegal spying. Of course, the FISA bill should have been blocked anyway. I didn't read through it, but Bush signed it.

George W. Bush

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Bush is threatening to veto any wire-tapping bill that comes to him without language that retroactively provides immunity to the telecommunication companies (like AT&T) for their part in the illegal spying fiasco.

Has anyone else noticed or is refusing to sign a law because of a provision that technically has nothing to do with said law considered blackmail? If it's not, it's certainly a tantrum at the least.

George W. Bush

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No I'm not talking about the illegal spying, but the case of the Al-Queda video that was discovered before it was publicly released. The problem is that the disclosure of the video alerted Al-Queda that their networks had been compromised. While I read about this news yesterday, what I didn't know was that it was the Bush administration who is responsible for the leak.

"Often controversial, seldom liked. The FCC."

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Sometimes it seems that the Government Accountability Office is the only one trying to do it's job. In their report on the Federal Communications Commission, they state that the agency favors lobbyists over citizens in that lobbyists are kept up to date on FCC actions while citizen groups were not.

Granted, they need to do more stuff like this on their own instead of waiting to be asked, but at least they aren't towing the same line that all the other corrupt and inept agencies are.

AT&T

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Now that Congress has officially started to investigate the role of major telcom companies in illegal spying, the question is, "will anything finally come of it?"

At this stage, they've only sent letters asking about their involvement and whether they knowingly broke the law under the promise of protection from litigation from the executive branch. If they actually answer truthfully, things should get interesting.

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I see noise about "Ron Paul" everywhere. Streets, media, online. It's enough to get on your nerves. But as with all things popular, eventually, you want to see what the fuss is about.

I checked out his website today and if half of the things there are true, he might be our best presidential candidate in a long, long time.

For one, he doesn't hide behind political speech. Is he against abortion? Yes, yes he is. It's not hard to find out his stance on almost anything. And, I for one, can definitely agree with this:

The biggest threat to your privacy is the government. We must drastically limit the ability of government to collect and store data regarding citizens’ personal matters.

Damn straight. Maybe if Ron Paul was elected, we wouldn't end up with stupidity like the Presidential ID Theft Task Force that spent over six months analyzing ID theft only to produce an 80 page document that ignored the actual solutions.

It would be nice to actually have a candidate that I believed would do a good job rather than just trying to pick what I hoped was the lessor of two evils only to end up with someone who nearly single-handedly destroyed America during his terms.