YES, THE NSA NUMBER-TRACKING PROGRAM isn’t really “eavesdropping” on calls. But as reader Liz Mauran notes, the misleading press coverage probably doesn’t matter: “It seems to me, judging from the number of people in airports, restaurants, and other public venues talking on their cell phones, that it’s just fine to have a non-private telephone conversation.”

Yes. I wish that people valued their telephonic privacy a bit more. And based on my own experience, I’d pity any NSA agent who was forced to listen to some of the stuff I’ve overheard. . . .

THE RESULTS OF THE USA TODAY/ GALLUP POLL that Dan Riehl participated in are out, and Dan is unimpressed.

AN ARMY OF (ROLLERCOASTER-RIDING) DAVIDS:

You could barely swing a cat without hitting a David at La Ronde yesterday as the almost 40 year-old theme park opened its latest thrill ride.

It was a festival of Davids, a sea of Davids of every shape, size and age. Grey-haired Davids and red mohawked Davids, Davids in hiking boots and sandals, all of them sporting red T-shirts that said, in French: “I beat Goliath.”

In an inspired promotion, anyone with David as their first, middle or last name, was eligible for a contest draw to be the first to ride Goliath, the tallest and fastest roller coaster in Canada.

David vs. Goliath. Get it?

Amusingly, the headline to this article is: “Goliath conquers army of Davids as La Ronde thrill ride is launched.” I guess the meme has penetrated.

They should’ve given them all a free book, of course. What better souvenir?

DIAGRAMMING THE U.N.’S DECISION PROCESS on Iran.

I WASN’T ABLE TO ATTEND THE SINGULARITY SUMMIT AT STANFORD, though they were kind enough to invite me. But here’s a roundup. And here’s a story on the summit from the San Francisco Chronicle.

CONSERVATIVE BATTLE FATIGUE: Mark Tapscott continues the discussion with a thoughtful post. He offers some extensive thoughts on constructive action.

A NOTE ON THE ASTOUNDING INFLUENCE of Rush Limbaugh. Who knew?

THE RELIABLE SOURCES PEOPLE send me these highlights from John Stossel’s appearance on the show today:

On journalists being clueless about science and hostile to capitalism

STOSSEL: Most journalists are clueless when it comes to science…I’d say journalists are hostile to capitalism and clueless about science and economics.

KURTZ: Hostile to capitalism. What do you base that on?
STOSSEL: I base it on the people I work with. People just don’t like business. We hate our employers who pay us but love the government, which takes a third of our money and squanders it. There’s a bias against business.

On reporters being in favor of government and opposed to business

STOSSEL: Reporters look at business with great suspicions. And hype Enron and WorldCom as if that’s the norm…I think reporters cheer on the ignorant politicians…

On bias in the “liberal media”

STOSSEL: I don’t think journalists are trying to push the agenda. I think most of you think you’re right down the middle. But the people you hang around with all think as you do here in New York and Washington. And that leads to a bias…Not everyone, but most.

KURTZ: So you think it is to some degree subconscious or, at least because — in other words, you think that journalists are out of touch with ordinary people, who perhaps are and ought to be more skeptical of government regulations?

STOSSEL: Yes. I think we are steeped like tea bags in “The Washington Post” and “The New York Times”, and it affects the way we view the world.

KURTZ: Are there people who, at ABC News who don’t like what you do or don’t like your point of view on all this?
STOSSEL: Yes. But God bless ABC News, they still feel I deserve a place at the table.

And good for them, though I suppose it doesn’t hurt that Stossel’s ratings are strong.

WE’RE HAVING A BIG FAMILY MOTHER’S DAY GET TOGETHER, and I was going through digital memory on the camera when I found these pictures I had forgotten taking. They’re off Northshore Drive, taken last October. I hope this will make homesick Knoxville expats feel better. As you can see, the waterbirds are coming back nicely.

I’VE DISCOVERED A SHOCKING OMISSION in Michael Totten’s reporting from Lebanon.

MARK STEYN:

So there are now two basic templates in terrorism media coverage:

Template A (note to editors: to be used after every terrorist atrocity): “Angry family members, experts and opposition politicians demand to know why complacent government didn’t connect the dots.”

Template B (note to editors: to be used in the run-up to the next terrorist atrocity): “Shocking new report leaked to New York Times for Pulitzer Prize Leak Of The Year Award nomination reveals that paranoid government officials are trying to connect the dots! See pages 3,4,6,7,8, 13-37.”

How do you connect the dots? To take one example of what we’re up against, two days before 9/11, a very brave man, the anti-Taliban resistance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, was assassinated in Afghanistan by killers posing as journalists. His murderers were Algerians traveling on Belgian passports who’d arrived in that part of the world on visas issued by the Pakistani High Commission in the United Kingdom. That’s three more countries than many Americans have visited. The jihadists are not “primitives”. They’re part of a sophisticated network: They travel the world, see interesting places, meet interesting people — and kill them. They’re as globalized as McDonald’s — but, on the whole, they fill in less paperwork. They’re very good at compartmentalizing operations: They don’t leave footprints, just a toeprint in Country A in Time Zone B and another toe in Country E in Time Zone K. You have to sift through millions of dots to discern two that might be worth connecting.

I’m a strong believer in privacy rights. I don’t see why Americans are obligated to give the government their bank account details and the holdings therein. Other revenue agencies in other free societies don’t require that level of disclosure. But, given that the people of the United States are apparently entirely cool with that, it’s hard to see why lists of phone numbers (i.e., your monthly statement) with no identifying information attached to them is of such a vastly different order of magnitude. By definition, “connecting the dots” involves getting to see the dots in the first place.

The income tax point is an excellent one. After all, we’ve been told for years that only kooks worry about the government having all their financial information on file. (Via Newsbeat 1).

SOME MOTHER’S DAY THOUGHTS on family size.

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE on Sympathy for the Devil.

A LOOK AT political blogging and its impact. (Via NealeNews).

FROM A TIME PRESS RELEASE in this morning’s email:

CONTROVERSIAL SPYING PROGRAM COULD GIVE POLITICAL BOOST TO PRESIDENT BUSH

New York, NY-There was a time-say, four years and nine months ago-when news that the government had been gathering up the country’s phone records might have been the making of a scandal, or even a constitutional crisis. But although there have been protests from civil libertarians and some criticism on Capitol Hill, early indications suggest the revelation could actually give a political boost to President George W. Bush, reports TIME’s Karen Tumulty in the new issue of TIME, on newsstands Monday, May 15th.

This should be interesting. Let’s see if Bush’s approval jumps in the next round of polls.

UPDATE: Well, that didn’t take long: “President Bush’s job approval rating has jumped six points in the wake of a media barrage of criticism over his administration’s telephone records collection program.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Dave Weigel emails that the story above is unreliable, comparing two polls with different methodology. So I guess we’ll have to wait a bit longer to find out.

HMM: “Mammoth Extinction Caused by Trees, Study Suggests.”

I guess Reagan was right!

SOME NEW TECHNOLOGIES for fuel economy and cleaner engines, from Sandia Labs.

ALL THE COOL KIDS ARE DOING IT — Drezner, McArdle, even Bainbridge — so I’ll take the Atrios/Drum “are you a liberal” test, too. The questions (in bold) and my answers appear below:

1) Repeal the estate tax repeal: I’ve never cared much about the Estate Tax, one way or another. Score me a weak no.

2) Increase the minimum wage and index it to the CPI. Nope. Drezner invokes wage-price spirals; I see this (like the Estate Tax is for both sides) as basically an issue of political demagoguery. It either does nothing (as now, when even most entry-level jobs are above minimum wage) or it does harm.

3) Universal health care (obviously the devil is in the details on this one). Drezner: “Do free ponies come with this one?” The current health insurance system sucks; turning it into a government monopoly will increase, rather than decrease, the overall level of suckage. I’d change the tax law to eliminate the more favorable treatment of employer-provided healthcare, and probably try to reduce legal barriers that make a true market difficult.

4) Increase CAFE standards. Some other environment-related regulation. Nope. The market will take care of this stuff. Government research on more-efficient technologies (or better batteries!) is okay. Stuff like ethanol, etc., looks more like vote-buying from farmers and corporate welfare to agribusiness to me.

5) Pro-reproductive rights, getting rid of abstinence-only education, improving education about and access to contraception including the morning after pill, and supporting choice. On the last one there’s probably some disagreement around the edges (parental notification, for example), but otherwise. I’m basically in agreement here, though I agree with Megan that this question is a bit fuzzy. Abortion, as Dave Kopel and I have argued at length, shouldn’t be considered a federal issue at all; regulation of pre-viability abortion, at least, is probably also outside a reasonable construction of state powers (as many state supreme courts have held). I think that abstinence-only education is a waste of money, and tends to veer into religious indoctrination.

6) Simplify and increase the progressivity of the tax code. Hmm. The tax code could certainly be simplified, but it’s hard to do that while increasing progressivity. At any rate, given that people in the bottom half of the earnings distribution pay almost no federal income tax, we’re pretty far along that road already.

7) Kill faith-based funding. Certainly kill federal funding of anything that engages in religious discrimination. In principle, I support this. In practice I note that when you look at who was providing relief after Katrina, there’s not much in the way of secular humanism to be found. Churchy people seem better at helping the sick and dispossessed; non-churchy people probably get a disproportionate share of NEA grants. I can live with both.

8) Reduce corporate giveaways. I’m tempted to disagree just to be contrarian. But sure. Who could disagree with it when it’s phrased this way? (Bainbridge: “Sure. Include the giveaways to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, however.”)

9) Have Medicare run the Medicare drug plan. Here, I agree with Drezner: “Hell, no. Just kill the motherf#$er.”

10) Force companies to stop underfunding their pensions. Change corporate bankruptcy law to put workers and retirees at the head of the line with respect to their pensions. No. As Drezner and McArdle note, this question betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation.

11) Leave the states alone on issues like medical marijuana. Generally move towards “more decriminalization” of drugs, though the details complicated there too. Leave the states alone in general. Drop federal laws on drugs in general — except antibiotics, since their misuse has the greatest potential to harm innocent third parties.

12) Paper ballots. Oh, please. I was way ahead of the curve on this one.

13) Improve access to daycare and other pro-family policies. I agree, but probably not in an Atrios-friendly way. How about this: Federally override most state and local licensing and zoning laws to make daycare centers easier to open and operate. Most of those rules don’t have much to do with protecting children anyway. (Federalize! That’s a “liberal” solution, right? Er, but it’s deregulation, so . . . Anyway, I’m pretty sure that what the question really envisions is taxpayer-subsidizd daycare, or even federally run daycare, and I’m against those.)

14) Raise the cap on wages covered by FICA taxes. I’d rather phase out Social Security entirely, in favor of a private pension system.

15) Marriage rights for all, which includes “gay marriage” and quicker transition to citizenship for the foreign spouses of citizens. I’d go farther: Separate marriage and state, and make it a matter of private contract only. On immigration — I’m not sure how that would play out.

16) Undo the bankruptcy bill enacted by this administration. Already there. Though I thought it was Congress that enacted the bill, not the Administration, and that it did so with a lot of bought-and-paid-for Democratic support, to go along with the bought-and-paid-for Republican support. . . .

Anyway, there you are. Am I a liberal? Score this as you like.