Archive for 2013

CHANGE: Senators Float New Surveillance Bill.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy introduced the most sweeping bill yet dealing with the fallout over revelations of NSA surveillance of phone records and Internet usage.

The legislation is notable for its comprehensiveness and because of the author: Leahy is sure to give the measure some time in his committee room, be it for a hearing or a markup. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said any legislation reacting to the National Security Agency programs must go through the regular committee process.

I wish they did that with immigration, or guns, or . . . But I digress. More:

The Vermont senator’s 72-page bill takes pieces of disparate proposals from other senators who have long sought to raise red flags over the breadth of government reach stemming from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Patriot Act, drawing cosponsorships from Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.).

Lee said the bill “will narrow surveillance authorities where appropriate and help provide the necessary accountability to ensure that Americans’ constitutional rights are respected.”

We need some of that.

PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH is having a blog fundraiser.

WHEN INTEGRATION FAILS: Students At Integrated South African University Vote To Re-Segregate. “Everybody I talked to connected with UFS’s history mentioned the number 30 percent. It was a demographic hot line—when the feelings of a few dissidents like Shadrack Modise became the feelings of the whole cohort and black students stopped wanting to go along with the white students’ traditions. They wanted dorm culture to reflect their culture—black culture. They wanted soccer, the black sport, on the common room TV, not rugby. . . . In many ways, the students at UFS were acting out a greater national drama. When South Africa transitioned to democracy in 1994, the first priority was emotional reconciliation. Over time, though, the theme switched to economic and social transformation. The freed black majority wanted to see material evidence of their bettered status. And yet South Africa’s institutions—business, agriculture and the arts—remained disproportionately white-designed and white-dominated. Thus, in the second half of the 1990s, the races that had initially come together in South Africa with astonishing joy began to regard each other more warily.”

PETER WOOD: A Wretched Defense of the Humanities. “The Commission pretends to speak with the authority of Erasmus or Diderot about the importance of a human-centered curriculum, but all it really musters is the voice of a middling utilitarian.”

Plus: “I am inclined to think the humanities thrive when the humanists are self-evidently offering good and important work. The humanities decline when they descend into triviality. The answer to a nation skeptical of these disciplines is not more balloons, nor better metaphors, or even better-crafted reports. It is better work.” Indeed.

AT AMAZON, up to 66% off on The Dick Van Dyke Show: The Complete Series on DVD or Blu-Ray.

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THE CORRECT ATTITUDE ON SNOWDEN: “I doubt everything.”

As I wrote when the story was new, “There’s a good chance that even Snowden doesn’t really know who he’s working for. Bear that in mind.” For all we know he may be a catspaw in an elaborate scheme to get disinformation, or malware, into Chinese or Russian intelligence. (Or for all he knows).

As Rep. Frank Underwood comments, sagely: “What a martyr craves more than anything is a sword to fall on. So you sharpen the blade, hold it at just the right ang