Brightrock

From what I could tell scanning through the morning news on the Tivo, there was about 2.75 hours of Michael Jackson coverage on CNN, with the remaining 15 minutes devoted to other less important stuff: Iran, Iraq, North Korea, health care legislation, etc.  This cartoon sums it up nicely . . .

Despite the fact that the fallout from the Foley scandal has the potential to bring about changes in Congress that I would like to see, I hate to see this kind of thing determine elections.  I would rather have this election decided on what I see as the "big issues":  the conduct of the war in Iraq, the proper way to conduct the war on terror, civil liberties, tax policy, the proper role of FEMA during natural disasters, etc.   Mark Foley sounds like a vile human being who abused his position of power, but should that be the determining factor in this election? 

I'll argue politics and policies all day long, but I won't pretend that the moral failings of a single Republican congressman should cost the Republican's control of Congress.  They are lots of reasons that the Republican's should lose Congress – the Foley scandal doesn't even rank in the top 10.  

I have mixed feelings regarding this article (Defying Law, a Foie Gras Feast in Chicago) about the new anti-foie gras law in Chicago.  On the one hand, I have a libertarian streak in me that wants the government to keep out of my business as much as possible (I hate not being able to order a rare steak when I travel to certain cities).  On the other hand, I think the animal cruelty argument that lead to this ban has a lot of validity.  So, while I don't think I could support a ban on a specific food for health or political reasons, I don't really have much of a problem with this particular ban.

The smoking bans currently being debated in Houston raise similar issues.  The Houston Chronicle is reporting today that the Greater Houston Restaurant Association has endorsed an expansion of Houston's current anti-smoking ordinance to cover bars as well as restaurants (Restaurant owners now want smoke-free bars).   I have friends who view any such ban as an infringement on their liberty.  While I would not want the government to be able to prevent people from smoking in their own homes, the evidence regarding the dangers of second-hand smoke seem clear enough to justify a ban on smoking in public places. 

The idea that a major news network would advocate re-establishing an "Office of Censorship" shocks me: Fox & Friends co-host Kilmeade advocated "Office of Censorship" in wake of NY Times banking surveillance story.  Did Kilmeade miss that part of civics class where they discussed the importance of a free press?  Why bother to vote if we have no right to know how the government is conducting itself?  Under existing American law, the government can already stop the publication of certain specific types of information such as troop movements.  If the New York Times had been publishing stories about upcoming raids on specific targets in Iraq, the conservative critics might have a point.  The topics covered in the recent banking stories, however, don't appear to have been particularly secret.

Maybe our politicians aren’t so bad, at least compared to the statesmen of the Czech Republic.

Not that American politicians haven’t occassionally done worse – it’s just been a few years :-)

I think that this essay by Bruce Schneier (Wired News: The Eternal Value of Privacy) makes some good points – privacy has value even when you have nothing to hide.  In the context of the current debates about wire tapping, data mining, and other government surveillance, I think that we need to remember that one of the things that has made our country special is our reverence for individual liberty. 

Now, this doesn't mean that I object to all government surveillance – clearly there are threats in our world that justify government intelligence gathering.  My objection to our current policies is the lack of independent oversight.  The Executive should have to justify its surveillance activities to the other, independent branches of government. Absent sufficient oversight, both Democratic and Republican administrations have shown that they will abuse surveillance power.  Based on that history, the current administration's argument that the Executive branch can police its own use of surveillance power simply doesn't hold up.  We may need to come up with new legislation to streamline the process for getting warrants, but we shouldn't simply abandon separation of powers and judicial oversight because they are inconvenient or cumbersome.