On October 8, 2007, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati granted the government's request for a full-panel hearing in United States v. Warshak case centering on the right of privacy for stored electronic communications. At issue is whether the procedure whereby the government can subpoena stored copies of your email - similar to the way they could simply subpoena any physical mail sitting on your desk - is unconstitutionally broad.

This appears to be more than a mere argument in support of the constitutionality of a Congressional email privacy and access scheme. It represents what may be the fundamental governmental position on Constitutional email and electronic privacy - that there isn't any. What is important in this case is not the ultimate resolution of that narrow issue, but the position that the United States government is taking on the entire issue of electronic privacy. That position, if accepted, may mean that the government can read anybody's email at any time without a warrant.

No email privacy rights under Constitution, US gov claims

On Oct. 26, the State Department e-mailed 250 diplomats and told them that they might be ordered, whether they like it or not, to fill about 50 positions in Iraq next year. It was no secret the US was considering compulsory Iraq service for its diplomatic corps, but the e-mails sparked outrage nevertheless.

Why Diplomats Won't Go to Iraq

Valerie Plame was just the latest woman to run up against Langley's Kafkaesque workplace culture.

The broader problem, says Janine Brookner, is a dysfunctional workplace culture that uses the cloak of national security to insulate itself from demands for reform.

Click through for a rather colorful rant toward the end of the article.

A land surveyor takes a job at a mysterious castle, only to meet resistance from co-workers who have been organized by the company’s bureaucracy to impede his progress. He also is met with hostility from the residents of a nearby town who conspire with the castle’s workers. Haneke’s faithful adaptation of Franz Kafka’s novel fragment successfully incorporates the writer’s prose into a startling cinematic vision.

The CIA's Double Secret Probation

In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, the Bush administration had a choice: Aggressively pursue potential terrorists using existing laws or devise new, secret intelligence programs in uncharted legal waters.

Unfortunately, President Bush often chose the latter ... his decision to go it alone ... had devastating consequences.

The chairman of the Senate's intelligence committee is unhappy with the President, but he comes out in defense of telecom collaborators.

If we require them to face a mountain of lawsuits, we risk losing their support in the future.

Maybe if we just offer to indemnify UBL we can win his support.

There once was a post about this article:

In adamantly refusing to declare waterboarding illegal, Michael B. Mukasey, the nominee for attorney general, is steering clear of a potential legal quagmire for the Bush administration: criminal prosecution or lawsuits against Central Intelligence Agency officers who used the harsh interrogation practice and those who authorized it, legal experts said Wednesday.

Rockefeller puts the responsibility/blame on the government:

There is little doubt that the government was operating in, at best, a legal gray area.

But he holds nothing back:

We face an enemy that uses every tool and technology of 21st-century life, and we must do the same.

Also, some tools from the Spanish Inquisition.

Partners In the War On Terror

In the month of October, nearly 700 Iraqis died violent deaths as direct victims of sectarian violence. This is Good News [Corp.], says the Weekly Standard:

Peace is breaking out through Iraq and the sectarian violence declining because that is the demand of the Iraqi people.

The Real Iraqi Miracle

Politics might be rock 'n' roll for nerds, but the nerds aren't supposed to be quite this nerdy.

Meet Ron Paul.

And the nerdiness lends Paul's simple message an aura of credibility, especially on a stage with more polished politicians and their nuanced positions.

"He's about something that American nerd culture can get on board with: really knowing one subject and going all out on it. For some people, it's Star Wars. For some people, it's Japanese cartoons. For Ron Paul, it's free-market commodity money."

The Ron Paul Revolution

It is a libertarian dream. Hexagonal neighborhoods of square apartments bob sedately by tiny coiffed parks and tastefully featureless marinas, an Orange County of the soul. It is the ultimate gated community, designed not by the very rich and certainly not by the very powerful, but by the middlingly so. As a utopia, the Atlantis Project is pitiful. Beyond the single one-trick fact of its watery location, it is tragically non-ambitious, crippled with class anxiety, nostalgic not for mythic glory but for the anonymous sanctimony of an invented 1950s. This is no ruling class vision: it is the plaintive daydream of a petty bourgeoisie, whose sulky solution to perceived social problems is to run away--set sail into a tax-free sunset.

Floating Utopias

I've never been able to explain Halloween to the kids, with its odd thematic confluence of pumpkins, candy and death.

Mmmm, candy ...

But Halloween is a piece of pumpkin cake compared to Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, which commences today.

It's Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week!

THE revival in Welsh identity and the rise in the number of Welsh- speakers may be down to a reaction against globalisation, a leading academic will claim today.

Manuel Castells, a professor of Sociology at the University of California and a former UN adviser, says trends in Wales are similar to those in his native Catalonia, which has also seen a resurgence in a separate national identity.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Analysis, to be broadcast tonight, “All identities are culturally constructed, people decide to assign themselves these identities, but it doesn’t mean these are arbitrary identities. People work with the material of history.

“You use these attempts to build on your language as a sign of creating autonomy, of reacting against globalisation. That is actually very similar to some of the things happening in Catalonia or the Basque country.”

The programme delves into some controversial areas, and carries interviews with – anonymous – senior civil servants who complain of a pro-Welsh speaking bias in the public sector. One talks of a “fear of debate” around language politics, and a “fear of what the consequences of airing views would be, particularly at senior level”.

Welsh revival may be a reaction to globalisation

Tens of millions died in Stalin's famines, purges and camps. Most Soviet citizens somehow survived. Here are some of their stories.

Stalin's children