Man about Murfreesboro

Osama raised his ugly head yesterday with a new tape. What shocks me about this is that it will most likely cause Bush's approval ratings to go up. Fear does that to us, for some reason.

Chris Mathews on "Hardball" used the opportunity to slime Michael Moore. John Kerry had the perfect response:

"You'd think the only focus tonight would be on destroying Osama Bin Laden, not comparing him to an American who opposes the war, whether you like him or not. You want a real debate that America needs? Here goes: If the administration had done the job right in Tora Bora we might not be having discussions on 'Hardball' about a new Bin Laden tape. How dare Scott McClellan tell America that this administration puts terrorists out of business when had they put Osama Bin Laden out of business in Afghanistan when our troops wanted to, we wouldn't have to hear this barbarian's voice on tape. That's what we should be talking about in America."

If he'd talked more like that during the campaign, I could be criticizing President Kerry right now.

McDonald's is clearing out their shelves of old Happy Meal toys by putting two "mystery" toys in each Happy Meal. I bought Happy Meals for the kids yesterday and Max was quick to grab one of the bags and fish out the two toys.

It was only then that he saw Rozzy's Happy Meal included a NeoPet -- Max's most favoritest Happy Meal toy evah. Rozzy, who could really care less about the toy, immediately saw the opportunity to get Max's goat.

Max even offered Rozzy his RoboSapien -- a toy he spent nearly $100 on -- and she refused.

Eventually, Rozzy grew tired of the game and agreed to trade the toy to Max in exchange for three of his four chicken nuggets and the stuffed bear. She then took a single bite out of one of the nuggets and put the rest back in the bag, refusing either to eat them or to give them to Max. Heh.

So, Dollie and I started watching "24" last night and had to stop about 15 minutes in because it was making her too tense.

I like "24" because of the non-stop action and the ridonculous (thank you, David Spade) plot lines. I like the way they take a term like "datamine" and turn it into a catch-all for 733t haxor skills.

The director of CTU will call the terrorists and make with the chit-chat. The terrorist hangs up. The director looks at Chloe and says "datamine that call." Heh.

It's stupid, but there's such a sense of urgency and tension that you just let it pass and go on. But I don't confuse "24" with reality. The right-wingers on the local radio station are all about Jack Bauer. Steve Gill posted on his blog about how great Jack is and how he hopes there's a Jack Bauer out there defending America.

Oh please. The reality of course is that a real person would have been dead long ago. Last season (at least I think it was, it's hard to keep up) he kicked heroin, died, was revived and still stopped the terrorists from blowing up LA.

But he's a tough guy who doesn't mind bending the rules when lives are at stake, so he's the darling of the right wing, I guess.

Google is my hero.

The Justice Department has asked a federal judge to compel Google, the Internet search giant, to turn over records on millions of its users' search queries as part of the government's effort to uphold an online pornography law.

Google has been refusing the request since a subpoena was first issued last August, even as three of its competitors agreed to provide information, according to court documents made public this week. Google asserts that the request is unnecessary, overly broad, would be onerous to comply with, would jeopardize its trade secrets and could expose identifying information about its users.

Good for them. Someone needs to protect the privacy of the customer/client/citizen. The fed isn't going to do it. Now I see that Yahoo!, MSN and AOL won't do it. Good for Google.

"But Mike, you say. If you aren't doing anything wrong, then you've got no reason to worry if the government looks at all your Google searches."

Well I don't surrender my freedoms so easily. I don't give up my right to privacy just because I have nothing to hide. It's the same as with the domestic spying issue. My brother Dan said in the comments:

"It is like they [meaning liberals] would rather be attacked than be safe. I like who Bush is and what he does. Keep up the good work W!"

But would he feel the same way under President Hillary Clinton? The powers we yield to Bush won't go away with the next administration. They won't go away with the death of bin Laden or even the unlikely end to terrorism on the planet. If, as Bush contends, the whole reason bin Laden hates us is because of our freedoms, then taking away our freedoms plays into his hands, right?

I'm not, nor have I ever suggested that the U.S. shouldn't spy. Of course we should. Spy away. But do it within the bounds of the law and the Constitution. Do it with the proper checks and balances in place. To do so otherwise damages our country and I, at least, don't want to see that happen.

Their argument ignores a fundamental fact: nothing in Bush's executive order creates any new capabilities for the NSA. There were (and are) legal ways for Bush to spy on us, but he didn't follow them.

My aunt thinks I want Bush to be guilty of an impeachable offense. What I want doesn't matter if he broke the law. I think she would be willing to ignore any offense Bush committed.

I think Bush is dangerous. I think he's bad for our country both in foreign and economic policy. I think he's setting himself up as an imperial president and I don't like it. I don't like him. Do I want him out? Yes. Would I like to see him held accountable for his misdeeds? Yes. Does that make any of this my fault? Nope.

My neighbor, Badger, is all excited about the new season of "American Idol" or "AI" as he calls it. He called me the other night to make sure I was watching.

I wasn't. I don't listen to pop music, with the exception of the 10 minutes or so of Radio Disney I get while taking Max to school in the morning. I have zero interest in "AI." I've never seen an entire episode.

But it sure does get crazy numbers. It drew somewhere around 45 million viewers that first night. Crazy numbers.

ABC is reporting that a woman, blind for 25 years, regained her site after having a heart attack.

Awwww maaaan, Wilson Pickett is dead at 64.

The U.S. Army has raised the enlistment age to 40.

The new "Battlestar Galactica" has surpassed the old series both in number of seasons and episodes. I have to say, I really like this show. I liked the old series, but I was a little kid then and would have watched anything with lasers and robots. The new series is complicated and nuanced. It's a highly developed drama that just happens to be set in space. It's great.

Have a good weekend.

Dollie and the kids got the day off yesterday due to icy conditions. And while I left for work in the bitter cold, I drove home after a balmy afternoon. So, it's back to school for all of them today.

During the day, Dolls managed to clean out the spare bedroom, take the bed apart, pull up the carpet and turn it into a playroom for the kids. The plan, as I understand it, is to move all the toys currently stored in the living room and hall closet to the new playroom. This, of course, will be a welcomed occurance. I've torn my feet to ribbons on Lego caltrops. The living room floor has become a battleground for dinosaurs and giant robots.

We went out for dinner last night and Dolls asked the kids where they wanted to go. Max wanted Burger King and Rozzy wanted Chilli's. Now why Rozzy likes Chilli's so much is a mystery. I suspect she just likes saying "Chilli's" and any restaurant that isn't one Max wants is fine.

Those who have never dined out in Murfreesboro may never have experienced the hassle that is eating out here. Every restaurant is packed most every night. The 'boro has a thousand restaurants going in and out of business in a constant cycle. So, even on a Wednesday night, there was a wait at Chilli's.

So, we got our light up coaster and stood nearby. Judging by the size of the crowd, we were looking at a nice long wait. Suddenly, the lights started flashing. Our number was up!

We got to our table and Dollie said she saw the hostess's clipboard. It seems they wrote down the wrong number on a previous customer, so we were jumped way ahead of the line. On any other night, I might have mentioned something, but I was tired and hungry and . . . no, I probably wouldn't have said anything anyway.

We ate, Max and Rozzy picked and fought. At one point, Rozzy told on Max for kicking her under the table, when in fact she was just making it up to get him in trouble. She has all the ladies at her daycare fooled, but she's mean as a snake.

Speaking of snakes, the "Psycho House Fear Factor" specials were crazy. I was with them up until they made the couples eat the camel spiders. I told Dollie right then "I'm sorry, honey, but we'd just have to go home at that point."

The Congressional Research Service has issued a second report about Bush's domestic spying program. The first said that the program was illegal. Now the second says that the briefings Bush gave to just a few select members of Congress violated the National Security Act.

The NSA says that all members of the intelligence committee in both the House and Senate are to be kept fully informed on all intelligence programs. And while there is a loophole for covert actions, the CRS doesn't believe it applies in this case because a covert action is defined as one that the government would deny if it came to light. When the NYT broke the story, Bush didn't deny it. He admitted it and said it would continue.

Rep. Slaughter said on Air America's "The Majority Report" that both Tom DeLay and Bill Frist had day traders working out of their offices. That is a huge conflict of interest and probably illegal. Not to mention a bit slimy.

"Now we're going to say you can't have a meal for more than 20 bucks," said Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi. "Where are you going, to McDonald's?"

No, you jerk, you're going to have to pay for your own damn meals, instead of getting a free ride from some special interest group. And what's wrong with that?

Plus, health considerations aside, it wouldn't hurt Lott to eat at a McDonald's.

I got an email survey from the folks who are organizing my 20th highschool reunion. I'm conflicted about attending. The last one wasn't particularly fun. There were some awkward greetings, people pointed out how fat and bald I was, I pointed out how fat and bald they were.

Then I sat in the corner with Seve like I do at all these type of gatherings. Dollie was bored and I was uncomfortable. Who knows, maybe five years will have changed things.

Well, it turns out my brother Scott was one of the ones who complained about "The Book of Daniel." He has that right and I shouldn't have come down so hard in the comments section. But I don't see how anyone can justify complaining about a show you've never seen nor ever intend to see. If I complained about every movie, TV show, radio program, newspaper article and magazine clipping I came across that offended my sensibilities . . . well, I'd have to start a blog to keep up.

One article I won't complain about is the report in today's New York Times about Bush's domestic spying program. According to sources at the FBI, the NSA flooded their agents with wire tap information to the detriment of their actual work tracking down terrorists.

1. The leadership of the FBI questioned whether what the NSA was doing was legal.

2. The FBI requested that the NSA stop sending the wiretap information because of the thousands and thousands of numbers they were given, not a single lead came out of it.

3. The FBI complained that all these dead ends were keeping their agents from more legitimate field work tracking down terrorists.

4. Bush's assertion that this program was limited to Americans who received calls from some al Queda phone list was bogus.

So, when Cheney says this program saved "thousands of lives" he's lying. When Bush says it's a "vital tool in the war on terror," he's lying.

Now the lawsuits are flying. The ACLU is suing the NSA. The Center for Constitutional Rights, Greenpeace and Christopher Hitchens are also suing. This is going to come to a head. It may be 15 years down the line and Bush may be long gone, but, despite the best efforts of the president, it will be worked out in the courts.

Yesterday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. MLK was a victim of domestic spying by the Hoover FBI, under authorization of the Kennedy Justice Department. It was done under the auspices of the war on communism. The FBI called MLK "the most dangerous negro in America."

They bugged his home, his phone and his hotel. They caught him on tape having sex with a woman that was not his wife. He was no communist. He was a civil rights leader and peace activitst. Hoover met with MLK in 1964, just after the Democratic National Convention and just before he was to accept the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Hoover presented the tapes, documenting that MLK had been the victim of domestic spying for years. Hoover told him that the most embarrasing tapes would be released unless Dr. King committed suicide before accepting the Nobel. Fortunately, MLK resisted. But this is an illustrative anecdote as to why we cannot trust a government agency that spies on it's own citizens without oversight.

MLK wasn't part of the war on communism. He was a critic of the administration. Which of Bush's critics are being tapped as part of the war on terror?

Conan O'Brien has made a splash in Finnland. He's been running campaign commercials on his TV show endorsing the current president because she looks so much like him. The photo in the AP story is uncanny.

"If the president has the power to eavesdrop on American citizens without a warrant, imprison citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what can't he do?"

Al Gore gave a speech yesterday in which he tore the bark of the Bush administration over the domestic spying issue. It got very little coverage in the news, but the rightwing spinners are twisted in knots over it.

I would say that with respect to comments by the former vice president it’s my understanding that during the Clinton administration there was activity regarding the physical searches without warrants, Aldrich Ames as an example.

I can also say that it’s my understanding that the deputy attorney general testified before Congress that the president does have the inherent authority under the Constitution to engage in physical searches without a warrant and so those would certainly seem to be inconsistent with what the former vice president was saying today.

FISA didn't cover physical searches until 1995. That's when President Clinton signed the bill that expanded FISA. So, the Aldrich Ames search, which took place in 1993, did not violate FISA.

Next, Deputy Attorney General James Gorelick testified before congress in 1994 that, absent any Congressional action, the president could conduct warrantless physical searches. But, that changed in 1995 when Clinton expanded FISA. Gorelick never testified that the president could ignore the law.

The Bush administration keeps pushing the line that Clinton did it too. The fact that they're obscuring the facts just shows how they have no real leg to stand on here.

Citing the same examples and facts, Scott McClellen said about Gore's speech “I think his hypocrisy knows no bounds."

It was a great weekend -- that rare treat of a weekend when I can relive my bachelor days (that I never really lived when I was a bachelor). Dolls was out of town at a thesbian conference. The kids were at their grandma's house and I had the place to myself for an entire day.

It was 24 hours of me doing what I want without responsibilities, obligations or having to check in with anyone. It was . . .

Well it was boring. I sat around the house, watched television and played video games.

There was a short excursion with Badger out to a tree stand. Badger has noticed that this little lot, where you can buy trees to plant in your yard, has been in business for about three years and he wants to know if this is a viable business model for himself.

I agreed to go and see the place, but I know nothing about business, trees or viable models, so I didn't expect to be much help. The plan was for me to ask the guy about the business: how many trees do you sell a day? What's your price on such and such? That sort of thing. I was prepared to do my part, but when we got there on Saturday about 3 p.m., it was closed.

I watched football with Badger, played the Xbox, won a space-race victory in Civilization IV and played Heroclix with the geeks at the comic book shop. It was glorious.

Max, who has had a rough week at school, came home Friday with a smiley face from his teacher. Evidently, he pulled it together in the end. We're keeping our fingers crossed for Tuesday.

I spent last Thursday at home with Rozzy. She had a fever and had to come home early on Tuesday and Dollie kept her on Wednesday. By Wednesday night her fever had broken, but she kept complianing about her mouth hurting.

A quick peek in the back revealed a bunch of ulcers. The doc said it was due to the fever and gave her some prescription mouthwash which she hates.

Max also came home sick early on Tuesday, but his mother and I suspect he was faking it because his school day was going so badly.

I can't believe that I forgot to tell the TiVo to get the premier of "24." That bites.

Another Republican congressman has given up his leadership post due to the Abramoff scandal. This time it is Ohio Rep. Bob Ney, chair of the House Committee on Administration. Of all the congressmen in Abramoff's pocket, Ney was probably deepest. He lobbied for Iran, he changed his votes within weeks of receiving substantial gifts from lobbyists, he took trips and other goodies in exchange for his influence on the Hill.

Under pressure from Speaker Hastert, he's quit before the inevitable indictment came down.

Today, in addition to being MLK day, is Religious Freedom Day. It celebrates the anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's Virginia statute on religious freedom (Jan. 16, 1786).

So 220 years ago, Jefferson wrote: "that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint...That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical...that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right."

It is the groundwork for the doctrine of separation of church and state and worth noting.

Laura Bush has come out in favor of domestic spying. So I guess that settles that. What gets me about all this is that they're putting up a strawman. No one is denying that the government should be listening to phone calls of those suspected to have terrorist connections. They absolutely should. But there are legal ways to do it and Bush ignored them and his reasons giving for ignoring them don't hold water.

That's the challenge for all you Republicans out there who were screaming at Clinton about the rule of law and how no man is above the law. Where is your outrage now?

Bush and his people are spinning this as necessary, but they can't say why it is. There is nothing in the executive order that gives Bush any new capabilities -- it just lets him do it without judicial oversight.

My brother Dan thinks it's okay because he has nothing to hide. That may be, but I don't yield my civil liberties so easily. Plus, I wonder how okay he's going to feel about it when a Democrat is in the White House?

By the way, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service says "that the administration’s justification for the warrantless eavesdropping authorized by President Bush conflicts with existing law and hinges on weak legal arguments."

I talked about this with a coworker who supports the ban. She said these people have a right to complain and I agree, but they also have a choice. There are three other networks and scads of other cable channels. So, why complain about what's on one of them? Why not just change the channel or turn off the TV?

That's what I do when shows I don't like come on. What these complainers have done is take away my choice because they couldn't make one on their own. Because they didn't like the show, I can't watch the show.

I wasn't even going to watch the show before, but I'm so ticked that the local affiliate caved, that now I want to watch it just to see what all the jibberjabber was about.

Now here's the interesting part. "The Book of Daniel" finished third nationally when it premiered. But in the Nashville market, it was No. 1.

Murtha is a 37-year vet of the Marine Corps with 8 service medals. He's been the military's best friend in the Congress for as long as he's been there. The Bush administration is acting in a shameful and cowardly manner with respect to Murtha.

Did Bush learn nothing from the Plame scandal? Smearing your critics doesn't make you right. It makes you a jerk.

Meanwhile, Walter Cronkite has said that it's time to pull the troops out of Iraq.