The table piled higher and higher with empty bottles as I sat down to prepare the News segment this week. As I went through the last eight years, making an inventory of the steady decline, I found myself sinking drink after drink to keep the temper down.

The Bush team, they called themselves the Vulcans, an elite cadre of advisors chosen to shepherd the man-child President through his term in office, is packing up their bags and preparing to leave their home for the last eight years.

Many of them, some of the best, and some of the worst, have already retired to cushy private-sector jobs. The rest will be joining them soon.

This was a group of men and women who set out following the debacle of the 2000 election recount and Supreme Court intervention with one goal in mind, one guiding principle so central that it received its own acronym: ABC.

Anything But Clinton.

This was a group of people returning to higher office after eight years in the wilderness. Eight years where they watched Bill Clinton not only survive every piece of muck thrown at him, every brick pulled out from underneath his administration, and relentless obstruction from the Republican Congress, not only survive, but thrive.

William Jefferson Clinton left office eight years ago with an approval rating of 68%.

The Bush team has outdone themselves in their efforts to distance their President from the Clinton legacy.

George W. Bush leaves office with an approval rating of 22 percent. It’s the lowest for an American president leaving office since Truman departed under the shadow of the Korean War. And Truman did better by 10%, according to Gallup.

Nearly four out of five Americans disapprove of where President Bush has left our country.

We went from a budget surplus projected to pay off the national debt by 2012, to an expected trillion-dollar deficit for the coming year.

We were, even briefly during Bush’s term, considered a leader on the international stage, begrudged for our influence, but respected. There was a moment in the fall of 2001, when we were wounded by a terrorist attack unprecedented in our own nation’s history, when the rest of the world stood with us.

President Bush squandered that compassion, neglecting his duty to bring the Pashtun tribes of the Afghan border regions into the international system, preferring to play out the petty ideological policy goals of his advisors.

Our manufacturing base continued to decline, and national debt skyrocketed. While the industry of the future, the retooling of our infrastructure and businesses to be sustainable in a global economy and a global environment, was neglected in favor of old party-line interests. Old men, living comfortably in their old age, while the rest of us feed their pockets.

That’s the legacy.

There is change on the horizon, or so we hope.

The challenges that face our country as we step forward beyond Tuesday beyond the 20th of January seem immense. Mr. Obama… President Obama, will need to be more than just an average president, more than a good president. He’ll need to be a great president, the kind of man who’s able to enlist his self-styled opponents to match common goals, or to overwhelm them with the integrity of his vision.

We had better be building statues of him in twenty years, because that’s the kind of leadership that this country needs right now. It’s “I’m going to crash-land this dying Airbus on the Hudson,” kind of leadership that we need.

I have hope; I hope that we’re not asking too much of one man.

So before I crash-land this broadcast into the next hour, it’s time for the Timothy Jordan Show News, right on the cusp of something new, for the week of January 18th, Ought-Eight.

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Okay, so I know that we promised a review of the new administration’s spending plan this week, but it’s not going to happen. It’s huge, and my staff is only halfway through reading the damn summary. Rather than provide the half-assed coverage typical to most media outlets, we’re going to take the time to actually understand the material, to the best of our abilities, before we try and inform other people about it.

Our coverage on the spending/bailout/stimulus package is pending, to be delivered when we’re damn well and ready to throw back the covers on one of the most significant government interventions in an economy in history.

We turn instead to resume some regular coverage of ongoing political news.

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The ultra-secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review issued a public ruling earlier this week. In that ruling three judges of the court decided that the ongoing warrantless wiretapping program as currently authorized is legal and constitutional.

This is only the second time in the last eight years that one of the court’s decisions was declassified, the first being the decision that prompted this review.

It is being portrayed as a blow to the efforts of privacy activists, but may only turn out to be a skirmish in the larger fight over 4th Amendment rights in this age of government paranoia and electronic surveillance.

As with all documents released by the court to date, this decision was heavily redacted. We don’t know who initially brought the claim against the government, but can infer that it was a telecommunications service provider, of phone service, internet, or both.

Late in 2007, the U.S. government contacted the service provider with a wiretapping order issued under the now-expired Protect America Act, first authorized in August of 2007. They refused to comply, immediately objecting to the Surveillance Court, believing that the wiretapping was unconstitutional.

The court ruled against them, and after threatening civil contempt, the provider began to comply with the wiretapping order. They continued to fight, however, leading to the current ruling, just reaching us this week after being decided on August 22nd of 2008.

The provider argued before the court that the Government lacked a proper warrant to issue wiretapping orders, and that even if there were an exemption to cover foreign intelligence, the orders being issued were unreasonable searches under the 4th Amendment.

From these claims against the government, it’s safe to assume that the provider in question isn’t AT&T.

But instead of answering these larger questions, the judges of the Surveillance Court of Review decided to only consider the facts of the specific wiretap order in question. Unfortunately for us, nobody but the government, the service provider, and the judges know the facts of the original wiretap order.

Media reviews of the case have focused on the outcome, that the Court of Review decided in favor of the government, finding that a special need to wiretap existed, and that the needs of the government outweighed the privacy claims of an individual.

But where the reporting has fallen short is in actually reading the decision. The Court of Review didn’t write this decision as a general ruling on the warrantless wiretapping program. This is instead a decision on the legality of a specific wiretap order issued to a specific service provider with a specific target.

While their decision in this case is rather frightening, the court specifically states that the government’s national security claims trump an individual’s claim for constitutional privacy rights, the court’s decision is specific to this case.

If anything this decision is a case study in buck-passing. The Court of Review could have very easily taken up the larger constitutional issues posed by the wholesale warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, but instead chose to exploit a subtle flaw in the service provider’s legal argument to apply the scope of their review to no more than the wiretap order in question.

The most worrying thing about this decision, in the end, is the continued willingness of the Surveillance Court to take the government’s word without question. They responded to the service provider’s concerns about information from other people unrelated to the case by saying that, “The government assures us that it does not maintain a database of incidentally collected information from non-targeted United States persons, and there is no evidence to the contrary.”

Well of course. If you don’t ask for any proof of government claims, you’re not going to have any evidence. If the Surveillance Court, which was set up in the wake of massive government civil liberties violations to serve as a check on government wiretapping, keeps bowing to the government’s demands, then it no longer performs its duty.

• Surveillance Court of Review: No. 08-01 IN RE: DIRECTIVES [redacted text]* PURSUANT TO SECTION 105B OF THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE ACT

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In other legal news, a bill has been introduced in the South Carolina legislature which would make it, “… unlawful for a person in a public forum or place of public accommodation wilfully and knowingly to publish orally or in writing, exhibit, or otherwise make available material containing words, language, or actions of a profane, vulgar, lewd, lascivious, or indecent nature”

This bill would, in effect, make most of the Internet illegal in South Carolina.

The penalty for publishing something considered obscene by a group or individual in violation of the law would be up to $5,000 and five years in prison.

I have a question: if I find this law indecent, and an obscenity committed against the United States Constitution, can I have anyone in South Carolina legislature who votes for this bill locked up for five years?

The bill has been referred to the South Carolina Senate’s Judiciary Committee, where hopefully it dies a quick and painful death.

• S. 56, pending South Carolina indecency legislation

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And while we’re on a legal spin, and since I feel like kicking a dead horse when it’s down, or at least leaving office, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington won a major case against the Bush Administration during their final days in office.

On the 15th of January Judge John Facciola ordered the Executive Office of the President to preserve all email messages that were sent or received between March of 2003 and October 2005.

The period in question covers a two and a half year span where the Bush White House was improperly using private email servers, as well as failing to regularly back up messages sent using official government servers. It is believed that as many as 14 million email messages are missing from records of that crucial time in the Administration’s history.

Those 702 days cover not only the immediate aftermath of invading Iraq, but also the 2004 election, the Valerie Plame leak investigation, and the fallout from Hurricane Katrina.

If put into effect, the ruling would require that all outgoing White House officials and staff surrender all hard drives and all other storage devices and media which may be reasonably considered to contain some or all of the missing messages. This discovery order would also include any and all government agencies which may have had communications with the Executive Office during that window of 702 days.

In a response, filed late Thursday evening, lawyers for the White House responded by disputing the authority of the court to order a preservation of their records. They claim that this is instead the purview of the National Archivist, and that any efforts by private agencies to seek restoration of Presidential records contravenes the normal administrative system.

In addition, they claim that they have already, “initiated action” to restore missing emails. This claim is based on a 2008 review of the records from the initial 2005 investigation into missing email records. They now claim that the 14 million messages shown as missing in 2005 were simply due to technical limitations in their ability to count the emails preserved in their system.

Since, White House lawyers now say, the emails were never missing in the first place, any discovery now is moot, and so they shouldn’t have to produce any records, any records at all.

I find it interesting that a Presidential administration that was so adamant about their right to look into our private email messages without any court review should be so concerned about a court-ordered review of their ostensibly public-domain email messages.

• Preservation order PDF

• White House response PDF

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And if the Bush legal team hasn’t sunken low enough for you, we can offer PETA’s latest campaign.

I really wish that I was making this up, I really do.

PETA, those lovable food-Nazis, have embarked on a new ad campaign with new cute artwork targeted at children. What’s the cuisine animal du jour this week? Sea kittens, or as we better know them, fish.

That’s right, those masters of rebranding are trying to change the image of fish by calling them sea kittens; because nobody would want to eat something that sounds cute, like a sea kitten, would they?

This most recent media campaign includes a web-based email message system through which it’s possible to send a form letter to the Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service, asking him to stop promoting the fishing industry.

Since it was so conveniently set up, I used their system myself, but instead replaced their message with one of my own, asking the director to ignore the requests of a radical vegan minority uncomfortable with the concept of an omnivore’s lifestyle and seeking to impose their dietary restrictions upon the rest of us.

If you’re seeking to force people to eat what you want them to eat, the you’re no better than the right-to-lifers, or the people perpetuating the war on drugs.

Live and let live, and let me kill to eat what I want to live.

• PETA Sea Kittens spam mailer

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That’s an excellent motto to live, kill, and eat by. Hey Timothy, do you know what else is excellent?

Well you’ll have to wait until after the music announcing…

We saw a lot of excellence demonstrated this week. Chesley B. Sullenberger, the pilot of US Airways Flight 1549 has earned enough recognition since he belly-flopped a jet airliner into the water without killing a single person for the first time in aviation history. If he does something amazingly heroic again next week, he’ll be a shoo-in for our Award.

It also nearly went to the team at Reaction Engines Limited, for their conceptual single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane.

Well actually, they haven’t built the damn thing yet, and their 3D graphics are straight out of 1994, so let’s forget that I said anything about them and move on to some real excellence.

It’s legislation! Yep, we’re awarding excellence for a bill entering the Colorado House of Representatives. H.B. 1042 would make it a Class A offense to drive at a speed that impedes or blocks the normal flow of traffic, or more than 5 vehicles following behind.

That’s right. Drive too slow, slow enough that you’re blocking the flow of traffic, I’m looking at you, large asian woman with big hair, and you could get the same fine as if you’re speeding.

In Colorado at least.

The bill was sponsored by Mike Merrifield, Democratic Representative for Colorado District 18.

It turns out that Mike is a pretty cool guy. The 61-year old former high school teacher also wrote a book on Gonzo mountain biking trails in Colorado.

And now he’s written this bill asking people to please just get out of the way on the roads.

And that’s damn excellent. Rep. Mike Merifield is this week’s winner of the Timothy Jordan Show Award of Excellence.

• H.B. 09-1042

• About Rep. Merrifield

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And that’s the News for the week ending January 18th, Ought-Nine.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 11:15 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.