Daniel Cody - “Left on the Lake”

As you may have noticed, the ‘recent comments’ section on the left side of my weblog has been filled lately by two types of comments: those pushing various poker, casino, and other card type games and those from ‘real’ sounding people telling me what an “Interesting wonderful great site you have! I will be sure to come back in the future” followed by a few paragraphs of crap about whatever product they’re hawking.

It’s the commonly known problem of comment spam, robots crawling the Web and posting comments on weblogs with links to their own site to boost their page rank with Google.

For the first few months since I switched to the dancody.org domain name, I didn’t have a problem with comment spam bots at all because my own ‘page rank’ with google was so low that there was nothing to be gained out of having a link from my site. In the last month or so though, I’ve been posting a lot more, and a few of my posts have been linked to from well known weblogs, two journals, and last week the web site of the Washington Post.

In fact, the month of December has been the busiest ever for my website (going back five years with five2one.org) with about 1,000 unique visitors a day and 5,000 - 7,500 page views a day. Nothing huge in the grand scheme of things of course, and not anything that drives what happens here, but interesting none the less. It’s also slightly gratifying that after years of talking about the issues I talk about - in the way that I talk about them - that I’m making a small difference and being looked to for opinion of my own from time to time. And as all of my good friends now, if there’s anything that I’m all about, it’s self gratification.. Kidding of course ;)

All of those things have increased the page rank of my own site, which makes it more attractive for spam bots to post their links here with the hope of increasing their own page rank. To be honest, what is getting through in terms of spam on the site is a very small amount of what the spam bots are trying to get through. I block probably about 90% of the comment spam attempts every day before they make it to the site, but a few do trickle through.

There are some other ways to stop it, but I don’t want to make people ‘register’ for my site just to post a comment, nor jump through any other hoops like moderation from me. Bryan mentioned to me last week that the new version of Movable Type has some increased functionality with regards to comment spam, so I might be upgrading to that in the next week, which should take a bite out the comment spam so you can see in an instant who is berating who in the political slugfest of the day :)

I just wanted to make a note that the posting will be sporadic for the next few days while we enjoy the Christmas holiday in the Cody household.

It’s been a wonderful year so far, probably the best year ever actually, both personally and professionaly for me. Getting a great new job at UW Milwaukee, having a good friend tie the knot, Jenny going back to grad school, Emerson coming into our lives… 2005 has really been a great year, and I hope it has been for you all as well.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

By a vote of 51-50, the Republican controlled Senate today voted to cut funding for Medicare, Medicaid, student loan programs, and more.

Even though the cost of health care continues to skyrocket, payments under Medicare will be frozen at existing levels for the next year under the new budget plan. So if you’re poor or can’t afford medical insurance, make sure you don’t get sick this year. Merry Christmas from the Republican party.

Later today, they’ll be voting to open up drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Preserve, any bets on screwing the elderly, the poor, and the environment all in one day?

Beautiful. Just beautiful.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX): “None of your civil liberties matter much after you’re dead.”

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI): “Give me liberty of give me death.”

Amen.

With all uproar over the revelations that the President authorized illegal wiretaps, the right wing pundits are out in force defending him today on the cable news channels.

One thing they keep repeating ad nauseum is the President has the right and the obligation to spy on terrorists, so this isn’t really a big deal. For some reason, the counterpundits haven’t responded to that in one important way that I think a lot of people are missing.

The President DOES, via the executive branch of the federal government, have the right and in fact the responsibility to spy on potential terrorists both within the United States and abroad. The pundits and the President, Vice President, Condi Rice, etc.. are all correct on that point.

What we’re talking about here though is not just spying. It’s domestic spying without a warrant, without oversight, and without legal justification. They’re basically saying, “We don’t need to prove to a judge that our wiretap is warranted, so screw off.” and that’s what the real issue here is.

The President himself went on and on yesterday about how spying has stopped terrorist plots in the past four years, and that might be true. But he and his administration are purposely trying to confuse the issue by interjecting the legal uses of spying in their defense of these revealed illegal spying techniques. It’s a clever piece of political misdirection on their part and the right wing pundits have taken up the same tactic in their defense of the administration, but as with so many other things regarding this administration, it’s not the entire truth. Some might even call it lying.

Spying is fine. Spying without a warrant or legal oversight isn’t.

The President and his administration might not want to recognize the distinction between the two, or they are choosing to continue charging ahead with the “King George makes it so” attitude, but it’s an incredibely important distinction to be aware of if we’re going to have a decent debate about this issue.

Yet, at the same time he was secretly authorizing the use of wiretaps without warrants. What’s the word we use when someone says one thing and does another again?

Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so. It’s important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution. - GWB 04/20/2004

Attorney General Gonzales has been on just about every TV network this morning claiming that when Congress passed the authorization for war against the Taliban back in 2001, they really gave the President the authority to wiretap anyone he wanted:

“We also believe that the authorization to use force which was passed by the Congress in the days following the attacks of September 11th constituted additional authorization for the president to engage in this kind of” electronic surveillance, he said.

Of course the “Authorization to use Military Force” resolution that he’s referring to makes no mention of spying, or torture for that matter, although it’s now being used as justification for both. Seriously, what’s the point of even having things like the PATRIOT Act in place if you’re just going to anoint yourself with the power to step around it and other laws whenever you please?

Once again Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold is standing up to the administration on this and had the following to say in response to A.G. Gonzales:

“This is just an outrageous power grab,. Nobody, nobody, thought when we passed a resolution to invade Afghanistan and to fight the war on terror, including myself who voted for it, thought that this was an authorization to allow a wiretapping against the law of the United States.

There’s two ways you can do this kind of wiretapping under our law. One is through the criminal code, Title III; the other is through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That’s it. That’s the only way you can do it. You can’t make up a law and deriving it from the Afghanistan resolution.

The president has, I think, made up a law that we never passed.” - Sen. Russ Feingold

I’m looking forward to hearing the President try to defend himself on this problem going forward, starting with this mornings sudden press conference. He can’t grab the networks and tell them he’s doing a primetime speech every night and Dick Cheney can’t make “surprise” visits to Iraq every weekend as part of their feeble attempts to change the subject.

Republicans and Democrats want some answers, starting with an answer to the question ‘Why did the President feel the need to break the law?’

So the President admits he authorized the NSA to wiretap within the United States without a warrant, and following the GOP playbook to the letter, attacks the messenger and accuses the New York Times of endangering national security. Then he talks about how leaking classified information is the primary issue here and a huge problem. Right… Now he’s serious about classified leaks.

And of course, the timing for Dick Cheney to make a ’surprise’ visit to Iraq couldn’t have been better. Or scheduling a prime time address to (again) talk about Iraq for tonite. Both are pretty lame attempts to try to knock the spy story off the front page, but that tells you how seriously the White House feels it needs to quickly ditch this issue by dropping bombshells in other areas. Who knows, I can even imagine Bush announcing a full withdrawl from Iraq tonite just to change the subject.

Whatever the President and his circle of cronies believe, spying on people within the United States, or citizens of the United States without legal warrants is illegal. He can try to wiggle some justification in there because we’re in an undeclared war, or because his interpretation of the law tells him it’s legal, but it isn’t going to work.

The fact of the matter is that most constitutional legal scholars have seemed to agree over the past 2 days that the President overstepped his legal authority and has probably committed a serious crime against the citizens of the United States and our constitution. I have a feeling the majority of Americans are starting to feel the same: We elected a President to uphold the constitution, not to trash it whenever he feels the need.

Right on Russ:

“We have a president, not a king, and that’s the way he’s talking,” Feingold said in an interview with CNN. “What he’s doing, I believe, is illegal. And it’s really quite a shocking moment in the history of our country.” - Sen. Russ Feingold

Question of the day: ‘Did you know your own government has spying on Americans for the last three years without legal warrants?’.

According to the New York Times:

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval represents a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad.

The reasoning from the administration of course is that the President has the executive powers to do something like this, despite little things like congressional laws and constitutions, and of course, the over used references to ‘a different kind of war’.

Amazing…

In what’s becoming a weekly occurance in Congress, the Republican controlled House of Represenatives passed another spending bill that cuts funding for children, the poor, and special education programs.

The cuts hit a wide range of programs, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the ‘Head Start’ program, rural health care, and help to low income families to pay their heating bills.

Last week, the Republican controlled House of Reps. passed a $94 Billion tax cut that benefits the super rich in America. Every Democrat - joined by a few Republicans - voted against the measure, providing yet another example of the differences between the Republican and Democratic parties in America. Democrats vote for funding of education, health care, and programs for the less fortunate while Republicans vote for tax cuts that benefit the super rich.