Everything old is new again.

In the political atmosphere created by a seemingly endless, only half-declared war, in which both foreign infiltration and domestic subversion are considered serious threats by the powers that be, the spooks from the FBI have been granted expansive powers for clandestine domestic surveillance — that is to say, spying on you, and I, and our neighbors, if our political loyalties are suspect. They are accountable only to minimal oversight, by closed, secret courts whose proceedings are only known to a select few of the bureaucrats and overlords of the State–but not to you, or I, or our neighbors. And in this kind environment, the Washington Post is shocked! shocked! to discover that the FBI may have abused its undisclosed and unchecked powers:

The FBI has conducted clandestine surveillance on some U.S. residents for as long as 18 months at a time without proper paperwork or oversight, according to previously classified documents to be released today.

Records turned over as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit also indicate that the FBI has investigated hundreds of potential violations related to its use of secret surveillance operations, which have been stepped up dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but are largely hidden from public view.

…

In other cases, agents obtained e-mails after a warrant expired, seized bank records without proper authority and conducted an improper unconsented physical search, according to the documents.

Although heavily censored, the documents provide a rare glimpse into the world of domestic spying, which is governed by a secret court and overseen by a presidential board that does not publicize its deliberations. The records are also emerging as the House and Senate battle over whether to put new restrictions on the controversial USA Patriot Act, which made it easier for the government to conduct secret searches and surveillance but has come under attack from civil liberties groups.

The records were provided to The Washington Post by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group that has sued the Justice Department for records relating to the Patriot Act.

David Sobel, EPIC’s general counsel, said the new documents raise questions about the extent of possible misconduct in counterintelligence investigations and underscore the need for greater congressional oversight of clandestine surveillance within the United States.

We’re seeing what might be the tip of the iceberg at the FBI and across the intelligence community, Sobel said. It indicates that the existing mechanisms do not appear adequate to prevent abuses or to ensure the public that abuses that are identified are treated seriously and remedied.

…

Catherine Lotrionte, the presidential board’s counsel, said most of its work is classified and covered by executive privilege. The board’s investigations range from technical violations to more substantive violations of statutes or executive orders, Lotrionte said.

Most such cases involve powers granted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs the use of secret warrants, wiretaps and other methods as part of investigations of agents of foreign powers or terrorist groups. The threshold for such surveillance is lower than for traditional criminal warrants. More than 1,700 new cases were opened by the court last year, according to an administration report to Congress.

— Dan Eggen, Washington Post 2005-10-24: FBI Papers Indicate Intelligent Violations

Sometimes things just happen out of the blue, and there just aren’t any warning signs. Who could have predicted that unchecked and unaccountable spying power, responsible only to secret courts, created by bulldozing established legal limits, would lead to abuses of power? It’s not like those onerous limits on the FBI were created for any particular reason. It’s not like anything like that ever happened before.

The fact is that this is only the smallest sign of a incredibly serious problem — systematic surveillance and unaccountable secret police are always toxic, and can be lethal, to anything resembling freedom. This is something that deserves a lot more than heaping facile sarcasm on it. But what else is there to say? It’s outrageous, but it’s not at all surprising. Those who rammed through measures like the USA PATRIOT act not expecting this to come are the worst sort of fools. Those who rammed through those measures not caring whether it came or not are the worst sort of criminals. And my lingering suspicion is that most of the folks in DC are both thoughtless enough, and ruthless enough, to be best described as both.

(Link thanks to Charles Featherstone at the LewRockwell.com Blog 2005-11-02.)

It seems that the League of American Foxes is gathering in Argentina for a summit on hen-house protection; the caudillos of the United States and Venezuela are expected to have a bit of a row. Nevertheless, our Prince President made the following announcement to the press:

Bush OKs Nuclear Reactor for Venezuela

WASHINGTON – Despite tense relations with Venezuela, President Bush says it might be OK for the South American nation to have a nuclear reactor for peaceful energy uses.

Bush acknowledged he had not heard about Venezuela’s request for a reactor when asked about it Tuesday in an interview with Latin American reporters in advance of his five-day trip to the region. But he didn’t reject the idea, even though he has had numerous disputes with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

— Nedra Pickler, Associated Press 2005-11-02

In related news, I, Rad Geek, the Transportation Minister of this secessionist republic of one, would like to announce that it might be OK for the people of Wyoming to fly on airplanes for peaceful transportation purposes.

Also, in spite of our many differences, it’s OK by me if George W. Bush peacefully has a bowl of soup for lunch.

(Link thanks to Mark Dilley 2005-10-28.)

Hey, look, it’s another male Leftist pissing all over other social justice movements in order to demand attention for his pet cause!

Despite the vicious resistance of employers to unionizing, organizing is not only vital to the growth of unions but is imperative to their very survival. If unions do not wish to be some oddity studied in political science textbooks, unionists must be sent to every American workplace. Sad to say, not only is the future of American unions at stake but also the viability of American progressivism. Political discourse in this nation centers on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage, and there is a real paucity of debate on matters that actually impact the daily lives of Americans, such as the stunning loss of manufacturing jobs.

— Ephraim Harel, The Retriever (University of Maryland Baltimore County): Labor Unions in contemporary America: Down but not out

Meanwhile, in the daily lives of half the American population:

• Half of all pregnancies to American women are unintended; half of these end in abortion.

• In 2002, 1.29 million abortions occurred.

• At current rates, about one in three American women will have had an abortion by the time she reaches age 45.

— Alan Guttmacher Institute: An Overview of Abortion in the United States

Now, it may very well be true that abortion has never actually impacted on Ephraim Harel’s daily life; but generalizing from his own case as a white male college student to a sweeping statement about what matters, and what doesn’t matter, to the daily lives of 260,000,000 men and women seems (even if he is doing it on behalf of his working-class brethren) more than a little arrogant, or more than a little thoughtless. Also, unfortunately, more than a little typical. I picked this quote out because I noticed it most recently, but the idea that abortion (just to take an example) is a merely cultural issue that doesn’t affect the material lives of ordinary Americans — and so ought to be played down, side-stepped, or ignored — has become all too popular in some segments of the Progressive movement. (Hello, Kos.) It might just lead you to wonder who male Progressives think of as ordinary, and what they think that culture is made of, if not of people’s daily lives. It might also leave you with the lingering impression that women’s daily lives just don’t matter very much to some male Leftists.

In point of fact, Harel’s article is atypically sensible compared to most of the rest: he, at least, has got something in mind — aggressive labor organizing — that really could have an immediate impact for the better on the daily lives of a lot of women and men; and that really does — unlike, say, the electoral prospects of the Democratic Party, or Social Security (!), or government education (!!) — really get seriously neglected in the discussion by a lot of the educated-professional Progressive Left. He’s perfectly right to call them to task for neglecting unionism; he’s perfectly right to call for large-scale, uncompromising and daring union organizing; and he’s perfectly right to bag on the union bosses of the AFL-CIO for acting as if they were running a PAC rather than an organized labor federation. (He’s wrong to suggest that the then-feared, now-accomplished split between union bosses is any kind of blow to the labor movement — solidarity comes from the bottom up; bureaucratic unity from the top down is just another corporate merger. But that’s another issue for another day.) Plenty of the things he says are worth saying, and not insisted on enough. But they are not worth insisting on at the expense of women’s struggle for control over their own bodies and their own lives. It’s long past time we said goodbye to all that.

It seems obvious that a legitimate revolution must be led by, made by those who have been most oppressed: black, brown, and white women–with men relating to that as best they can. A genuine Left doesn’t consider anyone’s suffering irrelevant, or titillating …

— Robin Morgan (1970), Goodbye to All That ¶ 4

You can let Mr. Harel know what you think at ehare1@umbc.edu.

Further reading

• Robin Morgan (1970): Goodbye to All That (in Dear Sisters, pp. 53-57)
• Feministe 2005-09-10: Quiet war on abortion, plus Dems
• Pinko Feminist Hellcat 2005-06-01: I’m not going to carry your water
• TeresaInPa 2005-05-24: What you don’t understand about pro-choice women
• GT 2001-08-22: The Labor Movement and Women’s Organizing

(I owe the link to Broadsheet 2005-10-27.)

We can start with the headline:

Bush Is Not Expected to Feel Need to Pick Woman Again

And it gets better: another bunch of anonymous professional blowhards, informing us that Bush, having gotten that whole woman thing over with by tossing an ill-considered and ineffective nomination to someone with two X chromosomes, can now get to the important stuff. You know, the politics:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 – In choosing a replacement for Harriet E. Miers, President Bush may feel less of a need to select a woman to fill the seat of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, several lawyers and analysts said Thursday.

The lawyers and analysts, all of whom have been involved in directly or indirectly counseling the White House about Supreme Court selections, also said that because of Mr. Bush’s desire to move quickly, he would probably choose from the roster of candidates whom he has considered before and whose backgrounds and records have been extensively researched.

The consensus among the handful of people who spoke about Mr. Bush’s situation was that in addition to deciding whether he had the leeway to replace Justice O’Connor with a man, Mr. Bush will have to deal with other more pressing political questions in making his selection.

And not a moment too soon. After all, who would want to get hung up on something non-political, like the gender makeup of the most powerful courts? You might as well try to have a political discussion about housework or childcare! What ever would all the analysts and lawyers assert their expertise and insider information on then?

In politics today, the world’s greatest deliberative bodies, under the principled leadership of conservative Republicans, have taken another decisive move to halt a grave and gathering threat to your safety and mine through the benign influence of the therapeutic State. You can rest easier tonight knowing that the federal government will protect you from the dangers of unregulated color contact lenses:

Contact lenses that can change brown eyes to blue, and a host of other colors, would have to be dispensed through eye-care professionals under a bill on its way to President Bush.

The legislation puts cosmetic and novelty contact lenses under the regulating power of the Food and Drug Administration, even in cases when the lenses don’t correct for poor vision.

Rep. John Boozman, R-Ark., who was an optometrist before becoming a lawmaker, said the action comes just before a spike in sales that occurs when Halloween shoppers look to add colored contacts to their costumes.

With Halloween upon us, it is important that we bring attention to the fact that colored contact lenses are being sold without any instruction on how to safely use them, he said in a statement after the House passed the bill on Wednesday.

The legislation, already approved in the Senate, would require people to see an eye-care professional to get fitted for the lenses and to be instructed in their use and care. Customers could purchase the lenses from their eye-care professionals or through online vendors.

Optometrists have warned that misuse or sharing of contacts lenses can lead to infections, abrasions, allergic reaction or blindness.

— BusinessWeek 2005-10-27: Bill would regulate colored contact lenses

A lot of libertarians like to say that Democrats want the government to be your mom, and the Republicans want the government to be your dad. I don’t know if that’s right, but the sight of a bipartisan caucus running behind all of us, shouting You’ll put an eye out with that thing! does tend to obscure my view of the shimmering glory and tremendous seriousness of government in the public interest.

Maybe it’s just my fuzzy vision, but sometimes I have trouble distinguishing these guys from a bunch of bellowing know-it-alls who can think of nothing better to do with their time than boss other people around, and pat themselves on the back over and over again for doing it.