There is a lot of discussion about the lack of meaningful revelations in the Alito confirmation hearings. The Roberts confirmation hearings were also devoid of much meaningful substance as well.
Basically, the nominee must say that he’ll have an open mind, that he will decide cases according to the “rule of law,” that he has respect for precedent, and that he won’t be a “judicial activist.” The nominee must sit calmly while Senators bluster and wait out the storm.
The Chicago Sun Times reports:
The Chicago Police Department is warning officers their cell phone records are available to anyone — for a price. Dozens of online services are selling lists of cell phone calls, raising security concerns among law enforcement and privacy experts. . . .
To test the service, the FBI paid Locatecell.com $160 to buy the records for an agent’s cell phone and received the list within three hours, the police bulletin said. . . .
How well do the services work? The Chicago Sun-Times paid $110 to Locatecell.com to purchase a one-month record of calls for this reporter’s company cell phone. It was as simple as e-mailing the telephone number to the service along with a credit card number. . . .
On Tuesday, when it reopened, Locatecell.com e-mailed a list of 78 telephone numbers this reporter called on his cell phone between Nov. 19 and Dec. 17. The list included calls to law enforcement sources, story subjects and other Sun-Times reporters and editors.
A recent article in the LA Times discusses the ongoing debate about whether to remove J. Edgar Hoover’s name from the FBI building. J. Edgar Hoover was the head of the FBI from 1924, its early days before it was even called the FBI (it used to be called the Bureau of Investigation), until his death in 1972. Throughout his career, Hoover engaged in a massive array of abuses. According to the LA Times article:
The DOJ has launched a probe into the leaking of the NSA surveillance program to the New York Times:
“The leaking of classified information is a serious issue. The fact is that al-Qaida’s playbook is not printed on Page One and when America’s is, it has serious ramifications,” Duffy told reporters in Crawford, Texas, where Bush was spending the holidays.
There’s been some terrific analysis in the blogosphere about whether President Bush is correct that he had the power to authorize warrantless surveillance. (See here and here for a roundup of posts.) The arguments thus far focus on what the President has already done, but the President has stated that he will continue the warrantless surveillance [link no longer available] “for so long as the nation faces the continuing threat of an enemy that wants to kill American citizens.”
Judge Richard Posner has written an op-ed in the Washington Post today where he calls for a massive program of surveillance of U.S. citizens — their email, documents, phone conversations, nearly everything they say or do — regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing or not. Posner’s argument is quite startling and troublesome. Posner writes:
A story in Wired reveals that Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has been editing his own Wikipedia entry:
In addition to the blog post roundup I did yesterday, here are more blog posts about Bush’s NSA surveillance worth reading:
An interesting article from Salon discusses how Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft assist the Chinese government with censorship. The companies filter out search results that the government wants to censor, and they help the government track down individuals engaging in criticism and dissent:
In this post, I aim to explore more in depth whether Bush had the legal power to authorize warrantless NSA surveillance. As I was putting the finishing touches on this post, I noticed that Orin Kerr beat me to the punch, and I find that we’ve identified the same issues and are in substantial agreement. His post is a lot longer and more detailed than mine (which is quite long itself), so read mine for a broader overview and Orin’s for the treatise-length account.