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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / The Grandma Test

The Grandma Test

by Tim F|  August 8, 200711:12 am| 11 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics

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Various excuses for why I haven’t blogged much for the last five or six days. From Friday through Sunday I traveled away from news or internets, but the real fun happened when I came home and discovered that my genius party seems to have handed the keys of the kingdom to Alberto effing Gonzales. While unusually busy (I probably should not be taking this time right now…) it is hard to deny that I just don’t feel like blogging right now. Republicans don’t want my support, Democrats don’t appear to deserve it. Some third party might appeal to me if I trusted any one of them to run a bakery.

But hell, I never took an LSAT. Maybe I have it wrong. So rather than rant away like usual I will just propose the same test that ought to be applied to any new law enforcement power. Better informed parties can help me work out whether or not I should get worked up about it.

Call it the Grandma Test. Weasel politicians always frame new government power in terms of some bugbear (pedophiles, tarrists, teh ghey), but fine print rarely matches rhetoric. For example. The Church Commission showed quite clearly that feds will expand their brief to cover anything they think they can get away without triggering oversight and penalties.

So let’s dispense with the noise about who this bill is meant to target. If a fed wants to tap grandma’s phone, assuming she is alive and doesn’t merit such surveillance, what exactly will stop him? I want to know more than just the language on what kind of call can and cannot be tapped, although that obviously matters. Who approves of a tap? Who judges whether a tap has violated the law? What is the penalty for surveillance abuse and who administers it?

Preliminary reports suggest a pretty big gap between what the law claims to permit and what it actually allows. But then I remember how the Clenis-mad media considered Ann Coulter a legal expert. Maybe they got it wrong, honestly I hope that they did. So consider this an open invitation to clarify this law for me in terms of the Grandma Test. I will link any comment that seems well informed, particularly those which quote relevant portions of the law with context and precedent cases. If the debate isn’t settled quickly I might use interesting responses to nucleate a new post.

***

Also, just for a lark we’re going to try a comment policy that John and I have talked about for a while. Attack arguments in whatever language you want but comments attacking people will be deleted. If you absolutely cannot live within those rules, or you think your great cause legitimizes poor behavior, choose some other thread.

Long time readers will remember that we tried this once before (pie!). Even though it didn’t work we made it impressively far considering the intentionally inflammatory post topic, and even then it might have failed only because I got tired of enforcing the rule.

I know that changing the commenting rules is a controversial topic. Rather than hijack my own post, I set up an open thread above for hashing out how you feel about it and why.

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Reader Interactions

11Comments

  1. 1.

    John Cole

    August 8, 2007 at 11:19 am

    How long before I have to ban myself, I like pie?

    Ooops.

    don’t make me start posting West Virginia jokes. -ed.

  2. 2.

    HyperIon

    August 8, 2007 at 12:03 pm

    i watched Grennwald and David Rivkin on CSPAN last night talking about the legislation. not only is Rivkin personally repellent, he is also a very poor defender of the the bill. he actually said that in all of his years of government service, he had never met anyone who would try to undermine the constitution, so this Greenwald guy is just trying to scare people. at one point he said something to the effect of “surely you, Glenn, cannot believe that our president would do something bad to america”. i laughed out loud.

    several times he was asked a direct question and weaseled out of the answer. Greenwald was pretty good. Not perfect…he veered off a few times. but Rivkin was pathetic.

    but it is BIZARRE that legal scholars (as both are) cannot come to a shared conclusion about WTF this legislation means. “it’s says the government can do X”. “no, it doesn’t.” “the government has always been able to do Y.” “no, it hasn’t.” round and round.

  3. 3.

    dmbeaster

    August 8, 2007 at 12:48 pm

    We have reached the point where administration advocates are openly dishonest about what legislation (current and past) says. Add to that the secrecy and hairball signing statements (what the bill says does not matter anyway, per the signing statement). They just do what they want — the rest is just window dressing and PR.
    _____

    As for comment policy, some arguments can also have a personal attack component (i.e., “your arguments are always stinky for the following reason”), and some arguments can have a personal sting to them. (i.e., fools think …, and are fools because …”). You are going to make judgment calls with such a policy — hopefully those that seem purely personal will be the targets.

  4. 4.

    ThymeZone

    August 8, 2007 at 12:53 pm

    The rule is not enforceable. You will have to either define clearly, and unambiguously, what an “attack” is, and spend a lot of time defending your choices, or it won’t work.

    About half the regular posters here are at one time or another spoofing or trolling. For example, are you going to call the assertion of a spoof or troll an “attack?”

    That’s just absurd. Are you going to allow subtle denigrating remarks and generalizations to go past the guards, but rule that an “attack” has happened when somebody gets tired of that and barks at the offender?

    Is it okay for a poster to basically slam a whole group of antagonists with vague “lefty-righty” stereotypes and insults, and then escape when that poster is “attacked” for that behavior?

    Will there be language police? Have we outlawed the f-word and its cousins? Do the new rules apply to John and Tim too?

    Why you guys would want to go down this road is beyond me, but a lot of things you do are beyond me so what the hell do I know? I will play by any clear and evenly enforced rules.

    Also, if this is a solution, what is the problem it solves?

  5. 5.

    Tim F.

    August 8, 2007 at 12:56 pm

    thymezone and dmbeaster, please use the comments policy thread to talk about comments policy. Thanks.

  6. 6.

    Andrew

    August 8, 2007 at 3:35 pm

    It’s going to be really hard to talk about David Rivkin without resorting to personal attacks. For example, I would not be able to use the phrases, “authoritarian warmongering asshole” or “saddest fucking Bush apologist in the world” or “he probably masturbates to pictures of dead Iraqi childen and cleans up with copies of the Constitution.” I’ll do my best, but give me a few minutes to think of something.

  7. 7.

    HyperIon

    August 8, 2007 at 4:00 pm

    well, thanks, Andrew, for validating my impression.
    that guy was LAME.
    i kept thinking “THIS is the best they’ve got?”

  8. 8.

    Nash

    August 9, 2007 at 8:49 am

    Tim,

    I’m not a lawyer and I don’t play one on TV.
    But I *am* interested in the same questions you are:

    Who approves of a tap? Who judges whether a tap has violated the law? What is the penalty for surveillance abuse and who administers it?

    Preliminary reports suggest a pretty big gap between what the law claims to permit and what it actually allows.

    and towards that end, there seems to be a lot of focus on the conjunction of two aspects as key:

    1. The tappers may tap any phone call, e-mails or other communication that is “reasonably believed” to involve foreign nationals outside the United States.

    2. The Attorney General (via his assigns) is the one who decides if the “reasonable belief” standard has been met.

    NB: Those are not scare quotes, but are rather quoted to indicate that there appears to be an established legal standard known as “reasonable belief” out there.

    But that’s the rub. In this specific case, the discretion for applying the standard known as “reasonable belief” as well as for deciding after the fact if the standard has been upheld is given by the law to the Attorney General (or his assigns).

    The same entity that applies the law also rules on whether it has been applied legally if challenged.

    BTW: Aspect 1 reasonably gives those arguing that the law doesn’t say you can wiretap communications involving in-country citizens a leg to stand on.

    Aspect 2 reasonably gives those arguing that the law creates its own loophole to get around Aspect 1 a different leg to stand on.

    I think the very existence of Aspect 2 is absolutely damning to those who want to stand on Aspect 1 alone.

    I would not trust ANY administration, Republican or Democratic or Thundering Herd, with that kind of power. The founders set up the separation of powers for a reason.

    To me, the best thing about this law is its sunset provision. We are going to have this argument again and that is a good thing.

    Meeting commenting criteria?

  9. 9.

    Nash

    August 9, 2007 at 11:29 am

    I should note that the DNI (Mike McConnell for now) is the Attorney General’s co-equal as decider in whether the law was followed or not.

    What if it’s a split decision?

  10. 10.

    Nash

    August 9, 2007 at 3:47 pm

    What is the point in playing by the “rules” if you are going to ignore what is left behind, Tim?

    Over the deafening din of silence we have in this thread, it seems there’s an answer to be heard as to whether anyone, including you, is truly interested in doing the work to make it “impressively far” with your new comment policy.

    According to Mario and Luigi, that lark don’t fly.

Comments are closed.

Trackbacks

  1. Balloon Juice says:
    August 15, 2007 at 8:06 am

    […] So far I have seen zero responses to my Grandma Test post that address the law-as-written or even link to anybody who does, so I will ask one more time. How does the law define who “can” and “cannot” be wiretapped? What is the process for determining whether a given tap meets the criteria? Who oversees the operation to prevent abuse? Who is responsible for violations and what are the penalties? If can answer or if you have written a blog post that answers my questions, drop a line and I will promote it. Many thanks. […]

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