If you missed this morning's spur-of-the-moment presidential press conference, you didn't actually lose out. Bush only answered one question straight, about whether or not we could torture people. Excluding that, he continued to obfuscate on the NSA domestic wiretapping issue, a subject that is equally poorly discussed by Richard Posner in TNR.

Posner and Bush seem to make the following argument: if wiretapping makes us all safer, and the President is supposed to make us safer during a war, then the President is right.

But the issue isn't merely, "what would make us safer"? Because under that logic, the President could incarcerate all Muslims, or close the borders down indefinitely, or dissolve Congress in the interests of "national security". The President has specific powers laid out to him in the Constitution; when he exceeds those powers he is breaking the law. It's a simple as that.

The other side of the equation, of course, is that Posner and Bush are implicitly saying that if we don't spy on Americans, that Al Qaeda will kill Americans. For all the talk about terrorists "hating us for our freedom", Bush seemed to fold awfully fast when he was worried about evil terrorists.

And the simple fact remains: there have been exactly zero terrorist attacks on America in the four years post September eleventh. And exactly zero for the four years prior to September eleventh, when there were no unauthorized domestic wiretaps. That really illuminates the lie: when Bush, or anyone else, can explain why the FISA process couldn't be used, I'll be impressed.

So Oprah apologized for the James Frey bit.

I can't really blame her, actually. The book is quite compelling and you almost want it to be true, just to show the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. As a work of fiction, I still think I'd enjoy it.

That said, props to the guys at thesmokinggun for doing the research to put this case to rest.

The sky outside my office is so blue it almost hurts. No clouds mar the view. If it were thirty degrees warmer, it would be the sort of perfect, windy day I'd call in sick on. But it being winter, I can only look outside, and imagine.

Every time I've stopped learning at a job, I've left shortly thereafter. And you'd think, after almost seven (damn, has it been that long?) years of work, that I'd have picked up everything I need to know. But I haven't, fortunately, which helps me justify my continued existence.

Sadly, the result of this long period of continual learning about information technology is that I occasionally have trouble at work down-shifting to convey information to users. User X doesn't really need to know about the reverse DNS entry or the improper subnet mask that's preventing them from e-mailing certain users. They just want their e-mail to work. The really tragic thing is that unlike most of the workers at my firm, I can be incredibly busy at home, or off-site, or in my office, and they'd never know it. I will never be able to run into my boss's office and say "Hey, I just scored a new contract!" or "Look, I just saved us thousands of dollars!" Instead, the victories are smaller and less obvious. Things don't break as often as they used to. I get more done with less work. For someone as lazy as me, it's a big deal that I can do all of my work from my house, and that I can manage things with far less effort than I did two or three years ago. But with a long enough timeline, the goal has always been the same: obsolescence.

I look forward to the day where I will no longer have to apply my knowledge to problems of this nature. To a day when I can begin to forget the specifics and focus on the big issues. To the time when I have made myself the perfect redundant cog and can slip out without any decrease in efficiency. It will happen: the only question is when.

So the new motto is up, and comments are back working again. I'll try to get the member pages up and running next, although that'll take a bit more coding than the previous fixes.

Outside my large windows huge clouds are going by. Combined with the sunset, it's a hell of a view.

Kevin told me about this; Fincher (hopefully) was actually there.

Did Franklin actually say that? Of course not. But his actual quote is quite similar, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Translated into modern english, I think the students at the GULC did a good job.

This is an interesting discussion.

The Post, for all its flaws, seems to at least grasp that this is the future of news. Finding a way to let readers interact with reporters (and, god forbid, the ombudsman) is a good thing.

Along those lines I managed to fire off an e-mail to Michael Getler and it appears he's doing well, although he misses the newsroom environment a bit. Go send him a note and ask if he'll ever come back!

What was that title again, Dr. Rice?

Oh, wait. It's 2006, so the newest administration screwup is being alerted about Katrine well in advance.

Here we go:

The NISAC analysis accurately predicted the collapse of floodwalls along New Orleans's Lake Pontchartrain shoreline, an event that the report described as "the greatest concern." The breach of two canal floodwalls near the lake was the key failure that left much of central New Orleans underwater and accounted for the bulk of Louisiana's 1,100 Katrina-related deaths.

The documents shed new light on the extent on the administration's foreknowledge about Katrina's potential for unleashing epic destruction on New Orleans and other Gulf Coast cities and towns. President Bush, in a televised interview three days after Katrina hit, suggested that the scale of the flooding in New Orleans was unexpected. "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did anticipate a serious storm," Bush said in a Sept. 1 interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."

It seems like every time we have a major problem on our hands we discover:

a) the administration had no idea how to handle it b) some government agency briefed the administration a few days beforehand describing the exact scenario c) some government agengy wargamed the particular scenario a few months/years in advance

The point isn't, of course, that the administration deliberately didn't help. Instead, we should focus on the fact that this administration is unable to perform its job for the American people. The entire purpose of a bureaucracy is to generate ideas and plans for when problems arise. To ignore their solutions is idiocy. What could happen next? Let's say that, god forbid, a dirty bomb goes off in DC tomorrow. What would result?

1. the administration would claim it couldn't have predicted the bomb
2. DoE would say that, three months earlier, it had warned the administration that a theft of radioactive materials had taken place at a facility in Kentucky
3. DHS would botch the initial response, and then later discover that FEMA had actually generated a full plan for a dirty-bomb scenario, which was promptly ignored.

Democrats not only need to fight against corruption in government, they also need to restore America's faith in its government. Right now the Bushies are doing everything they can to undermine that faith. Let's not let them get away with it.

That's right, it's 24 time again. For a fairly interesting take on the series from one of the writers, head over to Slate. I'm always annoyed that certain people seem to think that 24 is endorsing

• The Bush Administration
• The use of torture
• Fox News

Okay, maybe they only show Fox News on 24, but that hardly validates the first two points. Besides, if you've watched 24 enough, you've seen that tortute occasionally yields bad information, and that all administrations are capable of mistakes.

The best paragraph, though, comes late:

Slate: As the show has gone on, it hasn't been entirely rigorous about hewing to "real-time" rules. Is it fair to say there's some fudging?

Loceff: That's fair. But to be fair to ourselves, in almost every original script, the timing is actually worked out down to the minute. What happens is that as the scripts are rewritten and re-edited in order to make the story more compelling, you sometimes end up with what you could call a time singularity—where there's no way for everything that happens to happen in real time. It's something that you need to wink at. And we have loosened up, maybe just because the stories got harder to write and because we became more desperate. Especially at the end of the season, when you have fewer episodes to make the story happen, and not all that much time to tell it. That's when it turns out the airport is actually two doors down from CTU.

Good stuff.

So I'm watching Meet the Press Sunday afternoon and I notice that Tim Russert is asking Obama about Harry Belafonte. It seemed slightly odd. Mr Dauo noticed it too.

Especially annoying was that this had just taken place after a roundtable in which James Carville was defending Senator Clinton's use of the term "plantation" during a speech. A term she had used multiple times before in public events, including on CNN.

I'm tired of people, especially white conservatives, decrying the use of race while speaking in racially coded terms. Every good Southerner knew exactly what Russert was saying when he asked Obama about Harry: the "you're black, so why is this black guy off the, ah, reservation". Russert then lambased Obama for, gasp, raising money, to help Democrats. And best of all, he asked if it was "appropriate" to compare President Bush to a terrorist? Appropriate? Of course not. But Obama knocked it out of the park by saying that the best part about America was that here anyone could say anything and it was consitutionally protected. Good for you, senator.

But can Russert honestly believe the Democrats are as culpable as the GOP with respect to corruption? Has it really come to this? Soliciting money for campaigns, while a demeaning, seedy practice, is so far from what Abramoff did that it defies belief to think any self-respecting, professional journalist would connect the two. Is Hilary Clinton corrupt because she raises scads of money? What about President Bush?

As far as I'm concerned, Russert can go join once-again disgraced Howell in the shame-on-journalists box. Where is Michael Getler when we need him?

Friday evening I hit Fogo de Chao with a friend. It was, in a word, amazing. To begin with, they let you hit a fairly large salad bar, as if you were in a Ponderosa, Golden Corral, or Western Sizzlin'. But the comparison to a standard low-budget steakhouse ends right there: once you've idiotically gorged on greens, they bring out a series of sides, and then you get to use the discs.

Oh yes: the discs.

One turns them from red to green and suddenly crazy gaucho-pants-wearing men with long knives show up to dispense slices of meat to all in attendance. Make them frown by rejecting them, or watch them smile when you agree to try the fillet of lamb! It's all good. For more background on the actual process, feel free to visit their website but put simply, there are 12 different types of meat floating around (some wrapped in delicious bacon) and all are excellent.

Saving room for dessert was a challenge, but we managed to do so, in the process polishing off a couple bottles of Brazilian wine.

The only sad moment came when the bill arrived. Despite the carnival like atmosphere, the style of dress (this is DC, after all) should've clued me in that this was more of a Sam & Harry's than a Ponderosa. Value wise, however, you definitely get your meat money's worth. The next time your favorite carnivore is in town, get him to Fogo, fast!

That's right: I'm finally going to hit Fogo tonight for some tasty meat.

Now if only the weather will stay perfect, this could be a great way to start out the evening...