Did people miss Colbert's performance? Because as I was reading this oh-so-boring profile of Tony Snow I came across this gem of a final paragraph:

Some friends were surprised that Snow accepted Bush's job offer, given his recent health problems. "Why he is doing this is absolutely beyond me," Beckel says. But "he has got a great deal of spiritual faith."

And that may be what becoming the public face of an administration in trouble requires: a leap of faith.

"I agonized a lot about whether to do this," Snow says. "Now I have no doubt. It's just your gut."

At first I thought, "what an idiot, he sounds just like Colbert!" Later, after some reflection, I came to the conclusion that perhaps, oddly enough, Snow as referring to his bout with colon cancer, thus saying it was "just" (as in, only) his "gut" (as in, colon/small intestine) and thus not important. Maybe it's a weird Snow joke. Then I went back to my original conclusion that Snow is an idiot.

Why? Because of thoughts like this:

Snow majored in philosophy and wasn't sure what to do after his 1977 graduation. He was a caseworker for the mentally ill in North Carolina, driving tens of thousands of miles dealing with what he calls "really hard, gut-wrenching cases." He spent time teaching in Cincinnati and also in Kenya, which he says convinced him of "the incredible failure of socialism." And he spent a year doing graduate work in economics and philosophy at the University of Chicago.

There's that gut again! And wow, who knew that in the late seventies, the problems in Cincinnati and Kenya could be tied to "socialism"? I guess the war on poverty was pretty silly stuff, eh? A good thing the private sector swooped in to rescue both of those areas, right? (And what does Kenya have to do with socialism? Perhaps a better analogy would be counter-insurgencies...)

My gut tells me Snow is going to be the worst Press Secretary ever. Why? Because he's trying to be friendly to the journalists...as someone who wants the process to work properly (and it's been broken almost the entire Bush presidency) I admire his efforts. But the sad fact is that Fleischer and McClellan, while awful press secretaries, were quite useful in their roles to the administration. They ensured, day after day, that no news came from the White House. Snow, by contrast, will probably let slip some juicy tidbits from time to time. And in this administration, a "juicy tidbit" is often a "leak which damages credibility". Let's start the snowstorm!

Four bang worthy, indeed:

President Bush’s job-approval rating has fallen to its lowest mark of his presidency, according to a new Harris Interactive poll. Of 1,003 U.S. adults surveyed in a telephone poll, 29% think Mr. Bush is doing an “excellent or pretty good” job as president, down from 35% in April and significantly lower than 43% in January. Approval ratings for Congress overall also sank, and now stand at 18%.

Breaking the 30% barrier is huge...few presidents have ever fallen so far. People are finally starting to wake up and realize we need new leadership, in all branches of government.

Time to bust out the champagne and make a toast to taking our country back!

Regardless of my disdain for the idea of privacy, I do feel that in America, certain things are sacred (hint: they're in the constitution!) and one of those is a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. If I purchase a TiVo and it tracks my television viewing, it does so for marketing purposes, not to determine if I'm a violent criminal. Why? Because the government is not involved. (If violent criminals were found to purchase Coke over Pepsi, I'm sure marketing folks would find a way to sell them soda on their way to their latest assault) To contrast, if the government were to begin tracking where automobiles traveled, such a use could clearly not be for marketing. The government isn't in the business of selling soda: it's in the business of stopping crime. And that's where a bright line must be drawn; the police don't have the right to stop cars heading to a 'suspicious neighborhood' any more than the NSA has the right to intercept phone calls that 'look suspicious'. Sure, both might cut crime slightly, but as any good 4th amendment scholar will tell you, unreasonable searches are simply not permitted, unless an agency has probable cause to obtain a warrant.

This situation, however, is far worse, because rather than the police (or the NSA) presuming folks are guilty, it's as if the police called every gas station (except the qwest ones!) and said "make a log of who stops here" in order to track cars. Such a system would be narrowly "legal" in that the gas station attendants wouldn't be doing anything inappropriate. Plus, their decision to "voluntarily" hand over the records to the police would seem to mean no laws were broken. However, this gets around the point above: such a move still presumes people are guilty.

To tie this back to the NSA, having large telecom companies "coerced" by the government into providing free access to their databases for the NSA to data mine clearly goes against that idea: if we are presumed innocent, then why are we being spied upon?

This is not to say that such an idea is illegal: these are private companies and they can do with their data what they wish. (Although I'd suggest all good progressives immediately start flocking to Qwest to show our support for private companies that 'get it') But the collusion between the government and private industry is astounding: I assume the NSA will do whatever it takes to spy upon people. But I never assumed they'd simply pay existing telecoms into providing data.

What's the point of all the fancy sigint equipment if, at the end of the day, the solution is to call Bob at Verizon up and do a data dump directly?

Regardless, even if some people aren't angry, they should be. Simply because a majority of people think it's cool to hand over phone records without a warrant doesn't make it any less important. (Tyranny of the majority, anyone?)

Until we live in a country where people are assumed to be criminals, we must fight to preserve our constitution. And this set of warrant-less data analysis goes against that idea. People will argue that the program increases security. But cops argue that about profiling, too! We cannot trade our liberty for such an abomination.

As most of you know, I'm not terribly concerned with the increasing lack of privacy in the world. (Shame, as a concept, is a pretty weak thing to hang a "right" upon.) RFID tags aren't going to lead to big brother, etc. etc.

As I'm setting up my new google calendar, therefore, I instantly moved many of my items into my "public" calendar with the exception of trivial things that clutter up the main mess. Then I came across a dilemma: do I put my friend's birthdays into the public or private calendar?

On one level, the information is public knowledge. Yet does the world need to know whose birthday's I have in my calendar? I think, all things being equal, that I'd probably import them into the public side. What do you guys believe? (Since it is likely your birthdays I'm moving over!)

What with all the angry bashing of Jonathan Chait at TNR I thought I'd remind people of the best Chait smackdown, in TNR itself, from my favorite Jonathan, Jonathan Cohn. Let's revisit it, shall we?

Perhaps you'd argue that the political consequences of taking firmer stands on the tax cuts and the war would have brought about electoral catastrophe for the Democrats in 2002. But how much worse could it have been? We can't rerun the election, so we'll never know for sure, but didn't the Democrats lose every vulnerable Senate seat but one? And didn't I hear over and over again, in news interviews and in the polls, that voters supported Republicans because they couldn't figure out where the Democrats stood on the issues? Here, again, I think Dean makes a pretty compelling case: Politically, sometimes its better be strong and wrong than weak and right.

Vintage Cohn. TNR isn't a bad publication: for every person on the board who voted to endorse Lieberman, there was a Cohn defending Dean and showing the right way to win votes in America.

Help! I'm being swamped with work, at work! (In addition to fuming over having my rental car repo'd and then won back again. Grr!)

In other news, I saw Tom Toles at a party on Friday night. Go figure.

If you haven't heard yet, be sure to check the "best moment" of the Bush administration right here.

In many ways, however, this encapsulates an important truth for the White House Press Corps: instead of trying to stump Bush (by asking him what the greatest mistake of his presidency was, for instance), reporters should try to get him to boast about things. Both methods can be quite revealing.

Oh, the somewhat odd USDA:

Career appointees at the Department of Agriculture were stunned last week to receive e-mailed instructions that include Bush administration "talking points" -- saying things such as "President Bush has a clear strategy for victory in Iraq" -- in every speech they give for the department.

...later...

Now, you might still be scratching your heads, trying to figure out how this is going to work when people expect a talk about agriculture issues. Not to worry. The attachments -- which can be viewed at http://www.washingtonpost.com/fedpage -- show how easy it is to work a little Iraq happy talk into just about anything.

There's a sample introduction: "Several topics I'd like to talk about today -- Farm Bill, trade with Japan, WTO, avian flu . . . but before I do, let me touch on a subject people always ask about . . . progress in Iraq." See? Smooth as silk.

Hilarious. I'm not terribly unhappy I no longer work there, considering. The career people at the USDA are all hard-working professionals, helping rural communities, keeping our forests healthy or testing herds for diseases. The political appointees, on the other hand, don't seem to understand what the mission of the USDA actually is. Instead, they seem to view the purpose of the USDA as the ability to get Republicans elected to office. Odd, eh?