Maybe They Thought They Could Get Away With It?

Updated: This post really touches on two very separate issues: The government possibly eavesdropping on citizens and the deplorable level of illiteracy in America today. I think we need to be concerned and vigilant about the first issue. I think we need to be horrified enough to be up in arms about the second. I've updated this post to add a link or two on the first topic, mark a clearer separation of the two, and add a further observation on the second topic.


I read Drudge fairly often, but not in anything like a regular, steady fashion. I do check him out from time to time. And from time to time my flit from flower to flower sort of brain alights upon two or more unlikely items that have little in common other than the fact that they caught our attention at the same time and we want to make an unlikely connection between them. Generally I have fun in my own little fashion, imagining all sorts of ridiculously improbable connections between point a, b, and 3 (42!)- just for fun. IT's not serious, you understand. I play conspiracy theories for laughs. I don't think I've ever shared one of my little head games here, but there's always a first time (which isn't the same thing as saying there should be a first time). But here we are:

Government Spies on Citizens? ~~Via the NYT (which means it might not be true) comes this disturbing, but not surprising report:

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.


Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.


The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval represents a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.


"This is really a sea change," said a former senior official who specializes in national security law. "It's almost a mainstay of this country that the N.S.A. only does foreign searches."


Nearly a dozen current and former officials, who were granted anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, discussed it with reporters for The New York Times because of their concerns about the operation's legality and oversight.

(Updated links: Michelle Malkin says this is an example of dishonest reporting and of 'Chicken Littles' on the loose- is she right? She has a large number of excerpts from vaious posts on the topic, and those interested in it should certainly read what she says. Political Pit Bull writes a clear and concise explanation of why he thinks we needn't worry. From the left, Mathew Yglesias disagrees, and writes that it's extremely troubling. The Washington Post has more, also from the left. From a more libertarian stance, Homeland Stupidity points out that the government is always trying to frighten citizens into giving up more of their civil liberties. "The Ministry of Truth" offers a rebuttal of Michelle Malkin's post, and explains that he too is concerned about trading imagined security for real losts of privacy, and that the President is violating the rule of law. Parental guidance suggested for Clintonian reference in final paragraph.)

For the moment let's put aside all speculation about the identity of the 'former senior official'- like, 'how former?' Clinton's Whitehouse? Carter's? It might make a difference. But never mind. And we won't ask any questions about the 'nearly a dozen current and former officials'- questions like, is that 11 former and 1 current, or half and half? But we aren't asking, because we're too busy making silly connections. It's late. Indulge us.

Maybe, we wonder, this secret authorization wasn't a secret because it was, you know, classified, as in an effort to protect national security by catching bad guys (you would have to scroll a long way down in that article to find this:"Warrants are still required for eavesdropping on entirely domestic-to-domestic communications, those officials say, meaning that calls from that New Yorker to someone in California could not be monitored without first going to the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court." sic Wonder which New Yorker they mean? And you have to go all the way to end to discover that the entire article may just be so much posturing).

But back to our linkage of two probably unrelated topics. Say the President and other government types have been signing papers and shifting laws (or more realistically, government policies) so they could eavesdrop without a warrent because....

They figured we couldn't read them anyway:

An estimated in one in 20 U.S. adults is not literate in English, which means 11 million people lack the skills to perform everyday tasks, a federal study shows. From 1992 to 2003, the nation's adults made no progress in their ability to read a newspaper, a book or any other prose arranged in sentences and paragraphs. They also showed no improvement in comprehending documents such as bus schedules and prescription labels.

The adult population did make gains in handling quantitative tasks, such as calculating numbers found on tax forms or bank statements. But even in that area of literacy, the typical adult showed only basic skills, enough to perform simple daily activities.

Hahaha- they thought we couldn't read them, get it? Hahaha....
Actually, it's really not very funny, is it? Breitbart has the link to the PDF file of the study. It's only 28 pages long. If I'm looking at it correctly, in 2003 23% of high school graduates scored 'Below Basic' in prose literacy (that chart is on page 5). That's 23 percent of high school graduates who have been defrauded, and it ought to be a national scandal. We're not even addressing the next level up, which I consider barely competent. Certainly students awarded a diploma ought to have achieved at least intermediate status. Basic, after all, includes the highly intellectual literary tasks of figuring out what programs are on by using your local television guide, as well as comparing the ticket prices for two events (three would be too complicated, apparently, and mark one as a proficient).

Page 3 of the report has the criteria for each level (Below Basic; Basic; Intermediate, etc), and I find that just as disturbing as the figures.

Presidents come and go, as do political systems, laws, and government agencies (although, like taxes, government agencies seem to have the survival ability of cockroaches).

But, but... I am speechless. How to describe the depradations and degradations possible in an illiterate democracy?
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UPdated Postscript to the NYT article: Jay Rockefeller is referred to frequently in the TIMES article. For another look at Senator Rockefeller see this post and the follow up. And be grateful you can read it.

Additional comment on the illiteracy of our citizenry: See page 14, Table 7. "Average prose, document, and quantitative literacy scores of adults, by educational attainment: 1992 and 2003", showing (statistically) significant declines in prose and document literacy among people with a college education. What other evidence do we need that our public education system is defective?