Dean over at Dean’s World suggests that the great huff in the US about warrantless wiretaps is actually about Project ECHELON.
TM Lutas says it very well: Essentially, what the executive order did was change the rules for which intercepted conversations were subject to human scrutiny. It’s absurd to think that already intercepted conversations cannot be listened to by agents of the executive absent a warrant. What is going on is not a new search but rather analysis of an already ongoing search, a search that’s been continually conducted in the world for decades. So if this search was OK during the Clinton administration (ECHELON far predates it) during peacetime, the exigencies of wartime mean we should blind our existing eyes? What kind of nonsense is this?
Dean’s World
What Lutas is suggesting is that the net move by Bush consisted of saying that human agents rather than machines could listen to the intecepts which were being made in any event. Trivial hardly begins to describe the distinction.
Written by jay on December 20th, 2005 with 15 comments.
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Harper isn’t running away from a stance on a single issue. He’s running away from the entire philosophy of governance he espoused as a “private citizen”. That’s a lot to swallow. Without some kind of rationale for that change, Harper is also exposing himself as unfit for the PM’s office. Either he’s lying now about what he believes, or he doesn’t believe in anything. If I wanted that, I might as well keep Paul Martin in office.
tilting at windmills
As thoughtful conservatives go Kevin is in the upper right hand drawer. I suspect, reading his excellent piece, that had Harper the slightest hint of the courage of his convictions - whether his 1997 convictions or his present ones - Kevin might well vote for him. But, as it stands, watching Harper back away from some rather pithy and trenchent things he said in 1997 leaves Kevin stuck for a choice.
I am quite certain that if Jack Layton is the answer we are all asking the wrong question. But when this election is finally over, and the Liberals form another minority government and the CPC is reduced to a Western rump, it will be time to start asking the right questions. Top of the pile: is there a conservative who does not see pandering as the sole means of climbing the greasy pole?
Written by jay on December 20th, 2005 with 2 comments.
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The Zerb wonders about polling given that so many journalists are innumerate. Greg Staples is looking at the SES leadership index to find signs of life in the CPC/Harper campaign.
Me, well I am looking at the SES December 19 numbers: 38 Lib, 29 CPC, 16% NDP and the regional breakdowns which - while they have a substantially higher margin of error, are interesting for trend:
Atlantic Lib 54, CPC 26, NDP 21 (+/-10)
Quebec Lib 32, CPC 10, Bloq 49 (+/-6)
Ontario Lib 46, CPC 32, NDP 19 (+/-6)
West Lib 32, CPC 42, NDP 19 (+/-5)
What the regionals are suggesting, and have been suggesting for some time, is that the CPC is not very close in Ontario and the Maritimes. About the only thing slowing the Liberals down is the NDP’s strength. However, as election day nears it is a good bet that the CLC will wheel out Buzz to explain strategic voting again and while the NDP popular support will only take a modest hit, where it counts, a good number of people are going to switch their NDP vote to the Liberals.
In the West the CPC looks pretty strong but here the question is voting efficiency. I’ve no doubt that Monte Solberg will take Medicine Hat with 70 or 80% of the vote and that this pattern will be repeated in many Alberta and Interior British Columbia ridings. Which will soak up the ten point CPC margin in the West before they actually hold any marginal seats or come close to winning any new ones.
In Quebec, the two questions are will the Bloq take 50% of the popular vote and will the Liberals manage to hang on to the shrinking perimeter of their Montreal redoubt. Is there enough money and enough ethnics to see the Liberals home with, say, 15 seats? I am hoping the Liberals are beaten back to Westmount simply because they need to understand how fundamentally Adscam has alienated Quebeckers.
Harper has been having a wonderful campaign. No gaffes, lots of interesting policy iniatives, a much greater sense of assurance — and it simply does not matter. As I predicted months ago, the SSM albatros is hung from his neck with a Kevlar rope. It is becoming the touchstone issue I suspected it would be.
If Harper and the CPC had gone with the idea that individual rights lie at the heart of modern conservatism they would have been able to diffuse this issue. It would have represented a genuinely fresh approach to the nature of governance and politics in Canada and it would have set an agenda which the Liberals could not have matched.
As it stands, the CPC is stuck with an incoherent platform plank which the Liberals gleefully are using as a proxy for the entire socon agenda.
Pathetic.
The only good news is that my own analysis suggests that we are going to have a Liberal minority, a Bloq Official Opposition and new leaders for bboth the Liberal and the Conservative parties.
Written by jay on December 20th, 2005 with 2 comments.
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