It's been big in the news this weekend, the issue of surveillance of American citizens by police and the NSA. It's amazing how many fronts are being challenged as the Orwellian creepiness of it all is starting to sink in.

We start with this NYT article on the NSA surveillance program and Senator Arlen Specter's assertion that the Bush administration has broken the law with illegal wiretaps.

Then we have another NYT article on Police complaints about surveillance of their union protests. Now that the cameras are being turned on the cops at their first amendment-protected activities, they are objecting to the treatment.

SFGate has an article discussing how the NSA wiretap program has been a failure. Apparently their broad data-mining of American citizens has just turned up a bunch of useless crap leads and wasted law enforcement's time. This is a common outcome of Bush administration policies, not only are they arrogant and irresponsible, but incompetent as well. We probably would allow the program to be legislated or protected by an act of Congress without making a stink if it actually had a beneficial purpose. It would be one thing if they broke the law and actually found a terrorist or two, but instead they've just wasted the FBI's time and probably made us less safe. Very typical of this cabal. Cheney, staying in reality-denying character has stated that eavesdropping without warrants "has saved thousands of lives." Apparently the program uncovered Saddam's nuclear program and allowed him to secure Iraq's WMDs as well.

The Bush administration has been suppressing NASA scientists trying to warn the public about global warming.

An additional entry for the incompetence file is on the underfunding of the FDA office responsible for certifying generic drugs. I wonder how much money has been lost by the delay in certifying generics, but I bet the drug companies aren't complaining about this unintentional extension of their patent-protected prices.

Finally, an unrelated but interesting story on how federally-mandated safety improvements on SUVs (lowering them by as little as half an inch) is lowering the fatality rate from car-SUV collisions by as much as 50%. There's another reason to hate SUVs, not only will they kill us in the long term, they are a short term danger to everyone on the road.