Deregulator: Alive since '85!

What's in a name? How has every network news show and most mainstream reporting and commentary labeled Bush's NSA surveillance program? Domestic spying. Except it may involve few if any calls that took place in the United States at all. How do we know? Just read James Risen. That's right, the New York Times reporter who broke the story in advance of his book State of War . Excerpting the book, lawprof Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy suggests strongly that "most of the new surveillance program was not about domestic surveillance at all; most of it was about the surveillance of entirely international calls and e-mails that just happened to be routed through U.S. networks in the course of delivery." Kerr is hardly a Bush apologist. In this follow-up post , Kerr says he still can't decide whether the program violates the law. (I'm with him, and with today's editorial in the Rocky Mountain News -- I don't work there yet -- which suggests that if th...

Confused cons Check out the back-and-forth at The Corner between (mainly) Rod Dreher and Jonah Goldberg over "crunchy conservatism," Dreher's formulation that a growing number on the right have grown dismayed with a mindless worship of market capitalism and are willing to burn the blazers, wear Birkenstocks, and shop at Whole Foods. No, seriously. This is an emerging movement! Dreher's Sunday Times essay promoting his forthcoming book launched the back-and-forth at NR. Goldberg's criticism of Dreher (which dates from 2002 ) is golden. His main points: Only a handful of inconsequential libertarians (or hidebound Objectivists) pretend that market economics is an all-encompassing philosophy of life; Friedman and Hayek never attempted to explain beauty or spirituality on purely economic grounds. Dreher and his crunchy mates are in fact promoting a 21st century version of Yuppie-style consumerism -- show your class consciousness: eat organic food! This debate began m...