THUMBS LIII: Memo to N.Y. Times: Look Up ‘Major Shift’ in Your Funk & Wagnall’s; Five Fences Proposed for 698 Miles of U.S. Mexican Border; Reading Scores Fall for Whites, Rise for Blacks, Asians: TV blamed
By David M. Kinchen
Editor, Huntington News Network
Hinton, WV (HNN) –This is the 53rd installment of a column expressing approval or disapproval of recent news events, commentaries, etc. Thumbs Up for approval; Thumbs Down for disapproval. This is your column as much as mine; I welcome contributions, which will be credited in the item. The contributions can come from within the HNN family or from our readers – I welcome them all. Contact me at davidkinchen@hotmail.com.
THUMBS DOWN – To New York Times reporter James Risen for saying last week
that President Bush’s use of the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on
Americans and others “without court approval was a major shift [my
emphasis] in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the
National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad.”
Risen – not coincidentally – has a new book coming out on the subject.
According to NewsMax.com, “During the 1990s, President Bill Clinton ordered the National Security Agency to use its super-secret Echelon surveillance program to monitor the personal telephone calls and private email of employees who worked for foreign companies in a bid to boost U.S. trade.
Sounds like a precedent to me (Yeah, I know: two wrongs don’t make a right). The conservative – OK, right-wing – online news service added: “In 2000, former Clinton CIA director James Woolsey set off a firestorm of protest in Europe when he told the French newspaper Le Figaro that he was ordered by Clinton in 1993 to transform Echelon into a tool for gathering economic intelligence.”
On Monday, Dec. 19, 2005, David Stout of the New York Times wrote: “President Bush offered a vigorous and detailed defense of his previously secret electronic-surveillance program today, calling it a legal and essential tool in the battle against terrorism and saying that whoever disclosed it had committed a ‘shameful act.’”
Stout added: “Bush said the surveillance would continue, that it was being conducted under appropriate safeguards and that Congress had been kept informed about it. He rejected any suggestion that the surveillance program was symptomatic of unchecked power in the presidency.
“The president also called on the Senate to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, whose government-surveillance powers Mr. Bush said were vital in keeping up with terrorist plots. Some of the very same lawmakers who criticized American intelligence agencies for failing to "connect the dots" before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks are now blocking renewal of the Patriot Act, Mr. Bush said.”
Stout reported that the NSA program was anything but secret, adding that Bush said that “leaders in the United States Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times on this program,” adding “it has been effective in disrupting the enemy while safeguarding our personal liberties. This program has targeted those with known links to Al Qaeda."
Echelon had been used by the Clinton Administration, NewsMax.com reported on Dec. 18, 2005, “to monitor millions of personal phone calls, private emails and even ATM transactions inside the U.S. - all without a court order. The massive invasion of privacy was justified by Echelon's defenders as an indispensable national security tool in the war on terror.” Precedent, anyone?
NewsMax added: “Clinton officials also utilized the program in ways that had nothing to do with national security - such as conducting economic espionage against foreign businesses.”
In 1996, President Clinton signed the Economic Espionage Act, which, according to the Christian Science Monitor, authorized intelligence gathering on foreign businesses.
"The Clinton administration has attached especial importance to economic intelligence, setting up the National Economic Council [NEC] in parallel to the National Security Council," the Monitor reported in 1999.
"The NEC routinely seeks information from the NSA and the CIA," the paper continued, citing anonymous officials. "And the NSA, as the biggest and wealthiest communications interception agency in the world, is best placed to trawl electronic communications and use what comes up for US commercial advantage."
THUMBS UP – To the House Republicans who voted Dec. 15 to toughen a border
security bill by requiring the Department of Homeland Security to build five
fences along 698 miles of the U.S.-Mexican border to “block the flow of
illegal immigrants and drugs” into the U.S.. I read this in the New York
Times, so it must be true! Still, I checked it out with other news sources
(the motto of the soon-to-be-defunct City News Service of Chicago is “If
your mother says she loves you, check it out.”) and the Grey Lady wasn’t
kidding.
At least these Republicans aren’t like those in the pocket of businessmen who want cheap and docile illegal alien labor; the amendment to the bill would require the construction of the fences along stretches of land in California, New Mexico, Texas and Arizona that have been deemed among the most porous corridors of the border, The Grey Lady of W.43rd Street reports.
The Times: “The vote on the amendment was a victory for conservatives who had long sought to build such a fences along the Mexican border. But the vote was sharply assailed by Democrats, who compared the fences to the Berlin Wall in Germany. Twelve Republicans also voted against the amendment.” I’m surprised the opponents didn’t compare the wall to the Israeli security fence or similar ones in Morocco, Turkey, India and other countries.
“Representative David Dreier, Republican of California, hailed the fences as a necessary tool to ensure border security. Construction of the barriers is to include two layers of reinforced fencing, cameras, lighting and sensors near Tecate and Calexico on the California border; Columbus, N.M.; and El Paso, Del Rio, Eagle Pass, Laredo and Brownsville in Texas.”
I’ve personally been to Tecate, a brewery center on the border between Mexicali and Tijuana. Unlike the latter two cities, there is no city across the border from Tecate, just rural San Diego County. Calexico is on the California side of the border with Mexicali, capital of the state of Baja California, and Tijuana is opposite the San Diego suburbs.
The Times added: “The vote on the amendment came on a day when the tough border security bill survived an unexpected tactical challenge from several Republicans. The bill was criticized by some moderates because it does not grant millions of undocumented workers the right to work temporarily in the United States and by some conservatives who argued that the measure was not tough enough.”
THUMBS UP – To Sam Dillon of the New York Times, for reporting that “the average American college graduate’s literacy in English declined significantly over the past decade, according to results of a nationwide test” released last week.
The National Assessment of Adult Literacy, given in 2003 by the Department of Education, is the nation's most important test of how well adult Americans can read, Dillon wrote, adding that “the test also found steep declines in the English literacy of Hispanics in the United States, and significant increases among blacks and Asians.’
Dillon: “When the test was last administered, in 1992, 40 percent of the nation's college graduates scored at the proficient level, meaning that they were able to read lengthy, complex English texts and draw complicated inferences. But on the 2003 test, only 31 percent of the graduates demonstrated those high-level skills. There were 26.4 million college graduates. The college graduates who in 2003 failed to demonstrate proficiency included 53 percent who scored at the intermediate level and 14 percent who scored at the basic level, meaning they could read and understand short, commonplace prose texts.”
These results seem to confirm one of my deeply held beliefs, that grade inflation in college is making an entire generation of low-achievers look good without working hard. This may just be the feeling of a grumpy old (I prefer “seasoned”) man who went to college before grade inflation. Yes, Virginia, there was such a time!
Dillon adds that “Grover J. Whitehurst, director of an institute within the Department of Education that helped to oversee the test, said he believed that the literacy of college graduates had dropped because a rising number of young Americans in recent years had spent their free time watching television and surfing the Internet.”
Amen to that, but do not under any circumstances consider reading the excellent content on the three sites of Huntington News Networks the equivalent of “surfing the Internet.”
THUMBS UP to: Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Happy Kwanzaa! Happy New Year!