1) that Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled Bush's NSA surviellance program as unconstitional?

If you watch the news, there's little chance you could have missed it. A search on "warrantless wiretapping unconstitutional" returned the following hits at the top of the list in this order:

• USAToday
• CNN
• MSNBC
• NYTIMES
• NewTelephony
• Washington Post
• 312,000 results in all

All of these hits talk specifically about the Taylor decision.

2) that the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the program to remain in force?

at least while it considers the government's appeal. The 6th curcuit unanimously stated that "they balanced the likelihood an appeal would succeed, the potential damage to both sides and the public interest." In other words, there is a high likelihood that Taylor's ruling will be overturned and thus "stayed" her ruling until further review.

When searching on "6th circuit court nsa wiretapping" do you think I found a bunch of articles about how they did this? Here are the top hits:

• Washington Post
• ACLU site
• Civilliberty.about.com
• MSNBC
• Wired.com

Every single one of these hits merely spoke of Judge Taylor's ruling and the impending possibility of a review by the 6th circuit court. Not one of them was a headline suggesting that maybe Taylor's ruling was about to be overturned.

So how did I find this out? Conservative blogs of course (BigLizards and Powerline) which reference an AP story titled "Court Temporarily OKs Domestic Spying". I did a google search on that title and it appeared to me that only the first 4 or 5 results were specifically this AP story. None of the majors are listed and in fact, Yahoo, Excite and SFGate are the only "news" organization links that I can even find on the first page of results.

Hmmmm. Any ideas why this is so?

Two posts ago I linked to Patterico's blog where he is interviewing a former nurse who served at Guantanamo Bay. Here are links to the next 2 posts. There is one more to come.

Part 3

Part 4

If you are a news junkie about Iraq and the WoT, you HAVE to read these posts. They are fascinating!!

It's no wonder the public's trust in the Congress of the U.S. is somewhere in the range of 20%. It's only slightly cleaner than raw sewage.

The Foley embarrassment is a prime example. We've got a record high stock market, troubles in Iraq, an election coming up and the top story for the last several days now is Foley. Not only that, no one seems to care about Foley - he resigned too quickly. So now the focus is on which Republicans to fire. And correct me if I'm wrong, but it's amazing to me that the last two internal investigations have been Plame and now Foley - both of which seem to be way overblown. We now know that the Plame thing was nothing and while Foley is a sick disgusting freak, it's doubtful that there was a lot of willful negligence on the part of anyone else in Congress to hide it. But we'll see.

We have a race in Virginia where the main topic is Allen's alleged use of the N word decades ago, definite use of the macaca word - whatever that is, and the fact that his mother is jewish but he didn't tell anyone.

The race between a black Republican - Steele - in Maryland has gotten even more interesting since his challenger was involved in some way with a "black face" smear. Steele fought back with a very interesting letter here.

Frankly, I don't understand how at election time no one even talks about the ISSUES any more. It's constant mud slinging - on both sides. If it's not mudslinging, it's smoke and mirrors, half-truths and other inuendo to suggest that the opponent is ineffective, immoral or otherwise unfit for duty. How about running on a platform of "here's MY plan"?

It's almost enough to want to stay at home on election day :-(

I found a blogger that is posting an interview he had with a nurse that recently served for several months at GTMO - the Guantanamo Bay Facility.  Rather than to comment on it at all, I'll just let it speak for itself and you can tell me what you think. The blogger is Patterico.

This link is to part 2 of the 5 part series. Part I is here.

The remaining parts have yet to be posted.

The following is a quoted passage from Part 2:

"In my opinion, most of them are sincere in their belief they will win for the following reasons:

a. They are told they are assured of victory by their religion. They are raised with the belief that Islam is destined to become the dominant way of life for this planet. No matter how long it takes, it is inevitable. Once Islam is supreme, there will be no war, crime, poverty, or need. These are frequent talking points every Friday in the mosques.

b. Their leaders consistently stress that jihad is working and our culture is a hollow shell. They point to VietNam, Somalia, 9/11, Madrid (both the bombings and the elections immediately following), and the anti-war propagandists here in the United States. . . . The jihadists are constantly told that America is weak-willed and will turn and run if they can be inflicted with enough damage and peace can be delayed long enough.

c. They believe they are more committed to victory at any cost because it is all in God’s name and is the Will of God. They point to our efforts at minimizing both our own casualties and those of civilians. You never see them worry about collateral damage and destroying infrastructure. They see our compassion as weakness and our integrity as blindness to reality."

[note: emphasis is all mine]

And I'm sticking to my guns: Republicans will hold on to both the Senate and the House. Here's a post from my favorite blog Powerline.

STILL, nothing has changed from my earliest predictions:

• Dems don't have solutions only criticism
• Economy is still strong
• Gas prices coming down is a bonus for incumbents

Unless something BIG happens between now and the election, we'll continue to have Republican control of congress. Nothing to be excited about, but still better (in my mind) than having Democratic control.