Grrrr..

NPR just mentioned the NSA's "domestic spying program". For the I've-lost-count time: it's not domestic. It covers international calls only. How hard is this to understand?

Anticipatory Warrants, again

Pretty much the same as last time. Orin Kerr once again called for comments, this time stating in his own voice:

Am I missing something, or does the text of the Fourth Amendment answer this question for us? The text says that no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause. In this context, it seems to me that "upon" means "following the establishment of" and "issue" means "signed by the judge." If that’s right, doesn’t the plain text of the Fourth Amendment prohibit anticipatory warrants?

. I replied in comments, much as I did then.

What makes you think that "upon", in this context, means "after", rather than "on the grounds of"?

Orin wrote:

If the constitution said, "no
warrants shall issue, but based on probable cause," or "no warrants
shall issue, but on the grounds of probable cause," doesn't that still
prohibit anticipatory warrants?

My answer: No, it doesn't. That's why you originally wrote: 'In this context, it seems to me that "upon" means "following the establishment of'; and if that's what "upon" means, then you're right.

But I don't think that is what it means. All it means, I think, is that the grounds for the warrant must add up to probable cause. So when the police tell the magistrate the facts as they know them, if he thinks they don't add up to probable cause, he must not issue the warrant, and if he does issue it then it's invalid. Similarly, if what the police told him turned out not to be facts after all, then his decision that they added up to probable cause is irrelevant, and the warrant is retroactively invalid.

But nowhere does it say that the magistrate's assesment of the facts, and decision that they constitute probable cause, and the consequent issue of the warrant, must occur after the facts themselves. All the magistrate is doing is issuing a legal opinion, based on a set of givens. If X and Y and Z are all true, then probable cause exists, otherwise it doesn't. He can do so when X and Y and Z are all true, or he can do so before they become true; if they never do, then his opinion, while still true, is irrelevant.

Ports

I've got no particular opinion on the port issue. My gut feeling is that there's nothing to worry about. But this isn't about that, it's about this post from Instapundit yesterday, quoting email from reader Steve Soukup:

Drudge runs with the headline "Arab Co., White House had Secret Agreement..." Follow the link and you find an AP story detailing this "secret agreement." At the end of the third paragraph, is the following, "Outside legal experts said such obligations are routinely attached to U.S. approvals of foreign sales in other industries." Really? So how, exactly, is this news? Does it really deserve to be fronted on Drudge?

Mr Soukup seems to have trouble reading. This is the news. If such obligations are routinely attached to approval in other industries, why weren't they attached here? That's what makes this agreement at least somewhat unusual. There may well be a good reason why the usual requirements were not made here, but in the absence of any obvious explanation it's a fair point to challenge.

Proxy For the People?

NBC reporter David Gregory thinks the White House press corps is a "proxy for the American people". That's odd, I thought our proxies were these people, and this one. I don't recall seeing Mr Gregory's name on any ballot.

But somehow he's got this idea in his head, so just to make things clear: Mr Gregory, whatever proxy you think you hold for me, I hereby revoke it.

Amazon Recommendation

Amazon does this thing where it looks at what you have bought, and what others who bought the same things have also bought, and guesses what else you might like to buy. Sometimes the results are useful, and sometimes...

Here's a f'rinstance. Today Amazon sent me a friendly note, recommending this book, by W. Leon Smith and everyone's favourite crazy woman, Cindy Sheehan. Why on earth did Amazon think I'd be interested? Because "We've noticed that customers who have purchased You Can't Say That! : The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscrimination Laws, by David E. Bernstein, also purchased books by W. Leon Smith". Now I've never heard of this W. Leon Smith fellow, but if he's co-writing books with Mother Cindy, then I don't think I'm interested in anything else he's written either, even if the people who buy them are also discriminating enough to buy Bernstein's book.

Those Wacky Danes

Denmark seems to be flavour of the month in the blogosphere. Everyone's reprinting those cartoons, Murray over at Silent Running is running a Buy Danish campaign, people are once again raising the memory of Good King Christian, and everything's coming up Marguerite Daisies.

But there's another side to the Danes, and David Bernstein doesn't want it to be forgotten.

Figaro

Yisrael Medad points out that the current cartoon brouhaha is merely the latest outbreak of a long-standing problem:

I cobble together a verse comedy about the customs of the harem, assuming that, as a Spanish writer, I can say what I like about Mohammed without drawing hostile fire. Next thing, some envoy from God knows where turns up and complains that in my play I have offended the Ottoman empire, Persia, a large slice of the Indian peninsula, the whole of Egypt, and the kingdoms of Barca, Tripoli, Tunisi, Algeria, and Morocco. And so my play sinks without trace, all to placate a bunch of Muslim princes, not one of whom, as far as I know, can read but who beat the living daylights out of us and say we are 'Christian dogs.' Since they can't stop a man thinking, they take it out on his hide instead..."

The Marriage of Figaro (1784), Act V, Scene 3