Pun Salad

• Worth more than a couple 'heh's: Google Future News checks out the Ron Paul presidency.

  Citing market forces as "a more powerful deterrent than mutually assured destruction" President Dr. Paul announced a bold plan to sell off more than 600 Minuteman and Trident nuclear missiles on the open market.

  (Via Hit&Run)

• Also amusing is this actual news item:

  In a move that might make some people scratch their heads, a loosely formed coalition of left-leaning bloggers are trying to band together to form a labor union they hope will help them receive health insurance, conduct collective bargaining or even set professional standards.

  Radley Balko scratches his head. Shawn Macomber was actually on hand at YearlyKos:

  Yesterday I attended a workshop entitled, "A Union for Bloggers: It's Time to Organize!" during which a moderator posited, "I think all bloggers, in one way or another, view themselves as professionals" and a woman bemoaned the travesty of her and husband's inability to quit their jobs and become full-time bloggers because the "social safety net is in tatters." In other words, Why won't society foot the bill for her hobby? Better organize!

• Black humor, but I couldn't help but snicker:

  Either way, man, that is not good way to die unless your name is Michael Vick.

  [But it wouldn't be too funny if it were you being mauled by dogs, would it?—ed. No, I guess not.]

It was introduced on Wednesday. The Senate passed it 60-28 on Friday. The House passed it on Saturday 227-183. And President Bush signed it yesterday.

What was it? Well, people disagree: the Washington Post (linked above) leads this way:

President Bush on Sunday signed into law an expansion of the government's power to eavesdrop on foreign terror suspects without the need for warrants.

But the New York Times says:

President Bush signed into law on Sunday legislation that broadly expanded the government's authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants.

Whoa, that's quite a difference! Which is it, "foreign terror subjects" or "American citizens"? If the nation's two leading news sources can't agree, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Orin Kerr, a most fair-minded and moderate person, has analysis of some of the issues here. Dafydd, a less fair-minded and reasonable person, opines:

And in the fullness of time, both the Democrat-controlled House and the Democrat-controlled Senate broke with longstanding Democratic tradition and decided to support the United States of America.

Silly bit of business, really; foreigners calling foreigners whose calls happen to be routed through nodes in Los Angeles or New York, and the National Security Agency was listening in when it appeared that one or the other foreign party was a terrorist, a terrorist supporter, or a terrorist harborer. But the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opened the Devil's gate by deciding that this violated some obscure clause of the Constitution of which we were all previously unaware: the constitutional right of privacy for all foreigners living abroad. A judge -- they won't say who -- struck down the program.

And the legislation was aimed toward "fixing" the legal environment to nullify the unnamed jurist's opinion. I tend to lean toward Dafydd's take. Intelligence gathering against terrorists is a no-brainer.

But, speaking of no-brainers: both New Hampshire reps, Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes, voted on the losing side. If I were a GOP ad-writer for the New Hampshire congressional races this year, I'd consider that my job just got considerably easier.