What Caught My Eye Today

Wiretapping - President Bush signed a bill that overhauls rules about government eavesdropping and grants immunity to telecommunications companies that helped the U.S. spy on Americans in suspected terrorism cases. He called it "landmark legislation that is vital to the security of our people." Its passage was a major victory for Bush, an unpopular lame-duck president who nevertheless has been able to prevail over Congress on most issues of national security and intelligence disputes. Give credit where credit is due. You usually see terms like unpopular and lame-duck accompanied by terms like ineffective. All evidence to the contrary. I'd love to know how Bush manages to pull this off. Even before Bush signed the legislation, the American Civil Liberties Union said it would challenge the new law in court. "A law like this is fundamentally inconsistent with the Constitution and with the most basic democratic values," said an ACLU spokesperson. Big deal. Since when has a little thing like the Constitution or civil liberties ever stood in the way of national security. This is a America, darn it! We'll defend our freedom no matter how much freedom we have to take away to do it.

Iran - Condoleezza Rice flexed America's muscles in the Middle East Thursday, forcefully warning Iran the U.S. won't ignore threats and will take any action necessary to defend friends and interests in the Persian Gulf. A fresh Iranian missile test prompted a show of force from Israel as well. Yeah, this is going well. Though the White House has repeatedly asserted it prefers diplomacy to war, Rice used some of the administration's most direct language yet to make clear the U.S. is strengthening its military presence to counter Iran in the strategic Gulf region and is prepared to use force. She also referred to U.S. arms sales to Gulf allies and military aid to Israel as protections against any threat from Iran. Admittedly, foreign affairs is not exactly a specialty of mine, but how exactly is saber-rattling used as a diplomatic tool? I appreciate the fact that this sort of policy worked out well for us in the Cold War, but is it really the wisest course to bank on the same sort of thing working again with Iran. Newsflash, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad isn't exactly playing with a full deck. Dude might react to all this posturing by actually pushing the little red button.

Air Travel - Just when you thought that air travel couldn't get much worse... US Airways says it will start removing in-flight entertainment systems on domestic flights in November to save about $10 million annually in fuel and other costs. An airline spokesperson said the movie systems weigh about 500 pounds each, forcing planes to use more fuel to get around the country. Well now, that just sucks. I, for one, always looked forward to squinting into a blurry 5-inch screen to enjoy a censored movie with the dude sitting in front of me reclined all the way back and a screaming toddler sitting behind me. It was the way cinematic entertainment was meant to be consumed.

Life - Well now, this next story is just flat out depressing...at least if you are an American. It's not just the American dollar that's losing value. The Environmental Protection Agency has decided that an American life isn't worth what it used to be. The "value of a statistical life" is $6.9 million in today's dollars—-a drop of nearly $1 million from just five years ago. Oh, keep reading. It gets better. Though it may seem like a harmless bureaucratic recalculation, the devaluation has real consequences. When drawing up regulations, government agencies put a value on human life and then weigh the costs versus the lifesaving benefits of a proposed rule. The less a life is worth to the government, the less the need for a regulation, such as tighter restrictions on pollution. And now the p'et de resistance... The EPA figure is not based on people's earning capacity, or their potential contributions to society, or how much they are loved and needed by their friends and family. Yeah, what would be the point of that? Instead, economists calculate the value based on what people are willing to pay to avoid certain risks, and on how much extra employers pay their workers to take on additional risks. Gee, that's comforting. I can see the dudes in the executive suite scratching their heads over this one. Bottom-line vs. employee survival. Always nice to know that my life is thought of with such high regard.