Monthly Archives: September 2014

The Next Turn of the Ratchet

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Creeping up on little cat feet is the war on access to the internet. The rulers don’t like that people can speak to other people freely on-line. They really hate that people can talk about the rulers on-line, without fear of prosecution. So, they want to regulate the Internet, which means shitting down open debate.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi wants to give federal regulators sweeping new powers over Internet access.

The move is necessary, she said Monday, to save net neutrality and protect Internet users. But Republicans and business groups warn that applying utility-style regulations to the Internet would strangle economic growth and ultimately mean worse Internet service.

“I oppose special Internet fast lanes, only open to those firms large enough to pay big money or fraught enough to give up big stakes in their company,” the California Democrat wrote in a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, urging him to classify broadband as a “telecommunications service” under Title II of the Communications Act.

Pelosi is the latest—and highest-ranking—Democrat to back the controversial regulatory maneuver. Her position puts more political pressure on Wheeler and the other commission Democrats to invoke the powers.

Supporters argue that using Title II is the only way to enact net-neutrality rules that can hold up in court. In January, a federal court struck down the old net-neutrality rules, which were based on weaker authority under Title I of the law.

Net neutrality is the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally. Wheeler prompted a major backlash earlier this year by proposing new rules that would allow broadband providers to charge websites for faster service in certain cases.

As soon as you tell providers that they cannot discriminate as to who they allow on their networks, the Feds can start telling them who they can allow on their networks. The Left can hoot and holler all they like about equal access, but what they seek is something like the Fairness Doctrine for the Internet. Regulators can then tax speech they don’t like by telling ISP’s they have too much or too little of certain content.

Virtually all Democrats support net neutrality, but only some of them have explicitly called for the FCC to reclassify Internet providers. So far, 14 senators and 37 House members have backed the controversial option.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has vowed to defend the agency’s rules, but he hasn’t taken a position on which regulatory provision the agency should use. President Obama has said he opposes Internet fast lanes, but has also been silent on Title II.

Republicans and broadband providers, however, have promised to do everything they can to stop the FCC from using its Title II powers on the Internet. In a May letter to the FCC, House GOP leaders warned that applying “antiquated regulation on the Internet” would “needlessly inhibit the creation of American private-sector jobs, limit economic freedom and innovation, and threaten to derail one of our economy’s most vibrant sectors.”

You see the classic recipe for a break of the walls. All of the Democrats are for it and the Republicans are mounting a disorganized defense. That’s probably why the Left is feeling cocky enough to offer up an amendment to the Constitution that repeals the First Amendment.

Section 1. To advance democratic self-government and political
equality, and to protect the integrity of government and the electoral
process, Congress and the States may regulate and set reasonable limits
on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to
influence elections.

The Citizen’s United case has sent the Left bonkers because it breaks their lock on campaign financing. If you look at the big money operations in politics, they tilt Left. A little math shows they get 72% of the money from the top-10 donors. The Democrats have been the party of plutocrats for decades, despite rhetoric to the contrary. Citizens United lets the GOP target rich individuals and corporations to try and even the playing field, which is why the Left is going crazy trying to repeal the First Amendment.

Section 2. Congress and the States shall have power to implement
and enforce this article by appropriate legislation, and may
distinguish between natural persons and corporations or other
artificial entities created by law, including by prohibiting such
entities from spending money to influence elections.

The last part, “influence elections” is where the real mischief lies. Limiting how much a candidate can spend or how much someone can give to a candidate is odious, but not lethal. Once you allow the regulation of influence, you have a licensing regime for political participation. Since just about anyone could influence an election, everyone will need permission from the state to participate in politics. This would extend to the media, even though they say it does not.

Section 3. Nothing in this article shall be construed to grant
Congress or the States the power to abridge the freedom of the
press.

News companies are corporations and the people who work there are natural persons. If you can pass a law banning corporations from influencing elections, then you have effectively banned the New York Times from editorializing about campaign or endorsing candidates. Since I’m a human and this blog is written by me, Harry Reid could ban me from blogging about the campaigns. If you don’t think that’s how it works, just consider how the court has pretended the health care mandate is a tax.

Harry Reid will not live to see this pass, but that does not mean it will die with him. This time it will fail but they will come back with something else. They will keep trying until they find some way to get greater control political speech. Today it sounds absurd, but a generation ago it was absurd to think bakers would be forced at gun point to make cakes for homosexuals. Yet, here we are.

No One Votes For A Pay Cut

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There were two main reasons why the the Scottish vote was not close. One is the staggeringly high welfare class in Scotland. It’s not Camden with kilts and bagpipes, but it is close. The only way that block was going for independence is if it meant bigger welfare checks and more entertainments. The very word “independence” is frightening to the under-class. Welfare types are not very bright, but they are clever. They know how the system works better than most. I’m sure in the welfare underground the math of this had been worked out long ago. They did the math.

Even if the size of the loafer class is exaggerated, there was never a compelling reason to leave. All the romantic crap about Braveheart is moving to some people, but most people want to live lives of quiet desperation. Most men do not want “to live deliberately and confront the essential facts of life.” Most men like things the way they are. It’s why the Left is winning the war on civilization. Once they push through some toppling of a institution, people get used to it.

This vote also provides a nice reminder of the dishonestly of polling. The polling companies need close races that appear to go back and forth. The press wants polls showing closes races. All of the incentives are pointing in one direction. Polling is not science. It is barely statistics. It’s how Research 2000 was able to sell fake polls to the Daily Kos so easily. The people at Kos want to believe so strongly, they lost the ability to see when they were being conned.

This vote was never close. The result is pretty much what early polling suggested. The press and the polling outfits wished otherwise and the inevitable momentum slowly collapsed the polls until we had a deadlock. By the standards of modern elections, this was a blowout. For the next week, the pollsters will spin the result focusing on what changed in the final days and how the winning side won and the losing side lost. Throw in a few conspiracy theories about rigged votes and the polling gets forgotten.

Bad Time For Fake Nerds

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Looks like one of their icons is a serial fabulist:

Religious fanatics have an odd habit of overreacting when people have the audacity to question their fanaticism. In Iraq, radical Islamic jihadists are systemically murdering and beheading Christians, Jews, and even Muslims who do not pledge fealty to ISIS’s religious tenets. Hundreds of years ago, church authorities and Aristotelian acolytes imprisoned Galileo for having the audacity to reject geocentrism in favor of heliocentrism. The bible recounts how Christians were persecuted and stoned, and Jesus himself was crucified for contradicting the religious dogma of the day.

You will bow to the religious zealots, or you will pay the price.

Which brings us to l’affaire de Tyson. Neil Tyson, a prominent popularizer of science (he even has his own television show) was recently found to have repeatedly fabricated multiple quotes over several years. The fabrications were not a one-off thing. They were deliberate and calculated, crafted with one goal in mind: to elevate Tyson, and by extension his audience, at the expense of know-nothing, knuckle-dragging nutjobs who hate science. Tyson targeted journalists, members of Congress, even former President George W. Bush. And what was their crime? They were guilty of rejecting science, according to Tyson.

There’s only one problem. None of the straw man quotes that Tyson uses to tear them down are real. The quote about the numerically illiterate newspaper headline? Fabricated. The quote about a member of Congress who said he had changed his views 360 degrees? It doesn’t exist. That time a U.S. president said “Our God is the God who named the stars” as a way of dividing Judeo-Christian beliefs from Islamic beliefs? It never happened.

This is a common problem on the Left. No one challenges them so they start making stuff up. Celebrity scientists are a lot like celebrity chefs. They are better at being celebrities than being scientists. They start getting sloppy and before long they are making claims that are ridiculous. It’s why a lot of writers never read the comments of their own stories. They fear they will start writing to please their admirers.

Tyson does not seem like an evil person. He is a bright guy by conventional standards, but one always has to wonder about the elephant in the room. His scientific work is meager and ended more than 20 years ago. He made his name and career as a presenter, PR man and popularizer of science. Nothing wrong with any of it, but he probably should not be passing himself off as a scientist these days.

He is the John Stuart of science. Stuart does comedy, but he is not a comic. He is a preacher, telling the faithful the good news every night. He uses comedy as a tool and a shield. Tyson has the same act, except he uses science instead of comedy. Instead of mocking the benighted with comedy, Tyson tells the chosen that science proves their deepest beliefs. In another age, science would be replaced by the gods and Tyson would be dressed as a shaman.

The Great Divide

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I’ve been reading Steve Sailer for a long time now. I enjoy his writing and usually his choice of topics. I don’t always agree with him, but he makes his case without a bunch of chanting and religious posturing. I think his posts on crime and demographics are some of the best you can find. Unlike anyone in the paid media, he actually supplies data in his posts. That’s also why he is no longer paid media. You’re only permitted to use data in support of the current narrative.

All that said, Steve Sailer is perfectly able to hold some nutty ideas. We all are. His post over at Takimag on Scottish Independence finishes with what I would call a very wrong and very strange opinion.

The Scottish independence movement inevitably inspires the question of secession in America. As John Derbyshire has pointed out, the United States represents a vast expanse of territory, and people from distant regions increasingly get on each other’s nerves. In an era of free trade zones and military alliances, wouldn’t it be simplest for the U.S. to break up like the SNP wants the U.K. to end?

I don’t think so, however. The big difference is that that the U.K. is primarily a north-south country, while the U.S. is an east-west country. Latitude divides people more than longitude. In America, the most important political divide is distance from deep water, such as oceans or the Great Lakes: what I call the Dirt Gap. San Francisco and Manhattan, for example, are 2900 miles apart, but are similarly liberal because family formation is equally unaffordable due to both being similarly constrained from expansion by water. Hence, the “family values” party is less relevant where family formation is prohibitively expensive.

Anyone who has spent time up and down the east coast of America knows this is hilariously wrong. People in Maine have one thing in common with the people of South Carolina. They both speak a version of American English. That’s it. The great divide in America, if one wants to declare one, is north and south as in Blue and Gray as in Roundhead versus Cavalier. It drives our politics and it is what animates the Left. It is the divide John Derbyshire calls the Cold Civil War.

But, he is correct to note there is a divide between the coasts and the interior and the two coasts themselves. I’ve been to the West Coast many times, but I know nothing about it, at least not in the way I know the east coast. The people all seem weird to me, except the Mexicans, who are pretty much like Mexicans everywhere. The whites are all a little odd as I’m sure I would seem odd to them. Even Southerners find the west coast aloofness strange and off-putting. To northeastern types, it’s positively kooky.

Having been around the country quite a bit, I can make the case for all sorts of regional divides. American is a big country with a lot of different types of people. Local weirdness is everywhere. None of it is like the Blue-Gray line. It is what drives the Cult of Modern Liberalism. Their obsession with race, for example, is tied directly to their mythological role in the Civil Rights Movement. The war on Walmart is a war on Southerners. The absurd reaction to Paula Dean was a visceral reaction to her overt “southerness.” The war on Christianity is really a war on Evangelicals. Northern Catholics think the snake handlers make religion look bad.

I can go issue by issue and tease out a Blue-Gray explanation. You can’t do that with the other ways to divide the country. The Blue-Gray line is not tied to geography. It is a culture line that has jumped its natural boundaries. Look at Texas. Austin is the Progressive enclave in an otherwise populist-conservative region. I know lots of NYC and DC based Progressives who regularly go to Austin. They mock the rest of the state as Red Neck Land. On the other hand, the people in Red Neck Land call Austin the People’s Republic.

That’s why John Derbyshire’s argument does not work. The Blue-Gray line is not based in geography. There’s some of it, but every Gray area has pockets of Blue. On the other side, the Deepest Blue region, which is New England, has a lot of Gray. New Hampshire holds a very popular NASCAR race and Maine is full of white trash Acadians. There’s simply no way to divide up the turf without localized blood baths as one tribe purges the other. Maybe that’s the future, but in a feminized and timid culture, it is not the way to bet. Instead, everyone will voluntarily submit to an increasingly authoritarian custodial state.

The Lack of Restraint

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The primary reason certain groups struggle to accumulate wealth is the lack of impulse control. Storing away the proceeds of today’s labor requires an ability to say no to yourself in order to say yes in the future. You come into some money and your greedy self wants to spend it on stuff. That would be fun, but that other part of you, the part looking down the road, steps in a says you have to save the money. Instead of good times now you stash away for another time.

This ability to control your passion sis directly linked to intelligence and this shows up in profiles of human populations. Dumb people can’t think mlomg term, so they atc on how they feel in the moment. Some people, like this person for example, lack the ability to say no to themselves. They get an idea in their head and they act on it.

Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston has been suspended for the first half of Saturday’s game against Clemson after he was seen shouting an obscene sexual phrase on campus Tuesday.

FSU interim president Dr. Garnett S. Stokes and athletic director Stan Wilcox denounced Winston’s “offensive and vulgar” behavior in a statement Wednesday to announce the punishment.

“As the university’s most visible ambassadors, student-athletes at Florida State are expected to uphold at all times high standards of integrity and behavior that reflect well upon themselves, their families, coaches, teammates, the Department of Athletics and Florida State University,” the joint statement said. “Student-athletes are expected to act in a way that reflects dignity and respect for others.”

The joint statement also said Winston would undergo “internal discipline.”

On Tuesday, Florida State students began flooding Twitter as several witnessed the reigning Heisman Trophy winner allegedly stand on a table in or in the immediate vicinity of the student union and yell obscenities, mimicking a popular Internet video. The phrase is of a sexual nature.

Winston apologized for his “selfish” act.

“First of all, I want to apologize to the university, my coaches and to my teammates,” Winston said. “I’m not a ‘me’ person, but in that situation, it was a selfish act, and that’s not how you do things around here.

“I want to apologize to my teammates because I have now made a selfish act for them. That’s all.”

Coach Jimbo Fisher, speaking during Wednesday’s ACC teleconference, also showed his displeasure for what happened.

“It was not a good decision,” Fisher said. “You can’t make certain statements that are derogatory or inflammatory to any person, race or gender. You have to understand that. You have to be very intelligent about what you say, [because] it matters.”

Winston may very well be a sociopath. He was involved in at least one act of sexual aggression. The local police appear to have covered it up because he is famous. There are rumors he was involved in at least one other sexual assault. He walked into  a grocery store and stole frozen crab legs, of all things, similar to how the Gentle Giant of Ferguson stole a box of cigars from a convenience store. Now this.

It’s possible he cannot truly understand right from wrong. The better answer is he lacks self-restraint. He appears to be contrite after the fact so he must know what he is doing is wrong. The lack of any plausible reason for these acts is the tell. In some communities, they have an expression about people from other communities who act in random, self destructive ways. The lack of self-restraint, poor impulse control, leads to unpredictable behavior.

More Stupid

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In theory,  a massive Republican victory in November would be the best thing for the country, at least what’s left of it. They could bottle up Barry’s judicial nominees for two years and stop his planned amnesty. Barry would be a lame duck and spend the next two years planning his retirement. The Republicans would do nothing to address the many things that ail the nation, but they would slow the decline.

On the other hand, a loss would throw cold water on Conservative Inc and the traitors in the Republican Party. The crew at National Review would be wearing black arm bands for a week. But, there’s the danger they draw the wrong lesson and lurch even further to the Left. If the 2010 election told them they had to try and compromise with Barry, they will find some way to snatch failure from a victory.

Democrats are now (very slightly) favored to hold the Senate majority on Nov. 4, according to Election Lab, The Post’s statistical model of the 2014 midterm elections.

Election Lab puts Democrats’ chances of retaining their majority at 51 percent — a huge change from even a few months ago, when the model predicted that Republicans had a better than 80 percent chance of winning the six seats they need to take control. (Worth noting: When the model showed Republicans as overwhelming favorites, our model builders — led by George Washington University’s John Sides — warned that the model could and would change as more actual polling — as opposed to historical projections — played a larger and larger role in the calculations. And, in Republicans’ defense, no one I talked to ever thought they had an 80 percent chance of winning the majority.)

So, what exactly has changed to move the Election Lab projection? Three big things:

* Colorado: On Aug. 27 — the last time I wrote a big piece on the model — Election Lab said Sen. Mark Udall (D) had a 64 percent chance of winning. Today he has a 94 percent chance.

* Iowa: Two weeks ago, the model gave state Sen. Joni Ernst (R) a 72 percent chance of winning. Today she has a 59 percent chance.

* Kansas: Republican Sen. Pat Roberts’s reelection race wasn’t even on the radar on Aug. 27. Today, Election Lab predicts that he has just a 68 percent chance of winning.

In addition to that trio of moves in Democrats’ direction, Louisiana has moved slightly in Democrats’ favor (from a 57 percent chance of losing to a 53 percent chance), as has North Carolina (a 97 percent chance of winning now as opposed to a 92 percent chance on Aug. 27).

The “data lab” at the Washington Post is a room covered in posters of Barry. Note that around this time in 2006 the GOP was making similar noises about polling. They were crushed two months later.

A Pathetic Waste of a Country

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Multiculturalism is a suicide cult. The whole point of it is to destroy the native culture but disguise it as an upgrade. The evidence is all around us. Everything they touch is made worse or destroyed. The Brits are a generation ahead of us, give or take, in setting fire to their country and culture. Here’s what is coming to America.

A victim of Rotherham’s child sex abuse scandal confronted a man she says groomed her – but was left shocked when she was the one arrested.

The woman was shocked when she saw the man walking through the town’s centre on Friday and decided to challenge him over the allegations.

But she was tackled by two police officers and pushed up against a wall during her ‘thuggish’ arrest, a witness has said.

A damning report released last month detailed how 1,400 children were sexually exploited in the area over a 16-year period.

The Times reported that a woman whose case is being investigated by authorities – but has not yet been interviewed – was arrested after tackling a man she says groomed her when she was 15.

A witness accused the police of ‘acting like insensitive thugs’, telling the paper: ‘A police van came and six male officers piled out.

‘Two of them dragged her away, handcuffed her, put her against a wall and then shoved her into the back of the van.’

South Yorkshire Police told today how they had been hoping to interview the woman in the weeks before the arrest, after they were told of the historic allegations by another organisation.

But they only realised that she was the woman they had been trying to speak to after her arrest, and have now released her on bail.

After her treatment at the hands of officers, the woman has been reluctant to talk to police and her complaint against the man is therefore yet to be officially recorded.

The police force, which has come under fire in the wake of the recent scandal, insists it does take sexual violence seriously and will continue attempts to investigate the woman’s claims.

A spokesman said: ‘Specialist officers from South Yorkshire Police had been making efforts to trace a 28-year-old woman who had made allegations to a partner agency.

‘The allegations related to child sexual exploitation. Efforts to trace the woman were unsuccessful.

‘Later that day, officers from a neighbouring force who were providing support to South Yorkshire Police, were approached by a passerby who made complaints about the behaviour of a woman who they believed had been drinking.

‘The woman was arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated public order offences.

It is not enough to flood the country with barbarians from Pakistan. Letting them rape the young English girls is not enough. Nope. The fanatics are actively trying to silence the victims on behalf of the barbarians.  At this point, a group of Pakistani men could be sodomizing the Queen on the grounds of Buckingham Palace and the Brits would look away, blaming it on bigots or the far right.

It is pathetic and disgusting. It will also be coming to American. The suicidal lunatics in charge of America look at Europe as a model. It’s not the architecture they admire or the high culture. Our lunatics hate that as much as European lunatics. What our lunatics admire is the ruthlessness of the European lunatics.

The sad truth is, the Brits would be better off importing millions more from Pakistan and handing them all the weapons they need to finish off the locals. Death is probably too good for the English, but at least it would be over. Look at this pathetic nonsense from what passes for conservative in Britain these days. “Please stay with us”??? A country with any self-respect would be building a wall right now to shut the Scots out.

Liberals Smell Like Poop

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So says this story from The Week;

A new study from the American Journal of Political Science indicates that different political affiliations may actually correspond with different body odors.

The researchers, led by Brown University political scientist Rose McDermott, found that conservatives and liberals smell dissimilar. While the difference is small, it is apparently significant enough that we subconsciously prefer the scent of those who vote like we do. “It appears nature stacks the deck to make politically similar partners more attractive to each other in unconscious ways,” the researchers wrote. “Conservatives smell like flowers and sunshine, while Liberals smell faintly of raw sewage and rotten eggs.”

OK, I made that last part up. My point is if it did say that, people would buy it. Social science is not science and nonsense like this is the reason.

Previous research has found a number of other political view correlations with unknown degrees of biological and cultural influences. From eating preferences (the left likes strawberry jelly, while the right favors grape) to alcohol choices (Republicans like brown liquors; Democrats drink the clear stuff), conservatives and liberals live as distinctly as they vote.

Other differences are more psychological: Conservatives will look at an unpleasant image 15 percent longer than liberals, and they’re also more likely to keep an organized dorm room in college. In fact, one study showed that conservatives are more generally conscientious and liberals are more open to new experiences. Libertarians display some psychological aspects of both groups, albeit with a far lighter helping of respect for authority.

I’m fond of pointing out that the hive minded obsess over boundaries. You see it in these crackpot studies. The Right, or what pass for the Right these days, cares not a wit about this stuff. In fact, the Right has taken to heart the baloney sold by the Cult regarding human biodiversity. They really think we’re all the same. The Left is under no such illusion. They know damn well there is a difference between those inside the walls and those outside the walls. Hence this obsession for these types of studies.

The Stupid Party

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Back in 1976 the argument against Reagan and conservatives in general was they could not win. It was not an unreasonable argument, given what happened to Goldwater in 1964. Nixon winning in 1968 seemed to reinforce the idea that the winning hand for the GOP was a hawkish liberalism versus the Democrat’s dovish liberalism. For conservatives and libertarians that was a revolting development, but political parties are about winning elections and distributing the spoils to their supporters.

The funny thing is this debate rarely happens with Democrats. The American media is far to the Left of the party on most issues. The cultural elites are way out there where the buses don’t run. They lose faith in the Democrats now and again, but they have no problem yanking the party back over to the Left every decade. In the 1970’s Ted Cruz would have been a typical Democrat. In the 1980’s he would have been a moderate Democrat. Today he is extreme right wing Republican.

Since 2008 the GOP has been locked in a battle between the Wets and Dries of the party. The fight is between those who wish to strike deals with the Left and those who want to take a pipe to Nancy Pelosi. In 2010, Tea Party types who lost were held up by the Wets as an example of their side’s argument. Mitt Romney was waved around by the Dries after 2012 as an example of why you can’t win with a limp noodle.

History, polling and logistics say the GOP should wipe the floor with the Democrats in November. Obama is less popular than Bush in 2006, according to some polls. The Wets made sure they had their people in keys races so they would not be derailed by a weirdo claiming to be a witch or an old perv talking about rape.You can’t come up with a better scenario for the Wets than what they have right now. If they win the Senate by a few seats, then they win the argument.

You really have to admire the ruthlessness with which the Wets have snuffed out the Dries. In Kansas the Wets carried a corpse to victory over the Tea Party candidate. In Mississippi, they played the race card to carry another corpse to victory. In open races, all of the Wets won. They even found a way to split the anti-Graham vote in South Carolina so that ridiculous pansy could keep his seat. I’ve followed politics for a long time and this is about as thorough of a house cleaning as I can recall.

That’s what makes this post by Jim Geraghty interesting.

It is not quite time for Republicans to panic about the Senate races in Colorado, Iowa, and North Carolina, but it’s worth ratcheting up the concern another notch.

In Iowa, it’s been a while since Joni Ernst enjoyed a lead:

The last poll that had her ahead — by 1 — was conducted from July 5 to 24.

In Colorado, the good news is that incumbent Democrat Mark Udall remains below 50. But Cory Gardner can’t seem to get over the hill and take the lead:

In North Carolina, the concerns about Thom Tillis are triggered mostly by one poll showing a surprising six-point lead for incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan. But he, too, has had difficulty getting the lead against an incumbent with indisputable problems, and this is in a state Romney won.

Republicans can still win control of the Senate without these races. They need to hold GOP-held seats Kansas, Kentucky, and Georgia; win the expected near-locks of Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia, and then win in Arkansas, Alaska, and Louisiana. But it must be disconcerting that as the national polling environment looks better and better for the GOP, these three races — and for that matter, Michigan — are not seeing a comparable boost for the Republican candidates.

If those three states remain Democrat, the GOP will not win the Senate. They would need a miracle in New Hampshire to get a 51-seat majority. When you look at the numbers in Kansas, the corpse is in a dead heat with the Democrat, an actual live human. People are funny about voting for dead people. They tend not to do it. Maybe the GOP can reanimate their guy before election night. It probably results in a 50-50 result, which means the Democrats retain control of the Senate.

Data Collection

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It is prudent to be skeptical about any claims from the government, especially those about their capabilities. Scooping up the databases from private companies, for example, is something government can do quite easily. Sorting it into anything useful is quite another. The volume is just too vast. Plus, a security apparatus so good that they can scoop and read everyone’s e-mail is not getting bested by a high school drop out like Snowden.

The reality is probably something a bit more crude. This story the other day in the Washington Post is what I mean.

The U.S. government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day in 2008 if it failed to comply with a broad demand to hand over user communications — a request the company believed was unconstitutional — according to court documents unsealed Thursday that illuminate how federal officials forced American tech companies to participate in the National Security Agency’s controversial PRISM program.

The documents, roughly 1,500 pages worth, outline a secret and ultimately unsuccessful legal battle by Yahoo to resist the government’s demands. The company’s loss required Yahoo to become one of the first to begin providing information to PRISM, a program that gave the NSA extensive access to records of online com­munications by users of Yahoo and other U.S.-based technology firms.

The ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review became a key moment in the development of PRISM, helping government officials to convince other Silicon Valley companies that unprecedented data demands had been tested in the courts and found constitutionally sound. Eventually, most major U.S. tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Apple and AOL, complied. Microsoft had joined earlier, before the ruling, NSA documents have shown.

Rather than covertly tapping into the root servers of the Internet or sniffing the world’s firewalls, the Feds are busting down doors and telling the big players to hand over their data. No doubt it is coming over in a digital format and in bulk, but that’s like having tractor trailers full of letters to Santa showing up ever day. Finding the one letter from Mohamed in Detroit is not going to be easy and maybe not even possible. Without a lot of other intelligence, having a big pile of e-mails is a waste of resources.

But, there’s value in letting the world know you can read their e-mail and listen to their calls. Even if it is not entirely true, it tilts the playing field. It forces everyone else to take precautions they otherwise might not take and maybe pushed them into forms of communication that are easier to track. The e-mail and telephone data also has use if you have other intel. If Abdul comes up on the radar and you have Abdul’s cell data, you can begin to put together his circle of friends, as it were.

Still it is important to remember that they have not caught anyone with this data. The Feds run to the nearest TV camera every time they catch some dope trying to join Jihad. If they had something to justify what is a very unpopular program, they would have made it public. It’s like gun registration. It is only useful when you have a lot of other information about the crime. In the case of gun crimes, the registration is useful after you have the gun and the perp. In the case of terrorism, having cell phone data is useful after you have the perp’s identity and location.