Daily News Roundup, 11/12/07: What Privacy Means

Today we have a tale of two takes on privacy, divergent in scope and application. First is Governor Rick Perry, who has a strict office policy that all email communications in or out of his office are destroyed after 7 days. The other is a senior official in the national intelligence directorate, who has a message for you: get used to a different definition of privacy.

Rick Perry's policy horrifies champions of open government and transparency. A man named John Washburn is one of them, and through some state statutes, he figured out a way to halt the destruction of those emails - by requesting them. State records that have been requested aren't supposed to be destroyed, so, behold the one man that took a single step.

I am a little worried about the other thing, from the office of the NDI. Donald Kerr says, in effect, that your right to anonymity is forfeit in this new, post-9/11 world. He tries to blame it on MySpace, and says these times they are a-changin', and that people in my generation don't expect anonymity anymore. I disagree — I think a right to privacy includes a right to anonymity if we want it. I guess we'll see, but I'm not optimistic about the survival of privacy rights in our modern world. At least, not in a recognizable format.

Depending on how you feel about the Roberts Court and guns, you will be pleased or disappointed to hear that it may fall to the Supremes to rule on the constitutionality of gun ownership. You can expect a decision on whether the Court will hear it around Tuesday or so, and at issue will be Washington, D.C.'s rules on guns.

Something I think is deserving of a ruling or two is the liability in FEMA's disaster response trailer program. Apparently, FEMA is so concerned about the potential toxicity of fumes in unoccupied trailers that have stood empty for awhile they have warned their employees against entering them. Just in case you were wondering, these are essentially the same trailers that Katrina evacuees occupy.

The Iraq War, if Bush gets the funding he's requested, will have a cost totalling $611 billion, so far. The Boston Globe wonders what that much money could have bought otherwise.

Oh yeah — Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick is going to ride his "Republicans that are against me are in league with Democrats" message until the wheels fall off. I don't know how I feel about the efficacy of that measure. Democrats are, of course, a bugaboo to the Republican base, but not everyone is crazy about Tom Craddick anymore. His use of the message may end up weakening the idea of evil Democrats among moderate Republicans overall, making it unusable for other Republican candidates.

Speaking of Republican candidates, GOP State Representative Pat Haggerty was among those Republicans who stood up against Craddick during the last cycle, and now the Republican Party is trying to figure out a way to get rid of him. They may figure it out by default, if Democrats can convince him to flip like Kirk England. You never know — it might happen.

Yesterday was Veterans Day, and today is the observation. If you know a veteran, thank them.

Lastly today, Norman Mailer died. This is a bad year for American writers; we keep losing some of the best ones we've got. Mailer had more than a few things to say about American politics and culture, and I'll leave that for you to discover. Rather than listing a quote along those lines, I thought I would reproduce one of my favorites, from Mailer, on life:

I don't think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.