by JAMES TARANTO
Friday, May 12, 2006 3:31 P.M. EDT

Scoop? We Didn't Have Any Scoop!
The New York Times editorial page is in its usual hysterical form today:

Ever since its secret domestic [sic] wiretapping program was exposed, the Bush administration has depicted it as a narrow examination of calls made by and to terrorism suspects. But its refusal to provide any details about the extent of the spying has raised doubts. Now there is more reason than ever to be worried--and angry--about how wide the government's web has been reaching.

According to an article in USA Today, the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting telephone records on tens of millions of Americans with the cooperation of the three largest telecommunications companies in the nation. The scope of the domestic spying described in the article is breathtaking. The government is reported to be working with AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth to collect data on phone calls made by untold millions of customers.

President Bush has insisted in the past that the government is monitoring only calls that begin or end overseas. But according to USA Today, it has actually been collecting information on purely domestic calls.

The Times' conflation of "monitoring" and "collecting information on" calls is quite dishonest. What the government is doing here is essentially maintaining a database of people's phone bills--information the phone companies store and use for their own marketing and billing purposes. In Smith v. Maryland (1979), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that law-enforcement agencies do not need a warrant to collect such information.

That's not even the most astonishing thing about the Times piece. The USA Today report that leaves the editorialists so breathless turns out to be largely a rehash of a story that appeared way back on Christmas Eve--in the New York Times!

The Times, of course, helped land one of its own reporters in jail by pushing for an investigation of who "leaked" accurate information to journalists in the Valerie Plame kerfuffle. Now the paper is so eager to hyperventilate about President Bush that it is willing to give another paper credit for a scoop it reported itself months ago. This is demented.

NSA Effort Twice as Popular as Bush
"A majority of Americans initially support a controversial [sic] National Security Agency program to collect information on telephone calls made in the United States in an effort to identify and investigate potential terrorist threats, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll," the Post reports:

The new survey found that 63 percent of Americans said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate terrorism, including 44 percent who strongly endorsed the effort. Another 35 percent said the program was unacceptable, which included 24 percent who strongly objected to it.

A slightly larger majority--66 percent--said they would not be bothered if NSA collected records of personal calls they had made, the poll found.

Underlying those views is the belief that the need to investigate terrorism outweighs privacy concerns. According to the poll, 65 percent of those interviewed said it was more important to investigate potential terrorist threats "even if it intrudes on privacy."

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire blog reports that President Bush's approval rating has descended into the roaring 20s--29%, in a new Harris Interactive poll.

Hey Democrats, listen up. We've got a great political strategy for you. What you need to do is really capitalize on opposition to the administration's intelligence-gathering efforts. You might even think of calling for the president's impeachment over it.

It's an ingenious way to unite the 71% of the population that opposes Bush with the 35% who find spying on terrorists unacceptable. With 106% of Americans behind them, the Democrats just might be able to capture the House and Senate.

Global Warming Strikes Again!
" 'Climate Has Changed' for Data Privacy"--headline, USA Today, March 12

Swift Note Veterans Against Youth
Judicial Watch has been researching the Clinton administration's policy on RU-486, the abortion drug, and the final exhibit--it begins on page 60 of the PDF document linked above--makes for fascinating reading. It was written by Ron Weddington, who served as co-counsel, along with his better half, Sarah, in successfully arguing Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that imposed abortion policies that remain among the world's most permissive.

The cover letter (p. 60) is dated Jan. 6, 1992, but the year seems to be an error, since the addressee, Betsey Wright, is identified as working for the transition team. In it, Weddington tells Wright of the four-page missive to the "President-to-Be" that follows that "I am going to try to get [it] published." Mission accomplished! Here are some excerpts:

I don't think you are going to go very far in reforming the country until we have a better educated, healthier, wealthier population. . . .

You can start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy and poor segment of our country. No, I'm not advocating some sort of mass extinction of these unfortunate people. Crime, drugs and disease are already doing that. The problem is that their numbers are not only replaced but increased by the birth of millions of babies to people who can't afford to have babies.

There, I've said it. It's what we all know is true, but we only whisper it, because as liberals who believe in individual rights, we view any program which might treat the disadvantaged differently as discriminatory, mean-shpirited and...well...so Republican. . . .

I am not proposing that you send federal agents armed with Depo-Provera dart guns to the ghetto. You should use persuasion rather than coercion. You and Hillary are a perfect example. Could either of you have gone to law school and achieved anything close to what you have if you had three or four or more children before you were 20? No! You waited until you were established and in your 30's to have one child. That is what sensible people do. . . .

Having convinced the poor that they can't get out of poverty when they have all those extra mouths to feed, you will have to provide the means to prevent the extra mouths, because abstinence doesn't work. The religious right has had 12 years to preach its message. It's time to officially recognize that people are going to have sex and what we need to do as a nation is prevent as much disease and as many poor babies as possible. . . .

There have been 30 million abortions in this country since Roe v. Wade. Think of all the poverty, crime and misery...and then add 30 million unwanted babies to the scenario. We lost a lot of ground during the Reagan-Bush religious orgy. We don't have a lot of time left. . . .

The biblical exhortation to "be fruitful and multiply" was directed toward a small tribe, surrounded by enemies. We are long past that. Our survival depends upon our developing a population where everyone contributes. We don't need more cannon fodder. We don't need more parishioners. We don't need more cheap labor. We don't need more poor babies.

Hat tip: Ramesh Ponnuru. This pretty much speaks for itself, although it does seem worth noting that the three sentences before the last one contradict everything else he's saying--unless you think soldiers, churchgoers and low-paid workers don't contribute to society.

Also creepy is Weddington's postscript: "I was co-counsel in Roe v. Wade, [and] have sired zero children and one fetus, the abortion of which was recently recounted by my ex-wife in her book, A Question of Choice. (Grosset/Putnam, 1992) I had a vasectomy in 1969 and have never had one moment of regret."

It's a bit reminiscent of the closing paragraph in Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal":

I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich. I have no children by which I can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing.

Only Swift was kidding.

Great Moments in Socialized Medicine
From Mike Hume in London's Times:

Edward Atkinson, a 75-year-old anti-abortion activist, was jailed recently for 28 days for sending photographs of aborted foetuses to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King's Lynn, Norfolk. That draconian sentence was not deemed punishment enough: the hospital has banned Mr Atkinson from receiving the hip replacement operation he was expecting.

Why do the same people who don't trust the government to spy on terrorists, lest dissenters get caught up in the web, so often also urge giving government control over our health care?

Nix on Ahmadinejad
Here's an Associated Press photo caption:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shows peace signs as he addresses Indonesian students in Jakarta, Indonesia, Thursday, May 11, 2006. Ahmadinejad on Thursday called Israel a tyrannical regime that will one day will be destroyed, and vowed to continue defending his country's right to develop nuclear technology.

Peace signs? Well, we guess this guy did pull out of Vietnam.

Hat tip: Little Green Footballs.

Zero-Tolerance Watch
Columnist Eric Heyl reports in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Penn Hills School District officials . . . did react swiftly and harshly when Jokari Becker triggered a crisis of near-Columbine proportions by bringing a toy gun to school for a class project.

First, they suspended the Dible Elementary School fifth-grader for three days. Then they decided that wasn't punishment enough. So they suspended him for an additional seven days.

They decided that wasn't quite punishment enough, either. So on Tuesday, they expelled Jokari. He won't be allowed back in school until January--at the earliest.

At the rate the penalties keep increasing, Jokari soon might find himself strapped on a gurney while Superintendent Patricia Gennari administers a lethal injection.

Lethal injection? That seems excessive to us. Couldn't they stick him in Abu Ghraib for a few months first?

Homer Nods
If someone was acting president on March 4, 1849, it would have been the Senate president pro tem, not the House speaker as we said in an item yesterday. The order of succession, after the vice president, is determined by statute and has changed over the years.

Snopes.com debunks the myth that then-PPT David Rice Atchison actually was president for a day (after all, he never took the oath of office), though it leaves open the possibility that Atchison was acting president. It also reports that Atchison "later told a St. Louis Globe-Democrat reporter that there had been no President at all that Sunday."

Another possibility is that Zachary Taylor actually took office on March 4, even though, according to the Constitution, he did not "enter on the execution of his office" until he took the oath on March 5. FindLaw.com's annotations to the Constitution support this theory:

What is the time relationship between a President's assumption of office and his taking the oath? Apparently, the former comes first, this answer appearing to be the assumption of the language of the clause. The Second Congress assumed that President Washington took office on March 4, 1789, although he did not take the oath until the following April 30.

If that's true about Washington, then all presidents who served two full terms were in office for exactly the same number of days, contrary to our ninth question. Also in that case, Franklin Pierce would move up two notches in question 8, since his position at the bottom is premised upon his not having had a vice president for the first 20 days of his term, owing to William Rufus King's late swearing-in.

(If you don't know what we're talking about, go back and read the questions and answers.)

Flashbacks
Remember John Kerry*? Neither do we, but Ari Berman of The Nation has an update on his activities:

People close to him certainly sense a change in attitude. Former Senator Gary Hart, a confidant, believes Kerry has circled back to the Vietnam era, recognizing the folly of current US policy and rising to protest against it. "He's much more outspoken, much more decisive and much less likely to give credit to this Administration," Hart says.

The notoriously cautious Kerry has gone bold, conveying his views on Iraq and national security through an aggressive schedule of speeches, op-eds and talk-show appearances. Into the void of Democratic Party leadership, he's speaking for the vocal opposition--even endorsing Senator Russ Feingold's resolution to censure President Bush. . . .

And after years of vacillation, he has found his voice on Iraq. He's visited the country three times since the election, on each trip growing more dismayed by the lack of progress. . . . He shocked Chris Matthews in a recent interview by answering some questions with just a yes or a no. . . .

The presidency is never far from his mind. He freely admits to "thinking hard" about running again. "I have an anger, a level of frustration about the failure of the public sector, that is as burning as when I first got involved in the 1960s," Kerry says.

So it's official: Kerry is a circling, outspoken, decisive, cautious, bold, aggressive, vocal, nonvacillating, dismayed, shocking, hard-thinking, angry, frustrated possible candidate!

* At least he served in Vietnam, unlike Hillary Clinton!

Kedwards: Still Working for America

"If we can do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."--John Edwards, Oct. 11, 2004

" 'Paralyzed' Woman Gets Up, Runs From Police"--headline, Reuters, May 11, 2006

McLife Imitates the Onion

"With nearly three weeks having passed since talk-show host Oprah Winfrey last issued an official command, approximately 60 million Oprah Winfrey Show viewers are on standby, stationed in front of their television sets and patiently awaiting further instructions from their leader."--Onion, Sept. 9, 1998

"Oprah Winfrey has risen to a new level of guru. She's no longer just a successful talk-show host worth $1.4 billion, according to Forbes' most recent estimate. Over the past year, Winfrey, 52, has emerged as a spiritual leader for the new millennium, a moral voice of authority for the nation."--USA Today, May 11, 2006

Insert Blonde Joke Here
"Brunett Takes Command of Squadron"--headline, Pacific Daily News (Hagatna, Guam), May 12

It's Called a 'Mirror.' Look Into It.
"Light's Most Exotic Trick Yet: So Fast It Goes . . . Backwards?"--headline, press release, University of Rochester (N.Y.), May 11

Why Not Put Sick People There?
"Princeton Mulls Uses for Hospital"--headline, Times (Trenton, N.J.), May 12

The Halawy, Khadrawy and Sayer Varieties Are Still Allowed
"School Bans Some Dates From Senior Prom"--headline, WCVB-TV Web site, May 9

This Place Used to Be Dead
"L.A. Morgue Faces Overcrowding"--headline, United Press International, May 12

South American Morgues Cut Labor Costs
"Penguins Wash Up Dead in Argentina"--headline, United Press International, May 12

'No Thanks, I'm Trying to Quit'
"Smoke Chemicals Found in Babies' Urine"--headline, United Press International, May 12

Thanks for the Tip!--LXXII
"Health Tip: Prevent an Asthma Attack"--headline, HealthDayNews, May 12

Bottom Stories of the Day

• "League Won't Make Chief Sealth Girls Forfeit Any Games"--headline, Seattle Times, May 11
  
  
• "Missing Manure Mystifies Middlefield"--headline, Associated Press, May 11
  
  
• "No Guests Complain Over Fat Fee at Hotel"--headline, Reuters, May 12

Boat With Wings
"The crash of American Airlines Flight 587 in a quiet residential neighborhood nearly five years ago is subject to general maritime laws, a judge ruled Tuesday, allowing potentially higher damages for dozens of people who sued," the Associated Press reports from New York. Apparently because people use planes for trips that used to be taken by boats, planes are boats:

"There can be no question that, but for the development of air travel, this trip or some portion thereof would have been conducted by a waterborne vessel and that it therefore bears a significant relationship to traditional maritime activity," the judge wrote in a 78-page opinion analyzing the issue.

Last week the Boston Globe reported that "a bona fide deck chair from the Titanic" was to be auctioned off over the weekend. But given the ever-expanding reach of maritime law, how can the buyer be sure it wasn't actually a deck chair from the Hindenburg?

(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Shae Murphy, Ed Lasky, Doug Levene, Dan O'Shea, Ethel Fenig, Mark Finkelstein, Garry Everson, Michael Segal, Dennis Powell, Shari Hillman, Matthew Tarpy, Todd von Kampen, Fred Furia, Stephan Levy, E.B.S. Hirsch, Charlie Banks, Mark Kliewer, Dave Cox, Robert Eachus, Richard Rostrum, Brian Kalt, John McNulty, Paul James, Robert Paci, Robert Firriolo, Earl Gieseke, Kevin Binversie, Jared Baldwin, Greg Askins, Joseph Tully, Rowe Sergent, Paul Bisdorf, David Williamson, Ruth Papazian, Tad Doviak and William Fox. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Today on OpinionJournal:

• Melanie Kirkpatrick: "A North Korean like you is easier to kill than a chicken."
• Daniel Henninger: The CIA's leakers lack the Cold Warriors' sense of purpose.
• The Journal Editorial Report: Tune in this weekend for an interview with Richard Lindzen and a discussion of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's letter and Al Gore's film.

And on the Taste page:

• Review & Outlook: Columbia confers an honorary degree on a Cuban dissident.
• Naomi Riley: Both left and right are prone to religious tone-deafness.
• Mark Oppenheimer: The only thing that's wild at today's bachelor parties is the salmon.
• Jonathan Reiss: How do rabbinical courts work?