Could this be why Don Young has been such a strong advocate for the Bridge to Nowhere? Tapscott points to the Anchorage Daily News story.

To state Board of Fisheries chairman Art Nelson, Don Young’s Way, the proposed Knik Arm crossing named after his father-in-law, is hardly a bridge to nowhere.

For Nelson and his well-connected partners in Point Bluff LLC, Rep. Don Young’s span is in fact a bridge to somewhere: their 60 acres of unobstructed view property on the Point MacKenzie side of Cook Inlet. The land sits directly across from Elmendorf Air Force Base, north of the Anchorage port and downtown.

‘It’s beautiful property,’ Nelson said.

If a road were built to the land today, it would require about a two-hour commute to downtown Anchorage. But a bridge would change everything. Don Young’s Way would mean a shorter drive to downtown than from the Anchorage Hillside - and make the land much more valuable.

From the AP:

Morgan Freeman says the concept of a month dedicated to black history is “ridiculous.” “You’re going to relegate my history to a month?” the 68-year-old actor says in an interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” to air Sunday (7 p.m. EST). “I don’t want a black history month. Black history is American history.”

…

Freeman notes there is no “white history month,” and says the only way to get rid of racism is to “stop talking about it.”

The actor says he believes the labels “black” and “white” are an obstacle to beating racism.

“I am going to stop calling you a white man and I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man,” Freeman says.

Rosa Mendoza will continue to celebrate it, but she will apparently only teach her students about those with whom she agrees.

By 1976, Negro History Week would morph into Black History Month. For thirty years it has graced the agenda of American schools. It should remain there until the American curriculum incorporates a full balance of perspectives. As a teacher, I will continue celebrating it with one salient difference; I will omit Morgan Freeman as a topic for my lessons.

Hah!

Paul will not let us forget.

Of all the myths surrounding Katrina -and there are thousands of them- the biggest one by far is that New Orleans flooded because it is below sea level. I know you’ve all heard it and I know many of you have repeated it. It’s simply not true. It’s a myth.

Read why…

More on Planned Parenthood’s sickening behavior, and the double standard of those who criticized the Catholic church, from Steve Huff (via Dawn Eden).

When the Catholic Church simply shuffled pedophile priests from parish to parish, thinking confession and who knows what else might ‘cure’ them, or at least hide the problem, they contributed to the victimization of future children. The church has paid out millions of dollars to settle suits because of this, and many of the most high-ranking Bishops in the U.S. have admitted to this flaw in church policy, and how damaging it may have been to generations of children.

How is Planned Parenthood’s failure to report these instances of underage pregnancy, in children as young as ten, any different? It isn’t.

Planned Parenthood Golden Gate needs to be investigated by the California Attorney General, just as Arizona, Indiana, and Ohio have investigated the organization for similar reasons. This isn’t about politics, to me. It’s about predators, and the safety of the next child who is either forcibly raped or lured into a sexual trap. Politics be damned.

Mark Shea says it a bit more concisely:

If you cover up the rape of a minor and you are a Catholic bishop, this is what is known as “crime.”

If you cover up the rape of a minor and you are Planned Parenthood, this is what is known as “heroism”.

While the Democrats and the press scream about Bush eavesdropping on your grandmother in her nursing home, others are taking a more in depth look at what is going on. Bush has come out swinging on this one, clearly ready to defend what he believes is necessary and right.

Dafydd:

Let’s review the bidding… senators, including some renegade Republicans, are getting in a lather because the NSA was caught red-handed intercepting electronic communications that cross the American border (in either direction) and analyzing them — without the knowledge of the parties whose eaves were being dropped.
In other words, the NSA has been discovered in the act of doing its job.

Somebody correct me if I’ve got this wrong, but isn’t electronic eavesdropping the actual mission for which the NSA was created? Didn’t it grow out of the old Army Signal Corps — which (among other things) “tapped” into telegraph wires to spy on bad guys? Am I hallucinating again? (Darn that Blue-Star acid!)

What the heck did everybody think the NSA was doing the last four years… its nails?

James Robbins in the NRO calls the hype “unwarranted outrage.”

From the sound and fury of the last few days from politicians and pundits, you would think this is a development as scandalous as Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy’s authorization to wiretap Martin Luther King Jr. But the legality of the acts can be demonstrated with a look through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). For example, check out section 1802, “Electronic Surveillance Authorization Without Court Order.” It is most instructive. There you will learn that “Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year”

Walid Phares writes:

The question is clear: Are we or are we not at war with the terrorists? Osama bin Laden declared that war in 1998. The bipartisan 9/11 Commission wondered why the previous administration refused to do so and the incumbent held off until October 2001. The jihadists are present within the U.S., including those who carry U.S. passports. So are other terror jihadists in Spain, Britain, Holland, or France. By pure rationale, the U.S. government has the duty to use all means (approved by war conventions) to resist the penetration and infiltration of the United States. Doing otherwise is unlawful, unconstitutional, and more importantly to the detriment of the security, and therefore the liberty of the American people. But regardless of any general legal argument, attorney John Yoo provides us with a technical legal provision. He writes:

Therefore, if al-Qaeda forces organize and carry out missions to attack civilian or military targets within the United States, government surveillance of terrorists would not be law enforcement so much as military operations. In such circumstances, when the government is not pursuing an ordinary criminal law enforcement objective, the Fourth Amendment requires no search warrant.

Joyner at OTB is a bit more cautious:

As I’ve written repeatedly, we need more information here to properly understand the administration’s rationale for doing the eavesdropping without asking for FISA warrants. My strong suspicion is that there is a reasonable explanation. It would be quite helpful if it were forthcoming.

Hinderaker:

Under the circumstances we face in dealing with the terrorist threat, is it unreasonable–the Constitutional standard–to begin immediately intercepting calls being made to a captured terrorist cell phone, whether those calls originate in the U.S. or another country? Of course not.

Volokh’s Orrin Kerr has an in depth analysis:

This is a really long post, so let me tell you where I’m going. I’m going to start with the Fourth Amendment; then turn to FISA; next look to the Authorization to Use Military Force; and conclude by looking at claim that the surveillance was justified by the inherent authority of Article II. And before I start, let me be clear that nothing in this post is intended to express or reflect a normative take of whether the surveillance program is a good idea or a bad idea. In other words, I’m just trying to answer what the law is, not say what the law should be. If you think my analysis is wrong, please let me know in the comment section; I’d be delighted to post a correction.

And Daniel Solove makes much the same point, a bit more concisely. Dan Markel summarizes both of them with:

Orin’s basic thesis, I think, is that the snooping likely violated Congressional statutes but not necessarily (though possibly) the relevant constitutional provisions. Dan Solove largely concurs.

Marty Lederman has an interesting observation:

In his press conference this morning, the President focused on two things: (i) defending the legality of his Executive Orders authorizing eavesdropping of conversations involving U.S. persons (including citizens); and (ii) scolding Senators for refusing to reenact the PATRIOT Act.

What virtually no one is pointing out is the incongruity of these two arguments — that if the President is correct about the legality of his wiretapping protocol, then there is little need to reenact the PATRIOT Act.

Confederate Yankee has a very fascinating theory on the whole thing:

Perhaps the NY Times can’t see it, or perhaps I’m just a bit fevered, but the Bush Administration appears to be writing this story in the national media as much as they are starring in it.

Let me offer up these simple thoughts for you to consider:

Real Clear Politics has similar thoughts as Confederate Yankee.

If Democrats want to make this spying “outrage” a page one story they are fools walking right into a trap. Now that this story is out and the security damage is already done, let’s have a full investigation into exactly who the President spied on and why. Let’s also find out who leaked this highly classified information and prosecute them to the full extent of the law.

Defense Tech thinks it’s more about technology than process.

There’s more to the NSA domestic spying case than the current storyline — that much is clear. The idea that the Bush Administration needed to bypass the courts to get wiretaps quickly makes no sense; under the current system, you can start eavesdropping, and get a warrant later. The notion that disclosing the surveillance would somehow tip off potential terrorists is laughable, too; Al Qaeda types know they’re being monitored.

That’s all assuming, of course, that the wiretaps in this case are the same as in any other. But maybe they’re not. Maybe there’s something different about this surveillance. It could be in its scope, as Laura suggests. But I’m guessing — and this is just a guess — that the real difference is in the technology of the wiretaps themselves.

Tom Maguire wonders what Congress knew and when. Similarly, Conservative Outpost links to a Newsmax article discussing Eschelon under Clinton.

But in fact, the NSA had been monitoring private domestic telephone conversations on a much larger scale throughout the 1990s - all of it done without a court order, let alone a catalyst like the 9/11 attacks.

In February 2000, for instance, CBS “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft introduced a report on the Clinton-era spy program by noting:

“If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there’s a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country’s largest intelligence agency. The top-secret Global Surveillance Network is called Echelon, and it’s run by the National Security Agency.”

NSA computers, said Kroft, “capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world.”

Echelon expert Mike Frost, who spent 20 years as a spy for the Canadian equivalent of the National Security Agency, told “60 Minutes” that the agency was monitoring “everything from data transfers to cell phones to portable phones to baby monitors to ATMs.”

It must be noted that the scope of Eschelon, as Kroft described it back then, is nearly impossible. That’s a grassy knoll I’m not willing to climb to the top of yet. Others taking shots as Eschelon include Tim Blair, Hard Starboard and Eric Berlin.

Froggy Ruminations thinks it’s all nutty.

So essentially what the liberals are saying is that the US should not monitor calls from known terrorists abroad to previously unknown US co-conspirators under any circumstances. They are proposing in essence that only calls to terrorist co-conspirators who are well known and under surveillance already can be monitored. The idea that the US should put its fingers in its own ears and repeat, “I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you!” when terrorists communicate with their agents in the US is one of the most ridiculous and silly ideas that I have ever heard.

More round ups at Small Town Vet, Instapundit, Martin’s Musings.

Hugh Hewitt has a five part series on presidential power. I, II, III, IV, V.

Michelle Malkin:

Now, go back and look carefully through the Times article. The reporters who have been so assiduously working on the story for at least a year couldn’t find a single, non-anonymous expert in national security and the law to come up with the kind of informed analysis that took legal and counterterrorism bloggers three days to research and post.