Reason Time with Orin Kerr

Professor Kerr thinks that ABC news’ story on surveillance has been oversold:

But it seems pretty clearly incorrect to say that this story suggests that Bush and the intelligence heads were lying about the Terrorist Surveillance Program the New York Times first reported on in 2005. The problem is that this appears to be a different monitoring program than the TSP.

I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on the legal territory, but a commenter raises an important question about the story’s impact on PUBLIC REASON as opposed to the specifics of the law:

We all have different memories….. My recollection was that the program was controversial because some Americans didn’t like the idea of the government spying on them by listening to their phone calls. Maybe some guys like you got into the FISA issues. The average American (to the extent they were concerned at all) were more concerned with the big-brother-is-watching angle.

So the government said, “Hey, we’re not spying on you. Just the bad guys!”

Now, well, that seems to not be the case.

Professor Kerr responds:

Based on polls, the average American wasn’t concerned, actually.

Which can only really foster two responses.  First, level of public concern over public deception is not an intelligent way to measure the seriousness of deception.  Second, it seems to make sense that a majority of citizens were unconcerned BECAUSE THEY WERE REASSURED BY PUBLIC REASONS THAT WERE FALSE!

Interesting question….

Yesterday I posted about the drought of the United States in the Nobel Prize for Literature.  The comment by Skates raises an interesting follow up:  If we take Pynchon off the table, and we take Toni Morrison off the table (for already winning) – what is the most important literary work of the last twenty years written by an American?  I really have no idea.  I confess that I do not get the appeal of Cormac McCarthy, John Updike and Joce Carol Oates.  Though I think them all fantastic essayists, and Oates is one of my favorite reads in the New York Review of Books. Don Dellilo’s White Noise and Mao II are masterpieces, but I think the rest of his work is not of the same standard.  I like Sandra Cisneros, but Nobel Prize good?  Unclear.  Who would you say if not Pynchon?  I’m interested in comments and suggeted reading.

I think it may be possible that the best fiction writing is quite possibly coming from people too young to win the award for decades still.