I would like to thank everyone who has visited the site and who has
e-mailed. It has been very interesting and fun for me and I hope we can keep
it interesting for all involved. Already, in just my second week, I have
violated my oath to myself with regards to the column. I promised myself I
would try to stay away from politics.
I promised myself I
would try not to get too serious. I promised myself I would avoid the
"topic of the week" and try to be original and fresh. So, without further
delay, let me continue in my reckless abandon of these three goals, far too
dignified as they were, to be met by me.
“LIVE FREE OR DIE"
(except in specified area codes)
You may want to
rethink that call to Lebanon, NH. God forbid a burp of static renders the
"NH" part of that call inaudible on a Federal tape recorder. I'm upset
about the NSA's announcement for all the wrong reasons. I really wouldn't
care if they wanted my phone records if they had ever, even once,
demonstrated a plausible scenario for needing it. More succinctly, that
they would know how to effectively use important information once they had
it. We knew one of the hijackers of 9/11 fame had admitted at flight
schools that he had no need to learn how to take off and land. The
information fell through the cracks. I have this nagging feeling as we
allow Big Brother more and more room on the couch that we're in for a big
letdown. Imagine you donate a kidney to a close friend and months later you
run into him. "Hey, it turned out I only had a stomach flu.....I fed your
kidney to my cat."
That may sound a
little harsh, but is it? Wasn't it poor intelligence that got us into
Iraq? Wasn't it poor dissemination of good intelligence between agencies
that allowed that terrible day on September 11th to become reality? Phone
records? Isn't that the first thing you learn at Crime School...use an
outside line? This might be a great idea if we had everything else under
control. To continue to allow thousands of unknown and illegal immigrants
into the country each week and do nothing but then ask the entire citizenry
to forgo more privacy is ridiculous. That's like me coming home from work
and there is a rabid wolverine eating my children but I tell my wife I want
to check on the termites in the wood shed first. To prove that I am not
unwilling to give credit where it is due I offer the following testimony to
a government agency that I think is awesome.
As a private pilot,
I pay attention to crashes. Not as a morbid curiosity but in the interest of
vigilance. Learn from it to avoid having it happen to you. The aviation
section of The National Transportation Safety Board is an aggressive, no b.s.
group. These are the folks that investigate airplane accidents, large and
small, determine when able a probable cause, and promote an action that will
help reduce or eliminate the possibility of another crash from the same
cause. Clearly, some of their work takes place under extreme conditions. It
often takes months or years of relentless investigation to yield a result
but most often they do, with hard, physical fact to back up the findings.
They need those hard facts because often, their findings mean money for the
airlines or an aircraft manufacturer. This is where the process stops. When
fact and necessity meet business and politics, or in other words, the FAA.
That terrible ValuJet crash in the everglades. For years the NTSB had
warned of the need for fire alarms/suppression equipment in cargo holds.
Could have been avoided. Flight 800, the terrible 747 crash into Long
Island. The NTSB had warned of problems concerning volatile fuel/air
mixtures in the near-empty center tanks of 747's. Could have been avoided.
So you can see why
I'm reluctant to give up my kidney. I don't think there is an American out
there who wouldn't give up their phone, much less their phone records, if
they thought it would really make a difference. We know it won't. I'm not
even sure I care if someone calls Osama. Ask if his refrigerator is
running.
A few days ago a
baby's arm was found at the Deer Island Sewage Treatment Plant in Boston.
In Ohio, a young man abducted and killed a ten-year old girl with the intent
of eating her at a later date. In Boston alone, two young women have been
found murdered in the last week alone. If there were answers for these
social ills in anybody's phone book, I would be leading the charge.