Daily Archives: September 13, 2013


Secret Law is No Law at All

There was some excitement in my twitter feed this morning regarding an opinion from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that instructed the White House to declassify some of its opinions:

In an opinion from the FISC itself, Judge F. Dennis Saylor on Friday told the White House to declassify all the legal opinions relating to Section 215 of the Patriot Act written after May 2011 that aren’t already the subject of FOIA litigation.

I am all for declassifying this material but this misses the key issue entirely.

In a free land there is no such thing as a FISC! No secret courts, no secret proceedings, no star chambers.

Secret law is no law at all.


Friday Ark #447

We’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and….?

Visit all the boarders, Link to the Ark and check back for updates through Sunday afternoon!

You can board the Friday Ark by submitting your link via the Linky Tool, leaving a comment to this post, emailing fridayark AT themodulator.org, or via the Blogcarnival site which has been broken off and on for a while. NOTE: Incoming trackbacks are off right now.

You can find previous editions at the not quite up to date Arkives page.

Cats

Birds

Invertebrates

Dogs

Other Vertebrates

In Memoriam

Didn’t Make It (Extinct)

Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to:

Birders: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is hosted monthly at 10,000 Birds.

For the Spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles.

  • The 71st edition, March 2012 , is up at The Dragonfly Woman
  • After the 71st the Circus of the Spineless seems to have gone dormant.

For the Herp lovers: House of Herps. The monthly blog carnival devoted exclusively to reptiles and amphibians and has been extinct since March 2011.

  • The 16th edition, March, will be hosted by Worm Salad
  • The 17th edition, April, will be hosted by TBD

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to:

  • The Canine Carnival hosted by Pamibe last year is on hiatus an looking for a new sponsor
  • The Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey’s Musings
  • has been out of operation since July 2007

For other current carnivals check out The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival