| The Kensington Review |
2 January 2006 |
| Latest Commentary: | Volume V, Number 1 |
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NSA Warrant-Free Spying May Free Convicted Terrorists -- The kerfuffle over the National Security Agency’s spying on US citizens without warrants, as ordered by President George “Lyndon” Bush, may wind up freeing convicted terrorists. The White House claims that securing a warrant took too long, endangered American lives and was legally unnecessary. Much to the chagrin of the administration, the nation remains a country a laws and due process. That means that men convicted of terrorism may wind up freed because of the warrant-free spying in a perfect example of the law of unintended consequences in action.
UK Government Releases Records of 1975 -- One of the delights of Hogmanay (Scots for New Year’s) is the release of papers by the British government that are no longer covered by the 30-year rule. This rule essentially classifies a load of documents for 30 years before the public gets to see them. This protects high level politicians and civil servants, who are usually all dead or too senile to face trial for whatever crimes they committed. So, here’s what 1975 looked like from Whitehall. Study Shows Accents Affect Perceptions in Business -- In the 1916 preface to “Pygmalion” (“My Fair Lady” without the music), George Bernard Shaw wrote “It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.” Almost a century later, a study of British business people has found that some accents in British business are preferable to others, and oddly, American is on the preferred list. Predictions for 2006 -- The smug feeling of getting 9 predictions right out of 11 last year still lingers. So, in a burst of hubris, here are the Kensington Review’s predictions for 2006. And as usual, unlike the nonsense of Nostradamus, the obtuse Oracle at Delphi or the open-to-misinterpretation horoscopes of the daily newspaper, these are empirically verifiable. Nine out of 11 will take some doing to beat, though. © Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux. |
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