Another Attack on NSA Collection of Telephony Metadata

The information found in Dan Roberts & Spencer Ackerman's article Obama review panel: strip NSA of power to collect phone data records in The Guardian (December 18 2013) suggests that some progress has been made on the issue of NSA collection of polyphony metadata for domestic calls, but apparently only modest progress has been made [see the article] (and Senator Feinstein, I assume, will do all she can to forestall even this modest progress).

It remains to be seen if Obama will endorse this modest recommendation by his advisory panel. Will the federal courts do what the Executive Branch and Congress may be unwilling to do? The current Supreme Court has not been terribly aggressive in the protection of individual rights, but I hope that the scale of NSA invasions of privacy - the Orwellian scale of such intrusions - will induce the Court to act in a positive and bold fashion.

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The Growing Gluttony of College Presidents

Private nonprofit organizations are exempt from federal income taxes - i.e., they get a federal tax subsidy. Donations to qualified private nonprofit organizations are deductible from federal taxable income - i.e. such donations get a federal tax subsidy. These general principles apply to private nonprofit colleges.

But for some people, private nonprofit colleges are "nonprofit" only in a technical sense; for some people, nonprofit private colleges are quite profitable. See Executive Compensation at Private Colleges, 2011 Chronicle of Higher Education (December 15, 2013). For example, for the year 2011 Robert J. Zimmer of the University of Chicago received compensation of $3,358,723 (from his university) and Lee C. Bollinger of Columbia University, $2,327,344 (from his university).

Capitalism run amok?

Note: The clerical presidents of most private Catholic colleges receive nominal or zero ($0) compensation from their universities. Go here (for example, see Boston College) and here and here.

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