National Security Letters

One of the outcomes of the Wikileaks episode is that I learned about something called National Security Letters, of which approximately 50,000 are issued every year, many of which don't need a court order if either terrorism or espionage represent the cause of the request. These demand of ISPs or any sort of cloud service to turn over information, records, data, etc. without any notification to the party being investigated. In fact, until Twitter challenged this in court recently, it was required NOT to reveal the request to those whose data was being turned over. As more and more of our data gets hosted outside our home (I, for one, use an online data backup service which means all my electronic communication is readily available to prying eyes), the potential for yet another Orwellian chapter to be added to the book of our diminishing freedom has been nicely crafted.

The Bears

I have been a big NFL fan my whole life, having been raised, sports wise, by my Milwaukee side of the family. They inculcated me in all things Packers in those days, so I was a Packer fan until about age 13 when I reverted to the Bears, who, though they sucked, had some of the most legendary players in NFL history - Sayers, Butkus and Ditka. The early Packer days were the glory years - the Ice Bowl and Lombardi. But except for '85, when the Bears were one of the greatest teams in NFL history,  the Bear years have been mostly like Cub years. So this year is fun. And there is a very real possibility that the Bears will host the Packers in the NFL's oldest rivalry in the NFL championship, while the Pats will host the Steelers in one of the modern era's great rivalries. This is a lot of fun for us Bear fans. If they somehow lost to the Seahawks (which they won't), it would be up there as one of the worst losses in their history.