Intelligence failure: protecting us from Gore supporters.

• Author: Walker, Jesse
• Position: Citings

Envy your kids; California's surprising economy; anti-consumerist capitalism; librarians fight filters; keeping psychics honest; reality TV tames nationalism; dirty words.

IN MARCH, CITING the heightened threat of terrorism, U.S. District Judge Charles Haight softened a set of rules known as the Handschu guidelines. The rules are named for Barbara Handschu, one of 16 activists who sued the New York Police Department in 1971 on the grounds that its "red squad" had pushed surveillance to the point of harassment. A 1985 court order established the guidelines, which barred cops from investigating a political or religious group without evidence linking it to a past or imminent crime.

Long faulted by civil libertarians as too weak a restraint, the guidelines nonetheless irritated the police, who argued late last year that they should be thrown out altogether. David Cohen, the NYPD's intelligence commissioner, told Haight, "it is difficult to imagine a state of affairs more outdated by the events of September 11th." Haight agreed and gutted the rules, allowing the NYPD to create its own regulations instead. The new rules couldn't be changed without the judge's approval, but they weren't embedded in his court order.

"That was the real flaw," comments Jethro Eisenstein, one of the attorneys who argued against the change. "If the police didn't choose to discipline their own for violating the rules, no one could go into court accusing them of violating the rules."

In August...