TS here. Lassen Sie uns fortfahren, meine Freunde!

On balance, I’m not nostalgic for the university. The women were gorgeous and plentiful, the hockey team was in its heyday, but all was not bread and roses: the math classes were a real pain in the ass and the administration a mite autocratic. The latter two were the cause of sleepless nights and innumerable semesters on probation.

One in particular – a girlfriend, not an academic torment – was, let’s say, creative to a fault and an incurable Dylan fanatic. She even, to her everlasting credit, made a good case for Bob’s Christian period. I am grateful and tip the cap each time I listen to Saved.

Others were a source of frustration. C. was 23 and spoke French, which, since I was 20, seemed like surefire indicators of maturity. Not so. You’d think after x-number of years my college roommate might let me forget that C. once went through the motions of fellating a Star Market banana.

Good times.

That roommate, in fact, has returned to our undergrad city, and says that we had it pretty good. (He’s got lots of degrees, and is an erudite fellow, so I can’t contradict him without further evidence.) “What the hell happened to us?” he asked me recently. “If I knew,” I said, “I wouldn’t be on Jdate.” Anyway, we do agree that dry spells, which, as it happens, I’m experiencing as I write, are a fact of post-college years and should’ve been foreseen.

You can get me at instaputzen [at] gmail [dot com].

Link:

During calendar year 2002, 1228 applications were made to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for electronic surveillance and physical search. The Court initially approved 1226 applications in 2002. Two applications were "approved as modified," and the United States appealed these applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, as applications having been denied in part. On November 18, 2002, the Court of Review issued a judgment that "ordered and adjudged that the motions for review be granted, the challenged portions of the orders on review be reversed, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court's Rule 11 be vacated, and the cases be remanded with instructions to grant the United States' applications as submitted..." Accordingly, all 1228 applications presented to the Foreign Intelligene Surveillance Court in 2002 were approved.

Sincerely,

John Ashcroft (hat tip via bunkport)

TPM has more information on the FISA requests: "So, in a quarter century, the FISA Court has rejected four government applications for warrants. Only, it's not quite that simple. Take the four rejected applications from 2003...read on"