The Best War Ever

Thursday, August 31, 2006

Keith Olbermann comments on Donald Rumsfeld

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Its Hot In Topeka

Cronyism in the White House ???? Surely not!

Remember the guy who was going to shake up Public Broadcasting because he felt it was biased in one direction? His problems aren't vanishing:
Democrats are pushing for the ouster of the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors who is accused of misusing government money, overbilling for his time and hiring a friend as a consultant.
Does this mean there is cronyism in the Bush administration and other things perhaps a bit worse?
A summary of a report by the State Department's inspector general released Tuesday says Kenneth Tomlinson misused government funds for two years as chairman of the organization, which oversees the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and other U.S. government broadcasting abroad.

Tomlinson stepped down last fall as a board member of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps fund public television, amid allegations of improperly promoting conservative programming.

The State Department investigation found that Tomlinson, as a political appointee to the Broadcasting Board of Governors, signed invoices worth about $245,000 for a friend without the knowledge of other board members or staff.

Tomlinson also used the board's office resources to support his private horse racing operation and overbilled the organization for his time, in some instances billing both the Broadcasting Board of Governors and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for the same time worked.
But maybe the horse racing was work related. After all, lots of administration officials have been accused of horsing around. Remember: this is the anniversary of the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.

This CNN report has his response to the charges:
Tomlinson said in a statement that he believed the investigation results were "inspired by partisan divisions inside the BBG."
So it's all just politics. AND:
Regarding the double billing, Tomlinson said he was in the unusual position of serving as chairman of two boards at the same time but still made "diligent efforts" to properly bill each board.

On charges of using government funds for his horse farm, Tomlinson said: "I am confident that I spent far more time on broadcasting responsibilities at my farm and my private residences than I spent on my horses at the office."
That takes care of that allegation totally.

So what will happen? Not much:
State investigators note in the report summary that the U.S. attorney's office in Washington has reviewed the case and concluded a criminal investigation is not warranted. However, they said a civil investigation related to the charges he hired a friend as a contractor was pending.
ETC. The motif of this administration on so many fronts is that there really aren't consquences or there will be limited ones for people who either screw up in their jobs or (at the least) give the impression of screwing up. In 2000 Republicans scornfully repeated the Bill Clinton phrase "it all depends on what is is" as typifying a splitting-hairs attitude on the part of Clinton and the Democratic administration. The Clintonistas were painted as not quite grown ups who wouldn't take responsibility for their actions.

On so many fronts what we see in the Bush administration is an administration that also operates under "it all depends on what is is" and always has a new excuse for deficiencies. And if the heat gets too hot, the tactic is to go on the attack against those turning on the heat and accuse them of partisanship. The irony is that this charge comes from what historians will surely say is one of the most divisive, partisan administrations in American history,

If the growups are now in charge, hopefully the kids aren't watching

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Couldnt Have Said It Better Myself

There should be a lot of very red faces in newsrooms all over the United States right about now -- there should be, but I doubt there will be.

As many legal experts had theorized might happen, Boulder, Colorado prosecutors today dropped their case against John Mark Karr in the slaying of JonBenet Ramsey. It appears that a DNA sample taken from Karr simply does not match DNA from JonBenet Ramsey's body, making it likely that Karr was just an attention-seeker trying to get a quick 15 minutes of fame and dupe a scandal-hungry media into playing along.

Mission accomplished.

It remains unclear whether Karr will be released or extradited to California to face child pornography charges there.

Samples of Karr's DNA had been taken upon his arrival in Boulder on Thursday and they were tested at the Denver Police Department's crime lab over the weekend. Despite his insistence that he killed Ramsey -- and the 10-day media frenzy that has followed -- the tests have failed to put him at the scene of the crime and he may be released entirely by the end of the week.

What is amazing to me is the media circus that has followed this "case" for almost two weeks now without really a shred of proof that anything had truly developed in the 10-year-old mystery. And we're not just talking about an informational mention on page six or seven of the local newspaper, or a 90-second story buried in the second half of a one-hour newscast.

We're talking about hour upon hour of coverage, with some cable news networks devoting the entire hour of a 60-minute newscast to a developing story that could very well have turned out to be a lot of noise about nothing. We're talking about alleged journalists and editors whose judgment made them decide that John Mark Karr's plane ride from Thailand to the United States, where he sat, who he talked to, what he ate and even what procedure was used to allow him to use the bathroom was their very top story.

All of this without the most basic elements of proof that freshman journalism students taking Reporting 100 are taught to look for.

Unbelievable.

And this giant waste of time and resources, occurred at the expense of real news affecting real lives: A major crisis in the Middle East, a civil war in Iraq that's killing an average of 100 Iraqis a day and with our troops stuck smack-dab in the middle of it. We have a major portion of our population without the means to get a simple medical check-up because they have no health insurance, more Americans in poverty, a devastating budget deficit and hurricane season upon us with FEMA in no better shape than it was a year ago when it bungled Hurricane Katrina.

Oh, and those people whose lives were sidelined by Katrina a year ago, tomorrow? Most of them still haven't received any help.

But none of that -- not one bit of it -- was more important to the corporate media over the last 10 days than a specious confession, to a murder long ago and with very little in the way of proof to go along with it.

We should read, see and hear some major mea culpas across every spectrum of the American media for wasting everyone's time over the last two weeks and, if there's a price to pay for total journalistic incompetence, more than a few editors should be fired. That should happen -- but it won't.

The best we can hope for is that the media will take a good, long, collective look in the mirror and hopefully feel some shame over what buffoons they have been over this non-story and how much they have let the American people down.

I'm sure a few will feel that guilt -- at least until the next blonde chick goes missing in the Caribbean.

A bit further from hell today

So I saw this on Fark and thought I would share:

Attention Central Texas Residents: The atmospheric condition of water falling from the sky is called "Rain." You may not have witnessed it in your lifetime, but it was actually quite common at one time.

Yes, finally after 19 straight days of 100+ degree weather, we had a whole day of rain. It only supposed to be in the 80's today and I can truly say that its nice outside.

Monday, August 28, 2006

Throw another nut log on the fire

USA - 9NEWS has confirmed from two sources that the DNA taken from John Mark Karr does not match the DNA samples taken from the crime scene in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case.

9NEWS has also confirmed from different sources that no charges will be filed against Karr in connection with the Ramsey case by the Boulder County District Attorney's office.

Samples of Karr's saliva and hair were taken in Boulder after his arrival on Thursday. Those samples were tested over the weekend inside the Denver Police Department's Crime lab.

9NEWS has confirmed that Karr's DNA is ruled out as the foreign DNA left on JonBenet Ramsey's body when she was murdered in December 1996.

JonBenet was covered in a blanket when her body was found. Foreign hair fibers were found on that blanket and they did not match any of the Ramsey family or approximately 100 people that were tested.

Karr was taken into custody in Bangkok, Thailand earlier this month in connection with the murder. He arrived in Boulder Thursday afternoon on a probable cause warrant for charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual assault on a child.

Karr said at a press conference in Thailand he was with JonBenet when she died.

Karr is scheduled to be in court Monday afternoon for an advisement hearing.

He still faces charges of child pornography in California.

*********************************************************************
NOW can we stop talking about this NUT Job and get on with REAL news?

A Third World Country with a First World Mentality

WASHINGTON — A pipeline shuts down in Alaska. Equipment failures disrupt air travel in Los Angeles. Electricity runs short at a spy agency in Maryland.

None of these recent events resulted from a natural disaster or terrorist attack, but they may as well have, some homeland security experts say. They worry that too little attention is paid to how fast the country's basic operating systems are deteriorating.

"When I see events like these, I become concerned that we've lost focus on the core operational functionality of the nation's infrastructure and are becoming a fragile nation, which is just as bad — if not worse — as being an insecure nation," said Christian Beckner, a Washington analyst who runs the respected Web site Homeland Security Watch (www.christianbeckner.com).

The American Society of Civil Engineers last year graded the nation "D" for its overall infrastructure conditions, estimating that it would take $1.6 trillion over five years to fix the problem.

"I thought [Hurricane] Katrina was a hell of a wake-up call, but people are missing the alarm," said Casey Dinges, the society's managing director of external affairs.

British oil company BP announced this month that severe corrosion would close its Alaska pipelines for extensive repairs. Analysts say this may sideline some 200,000 barrels a day of production for several months.

Then an instrument landing system that guides arriving planes onto a runway at Los Angeles International Airport failed for the second time in a week, delaying flights.

Those incidents followed reports that the National Security Agency (NSA), the intelligence world's electronic eavesdropping arm, is consuming so much electricity at its headquarters outside Washington that it is in danger of exceeding its power supply.

"If a terrorist group were able to knock the NSA offline, or disrupt one of the nation's busiest airports, or shut down the most important oil pipeline in the nation, the impact would be perceived as devastating," Beckner said. "And yet we've essentially let these things happen — or almost happen — to ourselves."

The Commission on Public Infrastructure at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said in a recent report that facilities are deteriorating "at an alarming rate."

It noted that half the 257 locks operated by the Army Corps of Engineers on inland waterways are functionally obsolete, more than one-quarter of the nation's bridges are structurally deficient or obsolete, and $11 billion is needed annually to replace aging drinking-water facilities.

President Bush, asked about the problem during a public question-and-answer session in an April visit to Irvine, Calif., cited last year's enactment of a comprehensive law reauthorizing highway, transit and road-safety programs.

"Infrastructure is always a difficult issue," Bush acknowledged. "It's a federal responsibility and a state and local responsibility. And I, frankly, feel like we've upheld our responsibility at the federal level with the highway bill."

But experts say the law is riddled with some 5,000 "earmarks" for projects sought by members of Congress that do nothing to systematically address the problem.

"There's a growing understanding that these programs are at best inefficient and at worst corrupt," said Everett Ehrlich, executive director of the CSIS public infrastructure commission.

Ehrlich and others cite several reasons for the lack of action:

• The political system is geared to reacting to crises instead of averting them.

• Some politicians don't see infrastructure as a federal responsibility.

• And many problems are out of sight and — for the public — out of mind.

"You see bridges and roads and potholes, but so much else is hidden and taken for granted," said Dinges of the Society of Civil Engineers. "As a result, people just don't get stirred up and alarmed."

But a few politicians are starting to notice. In March, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., joined Sens. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, and Tom Carper, D-Del., in sponsoring a bill to set up a national commission to assess infrastructure needs.

That same month, the CSIS infrastructure commission issued a set of principles calling for increased spending, investments in new technologies and partnerships with business. Among those signing the report were Sens. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Chris Dodd, D-Conn.

"Infrastructure deficiencies will further erode our global competitiveness, but with the federal budget so committed to mandatory spending, it's unclear how we are going to deal with this challenge as we fall further and further behind in addressing these problems," Hagel said in a speech last year. "We need to think creatively

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Iran has nuclear capability ... Guess whos responsible for it?

In the heart of Tehran stands one of Iran's most important nuclear facilities, a dome-shaped building where scientists have conducted secret experiments that could help the country build atomic bombs. It was provided to the Iranians by the United States.
The Tehran Research Reactor represents a little-known aspect of the international uproar over the country's alleged weapons program. Not only did the U.S. provide the reactor in the 1960s as part of a Cold War strategy, America also supplied the weapons-grade uranium needed to power the facility — fuel that remains in Iran and could be used to help make nuclear arms.
As the U.S. and other countries wrestle with Iran's refusal to curb its nuclear capabilities, an examination of the Tehran facility sheds light on the degree to which the United States has been complicit in Iran's developing those capabilities.
Saturday Iran inaugurated a heavy-water plant, expanding its nuclear program only days before the U.N. deadline that threatens sanctions unless Tehran curbs activities the West fears are meant to make atomic weapons, The Associated Press reported.
The move was the latest defiance by Iran to concerns expressed by the U.N. Security Council. Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shrugged off the possibility of sanctions, insisting they would not slow Iran's nuclear ambitions.
"We tell the Western countries not to cause trouble for themselves because Iranian people are determined to make progress and acquire technology," Ahmadinejad said after opening the plant.
He stressed his government's contention that the nuclear program is peaceful — intended only to produce fuel for nuclear power plants.
Though the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, has found no proof Iran is building a bomb, the agency says the country has repeatedly concealed its nuclear activities from inspectors. And some of these activities have taken place in the U.S.-supplied reactor, IAEA records show, including experiments with uranium, a key material in the production of nuclear weapons.
U.S. officials point to those activities as evidence Iran is trying to construct nuclear arms, but they do not publicly mention that the work has taken place in a U.S.-supplied facility.
The U.S. provided the reactor when America was eager to prop up Iran's shah, who also was aligned against the Soviet Union at the time. After the Islamic revolution toppled the shah in 1979, the reactor became a reminder that in geopolitics, today's ally can become tomorrow's threat.
Also missing from the current debate over Iran's nuclear intentions is emerging evidence that its research program may be more troubled than previously known.
The Bush administration has portrayed the program as a sophisticated operation that has skillfully hidden its true mission of making the bomb. But in the case of the Tehran Research Reactor, a study by a top Iranian scientist suggests otherwise.
After a serious accident in 2001 at the U.S.-supplied reactor, the scientist concluded that poor quality control at the facility was a "chronic disease." Problems included carelessness, sloppy bookkeeping and a staff so poorly trained that workers had a weak understanding of "the most basic and simple principles of physics and mathematics," according to the study, presented at an international nuclear conference in 2004 in France.
The Iranian scientist, Morteza Gharib, told the Chicago Tribune that management of the facility had improved in the past three years. When asked whether sloppiness at the reactor might have contributed to some of Iran's troubles with the IAEA, Gharib wrote in an e-mail: "It is always possible, for any system, to commit infractions inadvertently due to lack of proper bookkeeping."
Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at Harvard University, said bungling might be to blame for some infractions, but the Iranians clearly concealed major nuclear activities, such as building a facility to enrich uranium. "This was not an oversight," he said.
Another overlooked concern about the Tehran reactor is the weapons-grade fuel the U.S. provided Iran in the 1960s — about 10 pounds of highly enriched uranium, the most valuable material to bomb makers.
This uranium has already been burned in the reactor, but the "spent fuel" is still highly enriched and could be used in a bomb. Normally, spent fuel is so radioactive that terrorists could not handle it without causing themselves great harm. But the spent fuel in Iran been stored for so long that it is probably no longer highly radioactive and could be handled easily, U.S. scientists say.
The fuel is about one-fifth the amount needed to make a nuclear weapon, but experts said it could be combined with other material to construct a bomb.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Since everyone else is talking about this

A handwriting analyst who said he is 99.9 percent certain that John Mark Karr wrote the JonBenet Ramsey ransom note was disqualified as an expert witness earlier this year by a federal judge who challenged his expertise.

Georgia Federal District Court Judge Clay Land wrote that analyst Curtis Baggett was not certified by several industry groups, had not undergone proficiency tests and had not authored texts in the field of handwriting analysis.

In comparison to another expert witness, Land said Baggett's qualifications "are clearly paltry."

Baggett responded Tuesday that he has testified in more than 2,500 cases and was successfully disqualified in only about four. He said he has never been disqualified when he has appeared at trial.

A document examiner studying at Handwriting University, a training company that Baggett and his son run, says sniping is not unusual in the field.

"Every time you're on the top, someone is after you," said Vicki Kizer, who is studying under Baggett. "Curtis does more document exams per month than most people do all year."

Several other document examiners have said they are strongly leaning toward Baggett's conclusion based on a comparison of Karr's writing in a high school yearbook with the three-page note left on the Ramsey family stairway on the day JonBenet was reported missing.

In 2004, a federal magistrate in Maine also challenged Baggett's credentials and excluded his testimony in a civil case there.

Baggett said he was staking a large part of his reputation on his judgment that Karr wrote the ransom note.

He said there were at least 12 points of similarity between the ransom note and the yearbook entry.

Texas document examiner Linda James, however, said that while there are similarities between the yearbook writing and the ransom note, more evidence is needed.

"There are too many other things to consider," she said.

She also said Baggett had considered similarities, but not dissimilarities.

With the issue of DNA in the JonBenet case still in doubt, much of the case against Karr could revolve around expert handwriting analysis.

If that happens, experts said handwriting analysts will probably line up on both sides of the issue.

Baggett is one of the nation's most well-known document examiners.

He attributed the Maine and Georgia disqualifications to inadequate information about his credentials given to the courts in his absence.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

NSA Wiretapping is Unconstitutional

DETROIT - A federal judge ruled Thursday that the government’s warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it.

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency's program, which she says violates the rights to free speech and privacy.

“Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution,” Taylor wrote in her 43-page opinion.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of journalists, scholars and lawyers who say the program has made it difficult for them to do their jobs.

The government argued that the program is well within the president's authority, but said proving that would require revealing state secrets.

The ACLU said the state-secrets argument was irrelevant because the Bush administration already had publicly revealed enough information about the program for Taylor to rule.

“By holding that even the president is not above the law, the court has done its duty,” said Ann Beeson, the ACLU’s associate legal director and the lead attorney for the plaintiffs.

The NSA had no immediate comment on the ruling.

Taylor dismissed a separate claim by the ACLU over data-mining of phone records by the NSA. She said not enough had been publicly revealed about that program to support the claim and further litigation could jeopardize state secrets.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Post Employment Help of the Future

NEW YORK - Bankrupt Northwest Airlines Corp. advised workers to fish in the trash for things they like or take their dates for a walk in the woods in a move to help workers facing the ax to save money.

The No. 5 U.S. carrier, which has slashed most employees' pay and is looking to cut jobs as it prepares to exit bankruptcy, put the tips in a booklet handed out to about 50 workers and posted for a time on its employee Web site.

The section, entitled "101 ways to save money," does not feature in new versions of the booklet or the Web site.

Northwest spokesman Roman Blahoski said some employees who received the handbook had taken issue with a couple of the items. "We agree that some of these suggestions and tips ... were a bit insensitive," Blahoski told Reuters.

The four-page booklet, "Preparing for a Financial Setback" contained suggestions such as shopping in thrift stores, taking "a date for a walk along the beach or in the woods" and not being "shy about pulling something you like out of the trash."

The booklet was part of a 150-page packet to ground workers, such as baggage handlers, whose jobs will likely be cut after their union agreed to allow the airline to outsource some of their work, Blahoski said.

Prepared with the help of an outside company, the booklet encourages employees to manage their money better and prepare for financial emergencies.

"If you have saved some money, pat yourself on the back -- you deserve it," the booklet reads. "Take out only what you need and spend prudently."

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

I think that Fox News IS Satan

If Xray machines cant detect explosives in my shoes, why do I still need to put them in the Xray machine?

The government's new order that all airline passengers put their shoes through X-ray machines won't help screeners find a liquid or gel that can be used as a bomb.

The machines are unable to detect explosives, according to a Homeland Security report on aviation screening recently obtained by The Associated Press.

The Transportation Security Administration ordered the shoe-scanning requirement as it fine-tunes new security procedures.

Those procedures were put in place after British police last week broke up a terrorist plot to assemble and detonate bombs aboard as many as 10 airliners crossing the Atlantic Ocean from Britain to the U.S.

Among the new procedures are a ban on liquids and gels in airline passenger cabins, more hand searches of carryon luggage, and random double screening of passengers at boarding gates.

On Sunday, the TSA made it mandatory for shoes to be run through X-ray machines as passengers go through metal detectors. They were begun in late 2001, after the arrest of Richard Reid aboard a trans-Atlantic flight when he tried to ignite an explosive device hidden in his shoe. The shoe scans have been optional for several years.

In its April 2005 report, "Systems Engineering Study of Civil Aviation Security — Phase I," the Homeland Security Department concluded that images on X-ray machines don't provide the information necessary to detect explosives.

Machines used at most airports to scan hand-held luggage, purses, briefcases and shoes have not been upgraded to detect explosives since the report was issued.

TSA contends, however, that screening shoes is an important security strategy for detecting concealed weapons or tampering.

"It's absolutely a security reason that we're running the shoes through the X-ray machines," TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe said Tuesday. "Our security officers, after they've screened thousands of shoes, can see that shoes have been tampered with or an anomaly in the shoe."

She also said that TSA doesn't need large bomb-screening equipment to find a problem in a shoe. "We've definitely found things that need to looked at further," she said.

The Homeland Security report said that "even a 1/4-inch insole of sheet explosive" could create the kind of blast that reportedly brought down Pan Am flight 103, the airliner that blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988, killing 270 people in the air and on the ground.

The Homeland Security report recommends that explosives trace detection, or ETD, be used on the shoes and hands of passengers when the screeners determine they must be checked more thoroughly.

"To help close this gap, the percentage of shoes subjected to explosives inspection should be significantly increased," the report said.

"Within the current state of the art, they afford the only meaningful explosives detection capability at the checkpoint," the report said.

ETD involves a screener using a dry pad on the end of a wand to wipe a surface — baggage, shoes, clothing — and then putting the pad into a machine called an ion mobility spectrometer. The machine can detect tiny particles, or traces, of explosives.

Screeners do use ETD on passengers who have been selected to be screened a second time after going through the checkpoint.

TSA chief Kip Hawley recently acknowledged that the threat from liquid explosives isn't going away — and new security measures designed to thwart the threat may be around for awhile.

The agency is testing equipment to detect liquid explosives at six airports, Hawley said, and he called the technology "very promising."

But, he said, "with a million and a half to 2 million passengers every day, it is not practical to think that we are going to take every bottle and scan it through these liquid scanners."

"We are not going to wait for the perfect device to be deployable," Hawley said in an interview Friday. "We're going to look for a total system to be at the level to make us comfortable."

The agency wants to make better use of a limited resource — airport screeners, whose numbers have been capped by Congress at 45,000. The TSA handles security for 450 commercial airports.

Among the changes TSA said it is considering:

_Hire more people to take baggage-handling responsibilities from screeners so the screeners can focus on security responsibilities.

_Have screeners, instead of contract employees hired by airlines, check IDs and boarding passes.

_Expand a program that trains screeners to look for unusual behavior in passengers that might indicate malicious intent. Called SPOT — Screening Passengers by Observation Technique — it's used in at least 12 airports, Howe said.

Those changes may require approval by Congress and agreement with airports and the airline industry, which might have to bear some of the cost, Howe said.

Oh yeah ... they call it Airport Security. Its like calling Ms Cleo a Psychic, just because she says that she is.

Nexus of Terror

Keith Olbermann had a great piece last night about just how coincidental some timings have been to arrests in the "War on Terror". Go watch the piece here

Monday, August 14, 2006

More Media Truthiness

Since publication of The New York Times scoop last Dec. 16 on National Security Agency warrantless eavesdropping -- which later won a Pulitzer -- one side issue has been the hint that the paper had the basic story before election day, more than a year earlier, and held it.

Critics have suggested that if it had been published earlier it might have cost President Bush re-election. Bill Keller, the Times' executive editor, has given varying answers about this. Did he mislead readers last December by stating that he had held the article for "a year" to place that after the election? Later he said, vaguely, "more than year."

In January, the paper's public editor, Byron Calame, complained that he had encountered "unusual difficulty" in trying to determine when exactly the paper learned of the surveillance. "The New York Times's explanation...was woefully inadequate," wrote Calame at that time. "And I have had unusual difficulty getting a better explanation for readers, despite the paper's repeated pledges of greater transparency."

Now, in the Sunday Times this week, Calame has produced a tough-minded column, revealing new information and offering fresh criticism. In the end, Keller admits that his dating of the delay had been "inelegant."

This is how Calame starts: "Did The Times mislead readers by stating that any delay in publication came after the Nov. 2, 2004, presidential election?" He continues: "I have now learned from Bill Keller, the executive editor, that The Times delayed publication of drafts of the eavesdropping article before the 2004 election." He adds, "Since the Times article appeared, I have grown increasingly intrigued by changes in the way the delay has been described in the paper and in comments by Mr. Keller."

Keller, who wouldn’t answer any questions about this from Calame for an earlier column, did talk to the public editor for the new report.

"The climactic discussion about whether to publish was right on the eve of the election," Keller tells Calame. For a full accounting of why the story was delayed, see www.nytimes.com for the entire column.

Following that summary, Calame asks: So why did the Dec. 16 article say The Times had delayed publication for "a year,” specifically ruling out the possibility that the story had been held prior to the Nov. 2 election?

“It was probably inelegant wording,” Keller replies. Later he adds, “I don’t know what was in my head at the time.”

Calame concludes: 'Given the importance of this otherwise outstanding article on warrantless eavesdropping — and now the confirmation of pre-election decisions to delay publication — The Times owes it to readers to set the official record straight."

Let The Police State Begin

WASHINGTON — The nation's chief of homeland security said Sunday that the U.S. should consider reviewing its laws to allow for more electronic surveillance and detention of possible terror suspects, citing last week's foiled plot.

Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, stopped short of calling for immediate changes, noting there might be constitutional barriers to the type of wide police powers the British had in apprehending suspects in the plot to blow up airliners headed to the U.S.

But Chertoff made clear his belief that wider authority could thwart future attacks at a time when Congress is reviewing the proper scope of the Bush administration's executive powers for its warrantless eavesdropping program and military tribunals for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"What helped the British in this case is the ability to be nimble, to be fast, to be flexible, to operate based on fast-moving information," he said. "We have to make sure our legal system allows us to do that. It's not like the 20th century, where you had time to get warrants."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says he'd like to see laws that give U-S authorities more flexibility to conduct electronic surveillance.


The Bush administration has pushed for greater executive authority in the war on terror, leading it to create a warrantless eavesdropping program, hold suspects who are deemed as "enemy combatants" for long periods and establish a military tribunal system for detainees that affords defendants fewer rights than traditional courts-martial.

Congress is now reviewing some of the programs after lawmakers questioned the legality of the eavesdropping program and the Supreme Court ruled in June that the tribunals defied international law and had not been authorized by Congress.

On Sunday, Chertoff said the U.S. is remaining vigilant for other attacks, citing concerns that terror groups may "think we are distracted" after last week's foiled plot. Attaining "maximum flexibility" in surveillance of transactions and communications will be critical in preventing future attacks, he said.

"We've done a lot in our legal system the last few years, to move in the direction of that kind of efficiency," Chertoff said. "But we ought to constantly review our legal rules to make sure they're helping us, not hindering us."

He said he expects the Bush administration to keep the U.S. on its highest threat alert for flights headed to the U.S. from the United Kingdom and at its second-highest level for all other flights.

"We haven't fully analyzed the evidence, and therefore, we're still concerned there may be some plotters who are out there," Chertoff said. "We also have to be concerned about other groups that may seize the opportunity to carry out attacks because they think we are distracted with this plot."

Still, Chertoff said he believed that the nation's airline screeners were well-positioned to catch future terrorists. He did not anticipate greater restrictions beyond the current ban on carrying liquids and gels onto airliners, such as barring all carry-on luggage.

"We don't want to inconvenience unnecessarily," he said. "I think we can do the job with our screening, screening training and our technology without banning all carry-on luggage."

Chertoff made the comments on "Fox News Sunday" and ABC's "This Week.

Monday, August 07, 2006

"Culture War " overblown media hype ...or just another Talking Points Memo on Bill O'Reillys "The Factor"

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The so-called culture wars rending America over such issues as abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research may be overblown, based on a U.S. poll released on Thursday.

"Despite talk of 'culture wars' and the high visibility of activist groups on both sides of the cultural divide, there has been no polarization of the public into liberal and conservative camps," the Pew Research Center said, commenting on its poll of 2,003 American adults.

Best illustrating the willingness of Americans to consider opposing points of view is that two-thirds of poll respondents supported finding a middle ground when it comes to abortion rights -- a solid majority that stood up among those calling themselves evangelicals, Catholics, Republicans or Democrats.

The issue of abortion continued to split the country -- 31 percent want it generally available, 20 percent say it should be allowed but want to impose some restrictions, 35 percent want to make it illegal with few exceptions, and 9 percent want it banned altogether.

The poll, sponsored by the nonpartisan research group, was conducted with adults by telephone July 6-19 and had a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.

On five prominent social issues -- abortion rights, stem cell research, gay marriage, adoption of children by gay couples, and availability of the "morning-after" pill -- most Americans did not take consistent stances.

Just 12 percent took the conservative position on all five issues, while 22 percent took the opposite stance on all five. The bulk of Americans had mixed opinions.

On the subject of gay unions, 56 percent opposed giving gays the right to marry, but 53 percent favored allowing gays to enter into legal agreements that provide many of the same rights as married couples.

There has been an increase in recent years in the proportion of Americans who believe homosexuality is innate -- 36 percent, up from 30 percent in 2003. Similarly, 49 percent believed homosexuals cannot be changed to heterosexual, compared to 42 percent in 2003.

The poll's findings on stem cell research -- which preceded
President George W. Bush's veto of a bill to expand federal funding -- showed 56 percent favored the research even though human embryos would be destroyed, while 32 percent were opposed. Most of the gains in support of stem cell research occurred prior to 2004 and has been stable since.

But perhaps more significantly, 57 percent of the respondents said they had heard little or nothing about the stem cell debate.

(* my note:

Come Bill O' time to give up the ghost and admit its just another way for you and people like (M)Anne Coulter to sell books to scared Christians and ultra-tight assed conservatives who enjoy making up the truth.)

Al Gore spoof linked to Exxon Mobil

An online parody of Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, has been tied to a lobbying firm which counts ExxonMobil among its clients, The Wall Street Journal reported today.

The online YouTube profile, which is where the film is hosted, indicates that it was made by a twenty-nine year old working in his Beverly Hill basement. A Wall Street Journal investigation included and email exchange with the gentleman, nicknamed "Toutsmith." Research in to the routing of the email revealed that it was sent from the offices of DCI Group, the firm which ExxonMobil has a contract with.

The Journal report said:
A DCI Group spokesman declines to say whether or not DCI made the anti-Gore penguin video, or to explain why Toutsmith appeared to be sending email from DCI's computers. "DCI Group does not disclose the names of its clients, nor do we discuss the work that we do on our clients' behalf," says Matt Triaca, who heads DCI's media relations shop.

Dave Gardner, an Exxon spokesman, confirms that Exxon is a client of DCI. But he says Exxon had no role in creating the "Inconvenient Truth" spoof. "We, like everyone else on the planet, have seen it, but did not fund it, did not approve it, and did not know what its source was," Mr. Gardner says.

You can go here to learn more about Exxon and how they are trying to change this debate.

Sunday, August 06, 2006

The Constitution in Crisis

When the Shiite Hits the Fan

Former Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith is claiming President George W. Bush was unaware that there were two major sects of Islam just two months before the President ordered troops to invade Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.

In his new book, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End, Galbraith, the son of the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith, claims that American leadership knew very little about the nature of Iraqi society and the problems it would face after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

A year after his “Axis of Evil” speech before the U.S. Congress, President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans, one of whom became postwar Iraq’s first representative to the United States. The three described what they thought would be the political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. During their conversation with the President, Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites.

Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam--to which the President allegedly responded, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”

Research by RAW STORY has confirmed a surprising lack of public statements from the president regarding the branches of Islam, but did uncover at least one mention of their existence. A fact sheet released by the White House in December of 2001 does indeed use the term Sunni to describe a Lashkar-E-Tayyib, "the armed wing of the Pakistan-based religious organization, Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad." Other mentions, not originating from the White House, were common in government documents and proceedings, as well as in media coverage of the middle east.

Other reports also place Bush announcing newfound knowledge of the differences between Muslim groups shortly before entering the Iraq war.

In an interview with RAW STORY, Ambassador Galbraith recounted this anecdote from his book to exemplify “a culture of arrogance that pervaded the whole administration.”

“From the president and the vice president down through the neoconservatives at the Pentagon, there was a belief that Iraq was a blank slate on which the United States could impose its vision of a pluralistic democratic society,” said Galbraith. “The arrogance came in the form of a belief that this could be accomplished with minimal effort and planning by the United States and that it was not important to know something about Iraq.”

The Bush Administration’s aims when it invaded Iraq in March 2003 were to bring it democracy and transform the Middle East. Instead, Iraq has reverted to its three constituent components: a pro-western Kurdistan, an Iran-dominated Shiite theocracy in the south, and a chaotic Sunni Arab region in the center.

Galbraith argues that because the new Iraq was never a voluntary creation of its people--but rather held together by force--America’s ongoing attempt to preserve a unified nation is guaranteed to fail, especially since it’s divided into three different entities.

“You can’t have a national unity government when there is no nation, no unity, and no government,” said Galbraith. “Rather than trying to preserve or hold together a unified Iraq, the U.S. must accept the reality of Iraq’s breakup and work with the Shiites, Kurds, and Sunni Arabs to strengthen the already semi-independent regions.”

Galbraith further argues that the invasion of Iraq destabilized the Middle East while inadvertently strengthening Iran. One of the administration's intentions in invading Iraq was to undermine Iran, but instead, the Iraqi occupation has given Tehran one of its greatest strategic triumphs in the last four centuries.

Once considered to be Iraq’s worst enemy, Iran has now created, financed and armed the Shiite Islamic movements within southern Iraq. Since the Iraqi Parliamentary elections of 2005, the Shiites have made considerable political gains and now have substantial influence over the country’s U.S.-created military, its police, and the central government in Baghdad. In addition, Iraq is developing economic ties with Iran that Galbraith believes could soon link the two countries’ strategic oil supplies.

Galbraith says that, “thanks to George W. Bush, Iran today has no closer ally in the world than the Iraq of the Ayatollahs.” As a result, he argues, sending U.S. forces into Iraq, has in effect, made them hostage to Iran and its Iraqi Shiite allies and left the U.S. without a viable military option to halt Iran’s drive to obtain nuclear weapons.

A seasoned diplomat, Galbraith served as the first U.S. ambassador to Croatia, where he negotiated the 1995 Erdut Agreement that ended the Croatian war.

Galbraith fears the United States may have lost the war on the very day it took Baghdad. “The American servicemen and women who took Baghdad were professionals--disciplined, courteous, and task-oriented,” said Galbraith. “Unfortunately, their political masters were so focused on making the case for war, so keen to vanquish their political foes at home, felt certain that Iraqis would embrace American-style democracy, yet they were so blinded by their own ideology that they failed to plan for the most obvious tasks following military victory.”

Galbraith believes that the Bush Administration’s effort will only leave the U.S. with an open-ended commitment in circumstances of uncontrollable turmoil. In the end, he believes, America’s most important objective is to avoid a worsening civil war.

“There is no easy exit from Iraq,” said Galbraith. “The alternative, however is to continue the present strategy of trying to build national institutions-displaced in the 2003 invasion-but how can you do that where this now is no longer an existing nation?”

Friday, August 04, 2006

Bill of Rights Mean Nothing

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the US government could "indefinitely" hold foreign 'enemy combatants' at sites like the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"We can detain any combatants for the duration of the hostilities," said Gonzales, speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"If we choose to try them, that's great. If we don't choose to try them, we can continue to hold them," he said.

Yet neither the Bush administration nor the US military wants "to remain the world's jailers indefinitely," he said.

A Supreme Court ruling last month declared that government of President George W. Bush had overstepped his authority in forming military commissions to try detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

That authority, the court said, belongs to Congress, and the Senate committee is now hearing testimony on how the Guantanamo prisoners should be dealt with.

Gonzales said he was waiting for a green light from Congress to reinstate military tribunals to try war-on-terror prisoners at Guantanamo, Cuba.

Gonzales has proposed minor modifications to rules that inmate attorneys have decried as violating the rights of their clients.

The proposed rules would allow hearsay evidence to be introduced, including evidence obtained under duress, unless a military judge considers it unreliable, Gonzales said.

To prevent terrorists from having access to confidential information, judges handling the cases must be able to temporarily exclude defendants from their own trial if deemed necessary for national security.

And if a defendant faces the death penalty, he will face a panel of 12 judges who must rule unanimously for a death sentence to be issued.

Around 450 prisoners are being held in the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- some for years -- without charges being brought. Human and civil rights lawyers have brought suit on behalf of detainees, many of them picked up as suspected Al-Qaeda or Taliban fighters on Afghanistan's battlefields.

The Washington Post, quoting anonymous Bush administration officials, reported Wednesday that the White House also hopes to allow the secretary of defense to add crimes at will to the military court's jurisdiction.

Senators did not question Gonzales directly about this, though the attorney general gave assurances that no US citizen would face these courts.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Son of a Bush

Thank God for Chuck D.

Uh! Backwards!

C'mon! C'mon! C'mon! (c'mon!)

Oh no, struck by greased lightning
F'ed by the same last name, you know what?
China ain't never givin back that god damned plane
Must got this whole nation trained on some kennel ration
Refrain, the same train, full of cocaine, blows the brain

Have you forgotten? I've been through the first term of rotten
The father, the son and the holy Bush-shit we all in

Don't look at me, I ain't callin for no assasination
I'm just sayin, sayin
Who voted for that asshole of your nation?

Deja Bush, crushed by the headrush, when I wrote the bumrush
Saw you salute to the then Vice Pres
Who did what RayGun [Reagan] said

And then became prez himself, went for delf
Knee deep in his damned self
Stuck in a three headed bucket, a trilateral Bush-shit
Sorry ain't no better way of puttin it

No you cannot freestyle this
Cause you still ain't free
If I fight for y'all then they get me
How many o y'all is comin to get me?

None! Cause it's easier to forget me
Ain't that a Bush, son of a Bush is here all up in yo zone
You ain't never heard so much soul to the bone
I told y'all when the first Bush was tappin my telephone
Spy vs. Spy, can't truss em, as you salute to the illuminati
Y'know what? Take yo ass to your one millionth party!

He's the son of a Baaaaaad man
The son of a bad...
He's the son of a Baaaaaad man
Son of a bad..........

Now here's the pitch
Hiding inside certified genocide
Ain't that a Bush, repeat ain't that a Bush?
Out of nowhere headed to the hot house
Killed 135 at the last count
Texas Bounce! Texas Bounce! (c'mon)
Cats in a cage got a ghost of a chance
Of comin back from your whack-ass killin machine
Son of a Bush, ain't that a son of a Bush
Cats doin bids for the same Bush-shit that you did (the father)
Serial killer kid, uhh! Serial killer kid
Go on!

He's the son of a Baaaaaad man
The son of a bad...
He's the son of a Baaaaaad man
Son of a bad.........

the father, the son...
the father, the son...
(go on, better go on)
the father, the son, and the holy Bush-shit
The father...
The father...


Coke is the real thing
Used to make you swing
Used to be yo thing
Daddy had you under his wing
Uhh, son of a Bush
Bringin kilos to fill up silos
You probably sniffed piles
Got inmates in Texas scrubbin tiles
That shit is wild
That shit is wild CIA child
That shit is wild CIA child......

He's the son of a Baaaaaad man
The son of a bad...
He's the son of a Baaaaaad man
Son of a bad......

Son of a bad, man

Can I have Freedom Fries with that Abuse of Power?

A draft Bush administration plan for special military courts seeks to expand the reach and authority of such "commissions" to include trials, for the first time, of people who are not members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban and are not directly involved in acts of international terrorism, according to officials familiar with the proposal.

The plan, which would replace a military trial system ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in June, would also allow the secretary of defense to add crimes at will to those under the military court's jurisdiction. The two provisions would be likely to put more individuals than previously expected before military juries, officials and independent experts said.

The draft proposed legislation, set to be discussed at two Senate hearings today, is controversial inside and outside the administration because defendants would be denied many protections guaranteed by the civilian and traditional military criminal justice systems.

Under the proposed procedures, defendants would lack rights to confront accusers, exclude hearsay accusations, or bar evidence obtained through rough or coercive interrogations. They would not be guaranteed a public or speedy trial and would lack the right to choose their military counsel, who in turn would not be guaranteed equal access to evidence held by prosecutors.

Detainees would also not be guaranteed the right to be present at their own trials, if their absence is deemed necessary to protect national security or individuals.

An early draft of the new measure prepared by civilian political appointees and leaked to the media last week has been modified in response to criticism from uniformed military lawyers. But the provisions allowing a future expansion of the courts to cover new crimes and more prisoners were retained, according to government officials familiar with the deliberations.

The military lawyers received the draft after the rest of the government had agreed on it. They have argued in recent days for retaining some routine protections for defendants that the political appointees sought to jettison, an administration official said.

They objected in particular to the provision allowing defendants to be tried in absentia, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to describe the deliberations. Another source in contact with top military lawyers said, "Their initial impression is that the draft was unacceptable and sloppy." The source added that "it did not have enough due-process rights" and could further tarnish America's image.

The military lawyers nonetheless supported extending the jurisdiction of the commissions to cover those accused of joining or associating with terrorist groups engaged in anti-U.S. hostilities, and of committing or aiding hostile acts by such groups, whether or not they are part of al-Qaeda, two U.S. officials said.

That language gives the commissions broader reach than anticipated in a November 2001 executive order from President Bush that focused only on members of al-Qaeda, those who commit international terrorist acts and those who harbor such individuals.

Some independent experts say the new procedures diverge inappropriately from existing criminal procedures and provide no more protections than the ones struck down by the Supreme Court as inadequate. John D. Hutson, the Navy's top uniformed lawyer from 1997 to 2000, said the rules would evidently allow the government to tell a prisoner: "We know you're guilty. We can't tell you why, but there's a guy, we can't tell you who, who told us something. We can't tell you what, but you're guilty."

Bruce Fein, an associate deputy attorney general during the Reagan administration, said after reviewing the leaked draft that "the theme of the government seems to be 'They are guilty anyway, and therefore due process can be slighted.' " With these procedures, Fein said, "there is a real danger of getting a wrong verdict" that would let a lower-echelon detainee "rot for 30 years" at Guantanamo Bay because of evidence contrived by personal enemies.

But Kris Kobach, a senior Justice Department lawyer in Bush's first term who now teaches at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, said he believes that the draft strikes an appropriate balance between "a fundamentally fair trial" and "the ability to protect the effectiveness of U.S. military and intelligence assets."

Administration officials have said that the exceptional trial procedures are warranted because the fight against terrorism requires heavy reliance on classified information or on evidence obtained from a defendant's collaborators, which cannot be shared with the accused. The draft legislation cites the goal of ensuring fair treatment without unduly diverting military personnel from wartime assignments to present evidence in trials.

The provisions are closely modeled on earlier plans for military commissions, which the Supreme Court ruled illegal two months ago in a case brought by Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni imprisoned in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "It is not evident why the danger posed by international terrorism, considerable though it is, should require, in the case of Hamdan, any variance from the courts-martial rules," the court's majority decision held.

No one at Guantanamo has been tried to date, though some prisoners have been there since early 2002.

John Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer who helped draft the earlier plan, said Bush administration officials essentially "took DOD regulations" for the trials "and turned them into a statute for Congress to pass." He said the drafters were obviously "trying to return the law to where it was before Hamdan " by writing language into the draft that challenges key aspects of the court's decision.

"Basically, this is trying to overrule the Hamdan case," said Neal K. Katyal, a Georgetown University law professor who was Hamdan's lead attorney.

The plan calls for commissions of five military officers appointed by the defense secretary to try defendants for any of 25 listed crimes. It gives the secretary the unilateral right to "specify other violations of the laws of war that may be tried by military commission." The secretary would be empowered to prescribe detailed procedures for carrying out the trials, including "modes of proof" and the use of hearsay evidence.

Unlike the international war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, the commissions could rely on hearsay as the basis for a conviction. Unlike routine military courts-martial, in which prosecutors must overcome several hurdles to use such evidence, the draft legislation would put the burden on the defense team to block its use.

The admission of hearsay is a serious problem, said Tom Malinowski, director of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch, because defendants might not know if it was gained through torture and would have difficulty challenging it on that basis. Nothing in the draft law prohibits using evidence obtained through cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment that falls short of torture, Malinowski said.

The U.S. official countered that a military judge "would look hard" at the origins of such evidence and that defendants would have to count on "the trustworthiness of the system."

To secure a death penalty under the draft legislation, at least five jurors must agree, two fewer than under the administration's earlier plan. Courts-martial and federal civilian trials require that 12 jurors agree.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Diebold Machines found to be less secure than previously thought

“This may be the worst security flaw we have seen in touch screen voting machines,” says Open Voting Foundation president, Alan Dechert. Upon examining the inner workings of one of the most popular paperless touch screen voting machines used in public elections in the United States, it has been determined that with the flip of a single switch inside, the machine can behave in a completely different manner compared to the tested and certified version.

“Diebold has made the testing and certification process practically irrelevant,” according to Dechert. “If you have access to these machines and you want to rig an election, anything is possible with the Diebold TS -- and it could be done without leaving a trace. All you need is a screwdriver.” This model does not produce a voter verified paper trail so there is no way to check if the voter’s choices are accurately reflected in the tabulation.

Open Voting Foundation is releasing 22 high-resolution close up pictures of the system. This picture, in particular, shows a “BOOT AREA CONFIGURATION” chart painted on the system board.

The most serious issue is the ability to choose between "EPROM" and "FLASH" boot configurations. Both of these memory sources are present. All of the switches in question (JP2, JP3, JP8, SW2 and SW4) are physically present on the board. It is clear that this system can ship with live boot profiles in two locations, and switching back and forth could change literally everything regarding how the machine works and counts votes. This could be done before or after the so-called "Logic And Accuracy Tests".

A third possible profile could be field-added in minutes and selected in the "external flash" memory location, the interface for which is present on the motherboard.

This is not a minor variation from the previously documented attack point on the newer Diebold TSx. To its credit, the TSx can only contain one boot profile at a time. Diebold has ensured that it is extremely difficult to confirm what code is in a TSx (or TS) at any one time but it is at least theoretically possible to do so. But in the TS, a completely legal and certified set of files can be instantly overridden and illegal uncertified code be made dominant in the system, and then this situation can be reversed leaving the legal code dominant again in a matter of minutes.

“These findings underscore the need for open testing and certification. There is no way such a security vulnerability should be allowed. These systems should be recalled”

The rest of the pictures can be found here

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