Bush + Christians + Africa = more AIDS infections

Uganda was once an HIV prevention success story, where an ambitious government-sponsored prevention campaign, including massive condom distribution and messages about delaying sex and reducing numbers of partners, pushed HIV rates down from 15 percent in the early 1990s to 5 percent in 2001. But conservative evangelicals rewrote this history--with the full-throated cooperation of Uganda's evangelical first family, the Musevenis. As one Family Research Council paper put it:
"Both abstinence and monogamy helped to curb the spread of AIDS in Uganda...How did this happen? Shortly after he came into office in 1986, President Museveni of Uganda spearheaded a mass education campaign promoting a three-pronged AIDS prevention message: abstinence from sexual activity until marriage; monogamy within marriage; and condoms as a last resort. The message became commonly known as ABC: Abstain, Be faithful, and use Condoms if A and B fail."
This warped version of the true Uganda story became the mantra in Bush's Washington, with the "C" reduced more and more to an afterthought as time went by. For example, in piling on against a 2002 pro-condom comment by then Secretary of State Colin Powell, Focus on the Family's James Dobson wrote condoms out of the story entirely: "Secretary Powell seems to be ignorant of the fact the Uganda has made great progress against AIDS by emphasizing abstinence, not condoms." Soon, players connected with the Christian right, from Franklin Graham's Samaritan's Purse to Anita Smith's Children's AIDS Fund, cashed in to the tune of millions of dollars in federal grants to spread the abstinence message in Uganda, the Christian rights' new showcase for a morality-based approach to AIDS. In the case of Smith's outfit, her proposal was shot down by a scientific review committee, but politics prevailed: the head of U.S. AID overruled the experts and demanded that the program be funded.

Anita Smith has long been a close ally of Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma senator James Dobson helped get elected who is so fanatically pro-abstinence that he has pushed for warning labels on condoms and once demanded the ouster of the head of the Centers for Disease Control for promoting condom use. Coburn's legislative director, Roland Foster, used to regularly send out Children's AIDS Fund emails trashing HIV prevention organizations for being too sexually explicit and calling for them to be investigated and defunded. (Many were.) Once Coburn, a former Congressman, was elected to the Senate in 2004, President Bush picked Smith to replace Coburn as the head of his Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. Now, according to the State Department email printed below, she's an official U.S. delegate to next week's UN Special Session on AIDS.

(read the rest of this very compelling article here)

IF you want to read more on Senator Coburn go here
and here is a quote from said article "Coburn is the most dangerous creature that can come to the Senate, someone simply uninterested in being popular."

And here is some info on Anita Smith:
Anita Smith: to the President's Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA), a body established during the Clinton administration to provide policy recommendations on the U.S. government's response to HIV/AIDS. An outspoken opponent of comprehensive sexuality education with close ties to the Bush administration, Smith is vice president of the Institute for Youth Development and head of the Children's AIDS Fund (CAF). CAF was originally founded as Americans for Sound AIDS/HIV Policy by Smith and her husband, Shepherd Smith, in the 1990s. In 2004 their organization applied for funding from the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to implement an "abstinence-only" HIV prevention program in Uganda, but a federal expert panel deemed their project "not suitable for funding." Without explanation, the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator overrode the panel's decision and authorized the grant to CAF. On February 15, 2005, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) wrote to the Global AIDS Coordinator's office to learn why the grant was made despite the proposal's negative rating, but to date he has received no response.

I'm jamming (the phones) just for you.

A major figure in the Election Day phone-jamming scandal that embarrassed and nearly bankrupted the New Hampshire GOP is out of prison and back in the political game.

Charles McGee, the former executive director of the state Republican Party, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and served seven months for his part in the scheme to have a telemarketer tie up Democratic and union phone lines in 2002.

He's back at his old job with a Republican political marketing firm, Spectrum Monthly & Printing Inc., and will be helping out at the firm's "GOP campaign school" for candidates.

Richard Pease, the firm's co-president, said McGee would be available to advise candidates at the two-day event, planned for next weekend in Manchester. McGee's role at the school was reported Thursday by the New Hampshire Union Leader.

"Chuck will work with the candidates in any way they want," Pease said. "If they want his advice, if they want his . . . experience, it's there for them to take or leave."

Pease said he had no problem with McGee, who is a vice president in the firm, returning to advise politicians. "He made a mistake. He admitted to it. He served his time,"Pease said.

"He's certainly not going to be standing there and advocating breaking the law," Pease said. He said McGee declined to comment about his role at the school.

In court, McGee acknowledged that the phone-jamming of get-out-the-vote drives by Democrats and organized labor was his idea, inspired by a lesson he learned in the Marine Corps: cut off your opponent's communications. The calls had the desired effect for two hours the morning of Election Day, but then the scheme began to unravel. Two other people have been sentenced to prison in the phone jamming.

The news of McGee's role in the campaign school was seized on by Democrats, who have charged that Republicans in New Hampshire and Washington have not done enough to repudiate the jamming scheme's authors. Christy Setzer, a spokeswoman for a Democratic group called the Senate Majority Project, said Spectrum's clients include many of New Hampshire's most prominent Republicans.

"The very fact that they continue to associate with him and give him their money . . . speaks volumes," she said.

In response, Andy Leach, the executive director of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee, said his group has nothing to do with the campaign school.

"We're not encouraging anyone to attend," said Leach, who said he was speaking on behalf of state GOP Chairman Wayne Semprini. The party will be running its own campaign school later in the year, he said.

Fabric Of Faith

The following is actual text from a web site dedicated to "Mobilizing millions of Americans to pray daily for our President, our Leaders, our Nation and our Armed Forces."

The Presidential Prayer Team in affiliation with Fabric of Faith is pleased to offer you a distinctive line of men's and women's apparel handsomely embroidered with your choice of several PPT Signature logos or Fabric of Faith Biblical Icons.

Each patriotic symbol is faith inspired, developed from a scriptural foundation, and designed to remind you to pray for our President, our national leaders and our Armed Forces. Wearing these fine quality shirts also shows your support of America and your commitment to pray daily for God to protect and bless our nation.

Your purchase also provides financial support for The Presidential Prayer Team, while encouraging others to join 'The Team'. The PPT garments and Biblically patriotic logos symbolize your commitment to regularly seek God's favor as you faithfully defend America...on your knees...through prayer.

Select your favorite logo and place your order today. Together we can continue to make America 'One Nation Under God'!

Now before any wingnut says I've gone and stepped in it. Let me say this, I have NO problem with people who exhibit their faith, no matter what it is. I think though at this point that prayer alone can't help the current state of affairs. I am just curious though if these are the same people who say that gay marriage is wrong because the bible says that being homosexual is an abominination, or that abstinance is the only method of teaching children about sexual activity. Doesnt anyone see that the hypocrisy needs to stop here?

AIDS at 25

Frontline on PBS is showing a landmark documentary called "The Age of Aids" about the history of AIDS and where we stand now. Part 1 was shown last night with Part 2 being shown tonight. If you get a chance to watch it, I say you should.

Just some facts about the quarter of a century since AIDS was discovered:

AIDS has surpassed even the direst of epidemiological predictions. Today, no region on earth remains untouched by the virus, which continues to stay one step ahead of the best minds in biomedical research.

Worldwide, approximately 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS.

Women today comprise half of all infections worldwide. For a variety of biological and socioeconomic reasons, women¯especially young women¯are at increased risk of infection.

An estimated 15 million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS.

With half of all new infections occurring in people under 25, a whole new generation of young people is now in the crosshairs of the pandemic.

Sub-Saharan Africa has been decimated by AIDS. Without adequate treatment and prevention efforts, Eastern Europe and Asia will be the next epicenters of the epidemic.

Most people with HIV/AIDS live in the developing world, where a majority do not have access to lifesaving antiretroviral treatment.

Faux News .... (Yellow) Journalism at its Finest

You invade our country, kill innocent civilians ..... for this I am ungrateful? I just wonder, what kind of crack are they smoking over there at Fox? Also, I wonder if anyone caught that bastion of "fair and balanced" bloviant Bill O' with his loyal psychopant, Michelle Malkin last night. When someone posts some of the transcripts, I'll post them here.

Top 10 Signs of the Impending Police State

1. The Internet Clampdown

One saving grace of alternative media in this age of unfettered corporate conglomeration has been the internet. While the masses are spoon-fed predigested news on TV and in mainstream print publications, the truth-seeking individual still has access to a broad array of investigative reporting and political opinion via the world-wide web. Of course, it was only a matter of time before the government moved to patch up this crack in the sky.

Attempts to regulate and filter internet content are intensifying lately, coming both from telecommunications corporations (who are gearing up to pass legislation transferring ownership and regulation of the internet to themselves), and the Pentagon (which issued an "Information Operations Roadmap" in 2003, signed by Donald Rumsfeld, which outlines tactics such as network attacks and acknowledges, without suggesting a remedy, that US propaganda planted in other countries has easily found its way to Americans via the internet). One obvious tactic clearing the way for stifling regulation of internet content is the growing media frenzy over child pornography and "internet predators," which will surely lead to legislation that by far exceeds in its purview what is needed to fight such threats.

2. "The Long War"

This little piece of clumsy marketing died off quickly, but it gave away what many already suspected: the War on Terror will never end, nor is it meant to end. It is designed to be perpetual. As with the War on Drugs, it outlines a goal that can never be fully attained -- as long as there are pissed off people and explosives. The Long War will eternally justify what are ostensibly temporary measures: suspension of civil liberties, military expansion, domestic spying, massive deficit spending and the like. This short-lived moniker told us all, "get used to it. Things aren't going to change any time soon."

3. The USA PATRIOT Act

Did anyone really think this was going to be temporary? Yes, this disgusting power grab gives the government the right to sneak into your house, look through all your stuff and not tell you about it for weeks on a rubber stamp warrant. Yes, they can look at your medical records and library selections. Yes, they can pass along any information they find without probable cause for purposes of prosecution. No, they're not going to take it back, ever.

4. Prison Camps

This last January the Army Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root nearly $400 million to build detention centers in the United States, for the purpose of unspecified "new programs." Of course, the obvious first guess would be that these new programs might involve rounding up Muslims or political dissenters -- I mean, obviously detention facilities are there to hold somebody. I wish I had more to tell you about this, but it's, you know... secret.

5. Touchscreen Voting Machines

Despite clear, copious evidence that these nefarious contraptions are built to be tampered with, they continue to spread and dominate the voting landscape, thanks to Bush's "Help America Vote Act," the exploitation of corrupt elections officials, and the general public's enduring cluelessness.

In Utah, Emery County Elections Director Bruce Funk witnessed security testing by an outside firm on Diebold voting machines which showed them to be a security risk. But his warnings fell on deaf ears. Instead Diebold attorneys were flown to Emery County on the governor's airplane to squelch the story. Funk was fired. In Florida, Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho discovered an alarming security flaw in their Diebold system at the end of last year. Rather than fix the flaw, Diebold refused to fulfill its contract. Both of the other two touchscreen voting machine vendors, Sequoia and ES&S, now refuse to do business with Sancho, who is required by HAVA to implement a touchscreen system and will be sued by his own state if he doesn't. Diebold is said to be pressuring for Sancho's ouster before it will resume servicing the county.

Stories like these and much worse abound, and yet TV news outlets have done less coverage of the new era of elections fraud than even 9/11 conspiracy theories. This is possibly the most important story of this century, but nobody seems to give a damn. As long as this issue is ignored, real American democracy will remain an illusion. The midterm elections will be an interesting test of the public's continuing gullibility about voting integrity, especially if the Democrats don't win substantial gains, as they almost surely will if everything is kosher.

Bush just suggested that his brother Jeb would make a good president. We really need to fix this problem soon.

6. Signing Statements

Bush has famously never vetoed a bill. This is because he prefers to simply nullify laws he doesn't like with "signing statements." Bush has issued over 700 such statements, twice as many as all previous presidents combined. A few examples of recently passed laws and their corresponding dismissals, courtesy of the Boston Globe:

--Dec. 30, 2005: US interrogators cannot torture prisoners or otherwise subject them to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

Bush's signing statement: The president, as commander in chief, can waive the torture ban if he decides that harsh interrogation techniques will assist in preventing terrorist attacks.

--Dec. 30, 2005: When requested, scientific information ''prepared by government researchers and scientists shall be transmitted [to Congress] uncensored and without delay."

Bush's signing statement: The president can tell researchers to withhold any information from Congress if he decides its disclosure could impair foreign relations, national security, or the workings of the executive branch.

--Dec. 23, 2004: Forbids US troops in Colombia from participating in any combat against rebels, except in cases of self-defense. Caps the number of US troops allowed in Colombia at 800.

Bush's signing statement: Only the president, as commander in chief, can place restrictions on the use of US armed forces, so the executive branch will construe the law ''as advisory in nature."

Essentially, this administration is bypassing the judiciary and deciding for itself whether laws are constitutional or not. Somehow, I don't see the new Supreme Court lineup having much of a problem with that, though. So no matter what laws congress passes, Bush will simply choose to ignore the ones he doesn't care for. It's much quieter than a veto, and can't be overridden by a two-thirds majority. It's also totally absurd.

7. Warrantless Wiretapping

Amazingly, the GOP sees this issue as a plus for them. How can this be? What are you, stupid? You find out the government is listening to the phone calls of US citizens, without even the weakest of judicial oversight and you think that's okay? Come on -- if you know anything about history, you know that no government can be trusted to handle something like this responsibly. One day they're listening for Osama, and the next they're listening in on Howard Dean.

Think about it: this administration hates unauthorized leaks. With no judicial oversight, why on earth wouldn't they eavesdrop on, say, Seymour Hersh, to figure out who's spilling the beans? It's a no-brainer. Speaking of which, it bears repeating: terrorists already knew we would try to spy on them. They don't care if we have a warrant or not. But you should.

8. Free Speech Zones

I know it's old news, but... come on, are they fucking serious?

9. High-ranking Whistleblowers

Army Generals. Top-level CIA officials. NSA operatives. White House cabinet members. These are the kind of people that Republicans fantasize about being, and whose judgment they usually respect. But for some reason, when these people resign in protest and criticize the Bush administration en masse, they are cast as traitorous, anti-American publicity hounds. Ridiculous. The fact is, when people who kill, spy and deceive for a living tell you that the White House has gone too far, you had damn well better pay attention. We all know most of these people are staunch Republicans. If the entire military except for the two guys the Pentagon put in front of the press wants Rumsfeld out, why on earth wouldn't you listen?

10. The CIA Shakeup

Was Porter Goss fired because he was resisting the efforts of Rumsfeld or Negroponte? No. These appointments all come from the same guys, and they wouldn't be nominated if they weren't on board all the way. Goss was probably canned so abruptly due to a scandal involving a crooked defense contractor, his hand-picked third-in-command, the Watergate hotel and some hookers.

If Bush's nominee for CIA chief, Air Force General Michael Hayden, is confirmed, that will put every spy program in Washington under military control. Hayden, who oversaw the NSA warrantless wiretapping program and is clearly down with the program. That program? To weaken and dismantle or at least neuter the CIA. Despite its best efforts to blame the CIA for "intelligence errors" leading to the Iraq war, the picture has clearly emerged -- through extensive CIA leaks -- that the White House's analysis of Saddam's destructive capacity was not shared by the Agency. This has proved to be a real pain in the ass for Bush and the gang.

Who'd have thought that career spooks would have moral qualms about deceiving the American people? And what is a president to do about it? Simple: make the critical agents leave, and fill their slots with Bush/Cheney loyalists. Then again, why not simply replace the entire organization? That is essentially what both Rumsfeld at the DoD and newly minted Director of National Intelligence John are doing -- they want to move intelligence analysis into the hands of people that they can control, so the next time they lie about an "imminent threat" nobody's going to tell. And the press is applauding the move as a "necessary reform."

Remember the good old days, when the CIA were the bad guys?

The Net Stays Neutral

WASHINGTON--A bill that seeks to prevent broadband providers from offering an exclusive high-speed lane for video and other services has taken a step closer to becoming law.

By a 20-13 vote Thursday that partially followed party lines, the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would require broadband providers to abide by strict Net neutrality principles, meaning that their networks must be operated in a "nondiscriminatory" manner.

All 14 Democrats on the committee (joined by six Republicans) supported the measure, while 13 Republicans opposed it.

That vote is a surprise victory for Internet companies such as Amazon.com, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo that had lobbied fiercely in the last few months for stricter laws to ensure that Verizon, AT&T and other broadband providers could not create a "fast lane" reserved for video or other high-priority content of their choice.

"The lack of competition in the broadband marketplace presents a clear incentive for providers to leverage dominant market power over the broadband bottleneck, to preselect, favor or prioritize Internet content," said Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican who heads the committee.

In an unusual twist, many members of the committee said they were voting for the legislation not because of strong concerns over Net neutrality--but instead because of a turf battle. They said they were worried that a competing proposal already approved by a different committee last month would diminish their own influence in the future.

That other bill, called the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement, or COPE, Act, says the Federal Communications Commission "shall have exclusive authority" to investigate violations of Net neutrality principles. It's backed by Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican who heads the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and does not include strict Net neutrality mandates.

Because the FCC is overseen by Barton's committee, that proposal would effectively cut off Judiciary Committee members from being able to hold hearings on Net neutrality antitrust violations, give speeches about corporate malfeasance and solicit campaign cash from affected companies--the lifeblood of modern Washington politics.

That resulted in an unusual situation in which politicians who weren't enthusiastic about the Judiciary bill nevertheless voted for it on Wednesday. "I think the bill is a blunt instrument, and yet I think it does send a message that it's important to attain jurisdiction for the Justice Department and for antitrust issues," said Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat.

The most pointed opposition to the Judiciary bill came from Texas Republican Lamar Smith, who said he would prefer "to leave these decisions to the courts to work out on a case-by-case basis under the antitrust law."

The existing bill is far too regulatory and could "put a straitjacket on this important sector of the economy," Smith warned.

Rep. Anthony Weiner, a New York Democrat, said he also disagreed with the "regulatory scheme" proposed by the bill's sponsors but wasn't about to let the rival committee's proposal win. "The way the Energy and Commerce bill is written is to deny this committee--and, frankly, citizens--a right to remedy," he said.

AT&T said after the vote that it was disappointed but hoped that the turf war between the two committees could be resolved. "We are optimistic that the majority in Congress will see this legislation as an attempt to solve a problem that does not exist, and will instead focus on bringing choice to consumers by passing video choice legislation," Tim McKone, AT&T executive vice president for federal relations, said in a statement.

Walter McCormick, president of the United States Telecom Association (USTelecom), pointed to the pre-vote discussion when saying "the committee members understand that this misguided and reckless legislation could hamper investment and innovation and limit consumer choice." USTelecom is a trade association representing Verizon Communications, BellSouth and AT&T, as well as smaller telecommunications companies.

Also adopted was an amendment that Sensenbrenner and his co-sponsor Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, had offered. It says that broadband providers are allowed to offer consumer protection services such as parental controls; that they can offer special promotional pricing or marketing initiatives; and that they may prioritize or offer enhanced quality of service to all data of a particular type as long as they don't impose a surcharge.

Network operators from the telephone and cable industries, now allied with some of the nation's largest hardware makers, have said repeatedly that they have no intention of blocking, degrading or impairing content. They say they're protecting their right to manage their networks as they see fit, which could mean charging extra to heavy bandwidth users, such as video providers, that expect to have their content shuttled at priority speeds.

It's not clear what will happen next in the House. Often the House leadership, in this case the Republicans, will try to meld similar proposals together into one package before a floor vote. Alternatively, the Republican leadership could permit both bills to go to the floor for votes.

Bush says "Bring Em On" was a mistake ..... Satan seen buying snow shovel for upcoming blizzard.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush admitted on Thursday that his bellicose "bring 'em on" taunt to Iraqi insurgents was a big mistake, as he and British Prime Minister Tony Blair carefully avoided setting a timetable for removing troops from Iraq.

Meeting at a time when a new Iraqi unity government offers the promise of a way out of an unpopular war that has damaged their standings at home, Bush and Blair were remarkably reflective on some of the grievous mistakes that critics say has intensified anti-American sentiment in the Middle East.

At a joint news conference with Blair, after three years of war that has killed more than 2,400 Americans and thousands of Iraqis, Bush was asked what mistake he most regretted.

The Texan said that he regretted saying "bring 'em on" when responding in July 2003 to a question about the Iraqi insurgency.

On Thursday, Bush said the remark was "kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong message to people."

"I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner, you know. "Wanted, dead or alive"; that kind of talk. I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted," he said.

He also cited the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal as "the biggest mistake that's happened so far, at least from our country's involvement in Iraq ... We've been paying for that for a long period of time," he said.

Blair said the effort to rid Iraq's army of members of Saddam Hussein's Baathists -- a process called "de-Baathification -- could have been done better.

"I think it's easy to go back over mistakes that we may have made. But the biggest reason why Iraq has been difficult is the determination by our opponents to defeat us. And I don't think we should be surprised at that," Blair said.

FCC not to investigate NSA collection of records

WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission said it will not investigate whether telephone companies violated consumer-privacy laws by reportedly releasing millions of phone records to a U.S. spy agency.

In a letter released Tuesday, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said an inability to obtain classified material would prevent the agency from looking into a newspaper report that AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. handed over call records to the National Security Agency.

“The classified nature of the NSA’s activities makes us unable to investigate the alleged violations,” Martin said. “The commission has no power to order the production of classified information.”

Martin’s letter came in response to a request from Rep. Edward Markey, (D-Mass.), to look into a USA Today report that the three telecom companies handed over call records to the spy agency. Verizon and BellSouth denied turning over the records, and BellSouth has demanded the newspaper retract the story.

The FCC can fine phone companies more than $1 million for violating the 1934 Communications Act, which requires carriers to protect customer confidentiality unless the disclosure is in response to a court order or is approved by the consumer. Earlier this year, the FCC proposed fining AT&T and Alltel Corp. $100,000 each after private companies were found to be selling phone records over the Internet.

Martin’s refusal drew a pointed rebuke from Markey, who called for congressional intervention.

“The FCC… has taken a pass at investigating what is estimated to be the nation’s largest violation of consumer privacy ever to occur,” Markey said in a prepared statement. “If the FCC initiates an investigation and gets blocked by the White House, then the White House is stonewalling. But if the FCC refuses to even demand answers, then the White House never has to block the enforcement agency from getting to the bottom of this.”

Fox News .... They report .... they fabricate

This weekend on Fox News, host David Asman asked his guests to discuss the following question: “If people buy into [Al Gore’s] global warming hysteria, will it put him in the White House and our economy on the skids?” Steve Forbes answered yes, and called Gore’s new movie “a real recipe for more socialist regulation.”
For what it’s worth, the Apollo Alliance, a coalition of labor and environmental groups, has developed a plan to “develop alternative fuels, increase energy efficiency, rebuild and expand public transportation networks and come up with other initiatives to reduce fossil fuel use” that would create more than three million jobs in the process.

Full transcript:

ASMAN: Al Gore’s new documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, it hits the theaters this week. If people buy into his global warming hysteria, will it put him in the White House and our economy on the skids? Steve, first off, is it gonna get him in the White House?

FORBES: No, if he believes that’s gonna get him in the White House, he needs to rub on something stronger than this sunscreen.

ASMAN: Alright, but if his global warming agenda somehow gets mixed up into our agenda, the national agenda, what’ll it do to the economy?

FORBES: It will ice the economy. And after all, some people do believe the DiVinci Code, so some will believe the DiGore Code. [Laughter] But the fact of the matter is, the policies that result from it would hurt the economy, would create unemployment. It’s a real recipe for more socialist regulation.

AT&T's whistleblower evidence

Former AT&T technician Mark Klein is the key witness in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's class-action lawsuit against the company, which alleges that AT&T illegally cooperated in an illegal National Security Agency domestic-surveillance program.

In this recently surfaced statement, Klein details his discovery of an alleged surveillance operation in an AT&T office in San Francisco, and offers his interpretation of company documents that he believes support his case.

For its part, AT&T is asking a federal judge to keep those documents out of court, and to order the EFF to return them to the company. Here Wired News presents Klein's statement in its entirety, along with select pages from the AT&T documents.
AT&T's Implementation of NSA Spying on American Citizens


31 December 2005

I wrote the following document in 2004 when it became clear to me that AT&T, at the behest of the National Security Agency, had illegally installed secret computer gear designed to spy on internet traffic. At the time I thought this was an outgrowth of the notorious Total Information Awareness program which was attacked by defenders of civil liberties. But now it's been revealed by The New York Times that the spying program is vastly bigger and was directly authorized by President Bush, as he himself has now admitted, in flagrant violation of specific statutes and constitutional protections for civil liberties. I am presenting this information to facilitate the dismantling of this dangerous Orwellian project.
AT&T Deploys Government Spy Gear on WorldNet Network


-- 16 January, 2004

In 2003 AT&T built "secret rooms" hidden deep in the bowels of its central offices in various cities, housing computer gear for a government spy operation which taps into the company's popular WorldNet service and the entire internet. These installations enable the government to look at every individual message on the internet and analyze exactly what people are doing. Documents showing the hardwire installation in San Francisco suggest that there are similar locations being installed in numerous other cities.

The physical arrangement, the timing of its construction, the government-imposed secrecy surrounding it, and other factors all strongly suggest that its origins are rooted in the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness (TIA) program which brought forth vigorous protests from defenders of constitutionally protected civil liberties last year:
"As the director of the effort, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, has described the system in Pentagon documents and in speeches, it will provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents, without a search warrant." The New York Times, 9 November 2002

To mollify critics, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) spokesmen have repeatedly asserted that they are only conducting "research" using "artificial synthetic data" or information from "normal DOD intelligence channels" and hence there are "no U.S. citizen privacy implications" (Department of Defense, Office of the Inspector General report on TIA, December 12, 2003). They also changed the name of the program to "Terrorism Information Awareness" to make it more politically palatable. But feeling the heat, Congress made a big show of allegedly cutting off funding for TIA in late 2003, and the political fallout resulted in Adm. Poindexter's abrupt resignation last August. However, the fine print reveals that Congress eliminated funding only for "the majority of the TIA components," allowing several "components" to continue (DOD, ibid). The essential hardware elements of a TIA-type spy program are being surreptitiously slipped into "real world" telecommunications offices.

In San Francisco the "secret room" is Room 641A at 611 Folsom Street, the site of a large SBC phone building, three floors of which are occupied by AT&T. High-speed fiber-optic circuits come in on the 8th floor and run down to the 7th floor where they connect to routers for AT&T's WorldNet service, part of the latter's vital "Common Backbone." In order to snoop on these circuits, a special cabinet was installed and cabled to the "secret room" on the 6th floor to monitor the information going through the circuits. (The location code of the cabinet is 070177.04, which denotes the 7th floor, aisle 177 and bay 04.) The "secret room" itself is roughly 24-by-48 feet, containing perhaps a dozen cabinets including such equipment as Sun servers and two Juniper routers, plus an industrial-size air conditioner.

The normal work force of unionized technicians in the office are forbidden to enter the "secret room," which has a special combination lock on the main door. The telltale sign of an illicit government spy operation is the fact that only people with security clearance from the National Security Agency can enter this room. In practice this has meant that only one management-level technician works in there. Ironically, the one who set up the room was laid off in late 2003 in one of the company's endless "downsizings," but he was quickly replaced by another.

Plans for the "secret room" were fully drawn up by December 2002, curiously only four months after Darpa started awarding contracts for TIA. One 60-page document, identified as coming from "AT&T Labs Connectivity & Net Services" and authored by the labs' consultant Mathew F. Casamassima, is titled Study Group 3, LGX/Splitter Wiring, San Francisco and dated 12/10/02. (See sample PDF 1-4.) This document addresses the special problem of trying to spy on fiber-optic circuits. Unlike copper wire circuits which emit electromagnetic fields that can be tapped into without disturbing the circuits, fiber-optic circuits do not "leak" their light signals. In order to monitor such communications, one has to physically cut into the fiber somehow and divert a portion of the light signal to see the information.

This problem is solved with "splitters" which literally split off a percentage of the light signal so it can be examined. This is the purpose of the special cabinet referred to above: Circuits are connected into it, the light signal is split into two signals, one of which is diverted to the "secret room." The cabinet is totally unnecessary for the circuit to perform -- in fact it introduces problems since the signal level is reduced by the splitter -- its only purpose is to enable a third party to examine the data flowing between sender and recipient on the internet.

The above-referenced document includes a diagram (PDF 3) showing the splitting of the light signal, a portion of which is diverted to "SG3 Secure Room," i.e., the so-called "Study Group" spy room. Another page headlined "Cabinet Naming" (PDF 2) lists not only the "splitter" cabinet but also the equipment installed in the "SG3" room, including various Sun devices, and Juniper M40e and M160 "backbone" routers. PDF file 4 shows one of many tables detailing the connections between the "splitter" cabinet on the 7th floor (location 070177.04) and a cabinet in the "secret room" on the 6th floor (location 060903.01). Since the San Francisco "secret room" is numbered 3, the implication is that there are at least several more in other cities (Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego are some of the rumored locations), which likely are spread across the United States.

One of the devices in the "Cabinet Naming" list is particularly revealing as to the purpose of the "secret room": a Narus STA 6400. Narus is a 7-year-old company which, because of its particular niche, appeals not only to businessmen (it is backed by AT&T, JP Morgan and Intel, among others) but also to police, military and intelligence officials. Last November 13-14, for instance, Narus was the "Lead Sponsor" for a technical conference held in McLean, Virginia, titled "Intelligence Support Systems for Lawful Interception and Internet Surveillance." Police officials, FBI and DEA agents, and major telecommunications companies eager to cash in on the "war on terror" had gathered in the hometown of the CIA to discuss their special problems. Among the attendees were AT&T, BellSouth, MCI, Sprint and Verizon. Narus founder, Dr. Ori Cohen, gave a keynote speech. So what does the Narus STA 6400 do?

"The (Narus) STA Platform consists of stand-alone traffic analyzers that collect network and customer usage information in real time directly from the message.... These analyzers sit on the message pipe into the ISP (internet service provider) cloud rather than tap into each router or ISP device" (Telecommunications magazine, April 2000). A Narus press release (1 Dec., 1999) also boasts that its Semantic Traffic Analysis (STA) technology "captures comprehensive customer usage data ... and transforms it into actionable information.... (It) is the only technology that provides complete visibility for all internet applications."

To implement this scheme, WorldNet's high-speed data circuits already in service had to be rerouted to go through the special "splitter" cabinet. This was addressed in another document of 44 pages from AT&T Labs, titled "SIMS, Splitter Cut-In and Test Procedure," dated 01/13/03 (PDF 5-6). "SIMS" is an unexplained reference to the secret room. Part of this reads as follows:
"A WMS (work) Ticket will be issued by the AT&T Bridgeton Network Operation Center (NOC) to charge time for performing the work described in this procedure document....
"This procedure covers the steps required to insert optical splitters into select live Common Backbone (CBB) OC3, OC12 and OC48 optical circuits."

The NOC referred to is in Bridgeton, Missouri, and controls WorldNet operations. (As a sign that government spying goes hand-in-hand with union-busting, the entire (Communication Workers of America) Local 6377 which had jurisdiction over the Bridgeton NOC was wiped out in early 2002 when AT&T fired the union work force and later rehired them as nonunion "management" employees.) The cut-in work was performed in 2003, and since then new circuits are connected through the "splitter" cabinet.

Another "Cut-In and Test Procedure" document dated January 24, 2003, provides diagrams of how AT&T Core Network circuits were to be run through the "splitter" cabinet (PDF 7). One page lists the circuit IDs of key Peering Links which were "cut-in" in February 2003 (PDF 8), including ConXion, Verio, XO, Genuity, Qwest, PAIX, Allegiance, AboveNet, Global Crossing, C&W, UUNET, Level 3, Sprint, Telia, PSINet and Mae West. By the way, Mae West is one of two key internet nodal points in the United States (the other, Mae East, is in Vienna, Virginia). It's not just WorldNet customers who are being spied on -- it's the entire internet.

The next logical question is, what central command is collecting the data sent by the various "secret rooms"? One can only make educated guesses, but perhaps the answer was inadvertently given in the DOD Inspector General's report (cited above):

"For testing TIA capabilities, Darpa and the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) created an operational research and development environment that uses real-time feedback. The main node of TIA is located at INSCOM (in Fort Belvoir, Virginia)…."

Among the agencies participating or planning to participate in the INSCOM "testing" are the "National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the DOD Counterintelligence Field Activity, the U.S. Strategic Command, the Special Operations Command, the Joint Forces Command and the Joint Warfare Analysis Center." There are also "discussions" going on to bring in "non-DOD federal agencies" such as the FBI.

This is the infrastructure for an Orwellian police state. It must be shut down!

The equipment that was installed in AT&T's "secret room" is a product called the Semantic Traffic Analyzer. Wired has a story about it here

Craptacular TV

Ok so my life must be close to an end. I actually had the misfortune of watching a decidely wretched television show last night on MTV called My Super Sweet 16. Yeah I know, two things are wrong with this last sentence. I was watching TV and I actually expected something out of MTV. How could I be so naive? Let me get my bitching out of the way. I remember when MTV was just a broadcast medium for promoting MUSIC, but evidently those days are long gone. The joke used to be that MTV stood for Madonnas Three Videos but I think now it could stand for maladjusted teen vices. So with that said, I braced myself for whatever kind of nausea inducing event this was going to be. If you havent had the (dis)pleasure of watching this show, let me set up the premise for you. Mommy and Daddy have lots of money, Mommy and Daddy mate and spawn,(and in these cases should have eaten their offspring) Mommy and Daddy make societies next little monster. So this particular episode showed a girl who was planning her party and doing the thing that most rich little girls do, bitch. She didnt like her dress, she didnt like people making out at HER party, she loved her brand new BMW that her father gave her. She said (and I quote) "My father spent $300,000 on my party and I'm worth every cent of it."
Does anyone remember after 9/11 when all of us here in the states asked ourselves collectively "Why do they hate us?" Need we look any further? Yes yes yes, I'm invoking 9/11 for yet another lame excuse but rather than focus on that, consider this. We are by far one of the wealthiest countries on the planet. Doesnt it seem that we do in fact have aristocracy, we just dont have the monarchy to go with it? I'm curious as to where we go from here. We complain as a culture about all kinds of things, but this kind of schlock is welcome on TV? I guess as a culture though if we can support Jerry Springer, we can support this kind of crap too. Me personally, I'm disgusted and just wonder what kind of children can watch this and think that this show is entertaining.

Rove says Republicans will fare fine in midterms

“We’re in a sour time – I readily admit it,’’ Karl Rove, the president’s chief political adviser, said today of sagging public opinion toward his boss and his party. “The war looms over everything. There is no doubt about it.’’

Suggesting that there is “a disconnect’’ between public confidence in the economy and Bush’s political standing because of the war, Rove maintained today that the Republican Party will fare “just fine’’ in this fall’s midterm congressional elections.


“I’m absolutely confident,’’ Rove said. “We’re going to be just fine in the fall elections. And we’re going to be fine because we stand for things that are important to stand for – strong national defense… a complete victory in the war on terrorism…. We stand for economic policies that are pro-growth… fiscal restraint in the budget process.

“And our opponents, at this point, stand for little or nothing – except for pure obstructionism, whether it is the nomination of perfectly qualified men and women for the judiciary, or policies to pass and authorize the Patriot Act,’’ Rove said after an address at the American Enterprise Institute. “The other party seems to stand for little except obstruction, and ultimately the American people are a center-to-right country, presented with a central-right party with center-right candidates (and) will vote center-right.

“We’re in a sour time – I readily admit it,’’ Rove said in response to questions about the president’s low job approval and the potential impact on elections. “Being in the middle of a war where people turn on their television sets and see men and women dying is not something that makes people happy and optimistic and upbeat.

“Consumer confidence is relatively high,’’ said Rove, after delivering a speech before the conservative think tank that largely credited the Bush administration’s tax cuts and other economic policies for improvement in the economy. “There is a disconnect… and I think it’s because the war looms on all political actors.’’

The GOP’s own polling has registered approval for Bush, personally, in the low 60s, according to Rove. His job approval stands in the low 30s in public opinion polls.

“I love all these polls,’’ Rove told a reporter. “I love reading your polls. I love this mania which has swept through American media today which substitutes polls for coverage of substance... You’ll work your way through it eventually. I’m sure there will be a special Betty Ford addiction… for those who are addicted to regular poll numbers.

“I look at these polls all the time,’’ he allowed. “The American people like this president. His personal approval ratings are in the 60s. His job approval is lower. What that says to me is that people like him, they respect him. They’re just sour right now, and that’s the way it’s going to be. And we will fight our way through it. The polls will go up. The polls will go down… If you want to govern by waking up and saying, ‘How am I doing in the polls?’ and adjusting thereby, you’re going to find yourself in one heck of a problem. So we’re going to stay focused on good policy, confident that that will ultimately take care of the politics.’’

As the president prepares to address the American public on television tonight with his plans for immigration reform, Rove expressed confidence too that the politics of immigration reform will turn out all right. “This is about doing the right policy,’’ Rove said of the president’s immigration policy, “and the politics will take care of itself.’’

Rove has made relatively few public appearances since a federal prosecutor’s investigation pointed to him as one of the Bush administration officials who served as a source for news reporters who wrote about or knew of a CIA agent’s identity when her husband criticized the administration’s pre-war intelligence in the summer of 2003. And Rove had nothing to say on that count today, tersely referring to a statement that his own attorney released last month when Rove made his fifth appearance before a Grand Jury – lawyer Bob Luskin maintaining that Rove is not a target of the ongoing investigation.

Rove was asked by one reporter if – nearly three years since the identity of a CIA official was revealed and after Rove’s discussions with reporters have become known – the public deserves an explanation about Rove’s role in the identification of the CIA’s Valerie Plame when ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson criticized Bush’s pre-war intelligence.

“My attorney, Mr. Luskin, made a statement on April 26. I refer you to that statement. I have nothing more to add,’’ Rove replied. “Nice try, though.’

Feds spying on media sources

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.

ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.

One former official was asked to sign a document stating he was not a confidential source for New York Times reporter James Risen.

Our reports on the CIA's secret prisons in Romania and Poland were known to have upset CIA officials. The CIA asked for an FBI investigation of leaks of classified information following those reports.

People questioned by the FBI about leaks of intelligence information say the CIA was also disturbed by ABC News reports that revealed the use of CIA predator missiles inside Pakistan.

Under Bush Administration guidelines, it is not considered illegal for the government to keep track of numbers dialed by phone customers.

The official who warned ABC News said there was no indication our phones were being tapped so the content of the conversation could be recorded.

A pattern of phone calls from a reporter, however, could provide valuable clues for leak investigators.

Poll numbers may be faulty but facts dont lie

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - First lady Laura Bush said on Sunday she does not believe opinion polls showing her husband's approval ratings at record low levels.

Interviewed on Fox News Sunday, Laura Bush said she did not think people were losing confidence in President George W. Bush, despite a series of polls showing support for him at its lowest point in his five-year presidency and among the lowest for any president in the past 50 years.

"I don't really believe those polls. I travel around the country. I see people, I see their responses to my husband. I see their response to me," she said.

"As I travel around the United States, I see a lot of appreciation for him. A lot of people come up to me and say, 'Stay the course'."

Many recent polls have put Bush's job approval rating below 35 percent. One, the Harris poll, published last Friday, measured his approval at 29 percent, the first time any survey has put his support below the 30 percent mark. Two other polls published last week put his job approval at 31 percent.

In a separate interview on ABC's "This Week," Laura Bush said her husband's popularity was suffering because the country had been through a difficult year.

We've had a very, very difficult year, starting with the hurricane last September, but already because of the terrorist attack in 2001 and then the war on terror since then," she said. "He's the one that has to make the hard decisions. And, of course, they don't please everyone."

Mrs. Bush complained that when her husband's popularity was high, newspapers did not put that on the front page. Now it was low, they took great delight in highlighting the fact.

Asked if she thought the media had been unfair, Mrs. Bush said: "No, I don't think it's necessarily unfair. I think it's just, you know, I think they may be enjoying this a little bit."

Mentally Ill soldiers forced into fight

U.S. military troops with severe psychological problems have been sent to Iraq or kept in combat, even when superiors have been aware of signs of mental illness, a newspaper reported in its Sunday editions.

The Hartford Courant, citing records obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act and more than 100 interviews of families and military personnel, reported numerous cases in which the military failed to follow its own regulations in screening, treating and evacuating mentally unfit troops from Iraq.

In 1997, Congress ordered the military to assess the mental health of all deploying troops. The newspaper, citing Pentagon statistics, said fewer than 1 in 300 service members were referred to a mental health professional before shipping out for Iraq as of October 2005.

Twenty-two U.S. troops committed suicide in Iraq last year. That number accounts for nearly one in five of all noncombat deaths and was the highest suicide rate since the war started, the newspaper said.

The paper reported that some service members who committed suicide in 2004 or 2005 were kept on duty despite clear signs of mental distress, sometimes after being prescribed antidepressants with little or no mental health counseling or monitoring. Those findings conflict with regulations adopted last year by the Army that caution against the use of antidepressants for "extended deployments."

Although Defense Department standards for enlistment disqualify recruits who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, the military also is redeploying service members to Iraq who fit that criteria, the newspaper said.

"I can't imagine something more irresponsible than putting a soldier suffering from stress on (antidepressants), when you know these drugs can cause people to become suicidal and homicidal," said Vera Sharav, president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, a New York-based advocacy group. "You're creating chemically activated time bombs."

Commanders, not medical professionals, have final say over whether a troubled soldier is retained in a war zone. Col. Elspeth Ritchie, the Army's top mental health expert, and other military officials said they believe most commanders are alert to mental health problems and are open to referring troubled soldiers for treatment.

Ritchie acknowledged that some deployment practices, such as sending service members diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome back into combat, have been driven in part by a troop shortage.

"The challenge for us ... is that the Army has a mission to fight. And, as you know, recruiting has been a challenge," she said. "And so we have to weigh the needs of the Army, the needs of the mission, with the soldiers' personal needs."

Ritchie insisted the military works hard to prevent suicides, but it is a challenge because every soldier has access to a weapon.

"I'm concerned that people who are symptomatic are being sent back. That has not happened before in our country," said Arthur S. Blank Jr., a Yale-trained psychiatrist who helped get post-traumatic stress disorder recognized as a diagnosis after the Vietnam War.

Maj. Andrew Efaw, a judge advocate general officer in the Army Reserves who handled trial defenses for soldiers in northern Iraq last year, said commanders don't want to send mentally ill soldiers into combat.

"But on the other hand, [the com mender] doesn't want to send a message to his troops that if you act up, he's willing to send you home," Efaw said.

Rove to be indicted

Within the last week, Karl Rove told President Bush and Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, as well as a few other high level administration officials, that he will be indicted in the CIA leak case and will immediately resign his White House job when the special counsel publicly announces the charges against him, according to sources.

Details of Rove's discussions with the president and Bolten have spread through the corridors of the White House where low-level staffers and senior officials were trying to determine how the indictment would impact an administration that has been mired in a number of high-profile political scandals for nearly a year, said a half-dozen White House aides and two senior officials who work at the Republican National Committee.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, sources confirmed Rove's indictment is imminent. These individuals requested anonymity saying they were not authorized to speak publicly about Rove's situation. A spokesman in the White House press office said they would not comment on "wildly speculative rumors."

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, did not return a call for comment Friday.

Rove's announcement to President Bush and Bolten comes more than a month after he alerted the new chief of staff to a meeting his attorney had with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in which Fitzgerald told Luskin that his case against Rove would soon be coming to a close and that he was leaning toward charging Rove with perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators, according to sources close to the investigation.

A few weeks after he spoke with Fitzgerald, Luskin arranged for Rove to return to the grand jury for a fifth time to testify in hopes of fending off an indictment related to Rove's role in the CIA leak, sources said.

That meeting was followed almost immediately by an announcement by newly-appointed White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten of changes in the responsibilities of some White House officials, including Rove, who was stripped of his policy duties and would no longer hold the title of deputy White House chief of staff.

The White House said Rove would focus on the November elections and his change in status in no way reflected his fifth appearance before the grand jury or the possibility of an indictment.

But since Rove testified two weeks ago, the White House has been coordinating a response to what is sure to be the biggest political scandal it has faced thus far: the loss of a key political operative who has been instrumental in shaping White House policy on a wide range of domestic issues.

Late Thursday afternoon and early Friday morning, several White House officials were bracing for the possibility that Fitzgerald would call a news conference and announce a Rove indictment today following the prosecutor's meeting with the grand jury this morning. However, sources close to the probe said that is unlikely to happen, despite the fact that Fitzgerald has already presented the grand jury with a list of charges against Rove. If an indictment is returned by the grand jury, it will be filed under seal.

Rove is said to have told Bolten that he will be charged with perjury regarding when he was asked how and when he discovered that covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the agency, and whether he discussed her job with reporters.

Rove testified that he first found out about Plame Wilson from reading a newspaper report in July 2003 and only after the story was published did he share damaging information about her CIA status with other reporters.

However, evidence has surfaced during the course of the two-year-old investigation that shows Rove spoke with at least two reporters about Plame Wilson prior to the publication of the column.

The explanation Rove provided to the grand jury - that he was dealing with more urgent White House matters and therefore forgot - has not convinced Fitzgerald that Rove has been entirely truthful in his testimony.

Sources close to the case said there is a strong chance Rove will also face an additional charge of obstruction of justice, adding that Fitzgerald has been working meticulously over the past few months to build an obstruction case against Rove because it "carries more weight" in a jury trial and is considered a more serious crime.

Some White House staffers said it's the uncertainty of Rove's status in the leak case that has made it difficult for the administration's domestic policy agenda and the announcement of an indictment and Rove's subsequent resignation, while serious, would allow the administration to move forward on a wide range of issues.

"We need to start fresh and we can't do that with the uncertainty of Karl's case hanging over our heads," said one White House aide. "There's no doubt that it will be front page news if and when (an indictment) happens. But eventually it will become old news quickly. The key issue here is that the president or Mr. Bolten respond to the charges immediately, make a statement and then move on to other important policy issues and keep that as the main focus going forward."

Wal-Mart threatens farmers with imminent domain. Sell us your land or else.

The world's largest retailer, battling to build a huge new distribution center in Putnam County, is threatening a handful of rural residents that they may have their land taken if they don't agree to sell it to the company.

Representatives of Wal-Mart have told the landowners they will ask Putnam County to use its powers of eminent domain if the families won't sell. The retailer needs about a half-dozen parcels to widen a road that would provide access to a proposed 800,000-square-foot distribution center just over the Volusia County line -- a project Volusia officials have gone to court to block.

A letter to the landowners gave them until 5 p.m. Thursday to agree to a deal with the company.

(read the rest of the story here)

New Securtity flaws from Diebold

New fears were reported Friday about a potential security risk in Diebold Election System touch-screen voting machines.
Officials in Pennsylvania and California have issued urgent directives in recent days about a possible problem and other states with similar equipment were assessing the seriousness of the problem, The New York Times said Friday.
Computer scientists said the problem might allow someone to tamper with a machine's software in the newest chapter in an emerging political and legal fight around the country over voting machines, the newspaper reported.
Michael I. Shamos, an examiner of electronic voting systems for Pennsylvania, where primary voting is scheduled Tuesday, calls it "the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system."
Officials at Diebold and a number of states played down any risk, emphasizing to the Times there were no signs of tampering with the touch-screen machines.

Back From The Great White North

Welcome me back ya terds. Yes, I'm back from Toronto and full of piss and vinegar, but then facing down fears will either make you that or meek. Guess which one I chose? You're gonna start seeing a lot more "seething" and a lot less me just posting news. I think I've finally had enough. Its time to wake up and since most wont do it on their own, I guess I have to put on my steel toed boots and bring a little life to this party. Keep an eye out.

Americans are sick

White, middle-aged Americans — even those who are rich — are far less healthy than their peers in England, according to stunning new research that erases misconceptions and has experts scratching their heads.

Americans had higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, strokes, lung disease and cancer — findings that held true no matter what income or education level.

Those dismal results are despite the fact that U.S. health care spending is double what England spends on each of its citizens.

"Everybody should be discussing it: Why isn't the richest country in the world the healthiest country in the world?" asks study co-author Dr. Michael Marmot, an epidemiologist at University College London in England.

The study, based on government statistics in both countries, adds context to the already-known fact that the United States spends more on health care than any other industrialized nation, yet trails in rankings of life expectancy.

The United States spends about $5,200 per person on health care while England spends about half that in adjusted dollars.

Even experts familiar with the weaknesses in the U.S. health system seemed stunned by the study's conclusions.

"I knew we were less healthy, but I didn't know the magnitude of the disparities," said Gerard Anderson, an expert in chronic disease and international health at Johns Hopkins University who had no role in the research.

Just why the United States fared so miserably wasn't clear. Answers ranging from too little exercise to too little money and too much stress were offered.

Even the U.S. obesity epidemic couldn't solve the mystery. The researchers crunched numbers to create a hypothetical statistical world in which the English had American lifestyle risk factors, including being as fat as Americans. In that model, Americans were still sicker.

Smoking rates are about the same on both sides of the pond. The English have a higher rate of heavy drinking.

Only non-Hispanic whites were included in the study to eliminate the influence of racial disparities. The researchers looked only at people ages 55 through 64, and the average age of the samples was the same.

Americans reported twice the rate of diabetes compared to the English, 12.5 percent versus 6 percent. For high blood pressure, it was 42 percent for Americans versus 34 percent for the English; cancer showed up in 9.5 percent of Americans compared to 5.5 percent of the English.

The upper crust in both countries was healthier than middle-class and low-income people in the same country. But richer Americans' health status resembled the health of the low-income English.

"It's something of a mystery," said Richard Suzman of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which helped fund the study.

Health experts have known the U.S. population is less healthy than that of other industrialized nations, according to several important measurements, including life expectancy. The U.S. ranks behind about two dozen other countries, according to the World Health Organization.

Some have believed the United States has lagged because it is more ethnically diverse, said Suzman, who heads the National Institute on Aging's Behavioral and Social Research Program. "Minority health in general is worse than white health," he said.

But the new study showed that when minorities are removed from the equation, and adjustments are made to control for education and income, white people in England are still healthier than white people in the United States.

"As far as I know, this is the first study showing this," said Suzman. The study, supported by grants from government agencies in both countries, was published in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Other studies have measured the United States against other countries in terms of health care spending, use of medical care and availability of health care services. But this is the first to focus on prevalence of chronic conditions, said Anderson, the Johns Hopkins professor.

Differences in exercise might partly explain the gap, he suggested. One of the study's authors, Jim Smith, said the English exercise somewhat more than Americans. But physical activity differences won't fully explain the study's results, he added.

Marmot offered a different explanation for the gap: Americans' financial insecurity. Improvements in household income have eluded all but the top fifth of Americans since the mid-1970s. Meanwhile, the English saw their incomes improve, he said.

Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health who was not involved in the study, said the stress of striving for the American dream may account for Americans' lousy health.

"The opportunity to go both up and down the socioeconomic scale in America may create stress," Blendon said. Americans don't have a reliable government safety net like the English enjoy, Blendon said.

However, Britain's universal health-care system shouldn't get credit for better health, Marmot and Blendon agreed.

Both said it might explain better health for low-income citizens, but can't account for better health of Britain's more affluent residents.

Marmot cautioned against looking for explanations in the two countries' health-care systems.

"It's not just how we treat people when they get ill, but why they get ill in the first place," Marmot said.

Lets Impeach The President

Neil is still going strong:

Let’s impeach the president for lying
And leading our country into war
Abusing all the power that we gave him
And shipping all our money out the door

He’s the man who hired all the criminals
The White House shadows who hide behind closed doors
And bend the facts to fit with their new stories
Of why we have to send our men to war

Let’s impeach the president for spying
On citizens inside their own homes
Breaking every law in the country
By tapping our computers and telephones

What if Al Qaeda blew up the levees
Would New Orleans have been safer that way
Sheltered by our government’s protection
Or was someone just not home that day?

Let’s impeach the president
For hijacking our religion and using it to get elected
Dividing our country into colors
And still leaving black people neglected

Thank god he’s cracking down on steroids
Since he sold his old baseball team
There’s lot of people looking at big trouble
But of course the president is clean

Thank God

"People wonder why geeks are love to the drink"

So for those of you who dont know, I'm a geek for a living. I do all kinds of "techie" stuff on a daily basis and listen to a LOT of people be angry at me because of "technology" and have found that a majority of the time its not the technology that causes their anger BUT that its a lack of understanding on that technologies purpose to them. Or what need its there to fulfill, but on other occasions I get gems like this one:

"I carried out the upgrade 3.1.23 as they indicated me and even the day of yesterday functioned without problems. Today in the afternoon alone calls way were carried out VoIP but themselves not the calls were entered. It was put out and turned on the head office to repair the damage but we want to know to that this problem is owed? Enclosed you shipment the logs."

Thats something a customer sent to us. I know that its probably from someone who used a translation program but Fucking hell .... I'm supposed to know what this guy means?

Amnesty Internationals report on Torture in US Custody

"Evidence continues to emerge of widespread torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees held in U.S. custody," Amnesty said in its 47-page report.

See the full report here

From the report:

It is now known that at least 34 detainees who died in US custody have had their deaths listed by the army as confirmed or suspected criminal homicides.

Two Afghan detainees, Dilwar and Habibullah died from multiple blunt force injuries inflicted while they were held in an isolation section of Bagram US airbase in December 2002. Army investigative reports later revealed that both men were kept hooded and chained to a ceiling while being kicked and beaten during sustained assaults by military personnel. A soldier who acknowledged inflicting more than 30 consecutive knee strikes to Dilawar (a slight, 22 year old taxi driver) as he stood in shackles, told investigators that the blows were standard operating procedure for uncooperative detainees. An army criminal investigation report said both deaths were caused primarily by severe trauma to the men’s legs, adding that "sleep deprivation at the direction of military intelligence soldiers" was also a "direct contributing factor" in Dilwar’s death.(6) Army medical examiners found the prolonged shackling had also contributed to his death.(7) 7 low-ranking soldiers, charged variously with assault, maltreatment, dereliction of duty and making false statements eventually received sentences ranging from five months’ imprisonment to reprimand, loss of pay and reduction in rank.

Wikihow Guide on How To Exercise an Open Mind

Learn how to become open minded here

Two out of Five species identified by scientists face possible extinction

Two out of every five species on the planet that have been assessed by scientists face extinction, according to the latest World Conservation Union (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.

Overall, 16,119 animal and plant species are in danger of extinction, including 1 in 8 birds, 1 in 4 mammals and 1 in 3 amphibian species. Since records began, 784 species have been declared extinct. From the poles to the deserts, “biodiversity loss is increasing, not slowing down,” says IUCN director-general Achim Steiner.

The main cause, as ever, is people, as humanity impacts the world’s fauna and flora both directly and indirectly. While hunting and habitat loss continue to have a disastrous effect on species numbers, global warming is emerging as another threat.

read the rest of the story here

What do you get when you mix Al Jourgensen and Jello Biafra?

Assclown

Ladies and gentlemen
Welcome to Washington DC
Home of the Ass Clown
Step right up into the 3,000 ring circus of The Beltway
And witness the impossible
See them grovel, see them lie, see them crawl on their bellies
See real live white collar terrorists in their own natural habitat
See the Department of Homeland Security perfecting new ways of drowning black people
While our health care is subsidizing corporate drug dealers aiding big government and
Spying on everybody

Verse 1
I want to go to the circus
The circus of power
The circus they call Washington
A circle of dishonor
I want to round up the senators
Just like they did in Rome
Feed these Ass Clowns to the lions
Then I can go home

I wanna see it go up in flames

Chorus
Ass Clown
You’re going down

Verse 2
I want to blow up the circus
Bring down the circus of lies
The ultimate goal and purpose
Is no Ass Clown survives
I want to line up the congressmen
And strap them to their missiles
Then I’ll point them at their temples
Then I’ll wave goodbye!

I wanna see it go up in flames

Chorus
Ass Clown
You’re going down

See them stroke each other with bribes as they try on new shades of brown lipstick
See them circle jerk to the latest photos of torture victims
Ass Clown

Verse 3
I hate the three-ring circus
Under the bigtop of deceit
The circus maximus of arrogance
The circus maximus of greed
I want to line up all the judges
And take a gavel to their heads
Only then will there be justice
When all these Ass Clowns are dead

I wanna see it go up in flames

Chorus X2
Ass Clown
You’re going down

See how it’s really done

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This is from the new Ministry CD called Rio Grande Blood. If you havent heard it yet, and miss the old angry Ministry ..... go check it out.

President Bush is in a total push for power

President George W. Bush had shown disdain and indifference for the US constitution by adopting an “astonishingly broad” view of presidential powers, a leading libertarian think-tank said on Monday.

The critique from the Cato Institute reflects growing criticism by conservatives about administration policy in areas such as the “war on terror” and undermining congressional power.

“The pattern that emerges is one of a ceaseless push for power, unchecked by either the courts or Congress, one in short of disdain for constitutional limits,” the report by legal scholars Gene Healy and Timothy Lynch concludes.

That view was echoed last week by former congressman Bob Barr, a Republican, who called on Congress to exercise “leadership by putting the constitution above party politics and insisting on the facts” in the debate over illegal domestic wiretapping of terrorist suspects.

On Thursday Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the judiciary committee, noted: “Institutionally, the presidency is walking all over Congress.”

Mr Healy and Mr Lynch argue that Mr Bush has also failed to protect the right to political free speech by approving a bill that eliminated “soft money” contributions to political parties. He had also cracked down on dissenters, with non-violent protesters being harassed by secret service agents whenever Mr Bush appears in public, it said.

The more serious charges concern Mr Bush’s actions in the “war on terror”. Citing a 1977 interview with President Richard Nixon, who said, “Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal”, the report argues that the administration’s public and private arguments for untrammelled executive power “comes perilously close to that view”.

The authors cite spying by the National Security Agency and the “torture memos”, produced by the Department of Justice to defend the authority of the president over interrogation techniques. “The constitution’s text will not support anything like the doctrine of presidential absolutism the administration flirts with in the torture memos.”

Turkey refuses to let US use its country for Pre-emptive attack on Iran

From Ynet News:

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said Sunday that his country refused a request from the United States to attack Iran from its Air Force base in Incirlik, despite the U.S. offer of a nuclear reactor, according to a report in Al Biyan.


In an interview for the United Arab Emirates newspaper, Gul noted that America’s efforts to attack Iran are “imaginary” and that Turkey’s stance is “strategic” and refuses the use of its land for any belligerent activity against neighboring countries.

And a second story from the Jerusalem Post:

Turkey does not intend to allow the United States to launch an attack against Iran from the Inchirlik military base, Turkish news agencies reported Sunday.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told the Dubai-based al-Bayan that he doubted the US would ultimately choose to take military action, as "Iran has its own strategic advantages."

Gul said that facilitating an attack against a neighboring country was "not an option," despite the US offer to build Turkey a nuclear reactor as a counterbalance to Iran's expanding nuclear facilities. (read the rest of the story here)

Oregon Representative Peter Defazio has drafted a resolution prohibiting President Bush from launching a pre-emptive war on Iran. Write to your Congressmen urging that they support this resolution.

(Thanks to Eric over at A Liberal Dose for this information)

On Immigration

I found this little quote on newshounds:

if America “reigned in its corporations and stopped exploiting the resources and people of Latin America, then the flood of immigrants would stop." from Javier Rodriguez.

I dont think a lot more needs to be said.

Incoming Message From the Big Giant Head

ok so this was posted a week ago on Sweet Jesus I Hate Bill O'Reilly (who by the way have a new book out. Find it here on Amazon)

But anyway:

Monday's Talking Points Memo discussed the evils of a Yahweh-free media:

“There's no question the committed left-wing media hates FOX News — along with me and
some other commentators here — because we provide a balance to the overwhelming
secular presence in the media.

“Now every poll of journalists says the same thing. Secular media people outnumber
traditional media people by a huge margin. And some left-wing media companies
aggressively push their agenda in their news pages.”

Please, oh please, someone tell us what the hell O‘Reilly is talking about. What are these terms O’Reilly has made up in his sick little head? Secular media? That should be everything outside the 700 Club. And a “traditional media” to counteract them? By “traditional,” he can only mean a religious-based media. As for the “agenda,” we can only assume it is to report the news without
a Christian context.

Should the media standard be something akin to, “Well, gay marriage is now legal in
Massachusetts. Looks like there’s a lot of people there who will be burning in eternal hellfire. Now for the weather.”

Bill went on to tell us about how members of the secular media have smeared him, blah, blah, blah. And then he went on, once again, to tell us how he fought back and damaged them with his counteroffensives. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if you’re watching a live show or any one of a hundred reruns. There’s a growing number of conspiracy theorists in this country who believe there have only been about eight episodes of the O’Reilly Factor taped and they just digitally change his ties. But Bill has widened his threat. Tonight, the wrath of Captain Splotchy would be
felt by all:

“Any media person who uses smear tactics in any way — not just on me, but any way — will be featured on ‘The Factor’ and inducted into the billoreilly.com Hall of Shame. We will keep a running list of media smear merchants on the Web site, in addition to our ‘Don't Buy, Don't Advertise’ list.

“As you know, we debate issues all day long on this program. I have no objection to any media criticizing my stand on any matters of the day. But beginning today, the smear stops here. You guys want to do that? We'll let everybody know about it. That's called accountability.

“And that's ‘The Memo.’”

Okay, Retardo Montalban.

-----------------------------
I'll also be posting an update on the Net Neutrality Bill and also on the New Telecom Bill later today.

The decline of Western Civilization

If you thought the cliquey, bitchy teenagers in the Mean Girls film starring Lindsay Lohan were bad, then say hello to their parents. Alpha mothers and fathers have suddenly found themselves in the spotlight.

Rosalind Wiseman, author of the non-fiction book behind the Lohan film, has written a sequel, Queen Bee Moms & Kingpin Dads, about those who terrorise other parents at school by preying on fears of social inadequacy and sorting them into the “in” and “out” crowd.

“We don’t leave cliques or peer pressure behind when we grow up or when we become parents,” she said. “We just graduate to a new level with adults now playing the roles.”

Film rights to the book, to be published in Britain in June, have been sold to Paramount. Snooty alpha mothers are also the subject of a much admired television sitcom, The New Adventures of Old Christine, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jerry Seinfeld’s former sidekick.

Louis-Dreyfus plays a divorced single mother who is patronised by the blonde, pastel-wearing tigresses who run the school committees and the gossip networks. When her ex-husband is spotted kissing his new girlfriend, one of the alpha mothers asks brightly: “Isn’t it hard that she’s so young?”

For Wiseman, who has two children, it is the adults who are not confident of their status in “perfect parent world” who are often the most destructive: “They can be really manipulative because they are so desperate for approval.”

It is a land of perpetual judgment, she believes, in which parents strive to control their children’s choice of friends and how they are treated in class.

Wiseman divides parents of school-age children into social types, such as the Hip Mum, who is so keen to be liked that her children are allowed to transgress every boundary (“Hey, they’re going to drink no matter what so they might as well do it under my roof”); the Best Friend Mum, who boasts at parent-teacher meetings that her daughter tells her everything; and the Tennis Skirt Mum who turns up in a short skirt, immaculately coiffed, and describes herself as “ busy-busy-busy” — at the gym, at lunch and at the nail salon.

There are also the pushy types who say loudly at parent-teacher meetings: “I think I speak for all parents when I say . . . ” but who have never asked those lower down the pecking order for their views. It is a form of bullying, according to Wiseman.

“Parents often see other parents behaving badly and feel they can’t say or do anything about it,” she said. “It brings back all their adolescent fears.”

“Natalie”, a New York mother for whom it would be social death to give her real name, said the school attended by her nine-year-old daughter was full of cliques and alpha mums. In a scene that could have come straight out of the Louis-Dreyfus sitcom, one mother smiled sweetly to another wearing chic Manolo Blahnik shoes: “Do you realise that style went out last year?”

Another mother took her 13-year-old to a plastic surgeon: “She insisted her daughter got a nose job because she had to look a certain way.”

The alpha mothers who run the school groups can be the most obnoxious, said Natalie. “They get themselves elected to president of this or that and try to get you to do all the footwork,” she said. She was asked to write a fundraising letter for local businesses which was then signed by the domineering committee chairwoman.

When Natalie suggested that her own name should be on the letter, two other mothers rebuked her: “They demanded to know why I was being so needy about wanting the glory. It was all about the kids, they said, so I should put my ego aside.”

Wiseman believes that the excuse “it’s all about the kids” justifies appalling behaviour, including defending misconduct and rule-breaking by one’s child: “It’s partly because we love our children that there’s no room for mediocrity or failure. They have to have a constant string of successes.

“If you have behaved really badly you can look in the mirror and say, ‘Oh, I did the best thing for my child’.”

Alpha fathers, such as the Throbbing Vein Dad who screams at the child’s referee, and the Lock Her in a Closet Dad who thinks he can keep his daughter from drugs, alcohol and sex “just by saying no”, do not escape censure in Wiseman’s book. But they have it easy compared with the alpha mothers, she said.

“Mothers do the long-term, nitty-gritty complicated projects, while dads will get up at 7am, do the Christmas tree sale and feel really good about it. They laugh about how superficial the mothers are and get completely off the hook.”

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Take what you will from this story but theres a reason I posted it. I think you can figure out why. Also, todays my 38th b day. Happy B Day to me.

Do Republicans really want to ban abortions?

In South Dakota, where fewer than 1,000 abortions are performed annually, Republican leaders voted to ban all abortions except to save a mother's life. Nine other state legislatures have followed suit with their own attempts to directly overturn Roe vs. Wade.

You might think this would be a big priority in Florida, where roughly 90,000 abortions are performed annually and where Republican leaders regularly tout their "prolife" credentials.

You might think so, but you would be wrong.

"I've had no discussion about that at all. It hasn't come up," said state House Speaker Allan Bense, a self-described "prolife" Republican who many party leaders hope will jump into the U.S. Senate race. "The debate can sometimes get very personal on those issues so I'm not inclined to head there."

Mobilized Christian conservatives played a key role ensuring George W. Bush won Florida and a second term in 2004. But the Republican agenda in Tallahassee this year has been less about megachurches than about megabusinesses.

It's a safe bet that few people sporting "I Pray and I Vote" bumper stickers are praying for corporate defendants to pay less in negligence damages.

But when Gov. Jeb Bush last week signed the repeal of joint and several liability, so many lobbyists wanted to watch that they had to hold the ceremony in the Cabinet room to make space. Asked at the ceremony why Republican leaders in Florida opted not to take South Dakota's aggressive tack against legal abortions, the governor said lawmakers never pursued it.

"I'd sign it if they did," Bush said.

Orlando-based personal injury lawyer John Morgan is a self-described "prolife, social justice Democrat" who raises big money for Democrats across the country. His wife, Ultima Morgan, is former general counsel for Florida Right to Life. He lamented that, like countless voters across the country, she consistently votes Republican strictly on the abortion issue.

"I told my wife you've wasted your money and your vote, because they're all liars. If they believed what they say, they'd do in Florida what they did in South Dakota," said Morgan, whom you've probably seen hawking legal services in TV ads.

"All they have done is protect and make the rich richer and make the poor poorer and give all the benefits to insurance companies and the HMOs. I challenge them to give as much effort to passing the South Dakota initiative as they did to saving Terri Schiavo after 50 or 60 judges had said no, or to repealing joint and several."

Liberals and plenty of Republicans have long questioned whether conservative leaders really want to make abortion illegal. Removing it from their culture war arsenal would be a blow to the GOP get-out-the-vote playbook.

In his 2004 bestseller, What's the Matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank argued that Republicans have convinced working class and middle class Americans to vote against their own self-interest based on cultural wedge issues to which the GOP ultimately only pays lip service.

"Their grandstanding leaders never deliver, their fury mounts and mounts, and nevertheless they turn out every two years to return their right-wing heroes to office for a second, a third, a 20th try," Frank wrote. "The trick never ages: the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation."

Don't tell Stephanie Grutman, executive director of Planned Parenthood in Florida, that Republican leaders haven't delivered for antiabortion activists. From parental notice requirements to no public funding for abortion except in cases of rape and incest, to extensive state regulations, Florida leaders have done a lot to restrict access to abortion.

Still, no one's talking much about the big enchilada - directly challenging Roe vs. Wade with a full ban. Maybe it's because people remember how Gov. Bob Martinez in 1989 called the Legislature into special session to pass a sweeping abortion ban - and how he never won a second term. Maybe the backlash from trying to intervene in the Schiavo case has Republicans skittish.

"If they were ever to attempt to enact a ban in Florida and legislators were forced to go on record, that's when you'd see many legislators in Florida no longer legislators," said Grutman.

Of course, the political risks are huge. So is that estimate of annual abortions in Florida: 90,000. How long will the Christian conservative base let Republican leaders nibble cautiously around the edges?

"There was a time when values voters could be patted on the head and they would show up at the polls and be pacified, but I think that is coming to an end, and elected officials are going to have to be more accountable," said Matt Staver, general counsel of the Liberty Council conservative advocacy group.

Staver predicted that a sweeping abortion ban for Florida will be a big topic in the 2007 legislative session: "I do know that there's going to be a lot of movement toward that in the coming months."

That's not necessarily welcome news for Florida's Republican gubernatorial candidates, Tom Gallagher and Charlie Crist, who are all over the map on abortion. Both are longtime abortion-rights Republicans, but Gallagher has now cast himself as a staunch abortion foe who would hope to overturn Roe. Last year, Crist said he would not want to overturn Roe, but recently said he would sign a abortion ban much like South Dakota's. We can't tell where he stands.

Even if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe vs. Wade, Florida will be among the toughest states to make abortion illegal. Since 1980, the Florida Constitution has mandated that "every natural person has the right to be let alone and free from governmental intrusion into the person's private life."

In 1989, that clause led to the Florida version of Roe: In re T.W., which found a law requiring parental consent for a minor's abortion to be in violation of the state Constitution's right to privacy.

For those looking to ban abortions in Florida, there are two main options: amend the state Constitution to clarify that the privacy provision was not meant to protect abortion rights, or overturn In re T.W. through another challenge. After all, none of the T.W. justices of 1989 are still on the court, which just this month upheld a state law requiring doctors to tell women about the risks of an abortion.

Some of the savviest legal and political minds in the antiabortion movement in Florida are consumed with ensuring that the state pass a constitutional amendment in 2008 banning gay marriage. But a far-reaching abortion ban is in their sights.

"I'm going to lead the charge on this very topic if no one else does in the next session. ... We are going to turn very quickly to this being our No. 1 priority," said John Stemberger, a trial lawyer who heads the Florida Family Policy Council and is leading the effort to ban gay marriage.

He said it won't be long before activists start demanding action from state leaders: "Right now we're talking about the marriage amendment. We're not talking about Roe vs. Wade. Once the Supreme Court erodes the legal construct for Roe vs. Wade, we're going to see states all over the country act on this."

Like it or hate it, put up or shut up time could be looming for Florida Republicans on abortion.