Shadow Puppets

Virginia may be de-evolving eGovernment.

2011-12-07T11:31:00.001-05:00

http://bigkahunasattic.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/going-backwards/

States Look Quietly for Ways to Escape Debt - At Worker's Expense

2011-01-21T15:56:00.001-05:00

Policy makers are working behind the scenes to come up with a way to let states declare bankruptcy and get out from under crushing debts, including the pensions they have promised to retired public workers.

[more]

Feel Safe

2011-01-20T15:35:00.002-05:00

Mad at your boss? Want to complain about something but are afraid of getting canned? Use anonymous email. Pass it along to your friends and co-workers and let your voice be heard.

VITSPA - Position on VITA MSP Contract

2010-04-16T11:30:00.001-04:00

The Commonwealth of Virginia through the Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA) recently awarded a new contact for information technology services that covers staff augmentation and project based work. These services will be supplied to the Commonwealth agencies by I.T. staffing and consulting firms through the Managed Service Provider program administered by ZeroChaos. A review of this contact has raised a number of questions and concerns such as:

• Sub-contracting and partnering.
• Employee data disclosure.
• Company proprietary information disclosure.
• Billing rate.
• Liability.
• Terms and Conditions in general.

The board of the Virginia Information Technology Suppliers Association (VITSPA) is currently engaged with VITA executives and VITA Supply Chain Management in an effort to resolve these questions and concerns for the benefit of the Commonwealth and the I.T. staffing and consulting business community.

The view of VITSPA is that vendor organizations should decline to participate in this program under the terms of the current agreement.

It is hoped that through an open dialogue with both the Commonwealth and ZeroChaos that the VITSPA board will be able to assist in the resolution of these issues and concern and arrive at a program that is of benefit to all.

Va., Northrop Grumman reach terms on deal

2010-04-07T16:59:00.002-04:00

Virginia and its embattled computer-services contractor, Northrop Grumman, have reached terms on a new deal -- one that will extend their contentious relationship until 2019 and cost taxpayers at least an additional $140 million.

[more]

Sexual Equality in the Workplace? What Sexual Equality in the Workplace?

2010-03-25T09:40:00.005-04:00

I was asked to write a piece on sexism in the workplace. I think it was assumed I'd go in a different direction.

---

There was a time when sexism in the workplace, especially in Virginia, was predictable. It was a "good ol' boy" network where men just felt that woman had different strengths than men, and business was not one of them. The good ol' boy network is still alive and well, but at least in IT shops, there's a new breed of sexism. And it has claws.

It's women running an all-girl club, and burying anyone who doesn't fit into one of two roles: male follower or women.

I know, someone somewhere (probably a woman) is saying I'm just pissing sour grapes. That it can't be as bad as male sexism. Possibly. But the old adage still applies, two wrongs don't make a right.

People's Exhibit A:
In 1998 I helped start a company called [redacted], going under the name of [redacted], . We managed the [redacted] , and assisted in making Virginia internet-wonderful. I started as a webmaster and managed to work my way up to something akin to middle management. I was one of five people who paved the way for all the honeysuckles who came later to have jobs and loaf about drinking boxed wine and playing harps.

One day we hired a young girl to do some customer service stuff. A temp to handle calls, file papers, etc. All the ladies loved her, I liked her, but she knew next to nothing about the internet. After she introduced herself to me and my cubemate, he turned to me and said, "In a year we'll be working for her."

He was wrong. In a year she was a project manager in the shop. In two she had passed us entirely, left the state, and become the General Manager of her own network (the name for the individual business entities under the corporate umbrella). She still knew next to nothing about the internet, marketing, business, or management. Didn't matter. Corporate wanted women to run things, so she shot passed those of us who actually knew the landscape.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad she did well. She's a great person. But she didn't get her chance in the sun because of her training, her skills, or her experience. She got it because she was a woman.

People's Exhibit B:
Same company, same story, different woman. Came in after us as a project manager without project management training, within three years she was running her own network for the company. In comparison, I was allowed to have a small fishtank in my cube. I won several Best of the Web awards, First in the Nation awards, and E-Gov pioneer awards. I was published in Government Technology and Style Weekly.

I wasn't going anywhere.

People's Exhibit C:
Same company. Four of the five men who had started the company were still in the positions, more or less, that they had in the beginning. Slightly different titles, but the same gig overall. The fifth man? He was forced to resign when they took his position away and wanted to send him to a state several thousand miles away from his family.

A programmer with average Perl skills and no experience in marketing, project management, or business goes to a developer conference in New Orleans and hangs out with the COO. She comes back a Project Manager. Within a year she's the Director of Marketing. Not only did she pass over three men with more experience, she hopped departments to do it. What she did have going for her was that she became quick friends with the current Director of Marketing, who then went on to be the General Manager. Niether of them had training in marketing, business, or management. But they were both women.

I disagreed with the skipping over of the three men.

I was asked to leave the company. Then blackballed from working in IT for a year.

People's Exhibit D:
I was hired as a Web Manager at the [redacted]. It was a lengthy process consisting of several screenings, committee interviews, and skills tests. They were desperate to get someone onboard who knew something about web portals, and I had been designing and implementing them for ten years. The IT Department was 62 people strong and they had been trying to redesign their web site for the last seven years (yeah, I know. That should have tipped me off. I thought it was hyperbole).

I didn't know it at the time, but they had a great way of getting rid of employees upper management didn't like. They would rescope the position to something the person in question couldn't do, then give them the opportunity to resign. And by "they" I'm referring what came to be known as "The Estrogen Club."

The Director of the IT Department was a woman who really only trusted other women. Don't know why, but that was the long and short of it. She ran the Department like the Bataan Death March run by cheerleaders. She was out during my hiring, it seems, which is how a testosterone container like myself made it in.

From my hire to this blog entry, the following had occured:

Number of Men Fired, Laid Off, or Forced to Resign: 9 plus 1 that was able to switch departments
Number of Men promoted to management positions: 0
Number of Women Fired, Laid Off, or Forced to Resign: 0
Number of Women promoted to management positions: 3

Statistically unlikely, don't you think?

I was replaced after a year and a half by a woman with none of my skills, and none of the skills originally required for the position.

Now, I'm not saying that the same sort of thing doesn't go in in other companies with a male bias. I'm sure it does. I've never seen it in any of the IT shops I've worked at, but I know it's probably there. But you never hear about reverse discrimination; reverse sexism. People act as if such an animal could never exist. And if it does, it's just equality of the sexes, not any sort of discrimination. Or, at the extreme, something that's okay because it was done for so long in the other end of the spectrum.

But something wrong is wrong no matter how you spin it. Treating someone unfairly is bad not because YOU get treated unfairly, but because a PERSON is treated unfairly. No matter the color, religion, or gender. Whether you agree with their politics or share their brand of genitalia.

It's just wrong.

A new services and SOW contract vehicle with the Commonwealth of Virginia - Zerochaos

2010-03-25T06:48:00.000-04:00

Yesterday and today the supplier community is being introduced to Zerochaos the new MSP for the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Staff augmentation and project work (SOWs) of $2 million or less will be the initial business passing through Zerochaos' web tools.

--

Anyone have any experience with Zerochaos? I've only talked to one person so far who has, and it was a lukewarm review.

Law Restructures Virginia Information Technologies Agency

2010-03-22T22:31:00.000-04:00

Virginia's CIO has a new boss -- Gov. Bob McDonnell.
McDonnell signed legislation Monday, March 15, that puts the state's CIO directly under the governor's authority, taking that power away from the Information Technology Investment Board -- the independent body that formerly oversaw the CIO's performance and hired for the position.

Some observers believe the move could shake up the Virginia Information Technologies Agency's troubled outsourcing agreement with Northrop Grumman, a 10-year, $2.3 billion IT services and management contract that's the largest of its kind among the nation's state governments.

[more]

Think We Pay Them Too Much?

2009-11-02T08:45:00.002-05:00

After looking at Virginia.gov's photos, I'm wondering if the taxpayers and VITA pay them too much? Naw. My harpist is just as good...

Introductions

2009-07-31T13:25:00.002-04:00

I just wanted to thank the Shadow for inviting me to blog here. I'm mostly interested in issues related to psychology and parapsychology, but hopefully I'll have something to say every now and then. Feel free to visit my own blog, the Ghost Girl Diaries (and it has nothing to do with that kid's book out).

Kaine: IT agency should report to governor

2009-07-21T08:34:00.001-04:00

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine yesterday expressed concern about the level of information-technology customer service provided to state agencies, in a letter to several state lawmakers.

Kaine was responding to a letter that the chairmen of the legislature's two money committees and the chairman of the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission sent this week. The lawmakers said they cannot support any modifications to the state's $2.3 billion, 10-year contract with Northrop Grumman for IT services until a pending study is complete.

Kaine said he has no role in contract negotiations and cited the "unusual oversight structure" in which an independent panel -- the Information Technology Investment Board -- was created to oversee the Virginia Information Technologies Agency.

He reiterated that he believes the IT agency that serves executive agencies should report to the governor.

"No volunteer board, regardless of its collective talent . . . can offer the level of oversight that an elected executive with a full professional staff can provide," he wrote.

Kaine also said he demands "high performance" from agency heads but that their performance is based on a solid technology program. While customer-service problems are not unexpected with such a large project, he wrote, issues are addressed "less efficiently and effectively" when the agency delivering IT services is outside executive supervision.

He said one of his hopes is that the JLARC study may lead to an improved governance model.

Kaine encouraged leaders of the committees to arrange a meeting with him as soon as possible to discuss issues related to VITA.

Three the Hard Way

2009-06-25T20:25:00.003-04:00

It is said that stars die in threes, and the past few weeks holds that out.

Ed McMahon
Farrah Fawcett
Michael Jackson (well, maybe)

Va. Senate panel to investigate VITA

2009-06-18T09:57:00.000-04:00

JEFF E. SCHAPIRO TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Published: June 16, 2009

Lawmakers will investigate the state's troubled information technology agency, spurred by the removal of its boss and questions about the $2.3 billion Virginia is paying Northrop Grumman for computer services.

A state Senate panel that oversees government operations will conduct the inquiry and report to the Senate Finance Committee, whose chairman, Sen. Charles J. Colgan, D-Prince William, ordered the review.

"I believe the full committee would benefit from a discussion of the issues and allegations," Colgan said in a letter Friday to Sen. Yvonne B. Miller, D-Norfolk, head of the general-government subcommittee.

The investigation, disclosed yesterday, follows the removal Wednesday of Lemuel C. Stewart Jr. as director of the Virginia Information Technologies Agency. He was dumped after he alleged that Northrop Grumman is failing to provide the state with full computer, software and maintenance services.

"We have nothing to hide, and we have no problem answering the legislature's questions," said James F. McGuirk II, chairman of the Information Technology Investment Board, which voted to drop Stewart from his $189,280-a-year job as chief information officer.

Christy Whitman, a spokeswoman for Northrop Grumman, said the company has "not been contacted about the investigation, but we continue to support the customer," a reference to VITA.

The Senate Finance Committee is expected to discuss the controversy engulfing VITA at a meeting Thursday. The money panel will hear from the staff of the General Assembly's watchdog agency, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, which has been monitoring implementation of the 10-year contract with Northrop Grumman.

Miller's subcommittee begins its work at a meeting June 29. It was not immediately clear when the subcommittee would turn over its findings to the Finance Committee.

Del. M. Kirkland Cox, R-Colonial Heights and the JLARC chairman, said the concern about VITA -- an initiative of Democratic Gov. Mark R. Warner -- is growing.

"We hoped when VITA came in, it would be a little removed from politics, and I think it's almost gotten to be the opposite," Cox said.

Republicans have expressed alarm over the selection of Secretary of Technology Leonard M. "Len" Pomata as Stewart's temporary successor. They question whether a political appointee of Gov. Timothy M. Kaine can serve simultaneously as head of an agency that, by law, is independent of the executive branch.

Kaine defended the selection and said Pomata will bring to VITA "the skill set that's needed at this point."

Under VITA, the Warner administration envisioned consolidating IT services previously left to individual agencies. The umbrella approach, Warner claimed, could save taxpayers $100 million.

Stewart apparently had expressed concerns for more than a year about the Northrop Grumman contract and had withheld payments to the company, usually in amounts of $600,000 to $700,000, on items such as modifications to VITA offices in Chesterfield and Russell counties and a procedures manual for employees.

Because of his continuing questions about the adequacy of documentation by Northrop Grumman in the bills its submits to the state, Stewart urged freezing a monthly payment of just more than $14 million. That recommendation preceded his removal.

The Northrop Grumman contract, now in its third year, is the biggest privatization pact issued by Virginia government. The contract is financed with fees imposed on agencies for IT services. But the charges are insufficient, resulting in a continuing shortfall -- $6.2 million, according to Stewart's final briefing to the VITA governing board.

The dispute over VITA is being monitored by the gubernatorial candidates, Democrat R. Creigh Deeds and Republican Bob McDonnell. As legislators, both backed its creation.

Repairing a Tarnished Rep with Reputation Management

2009-03-24T16:42:00.003-04:00

Maybe you screwed up. Maybe all you did was fire a loudmouth jerk-salad. Whatever the reason, everywhere you look there's an article or blog or forum talking about how bad your company treats customers, how horrible management is, or whatever crime of the week you're guilty. Your online reputation has been toasted, smeared, and covered in jam.

At this point you could always change career paths, or move to the butt-end of space to hide. But there is another option, grasshopper.

Find an Online Reputation Management service and begin to repair the damage.

A Reputation Management company will begin to counter the negative publicity with positive (or even neutral) online information. They will create links to content that aren't hostile to your business, and in so doing create an online "pushback" in the search rankings.

Ideas! About! Virginia! Government!

2009-03-03T17:34:00.003-05:00

Want to discuss your ideas or concerns about the Commonwealth of Virginia? Rant about VITA? Visit http://ideas.virginia.gov.

IT deal no money saver yet for state

2008-12-09T10:01:00.000-05:00

Virginia taxpayers may have to wait a decade or more to see if the state's $2 billion switch to privately run information technology services saves money.
A report yesterday by the General Assembly's investigative arm said the transition -- started in 2005 -- has been slow and difficult.

[entire article]

Debates

2008-10-29T14:36:00.000-04:00

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

Memory Walk 2008

2008-05-15T09:06:00.000-04:00

In 2005, give or take, my father starting displaying signs of early Alzheimer's. In April of 2008, he decided to go for a drive. He crossed traffic and cut in front of a police car, which t-boned his car. The car bounced into a tree, which wasn't good for either the car or the tree. Aside from some fractured ribs, no one was hurt. But the trauma of the accident pushed my father from functional to full blown Alzheimer's.

I had always known what Alzheimer's was, and that it wasn't a nice thing to have. But it wasn't until it came into my home and my family that I realized the impact it can have.We all age. We all grow old and fall into disrepair. But there's something about Alzheimer's, about how it robs you of your history and your connections and your mind, that just isn't...I don't know...just isn't fitting. It just isn't right.
It's a disease, but not a fact of life. There's an old saying about tyranny that applies here as well. Evil flourishes when good people do nothing.I can't cure any diseases, but I won't sit by and do nothing.

I am determined to make a difference. By participating in the 2008 Alzheimer's Association Memory Walk®, I have committed to raise awareness and funds for Alzheimer research, as well as for care and support for people already affected by the disease. Currently more than 5 million Americans have Alzheimer's. Unless we find a way to change the course of the disease, 16 million Americans will have Alzheimer’s by 2050. I want to do my part to fight this fatal disease – but I can’t do it without your help. Memory Walk funds help the Alzheimer's Association advance important research into better treatments and a possible cure for Alzheimer’s. And for the millions already affected by the disease, the Association offers care, education, support and resources in communities nationwide.

On behalf of the millions of Americans who are living with Alzheimer’s, thank you for supporting my efforts.

Donation Page

Updated: Top 25 Censored News Stories

2008-03-03T06:15:00.000-05:00

Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008

#1 No Habeas Corpus for “Any Person”
Sources:Consortium, October 19, 2006Title: “Who Is ‘Any Person’ in Tribunal Law?”Author: Robert Parryhttp://consortiumnews.com/2006/101906.html
Consortium, February 3, 2007Title: “Still No Habeas Rights for You”Author: Robert Parryhttp://consortiumnews.com/2007/020307.html
Common Dreams, February 2, 2007Title: “Repeal the Military Commissions Act and Restore the Most American Human Right”Author: Thom Hartmannhttp://www.commondreams.org/views07/0212-24.htm
Student Researchers: Bryce Cook and Julie Bickel Faculty Evaluator: Andrew Roth, Ph.D.

With the approval of Congress and no outcry from corporate media, the Military Commissions Act (MCA) signed by Bush on October 17, 2006, ushered in military commission law for US citizens and non-citizens alike. While media, including a lead editorial in the New York Times October 19, have given false comfort that we, as American citizens, will not be the victims of the draconian measures legalized by this Act—such as military roundups and life-long detention with no rights or constitutional protections—Robert Parry points to text in the MCA that allows for the institution of a military alternative to the constitutional justice system for “any person” regardless of American citizenship. The MCA effectively does away with habeas corpus rights for “any person” arbitrarily deemed to be an “enemy of the state.” The judgment on who is deemed an “enemy combatant” is solely at the discretion of President Bush. The oldest human right defined in the history of English-speaking civilization is the right to challenge governmental power of arrest and detention through the use of habeas corpus laws, considered to be the most critical parts of the Magna Carta which was signed by King John in 1215. Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist #84 in August of 1788:

The establishment of the writ of habeas corpus are perhaps greater securities to liberty and republicanism than any it [the Constitution] contains. The practice of arbitrary imprisonments have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny. The observations of the judicious [British eighteenth-century legal scholar] Blackstone, in reference to the latter, are well worthy of recital:

“To bereave a man of life” says he, “or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government.”

While it is true that some parts of the MCA target non-citizens, other sections clearly apply to US citizens as well, putting citizens inside the same tribunal system with non-citizen residents and foreigners.Section 950q of the MCA states that, “Any person is punishable as a principal under this chapter [of the MCA] who commits an offense punishable by this chapter, or aids, abets, counsels, commands, or procures its commission.”1Section 950v. “Crimes Triable by Military Commissions” (26) of the MCA seems to specifically target American citizens by stating that, “Any person subject to this chapter who, in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States, or one of the co-belligerents of the enemy, shall be punished as a military commission under this chapter may direct.”1“Who,” warns Parry, “has ‘an allegiance or duty to the United States’ if not an American citizen?”

Besides allowing “any person” to be swallowed up by Bush’s system, the law prohibits detainees once inside from appealing to the traditional American courts until after prosecution and sentencing, which could translate into an indefinite imprisonment since there are no timetables for Bush’s tribunal process to play out.

Section 950j of the law further states that once a person is detained, “ not withstanding any other provision of law (including section 2241 of title 28 or any other habeas corpus provision) no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any claim or cause of action whatsoever relating to the prosecution, trial, or judgment of a military commission under this chapter, including challenges to the lawfulness of procedures of military commissions.”1 Other constitutional protections in the Bill of Rights, such as a speedy trial, the right to reasonable bail, and the ban on “cruel and unusual punishment,” would seem to be beyond a detainee’s reach as well.

Parry warns that, “In effect, what the new law appears to do is to create a parallel ‘star chamber’ system for the prosecution, imprisonment, and possible execution of enemies of the state, whether those enemies are foreign or domestic. “Under the cloak of setting up military tribunals to try al-Qaeda suspects and other so-called unlawful enemy combatants, Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress effectively created a parallel legal system for ‘any person’—American citizen or otherwise—who crosses some ill-defined line.” In one of the most chilling public statements ever made by a US Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales opined at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Jan. 18, 2007, “The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended.”

More important than its sophomoric nature, Parry warns, is that Gonzales’s statement suggests he is still searching for arguments to make habeas corpus optional, subordinate to the President’s executive powers that Bush’s neoconservative legal advisers claim are virtually unlimited during “time of war.”

Citation 1. “Military Commissions Act of 2006” Public Law 109-366, 109th Congress. See http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_cong_public_laws&docid=f :publ366.109.UPDATE BY ROBERT PARRYThe Consortium series on the Military Commissions Act of 2006 pointed out that the law’s broad language seems to apply to both US citizens and non-citizens, contrary to some reassuring comments in the major news media that the law only denies habeas corpus rights to non-citizens. The law’s application to “any person” who aids and abets a wide variety of crimes related to terrorism—and the law’s provisions stripping away the jurisdiction of civilian courts—could apparently thrust anyone into the legal limbo of the military commissions where their rights are tightly constrained and their cases could languish indefinitely.

Despite the widespread distribution of our articles on the Internet, the major US news media continues to ignore the troubling “any person” language tucked in toward the end of the statute. To my knowledge, for instance, no major news organization has explained why, if the law is supposed to apply only to non-citizens, one section specifically targets “any person [who] in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States.” Indeed, the “any person” language in sections dealing with a wide array of crimes, including traditional offenses such as spying, suggests that a parallel legal system has been created outside the parameters of the US Constitution. Since publication of the articles, the Democrats won control of both the House and Senate—and some prominent Democrats, such as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, have voiced their intent to revise the law with the goal of restoring habeas corpus and other rights. However, other Democrats appear hesitant, fearing that any attempt to change the law would open them to charges that they are “soft on terrorism” and that Republicans would torpedo the reform legislation anyway. Outside of Congress, pro-Constitution groups have made reform of the Military Commissions Act a high priority. For instance, the American Civil Liberties Union organized a national protest rally against the law. But the public’s lack of a clear understanding of the law’s scope has undercut efforts to build a popular movement for repeal or revision of the law.To learn more about the movement to rewrite the Military Commissions Act, readers can contact the ACLU at https://secure.aclu.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=DOA_learn

Comment
On June 8, 2007 the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act on an 11-8 vote. If approved, the bipartisan bill, authored by Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, will restore habeas rights that were taken away last year by the Military Commissions Act. The bill will move to the full Senate for vote late June 2007.

#2 Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
Sources: Toward Freedom , October 25, 2006Title: “Bush Moves Toward Martial Law”Author: Frank Moraleswww.towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/911
Student Researchers: Phillip Parfitt and Julie Bickel Faculty Evaluator: Andy Merrifield, Ph.D.

The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007, which was quietly signed by Bush on October 17, 2006, the very same day that he signed the Military Commissions Act, allows the president to station military troops anywhere in the United States and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to “suppress public disorder.”

By revising the two-century-old Insurrection Act, the law in effect repeals the Posse Comitatus Act, which placed strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. The 1878 Act reads, “Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.” As the only US criminal statute that outlaws military operations directed against the American people, it has been our best protection against tyranny enforced by martial law—the harsh system of rules that takes effect when the military takes control of the normal administration of justice. Historically martial law has been imposed by various governments during times of war or occupation to intensify control of populations in spite of heightened unrest. In modern times it is most commonly used by authoritarian governments to enforce unpopular rule.1

Section 333 of the Defense Authorization Act of 2007, entitled “Major public emergencies; interference with State and Federal law,” states that “the President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service—to restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of (or “refuse” or “fail” in) maintaining public order—in order to suppress, in any State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.”

Thus an Act of Congress, superceding the Posse Comitatus Act, has paved the way toward a police state by granting the president unfettered legal authority to order federal troops onto the streets of America, directing military operations against the American people under the cover of “law enforcement.”

The massive Defense Authorization Act grants the Pentagon $532.8 billion to include implementation of the new law which furthermore facilitates militarized police round-ups of protesters, so-called illegal aliens, potential terrorists, and other undesirables for detention in facilities already contracted and under construction, (see Censored 2007, Story #14) and transferring from the Pentagon to local police units the latest technology and weaponry designed to suppress dissent.

Author Frank Morales notes that despite the unprecedented and shocking nature of this act, there has been no outcry in the American media, and little reaction from our elected officials in Congress. On September 19, a lone Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) noted that 2007’s Defense Authorization Act contained a “widely opposed provision to allow the President more control over the National Guard [adopting] changes to the Insurrection Act, which will make it easier for this or any future President to use the military to restore domestic order without the consent of the nation’s governors.”

A few weeks later, on September 29, Leahy entered into the Congressional Record that he had “grave reservations about certain provisions of the fiscal Year 2007 Defense Authorization Bill Conference Report,” the language of which, he said, “subverts solid, longstanding posse comitatus statutes that limit the military’s involvement in law enforcement, thereby making it easier for the President to declare martial law.” This had been “slipped in,” Leahy said, “as a rider with little study,” while “other congressional committees with jurisdiction over these matters had no chance to comment, let alone hold hearings on, these proposals.”

Leahy noted “the implications of changing the [Posse Comitatus] Act are enormous.” “There is good reason,” he said, “for the constructive friction in existing law when it comes to martial law declarations. Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy. We fail our Constitution, neglecting the rights of the States, when we make it easier for the President to declare martial law and trample on local and state sovereignty.” Morales further asserts that “with the president’s polls at a historic low and Democrats taking back the Congress it is particularly worrisome that President Bush has seen fit, at this juncture to, in effect, declare himself dictator.”

Citation 1. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law, “Martial Law,” May 2007

UPDATE BY FRANK MORALES
On April 24, 2007, Major General Timothy Lowenberg, the Adjutant General, Washington National Guard, and Director of the Washington Military Department, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on “The Insurrection Act Rider and State Control of the National Guard.” He was speaking in opposition to Section 1076 of the recently passed 2007 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which President Bush quietly signed into law this past October 17. The law clears the way for the President to execute martial law, commandeer National Guard units around the country and unilaterally authorize military operations against the American people in the event of an executive declaration of a “public emergency.”This move toward martial law, which is intended to facilitate more effective counterinsurgency measures on the home front, took place, according to Lowenberg, “without any hearing or consultation with the governors and without any articulation or justification of need.” This, despite the fact that Section 1076 of the new law “changed more than one hundred years of well-established and carefully balanced state-federal and civil-military relationships.” In other words, with one swipe of the pen, says the General, “one hundred years of law and policy were changed without any publicly or privately acknowledged author or proponent of the change.”Its “Federal Plans for Implementing Expanded Martial Law Authority” are to be executed via the recently created domestic military command, the Northern Command or NORTHCOM. “One key USNORTHCOM planning assumption,” says Lowenberg, “is that the President will invoke the new Martial Law powers if he concludes state and/or local authorities no longer possess either the capability or the will to maintain order.” In fact, this “highly subjective assumption,” as Lowenberg puts it, has been in the works for some time now. According to the General, the “US Northern Command has been engaged for some time in deliberative planning for implementation of Section 1076 of the 2007 National Defense Authorization. The formal NORTHCOM CONPLAN 2502-05 was approved by Secretary of Defense Gates on March 15, 2007,” Further, according to the General, the 2007 NDAA provisions “could be used to compel National Guard forces to engage in civil disturbance operations under federal control.” In that case, NORTHCOM will effectuate its move to martial law, its “CONPLAN,” by way of its very own “civil disturbance plan,” Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2, code-named Garden Plot. Major Tom Herthel, of the United States Air Force Judge Advocate General School, recently laid out the Rules of Engagement & Rules for the Use of Force during the implementation of “GARDEN PLOT,” which according to Herthel, is ”the plan to provide the basis for all preparation, deployment, employment, and redeployment of all designated forces, including National Guard forces called to active federal service, for use in domestic civil disturbance operations as directed by the President.” Among other things, the “rules” allow for the use of lethal force during domestic “civil disturbance operations.”That is why many are urging Congress to repeal Section 1076 of the 2007 NDAA through immediate enactment of Senate Bill 513. Introduced in February 2007, and sponsored by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the bill seeks to repeal, or as the Congress puts it, “revive previous authority on the use of the Armed Forces and the militia to address interference with State or Federal law, and for other purposes,” through the “Repeal of Amendments made by Public Law 109-364-Section 1076 of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007.”It is critical that Senate Bill 513 becomes law, and that our popular struggle succeeds in beating back the President’s attempt to further codify the immoral and criminal seizure of state control via woefully ill-advised and dictatorial moves toward martial law and military rule.

#6 Operation FALCON Raids
Sources:SourceWatch, November 18, 2006Title: “Operation Falcon”Author: Brenda J. Elliot http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Operation_FALCON

Ukernet, February 26, 2007Title: “Operation Falcon and the Looming Police State”Author: Mike Whitneyhttp://uruknet.info/?p=m30971&s1=h1
Student Researcher: Erica Haikara and Celeste WindersFaculty Evaluator: Ron Lopez, Ph.D.

Under the code name Operation FALCON (Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally) three federally coordinated mass arrests occurred between April 2005 and October 2006. In an unprecedented move, more than 30,000 “fugitives” were arrested in the largest dragnets in the nation’s history. The operations directly involved over 960 agencies (state, local, and federal) and were the brainchild of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and US Marshal’s Director Ben Reyna. The DoJ supplied television networks government-shot action videotape of Marshals and local cops raiding homes and breaking down doors, “targeting the worst of the worst criminals on the run,” emphasizing suspected sex offenders. Yet less than ten percent of the total 30,150 were suspected sex offenders and less than two percent owned firearms. The press has not asked, “Who were the others?” And to date, the US Marshal’s office has issued no public statement as to whether the people arrested in Operation Falcon have been processed or released. Author Mike Whitney cautions that Attorney General Gonzales has little interest in the petty offenders who were netted in this extraordinary crackdown. This action is instead, he warns, a practice roundup in the move toward martial law.

Altogether, there were three FALCON Operations, each netting roughly 10,000 criminal suspects. Between April 4–10, 2005, FALCON I swept up 10,340 fugitives in the largest nationwide mass arrest (to that date) in American history. Alberto Gonzalez proudly announced on April 15 through corporate media, “Operation FALCON is an excellent example of President Bush’s direction and the Justice Department’s dedication to deal both with the terrorist threat and traditional violent crime. This joint effort shows the commitment of our federal, state, and local partners to make our neighborhoods safer, and it has led to the highest number of arrests ever recorded for a single initiative of its kind. We will use all of our Nation’s law enforcement resources to serve the people, to pursue justice, and to make our streets and Nation safer.” Operation FALCON II, carried out the week of April 17–23, 2006, arrested another 9,037 individuals from twenty-seven states mostly west of the Mississippi River. Operation FALCON III, conducted during the week of October 22–28, 2006, netted another 10,733 fugitives in twenty-four states east of the Mississippi River.

The US Marshals Service has not yet disclosed the names of the people arrested in these massive sweeps nor of what crimes they were accused. We have no way of knowing whether they were provided with due process of law, where they are now, or whether they have been abused while in custody.

SourceWatch contributors further ask for clarification, “Although Attorney General Gonzales stated on April 15, 2005 that Operation FALCON was ‘an excellent example of President Bush‘s direction and the Justice Department’s dedication to deal both with the terrorist threat and traditional violent crime,’ where is the connection between the Operation FALCON roundups and catching terrorists? Why did police wait for federally orchestrated raids to arrest known sex offenders and suspected murders? Why were state and federal agencies integrated with local law enforcement to simply carry out routine police work?”

The media played an essential role in concealing the important details of the Operation. In fact, the non-critical “cookie cutter” articles which appeared in newspapers across the country suggest that the media may have collaborated directly with the Justice Department. (see Chapter 9, Fake News) Whitney notes that nearly identical “news” segments and articles put the best possible spin on a story that most Americans might find deeply disturbing, and perhaps frightening.

While mass militarized police roundups make little sense as a method of apprehending fugitives, the FALCON program does make sense as a means of effectively setting up a chain-of-command structure that radiates from the Justice Department and relocates the levers of control to Washington where they can be manned by members of the administration. Whitney warns that the plan behind the FALCON program appears to have been devised to enhance the powers of the “unitary” executive by putting state and local law enforcement under federal supervision, ready for the institution of martial law (see story #2.)

Update by Mike WhitneyOperation FALCON presents the first time in US history that all of the domestic police agencies have been put under the direct control of the federal government. The implications for American democracy are quite profound.Operation FALCON serves no purpose except to centralize power and establish the basic contours of an American police state. It is not an effective way of apprehending criminals.For the most part, the media completely ignored FALCON. In fact, these extraordinary police-state sweeps did not elicit even one editorial or one column-inch of commentary from any journalist in the country. Following the government’s version of events, the story was simply brushed aside as trivial. For those who care to explore the media’s true role in undermining the fundamental rights of Americans; FALCON is probably a good place to begin. It illustrates how the media deliberately obscures facts that do not serve the overall interests of the state.The last FALCON operation was carried out on October 28, 2006. Since then, the project has been put on “hold,” presumably until some time in the future when it will be reactivated by presidential decree. The precedents have now been established for law enforcement agencies across the nation to be taken over by the chief executive at a moment’s notice. If there is another terrorist attack within the United States, or the outbreak of an epidemic, or a natural disaster on the scale of Hurricane Katrina; we can expect that President Bush will consolidate his power by asserting direct control over all of the various federal, state, and local police agencies. Eventually, we will see that FALCON was organized with that very purpose in mind.Recent changes to the Insurrection Act of 1807 as well as to the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 allow President Bush to declare martial law at his own discretion and to take control of the National Guard from the state governors. That means that Bush now has a complete monopoly on all the means of organized violence in the country.With the aid of the corporate media and an alliance of far-right organizations, Bush has successfully removed all the traditional obstacles to absolute power. The groundwork has been laid for an American dictatorship. FALCON is just one small part of that much larger plan.

UPDATE BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCEA more recent and less publicized sweep was made March 7, 2007, in Baltimore, with the arrest of about two hundred fugitives. The rationale for this sweep is more puzzling, perhaps, as it was the only city involved. This sweep received only local media attention.Numerous questions, as stated in the Operation FALCON article, remain unanswered. The mainstream press does not appear to be interested in exploring beyond the initial sweep events.Both House and Senate committees on the judiciary and government oversight are digging into DoJ operations due to the US attorney firings and politicization of the Department, with all roads leading to the White House. It is not unreasonable to expect that these sweeps may eventually come under investigation as well.The mainstream press, to my knowledge, has not responded at all to my SourceWatch coverage of this story. The press coverage that Operation FALCON received appears to be limited to DoJ and USMS news releases with the addition of an occasional local interest story. Information on the fate of the 30,000 plus who were arrested is conspicuous by its absence.Additional information on this story should be available from both the DoJ and USMS. In reality, it most likely will not be, as neither has provided any updates. The SourceWatch article will continue to be updated when or if additional information becomes available.

#7 Behind Blackwater Inc.
Source: Democracy Now! January 26, 2007Title: “Our Mercenaries in Iraq: Blackwater Inc and Bush’s Undeclared Surge” Author: Jeremy Scahillhttp://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/26/1559232
Student Researcher: Sverre TyslFaculty Evaluator: Noel Byrne, Ph.D.

The company that most embodies the privatization of the military industrial complex—a primary part of the Project for a New American Century and the neoconservative revolution is the private security firm Blackwater. Blackwater is the most powerful mercenary firm in the world, with 20,000 soldiers, the world’s largest private military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft, including helicopter gunships, and a private intelligence division. The firm is also manufacturing its own surveillance blimps and target systems.

Blackwater is headed by a very right-wing Christian-supremist and ex-Navy Seal named Erik Prince, whose family has had deep neo-conservative connections. Bush’s latest call for voluntary civilian military corps to accommodate the “surge” will add to over half a billion dollars in federal contracts with Blackwater, allowing Prince to create a private army to defend Christendom around the world against Muslims and others.

One of the last things Dick Cheney did before leaving office as Defense Secretary under George H. W. Bush was to commission a Halliburton study on how to privatize the military bureaucracy. That study effectively created the groundwork for a continuing war profiteer bonanza. During the Clinton years, Erik Prince envisioned a project that would take advantage of anticipated military outsourcing. Blackwater began in 1996 as a private military training facility, with an executive board of former Navy Seals and Elite Special Forces, in the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina. A decade later it is the most powerful mercenary firm in the world, embodying what the Bush administration views as “the necessary revolution in military affairs”—the outsourcing of armed forces.

In his 2007 State of the Union address Bush asked Congress to authorize an increase in the size of our active Army and Marine Corps by 92,000 in the next five years. He continued, “A second task we can take on together is to design and establish a volunteer civilian reserve corps. Such a corps would function much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the Armed Forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them.”

This is, however, precisely what the administration has already done—largely, Jeremy Scahill points out, behind the backs of the American people. Private contractors currently constitute the second-largest “force” in Iraq. At last count, there were about 100,000 contractors in Iraq, 48,000 of which work as private soldiers, according to a Government Accountability Office report. These soldiers have operated with almost no oversight or effective legal constraints and are politically expedient, as contractor deaths go uncounted in the official toll. With Prince calling for the creation of a “contractor brigade” before military audiences, the Bush administration has found a back door for engaging in an undeclared expansion of occupation.

Blackwater currently has about 2,300 personnel actively deployed in nine countries and is aggressively expanding its presence inside US borders. They provide the security for US diplomats in Iraq, guarding everyone from Paul Bremer and John Negroponte to the current US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad. They’re training troops in Afghanistan and have been active in the Caspian Sea, where they set up a Special Forces base miles from the Iranian border. According to reports they are currently negotiating directly with the Southern Sudanese regional government to start training the Christian forces of Sudan.

Blackwater’s connections are impressive. Joseph Schmitz, the former Pentagon Inspector General, whose job was to police the war contractor bonanza, has moved on to become the vice chairman of the Prince Group, Blackwater’s parent company, and the general counsel for Blackwater.

Bush recently hired Fred Fielding, Blackwater’s former lawyer, to replace Harriet Miers as his top lawyer; and Ken Starr, the former Whitewater prosecutor who led the impeachment charge against President Clinton, is now Blackwater’s counsel of record and has filed briefs with Supreme Court to fight wrongful death lawsuits brought against Blackwater.

Cofer Black, thirty-year CIA veteran and former head of CIA’s counterterrorism center, credited with spearheading the extraordinary rendition program after 9/11, is now senior executive at Blackwater and perhaps its most powerful operative.

Prince and other Blackwater executives have been major bankrollers of the President, of former House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay, and of former Senator, Rick Santorum. Senator John Warner, the former head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called Blackwater, “our silent partner in the global war on terror.”

# 12 Another Massacre in Haiti by UN Troops
Sources:HaitiAction.net, January 21, 2007Title: “UN in Haiti: Accused of Second Massacre”Authors: Haiti Information Projecthttp://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/1_21_7/1_21_7.html
Inter Press ServiceTitle: “Haiti: Poor Residents of Capital Describe a State of Siege”Authors: Wadner Pierre and Jeb Spraguehttp://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36772
Student Researcher: William LeemingFaculty Evaluator: Dianne Parness

Eyewitness testimony confirms indiscriminate killings by UN forces in Haiti’s Cité Soleil community on December 22, 2006, reportedly as collective punishment against the community for a massive demonstration of Lavalas supporters in which about ten thousand people rallied for the return of President Aristide in clear condemnation of the foreign military occupation of their country. According to residents, UN forces attacked their neighborhood in the early morning, killing more than thirty people, including women and children. Footage taken by Haiti Information Project (HIP) videographers shows unarmed civilians dying as they tell of extensive gunfire from UN peacekeeping forces (MINUSTAH).

A hardened UN strategy became apparent days after the demonstration, when UN officials stated they were entering Cité Soleil to capture or kill gangsters and kidnappers. While officials of MINUSTAH have admitted to “collateral damage,” in the raids of December 2006, they say they are there to fight gangsters at the request of the René Préval government.

But many residents and local human rights activists say that scores of people having no involvement with gangs were killed, wounded, and arrested in the raids.

Although MINUSTAH denied firing from helicopter gunships, HIP captured more than three hours of video footage and a large selection of digital photos, illustrating the UN’s behavior in Haiti.

An unidentified twenty-eight-year-old man, filmed by HIP, can be seen dying as he testifies that he was shot from a circling UN helicopter that rained gunfire on those below. HIP film also shows a sixteen-year-old, dying just after being shot by UN forces. Before dying he describes details of the UN opening fire on unarmed civilians in his neighborhood. The wounded and dying, filmed by HIP, all express horror and confusion.

IPS observed that buildings throughout Cité Soleil were pockmarked by bullets; many showing huge holes made by heavy caliber UN weapons, as residents attest. Often pipes that brought in water to the slum community now lay shattered.

A recently declassified document from the US embassy in Port-au-Prince reveals that during a similar operation carried out in July 2005, MINUSTAH expended 22,000 bullets over several hours. In the report, an official from MINUSTAH acknowledged, “given the flimsy construction of homes in Cité Soleil and the large quantity of ammunition expended, it is likely that rounds penetrated many buildings, striking unintended targets.”

Frantz Michel Guerrier, spokesman for the Committee of Notables for the Development of Cité Soleil based in the Bois Neuf zone, said, “It is very difficult for me to explain to you what the people of Bois Neuf went through on Dec. 22, 2006—almost unexplainable. It was a true massacre. We counted more than sixty wounded and more than twenty-five dead, among [them] infants, children, and young people.”

“We saw helicopters shoot at us, our houses broken by the tanks,” Guerrier told IPS. “We heard detonations of the heavy weapons. Many of the dead and wounded were found inside their houses. I must tell you that nobody had been saved, not even the babies. The Red Cross was not allowed to help people. The soldiers had refused to let the Red Cross in categorically, in violation of the Geneva Convention.” Several residents told IPS that MINUSTAH, after conducting its operations, evacuated without checking for wounded.

Following the removal of Haiti’s elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide government (see Censored 2005, story #12), up to one thousand Lavalas political activists were imprisoned under the US-backed interim government, according to a Miami University Human Rights study.

A study released by the Lancet Journal of Medicine in August 2006 estimates that 8,000 were killed and 35,000 sexually assaulted in the greater Port-au-Prince area during the time of the interim government (2004-2006). The study attributed human rights abuses to purported “criminals,” police, anti-Lavalas gangs, and UN peacekeepers.

HIP Founding Editor Kevin Pina commented, “It is clear that this represents an act of terror against the community. This video evidence shows clearly that the UN stands accused, once again, of targeting unarmed civilians in Cité Soleil. There can be no justification for using this level of force in the close quarters of those neighborhoods. It is clear that the UN views the killing of these innocents as somehow acceptable to their goal of pacifying this community. Every demonstration, no matter how peaceful, is seen as a threat to their control if it includes demands for the return of Aristide to Haiti. In that context it is difficult to continue to view the UN mission as an independent and neutral force in Haiti. They apparently decided sometime ago it was acceptable to use military force to alter Haiti’s political landscape to match their strategic goals for the Haitian people.”

Update by Kevin PinaSince President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his Lavalas political party were ousted from power on February 29, 2004, accusations of gross human rights violations have persisted in Haiti. While the Haitian National Police (HNP) received training and assistance from the UN following Aristide’s ouster, they were also accused of summary executions, arbitrary arrests, and the killing of unarmed demonstrators. The actions of the Haitian police became so egregious that even UN police trainers (CIVPOL) began to question the motives of their commanders and the mission’s objectives. The Haiti Information Project (HIP) received the following correspondence in response to a May 8, 2005 article “UN accommodates Human Rights Abuses by police in Haiti.”1 This is the first publication of that correspondence:
Just want to reinforce your observations as all being accurate.I am one of the 25 US CIVPOL here on the ground in Haiti, having arrived last November. As a group we are frustrated by the UN’s and CIVPOL’s unwillingness to interpret their mandate aggressively. I have been pushing them to conduct investigations into all the shootings and other significant Human Rights violations with no success. The Police Commissioner and command staff shows little interest and claim the mandate does not allow them to do this. Unfortunately I have countless examples.The corruption in the HNP is massive with little interest in addressing the problem. Just keep up the pressure, I don’t know what else to do.

Stephen MacKinnonChief, Strategic Planning UnitCIVPOL-MINUSTAH
Chief MacKinnon provided HIP with information and documents that painted a disturbing picture of a UN operation more obsessed with political embarrassment caused by mounting demonstrations for Aristide’s return than interest in reigning in human rights abuses committed by the HNP.2The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) now stands accused of having itself committed several massacres in the seaside shantytown of Cité Soleil. This area of the capital served as a launching site for massive demonstrations demanding the return of President Aristide and for an end to what they called the foreign occupation of their country.The Brazilian military has responsibility for leadership of the UN military forces in Haiti and is authorized to use deadly force. They are at the top of the command structure and their influence on the overall mission should not be understated. More importantly, there is a direct parallel between Brazilian military tactics utilized by UN forces in Haiti and similar military-style assaults used by the police in their own country.The Brazilian military police have been accused of firing indiscriminately in the poor slums of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro called favelas. This was highlighted in an Amnesty International report “Brazil: ‘They come in Shooting’: Policing socially excluded communities,” released on December 2, 2005.3 This is similar to the tactics authorized by the Brazilian generals in Haiti. It has resulted in several high-profile massacres committed in the poor slum of Cité Soleil where protestors challenged the UN’s authority by continuing to launch massive demonstrations demanding Aristide’s return and condemning the UN’s presence in Haiti. In each instance, the UN and the elite-run Haitian press demonized the entire community as being criminals and gangsters and/or collaborators of criminals and gangsters. While it is true that armed “gangs” operated in the neighborhood and a few claimed they were aligned with Aristide’s Lavalas movement, these military raids had a clear correlation to the ongoing demonstrations and opposition to the UN presence in Haiti. Cité Soleil was terrorized on July 6, 2005 when Brazilian commanders authorized a raid by UN forces with the stated aim of routing gangs in the area.4 For Aristide supporters, the raid was a preemptive strike by the UN to dampen the impact of protests on Aristide’s birthday, planned to take place only nine days later on July 15. It also represented the first time UN forces purposely sought to assassinate the leadership of armed groups claiming allegiance to Aristide’s Lavalas movement.5 By the time UN guns stopped firing, countless unarmed civilians lay dead with many having been killed by a single high-powered rifle shot to the head. Since then, documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show the US Embassy and various intelligence agencies, were aware of the excessive use of force by UN forces in Haiti on July 6, 2005.6 Despite being heavily censored by US officials, what emerges is clear evidence of the disproportionate use of force by UN troops in Cité Soleil.December 16, 2006 saw another large demonstration for Aristide that began in Cite Soleil and only six days later on December 22, Brazilian commanders would authorize a second deadly raid that residents and human rights groups say resulted in the wholesale slaughter of innocent victims. The unspoken parallel of Brazil’s role in leading the UN’s military strategy in Haiti is the fact that terror tactics such as these have been their modus operandi in their own country. In the early morning hours of Feb. 2, UN forces entered Cité Soleil firing indiscriminately and their victims were two young girls killed as they slept in their own home.7 Massive demonstrations were scheduled to take place five days later demanding the return of Aristide throughout Haiti on Feb. 7. While these demonstrations went largely unreported by the international corporate media, this stood in contrast, to the avalanche of news stories filed two days later on Feb. 9, when UN forces launched yet another deadly military operation in Cité Soleil.8 Although these raids were ostensibly to rid the neighborhood of gangs, they followed the same pattern and relationship to demonstrations for Aristide’s return and military tactics used by Brazilian commanders in previous UN operations. The only rights organizations documenting the loss of life and destruction of property resulting from the UN raid on December 22, 2006, as well as previous and subsequent UN military operations, were the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) and the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI).9 HIP, the organization originally authoring the article being recognized by Project Censored, is a news agency that has extensive video evidence and interviews from Cité Soleil taken the same day these attacks by UN forces were executed. HIP offers any human rights organization the opportunity to view the documentary footage and evidence supporting the claims of Cité Soleil residents that massacres by UN forces have been committed against them. Unfortunately, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States have remained conspicuously disinterested and silent about this evidence. For further information and updates about Haiti, please visit www.haitiaction.net, www.ijdh.org, www.HaitiInformationProject.net, www.haitianalysis.com, www.canadahaitiaction.ca, and http://www.ahphaiti.org/.

Notes 1. Haiti Information Project,”UN accommodates Human Rights Abuses by police in Haiti,” May 8, 2005. See http://haitiaction.net/News/HIP/5_8_5/5_8_5.html. 2. Internet correspondence received from Steve McKinnon to HIP May 12, 2005. 3. Amnesty International Report, “Brazil: ‘They come in Shooting’: Policing socially excluded communities” December 2, 2005. See http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?lang=e &id=ENGAMR190252005 4. Haiti Information Project, “Evidence mounts of a UN massacre in Haiti,” July 12, 2005. See http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/7_12_5.html. 5. Haiti Information Project,”The UN’s disconnect with the poor in Haiti,” December 25, 2005. See http://haitiaction.net/News/HIP/12_25_5/12_25a_5.html. 6. Haiti Information Project, “US Embassy in Haiti acknowledges excessive force by UN,” January 24, 2007. Article based on FOIA documents obtained by College of DuPage Geography Professor Keith Yearman. See http://haitiaction.net/News/HIP/1_23_7/1_23_7.html. 7. Haiti Information Project—February 2, 2007. UN terror kills Haiti’s children at night http://haitiaction.net/News/HIP/2_2_7a/2_2_7a.html. 8. Haiti Information Project, “Massive demonstrations in Haiti catch UN by surprise,” February 9, 2007. See http://haitiaction.net/News/HIP/2_9_7/2_9_7.html. 9. Haiti Information Project,”The UNspoken truth about gangs in Haiti,” February 15, 2007. See http://haitiaction.net/News/HIP/2_15_7/2_15_7.html. 10. Video images documenting UN military operations on July 6, 2005 and December 22, 2006 were taken by HIP videographer Jean-Baptiste Ristil.
An Update on 2/28/2007 IPS Article: "Haiti: Poor Residents of Capital Describe a State of Siege"

[Read The Rest of Them]

Wikileaks Censored by California

2008-02-19T09:55:00.000-05:00

Whistle-blower Web site Wikileaks.org has been effectively ordered offline by a California court. Last week, the court ordered domain name registrar Dynadot to remove all DNS entries for that domain. According to a story by the BBC, Dynadot was also ordered to "prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or any other website or server other than a blank park page, until further order of this Court." Swiss banking group Julius Baer Bank and documents surrounding its offshore activities are at the center of the controversy. The Wikileaks.org site is still available here.

The Cayman Islands is located between Cuba and Honduras. In July 2000, the United States Department of the Treasure Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued an advisory states stating that there were "serious deficiencies in the counter-money laundering systems of the Cayman Islands", "Cayman Islands law makes it impossible for the supervisory and regulatory authority to obtain information held by financial institutions regarding their client's identity", "Failure of financial institutions in the Cayman Islands to report suspicious transactions is not subject to penalty" and that "These deficiencies, among others, have caused the Cayman Islands to be identified by the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (The 'FATF') as non-cooperative in the fight against money laundering". As of 2006 the U.S. State Department listed the Cayman Islands in its money laundering "Countries of Primary Concern".

The Cayman's case is not the first time Wikileaks has tackled bad banks. In the second half of last year Wikileaks exposed over $4,500,000,000's worth of money laundering including by the former president of Kenya, Daniel Arap Moi (see http://wikileaks.be/wiki/The_looting_of_Kenya_under_President_moi which became the Guardian's front page story in September 2007 and swung the Kenyan vote by 10% leading into the December 2007 election and http://wikileaks.be/wiki/A_Charter_House_of_horrors reported in the Nairobi paper The Standard and now the subject of a High Court Case in Kenya).
To find an injunction similar to the Cayman's case, we need to go back to Monday June 15, 1971 when the New York Times published excepts of of Daniel Ellsberg's leaked "Pentagon Papers" and found itself enjoined the following day. The Wikileaks injunction is the equivalent of forcing the Times' printers to print blank pages and its power company to turn off press power. The supreme court found the Times censorship injunction unconstitutional in a 6-3 decision.
The Wikileaks.org injunction is ex-parte, engages in prior restraint and is clearly unconstitutional. It was granted on Thursday afternoon by California district court judge White, Bush appointee and former prosecutor.

The order was written by Cayman Island's Bank Julius Baer lawyers and was accepted by judge White without amendment, or representations by Wikileaks or amicus. The case is over several Wikileaks articles, public commentary and documents dating prior to 2003. The documents allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion. The bank alleges the documents were disclosed to Wikileaks by offshore banking whistleblower and former Vice President the Cayman Island's operation, Rudolf Elmer. Unable to lawfully attack Wikileaks servers which are based in several countries, the order was served on the intermediary Wikileaks purchased the 'Wikileaks.org' name through -- California registrar Dynadot, who then used its access to the internet website name registration system to delete the records for 'Wikileaks.org'. The order also enjoins every person who has heard about the order from from even linking to the documents.

In order to deal with Chinese censorship, Wikileaks has many backup sites such as wikileaks.be (Belgium) and wikileaks.de (Germany) which remain active. Wikileaks never expected to be using the alternative servers to deal with censorship attacks, from, of all places, the United States.

The order is clearly unconstitutional and exceeds its jurisdiction.

Wikileaks will keep on publishing, in-fact, given the level of suppression involved in this case, Wikileaks will step up publication of documents pertaining to illegal or unethical banking practices.

Wikileaks has six pro-bono attorney's in S.F on roster to deal with a legal assault, however Wikileaks was given only hours notice "by email" prior to the hearing. Wikileaks was NOT represented. Wikileaks pre-litigation California council Julie Turner attended the start of hearing in a personal capacity but was then asked to leave the court room.

White signed the order, drafted by the Cayman Islands bank's lawyers without a single amendment.

The injunction claims to be permanent, although the case is only preliminary.

NIC Press Release

2008-02-15T15:12:00.002-05:00

I just ran across this and thought it was interesting the way NIC (the parent company of Virginia Interactive, the guys who manage Virginia.gov) buried the most interesting part in the middle of an unrelated press release.

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NIC Announces Retirement of Chief Executive Officer Jeff Fraser

Harry Herington appointed Chief Executive Officer

OLATHE, Kan. – February 6, 2008 – eGovernment provider NIC Inc. (NASDAQ: EGOV) today announced the retirement of Jeff Fraser as Chief Executive Officer, effective February 4, 2008. He will continue to serve as Chairman of the Board.

The Board has named Harry Herington as Chief Executive Officer, effective February 4, 2008. Mr. Herington has served as President since 2006 and has held several leadership positions at NIC since joining the Company in 1995, including Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President of Portal Operations.

“Harry Herington has an outstanding track record of delivering results at NIC,” said Jeff Fraser. “I am confident that NIC will continue to grow under Harry’s highly capable and energetic leadership.”

These actions follow the conclusion of a review undertaken by the Audit Committee of the NIC Board of Directors, with the assistance of outside, independent counsel, which focused on the reimbursement of expenses by certain executive officers, including Mr. Fraser. The review covered the period from January 1, 2004, through June 30, 2007, and was conducted with full cooperation by the Company and Mr. Fraser in conjunction with an informal inquiry of expense reporting by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Mr. Fraser has reimbursed the Company approximately $97,000 in expenses as a result of the review, which followed reimbursement by him of approximately $186,000 in expenses made prior to the review. The reimbursement was made to correct expense reporting during the period from January 2004 through October 2006 that was inconsistent with the Company’s expense reimbursement policies.

The internal review also revealed that these expense reimbursement deficiencies were isolated to Mr. Fraser. NIC does not believe the amounts involved are material to its financial condition or results of operations.

Mr. Fraser co-founded the Company that would become NIC in 1992 and served as Chief Executive Officer until the end of 1999. He retired to become non-executive Chairman and relinquished day-to-day management to a new leadership team. Following an acquisition-based expansion strategy that placed NIC’s future growth at risk, the Board of Directors asked Fraser to return as Chief Executive Officer in May 2002. At his request, Fraser received a salary of $1.00 per year in 2002 and 2003 and $5,500 per year to cover medical benefits in 2004 and 2005. The Board approved a salary of $325,000 in 2006 in recognition of Fraser’s turnaround plan that refocused on the core portal business and returned NIC to profitability as a highly successful leader in the eGovernment space.

“We thank Jeff for his vision and commitment to building the industry-leading eGovernment provider from the ground up,” said Art Burtscher, Chairman of the Audit Committee of the NIC Board of Directors. “The Board of Directors is confident the current management team is capable of continuing NIC’s current track record of growth and we look forward to further success under Harry Herington’s leadership.”

Bush's Budget Proposal Would Cut Medicare Funding

2008-02-05T08:21:00.000-05:00

MONDAY, Feb. 4 (HealthDay News) -- President Bush's new budget proposal would cut $196 billion over five years from both Medicare and Medicaid -- programs that provide health care to millions of poor and elderly, federal officials announced Monday.

The proposed cuts are part of a plan to stop Medicare from running out of money in little more than a decade, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Mike Leavitt told reporters during a press conference. He said the savings would help keep premiums affordable, maintain the Medicare/Medicaid system, and balance the current Medicare budget.

"The Medicare portion of the budget should be viewed as a stark warning," Leavitt said. "Medicare on its current course is 11 years from going broke. Americans have become numbed to entitlement warnings as a repeated cycle of alarms and inaction," he said.

But President Bush and Leavitt are sure to face a Congressional showdown over the budget proposals.

"This administration ought to know that five years' worth of Medicare and Medicaid cuts totaling $200 billion are dead on arrival with me and with most of the Congress," Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, told theAssociated Press.
Not every agency would lose funds in the new budget: The cash-strapped U.S. Food and Drug Administration would receive a nearly 6 percent boost in financing, much of which would go to programs that oversee food safety, agency officials said.

All of these announcements stem from the $3.1 trillion 2009 budget proposal announced by the Bush administration Monday.

According to Leavitt, the majority of the Medicare cuts would come from reductions to fees paid to hospitals, nursing homes and hospices.

Medicare makes up 56 percent of the $737 billion HHS budget, Leavitt said. Cuts in the Medicare budget will become the norm until Medicare itself changes, he said. "We can keep our national commitment, but to do this we need to change our management of Medicare," Leavitt said.

Under the president's plan, the annual growth of Medicare spending would slow to 5 percent instead of the 7 percent currently projected. Similarly, spending growth would slow from 7.3 percent to 7 percent for Medicaid.

Medicare is an inefficient system and needs to be changed, Leavitt charged. Changing the system means putting more responsibility into the hands of consumers, enabling them to make their own health-care decisions, he said.

"If consumers were allowed to make the decisions in an efficient market, through electronic medical records, through quality measures, through cost comparisons and choices and incentives, their decisions would be far more precise and wise," he said. "It would produce better health, and at a lower cost."

But at least one critic believes a shrinking Medicare budget would hurt consumers and the health-care system.

"President Bush's proposed cuts to Medicare would hurt older and disabled Americans and take a wrecking ball to many essential hospitals across the country," Robert M. Hayes, president of the Medicare Rights Center, said in a prepared statement. "It is indefensible for the President to propose hurting America's grandparents while maintaining his rabid defense of Medicare overpayments to for-profit health insurance companies."

Under the Bush proposed budget, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would receive an additional $130 million added for fiscal year 2009, which begins Oct. 1.

"The agency's 2009 budget includes $2.4 billion, which includes direct budget authority and user fees," John Dyer, FDA's deputy commissioner for operations and chief operating officer, said during a Monday afternoon teleconference. "That's a 5.7 percent increase over the 2008 budget just passed by Congress."

According to Dyer, the budget would increase resources spent on food safety, modernize drug safety, speed approval of generic drugs and improve the safety and review of medical devices. The budget also includes increases in salaries and up to 1,000 additional employees for the FDA.
The agency, which was shaken by a long list of food recalls and food-linked illness outbreaks in 2007, plans to boost its inspections of domestic and imported food, as well as medical products. It will also target more inspections of high-risk food items, Dyer said.
An industry group applauded the agency's new emphasis on bringing cheaper generic drugs to the public faster.

"Bringing generic medicines to market in a timely manner is a win-win for the federal government, the generic industry and, most of all, consumers," Generic Pharmaceutical Association President and CEO Kathleen Jaeger said in a prepared statement.
Other agencies within HHS would either receive no added funding or lose money under the Bush budget proposal. These include the National Institutes of Health, which would see its budget hold steady at $29.4 billion for next year, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which would have $400 million shaved off its current budget of $6.2 billion. Programs aimed at providing health care to the rural poor would see their budgets fall from $6.9 billion to $6.0 billion, the president's office announced.

In addition to these other agencies, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is looking at a $7.14 billion budget proposal for 2009. The agency hopes to use its money to strengthen energy and homeland security around cities and major ports.

The EPA would also continue to promote energy efficiency and clean air and water standards. The agency intends to use $170 million to fund emergency teams that can address more than one terrorist attack at a time, the agency said in a statement. In addition, the EPA is looking for a total of $563 million for criminal enforcement.

More information
For more on Medicare, visit the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
SOURCES: Feb. 4, 2008, teleconference with Mike Leavitt, Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; John Dyer, M.P.H., deputy commissioner for operations and chief operating officer, U.S. Food and Drug Administration; statements: Medicare Rights Center; Generic Pharmaceutical Association; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency;Associated Press,Bloomberg

White House dismisses report charging government's false statements

2008-01-24T07:31:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 (Xinhua) -- The study alleging that U.S. President George W. Bush and his top advisers made about 935 false statements to advocate Iraq war was even not "worth spending time on," a White House spokeswoman said on Wednesday.
"I hardly think that the study is worth spending time on," spokeswoman Dana Perino said as a response to the Center for Public Integrity's assessment.
The study did not take into consideration the statements by U.S. lawmakers or "people around the world" reflecting what she described as a consensus that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
"We were part of a broad coalition of countries that deposed the dictator based on a collective understanding of the intelligence," she said.
Perino also denounced the study for not recognizing President Bush's effort to "make reforms in the intelligence community" to make sure that the mistakes would not happen again after realizing that there was no WMDs in Iraq.
The study released on Tuesday alleged that Bush and his then secretary of state Colin Powell made the most false statements as they sought to drum up support from the March 2003 invasion to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Comcast Sucks. Really.

2008-01-22T15:00:00.000-05:00

Identity Theft

2008-01-11T15:29:00.000-05:00

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has proposed two new consumer-protection measures. One would require businesses and state agencies to inform consumers when their personal identification information has been improperly acquired, accessed or released to the public. The other would give Virginians the ability to freeze their credit reports until any identity theft or fraud issues are resolved.

A Sad State of Affairs

2007-11-20T11:41:00.000-05:00

Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department analyst who leaked the secret Pentagon Papers history of the Vietnam War, offered insights into the looming attack on Iran and the loss of liberty in the United States at a recent American University symposium. What follow are his comments from that speech. They have been edited only for space.

Let me simplify . . . and not just to be rhetorical: A coup has occurred. I woke up the other day realizing, coming out of sleep, that a coup has occurred. It’s not just a question that a coup lies ahead with the next 9-11. That’s the next coup that completes the first.

The last five years have seen a steady assault on every fundamental of our Constitution . . . what the rest of the world looked at for the last 200 years as a model and experiment to the rest of the world—in checks and balances, limited government, Bill of Rights, individual rights protected from majority infringement by the Congress, an independent judiciary, the possibility of impeachment.

There have been violations of these principles by many presidents before. Most of the specific things that Bush has done in the way of illegal surveillance and other matters were done under my boss Lyndon Johnson in the Vietnam War: the use of CIA, FBI, NSA against Americans.
All these violations were impeachable had they been found out at the time but in nearly every case the violations were not found out until [the president was] out of office so we didn’t have the exact challenge that we have today.

That was true with the first term of Nixon and certainly of Johnson, Kennedy and others. They were impeachable. They weren’t found out in time. But I think it was not their intention, in the crisis situations that they felt justified their actions, to change our form of government.
It is increasingly clear with each new book and each new leak that comes out, that Richard Cheney and his now chief of staff David Addington have had precisely that in mind since at least the early 1970s. Not just since 1992, not since 2001, but [they] have believed in executive government, single-branch government under an executive president—elected or not—with unrestrained powers. They did not believe in restraint.

When I say this, I’m not saying they are traitors. I don’t think they have in mind allegiance to some foreign power or have a desire to help a foreign power. I believe they have in their own minds a love of this country and what they think is best for this country—but what they think is best is directly and consciously at odds with what the Founders of this country [and the Framers of the Constitution] thought.

They believe we need a different kind of government now, an executive government essentially, rule by decree, which is what we’re getting with ‘signing statements.’
Signing statements are talked about as line-item vetoes which is one [way] of describing them which are unconstitutional in themselves, but in other ways are just saying the president says: ‘I decide what I enforce. I decide what the law is. I legislate.’

It’s [the same] with the military commissions, courts that are under the entire control of the executive branch, essentially of the president—a concentration of legislative, judicial, and executive powers in one branch, which is precisely what the founders meant to avert, and tried to avert and did avert to the best of their ability in the Constitution.”

Now I’m appealing to that as a crisis right now not just because it is a break in tradition but because I believe in my heart and from my experience that on this point the Founders had it right. It’s not just ‘our way of doing things’— it was a crucial perception on the corruption of power to anybody, including Americans.

On procedures and institutions that might possibly keep that power under control because the alternative was what we have just seen, wars like Vietnam, wars like Iraq, wars like the one coming.

That brings me to the second point. This executive branch, under specifically Bush and Cheney, despite opposition [even] from most of the rest of the branch, even of the cabinet, clearly intends a war against Iran, which, even by imperialist standards, [violates] standards in other words which were accepted not only by nearly everyone in the executive branch but most of the leaders in Congress.

The interests of the empire, the need for hegemony, our right to control and our need to control the oil of the Middle East and many other places. That is consensual in our establishment. …
But even by those standards, an attack on Iran is insane. And I say that quietly, I don’t mean it to be heard as rhetoric. Of course it’s not only aggression and a violation of international law, a supreme international crime, but it is by imperial standards, insane in terms of the consequences.

Does that make it impossible? No, it obviously doesn’t; it doesn’t even make it unlikely.
That is because two things come together that with the acceptance for various reasons of the Congress—Democrats and Republicans—and the public and the media, we have freed the White House — the president and the vice president—from virtually any restraint by Congress, courts, media, public, whatever.

And on the other hand, the people who have this unrestrained power are crazy. Not entirely, but they have crazy beliefs.

And the question is what then, can we do about this?

We are heading toward an insane operation. It is not certain. [But it] is likely.… I want to try to be realistic myself here, to encourage us to do what we must do, what is needed to be done with the full recognition of the reality. Nothing is impossible.

What I’m talking about in the way of a police state, in the way of an attack on Iran, is not certain. Nothing is certain, actually. However, I think it is probable, more likely than not, that in the next 15, 16 months of this administration we will see an attack on Iran. Probably. Whatever we do.

And . . . we will not succeed in moving Congress, probably, and Congress probably will not stop the president from doing this. And that’s where we’re heading. That’s a very ugly, ugly prospect.

However, I think it’s up to us to work to increase that small, perhaps—anyway not large—possibility and probability to avert this within the next 15 months, aside from the effort that we have to make for the rest of our lives.

Getting back the constitutional government and improving it will take a long time. And I think if we don’t get started now, it won’t be started under the next administration.
Getting out of Iraq will take a long time. Averting Iran and averting a further coup in the face of a 9-11, another attack, is for right now, it can’t be put off. It will take a kind of political and moral courage of which we have seen very little.

We have a really unusual concentration here and in this audience, of people who have in fact changed their lives, changed their position, lost their friends to a large extent, risked and experienced being called terrible names, ‘traitor,’ ‘weak on terrorism’—names that politicians will do anything to avoid being called.

How do we get more people in the government and in the public at large to change their lives now in a crisis in a critical way? How do we get Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid for example? What kinds of pressures, what kinds of influences can be brought to bear to get Congress to do their jobs? It isn’t just doing their jobs. Getting them to obey their oaths of office.

I took an oath many times, an oath of office as a Marine lieutenant, as an official in the Defense Department, as an official in the State Department as a Foreign Service officer. A number of times I took an oath of office which is the same oath of office taken by every member of Congress and every official in the United States and every officer in the armed services.
And that oath is not to a commander in chief, which is not [even] mentioned. It is not to a Fuehrer. It is not even to superior officers. The oath is precisely to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States.

Now that is an oath I violated every day for years in the Defense Department without realizing it when I kept my mouth shut when I knew the public was being lied into a war as they were lied into Iraq, as they are being lied into war in Iran.

I knew that I had the documents that proved it, and I did not put it out then. I was not obeying my oath, which I eventually came to do.

I’ve often said that Lt. Ehren Watada—who still faces trial for refusing to obey orders to deploy to Iraq which he correctly perceives to be an unconstitutional and aggressive war—is the single officer in the United States armed services who is taking seriously [the matter of] upholding his oath.

The president is clearly violating that oath, of course. [All the personnel] under him who understand what is going on — and there are myriad — are violating their oaths. And that’s the standard that I think we should be asking of people.

On the Democratic side, on the political side, I think we should be demanding of our Democratic leaders in the House and Senate—and frankly of the Republicans —that it is not their highest single absolute priority to be reelected or to maintain a Democratic majority so that Pelosi can still be speaker of the House and Reid can be in the Senate, or to increase that majority.
I’m not going to say that for politicians they should ignore that, or that they should do something else entirely, or that they should not worry about that. Of course that will be and should be a major concern of theirs, but they’re acting like it’s their sole concern. Which is business as usual. “We have a majority, let’s not lose it, let’s keep it. Let’s keep those chairmanships.”

Exactly what have those chairmanships done for us to save the Constitution in the last couple of years?

I am shocked by the Republicans today that I read [about] in The Washington Post who threatened a filibuster if we … get back habeas corpus. The ruling out of habeas corpus with the help of the Democrats did not get us back to George the First it got us back to before King John 700 years ago in terms of counter-revolution.

I think we’ve got to somehow get home to them [in Congress] that this is the time for them to uphold the oath, to preserve the Constitution, which is worth struggling for in part because it’s only with the power that the Constitution gives Congress responding to the public, only with that can we protect the world from madmen in power in the White House who intend an attack on Iran.

And the current generation of American generals and others who realize that this will be a catastrophe have not shown themselves —they might be people who in their past lives risked their bodies and their lives in Vietnam or elsewhere, like [Colin] Powell, and would not risk their career or their relations with the president to the slightest degree.

That has to change. And it’s the example of people like those up here who somehow brought home to our representatives that they as humans and as citizens have the power to do likewise and find in themselves the courage to protect this country and protect the world. Thank you.”

A Presidential Coup

2007-11-05T10:10:00.000-05:00

Some interesting reading. Remember, even paranoids are right sometimes.

Increasingly, reputable figures are starting to talk about `a coup.’ Jim Hightower notes in an important essay, “Is a Presidential Coup Under Way?,” that a coup is defined in the dictionary as a sudden forced change in the form of government. (He also spells out the basis for a rigorously modeled impeachment and criminal prosecution.) Daniel Ellsberg’s much-emailed speech on recent events notes that, in his view, a `coup’ has already taken place. Ron Rosenbaum speculates in an essay on Slate about the reasons the Bush administration is withholding even from members of Congress its plans for Continuity of Government in an emergency — noting that those worrying about a coup are no longer so marginal. Frank Rich notes the parallels between ourselves and the Good Germans. And Congress belatedly realizes as if waking from a drugged sleep that it might not be okay for the Attorney General to say the President need not obey the law. Congress may realize why Mukasey CAN’T say that `waterboarding is torture’ — the minute he does so he has laid the grounds for Bush, Cheney and any number of CIA and Blackwater interrogators to be tried and convicted for war crimes. They are so keenly aware that what they have been doing is criminal that laws such as the Military Commissions Act of 2006 have been drafted specifically to protect them and the torturers and murderers they have directed from criminal prosecution. That is why insisting that Mukasey say that waterboarding is torture is, in spite of the alarming apparent defection of Feinstein and Schumer, an important tactic and even the perfect opening for the impeachment bid that Kucinich is bringing on November 6th to be followed by Congressional investigations into possible criminality.

[article]

Pakistan Goes Nuts...

2007-11-05T08:35:00.000-05:00

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking at a news conference in the West Bank Monday, said Musharraf, who imposed emrgency rule Saturday, should stick to his word and "take off his uniform," The Associated Press reported.

[more]

"When the news breaks, we're there to fix it."

Writer's Strike

2007-11-05T08:26:00.000-05:00

Hollywood writers go on strike after talks fail. No one notices.

(just kidding about that last part).

Spooky Election Fraud

2007-10-25T10:11:00.001-04:00

http://www.sprword.com/videos/curtis.html

Just Sayin', is All...

2007-10-15T12:43:00.000-04:00

Bush and Blackwater

2007-10-09T07:44:00.000-04:00

On the one hand, it's something he damn well better know, on the other, no one else seems to know either...

It Is Later Than You Think

2007-10-05T14:41:00.000-04:00

Why speak up about things that don't seem to affect you? Perhaps Pastor Martin Neimoller's view in one version of his quote will answer that question. He supported the Nazis until he realized, too late, what they were really about and was sent to Dachau concentration camp. He was one of the fortunate to be freed and live until 1984.

First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Social Democrats, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Social Democrat.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,and I didn't speak up,because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.

Rise of Amerika: The Police State

2007-09-26T16:30:00.000-04:00

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps
From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all

Tuesday April 24, 2007The Guardian

And here is where the circle closes: most Americans do not realise that since September of last year - when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - the president has the power to call any US citizen an "enemy combatant". He has the power to define what "enemy combatant" means. The president can also delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to define "enemy combatant" any way he or she wants and then seize Americans accordingly.

Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.

They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.

As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.
Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens' ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don't learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of "homeland" security - remember who else was keen on the word "homeland" - didn't raise the alarm bells it might have.

It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise.

Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
After we were hit on September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. We were told we were now on a "war footing"; we were in a "global war" against a "global caliphate" intending to "wipe out civilisation". There have been other times of crisis in which the US accepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincoln declared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands of Japanese-American citizens were interned. But this situation, as Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda notes, is unprecedented: all our other wars had an endpoint, so the pendulum was able to swing back toward freedom; this war is defined as open-ended in time and without national boundaries in space - the globe itself is the battlefield. "This time," Fein says, "there will be no defined end."

Creating a terrifying threat - hydra-like, secretive, evil - is an old trick. It can, like Hitler's invocation of a communist threat to the nation's security, be based on actual events (one Wisconsin academic has faced calls for his dismissal because he noted, among other things, that the alleged communist arson, the Reichstag fire of February 1933, was swiftly followed in Nazi Germany by passage of the Enabling Act, which replaced constitutional law with an open-ended state of emergency). Or the terrifying threat can be based, like the National Socialist evocation of the "global conspiracy of world Jewry", on myth.

It is not that global Islamist terrorism is not a severe danger; of course it is. I am arguing rather that the language used to convey the nature of the threat is different in a country such as Spain - which has also suffered violent terrorist attacks - than it is in America. Spanish citizens know that they face a grave security threat; what we as American citizens believe is that we are potentially threatened with the end of civilisation as we know it. Of course, this makes us more willing to accept restrictions on our freedoms.

2. Create a gulag
Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal "outer space") - where torture takes place.
At first, the people who are sent there are seen by citizens as outsiders: troublemakers, spies, "enemies of the people" or "criminals". Initially, citizens tend to support the secret prison system; it makes them feel safer and they do not identify with the prisoners. But soon enough, civil society leaders - opposition members, labour activists, clergy and journalists - are arrested and sent there as well.

This process took place in fascist shifts or anti-democracy crackdowns ranging from Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to the Latin American coups of the 1970s and beyond. It is standard practice for closing down an open society or crushing a pro-democracy uprising.
With its jails in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Guantánamo in Cuba, where detainees are abused, and kept indefinitely without trial and without access to the due process of the law, America certainly has its gulag now. Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced they would issue no information about the secret CIA "black site" prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people who have been seized off the street.

Gulags in history tend to metastasise, becoming ever larger and more secretive, ever more deadly and formalised. We know from first-hand accounts, photographs, videos and government documents that people, innocent and guilty, have been tortured in the US-run prisons we are aware of and those we can't investigate adequately.

But Americans still assume this system and detainee abuses involve only scary brown people with whom they don't generally identify. It was brave of the conservative pundit William Safire to quote the anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller, who had been seized as a political prisoner: "First they came for the Jews." Most Americans don't understand yet that the destruction of the rule of law at Guantánamo set a dangerous precedent for them, too.

By the way, the establishment of military tribunals that deny prisoners due process tends to come early on in a fascist shift. Mussolini and Stalin set up such tribunals. On April 24 1934, the Nazis, too, set up the People's Court, which also bypassed the judicial system: prisoners were held indefinitely, often in isolation, and tortured, without being charged with offences, and were subjected to show trials. Eventually, the Special Courts became a parallel system that put pressure on the regular courts to abandon the rule of law in favour of Nazi ideology when making decisions.

3. Develop a thug caste
When leaders who seek what I call a "fascist shift" want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorise citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution.
The years following 9/11 have proved a bonanza for America's security contractors, with the Bush administration outsourcing areas of work that traditionally fell to the US military. In the process, contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been issued for security work by mercenaries at home and abroad. In Iraq, some of these contract operatives have been accused of involvement in torturing prisoners, harassing journalists and firing on Iraqi civilians. Under Order 17, issued to regulate contractors in Iraq by the one-time US administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, these contractors are immune from prosecution

Yes, but that is in Iraq, you could argue; however, after Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security hired and deployed hundreds of armed private security guards in New Orleans. The investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill interviewed one unnamed guard who reported having fired on unarmed civilians in the city. It was a natural disaster that underlay that episode - but the administration's endless war on terror means ongoing scope for what are in effect privately contracted armies to take on crisis and emergency management at home in US cities.

Thugs in America? Groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workers counting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you can imagine that there can be a need for "public order" on the next election day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election; history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a polling station "to restore public order".
4. Set up an internal surveillance system

In Mussolini's Italy, in Nazi Germany, in communist East Germany, in communist China - in every closed society - secret police spy on ordinary people and encourage neighbours to spy on neighbours. The Stasi needed to keep only a minority of East Germans under surveillance to convince a majority that they themselves were being watched.
In 2005 and 2006, when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret state programme to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans that they, too, could be under state scrutiny.

In closed societies, this surveillance is cast as being about "national security"; the true function is to keep citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent.

5. Harass citizens' groups
The fifth thing you do is related to step four - you infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. It can be trivial: a church in Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favour of peace, found itself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches that got Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under US tax law, have been left alone.

Other harassment is more serious: the American Civil Liberties Union reports that thousands of ordinary American anti-war, environmental and other groups have been infiltrated by agents: a secret Pentagon database includes more than four dozen peaceful anti-war meetings, rallies or marches by American citizens in its category of 1,500 "suspicious incidents". The equally secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (Cifa) agency of the Department of Defense has been gathering information about domestic organisations engaged in peaceful political activities: Cifa is supposed to track "potential terrorist threats" as it watches ordinary US citizen activists. A little-noticed new law has redefined activism such as animal rights protests as "terrorism". So the definition of "terrorist" slowly expands to include the opposition.

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
This scares people. It is a kind of cat-and-mouse game. Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the investigative reporters who wrote China Wakes: the Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, describe pro-democracy activists in China, such as Wei Jingsheng, being arrested and released many times. In a closing or closed society there is a "list" of dissidents and opposition leaders: you are targeted in this way once you are on the list, and it is hard to get off the list.
In 2004, America's Transportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list of passengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried to fly. People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peace activists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member of Venezuela's government - after Venezuela's president had criticised Bush; and thousands of ordinary US citizens.

Professor Walter F Murphy is emeritus of Princeton University; he is one of the foremost constitutional scholars in the nation and author of the classic Constitutional Democracy. Murphy is also a decorated former marine, and he is not even especially politically liberal. But on March 1 this year, he was denied a boarding pass at Newark, "because I was on the Terrorist Watch list".

"Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that," asked the airline employee.

"I explained," said Murphy, "that I had not so marched but had, in September 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the constitution."

"That'll do it," the man said.

Anti-war marcher? Potential terrorist. Support the constitution? Potential terrorist. History shows that the categories of "enemy of the people" tend to expand ever deeper into civil life.
James Yee, a US citizen, was the Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo who was accused of mishandling classified documents. He was harassed by the US military before the charges against him were dropped. Yee has been detained and released several times. He is still of interest.

Brandon Mayfield, a US citizen and lawyer in Oregon, was mistakenly identified as a possible terrorist. His house was secretly broken into and his computer seized. Though he is innocent of the accusation against him, he is still on the list.

It is a standard practice of fascist societies that once you are on the list, you can't get off.

7. Target key individuals
Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they don't toe the line. Mussolini went after the rectors of state universities who did not conform to the fascist line; so did Joseph Goebbels, who purged academics who were not pro-Nazi; so did Chile's Augusto Pinochet; so does the Chinese communist Politburo in punishing pro-democracy students and professors.
Academe is a tinderbox of activism, so those seeking a fascist shift punish academics and students with professional loss if they do not "coordinate", in Goebbels' term, ideologically. Since civil servants are the sector of society most vulnerable to being fired by a given regime, they are also a group that fascists typically "coordinate" early on: the Reich Law for the Re-establishment of a Professional Civil Service was passed on April 7 1933.

Bush supporters in state legislatures in several states put pressure on regents at state universities to penalise or fire academics who have been critical of the administration. As for civil servants, the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spoke up for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publicly intimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening to call for their major corporate clients to boycott them.

Elsewhere, a CIA contract worker who said in a closed blog that "waterboarding is torture" was stripped of the security clearance she needed in order to do her job.

Most recently, the administration purged eight US attorneys for what looks like insufficient political loyalty. When Goebbels purged the civil service in April 1933, attorneys were "coordinated" too, a step that eased the way of the increasingly brutal laws to follow.

8. Control the press
Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 30s, East Germany in the 50s, Czechoslovakia in the 60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the 70s, China in the 80s and 90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of US journalists are at an all-time high: Josh Wolf (no relation), a blogger in San Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to turn over video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a criminal complaint against reporter Greg Palast, claiming he threatened "critical infrastructure" when he and a TV producer were filming victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written a bestseller critical of the Bush administration.

Other reporters and writers have been punished in other ways. Joseph C Wilson accused Bush, in a New York Times op-ed, of leading the country to war on the basis of a false charge that Saddam Hussein had acquired yellowcake uranium in Niger. His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA spy - a form of retaliation that ended her career.

Prosecution and job loss are nothing, though, compared with how the US is treating journalists seeking to cover the conflict in Iraq in an unbiased way. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented multiple accounts of the US military in Iraq firing upon or threatening to fire upon unembedded (meaning independent) reporters and camera operators from organisations ranging from al-Jazeera to the BBC. While westerners may question the accounts by al-Jazeera, they should pay attention to the accounts of reporters such as the BBC's Kate Adie. In some cases reporters have been wounded or killed, including ITN's Terry Lloyd in 2003. Both CBS and the Associated Press in Iraq had staff members seized by the US military and taken to violent prisons; the news organisations were unable to see the evidence against their staffers.
Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news and false documents. Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified documents to back up his claim that terrorists had been about to attack the nation. The yellowcake charge, too, was based on forged papers.
You won't have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit.

9. Dissent equals treason
Cast dissent as "treason" and criticism as "espionage'. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of "spy" and "traitor". When Bill Keller, the publisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush called the Times' leaking of classified information "disgraceful", while Republicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, and rightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the "treason" drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that one penalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution.

Conason is right to note how serious a threat that attack represented. It is also important to recall that the 1938 Moscow show trial accused the editor of Izvestia, Nikolai Bukharin, of treason; Bukharin was, in fact, executed. And it is important to remind Americans that when the 1917 Espionage Act was last widely invoked, during the infamous 1919 Palmer Raids, leftist activists were arrested without warrants in sweeping roundups, kept in jail for up to five months, and "beaten, starved, suffocated, tortured and threatened with death", according to the historian Myra MacPherson. After that, dissent was muted in America for a decade.
In Stalin's Soviet Union, dissidents were "enemies of the people". National Socialists called those who supported Weimar democracy "November traitors".

And here is where the circle closes: most Americans do not realise that since September of last year - when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - the president has the power to call any US citizen an "enemy combatant". He has the power to define what "enemy combatant" means. The president can also delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to define "enemy combatant" any way he or she wants and then seize Americans accordingly.

Even if you or I are American citizens, even if we turn out to be completely innocent of what he has accused us of doing, he has the power to have us seized as we are changing planes at Newark tomorrow, or have us taken with a knock on the door; ship you or me to a navy brig; and keep you or me in isolation, possibly for months, while awaiting trial. (Prolonged isolation, as psychiatrists know, triggers psychosis in otherwise mentally healthy prisoners. That is why Stalin's gulag had an isolation cell, like Guantánamo's, in every satellite prison. Camp 6, the newest, most brutal facility at Guantánamo, is all isolation cells.)

We US citizens will get a trial eventually - for now. But legal rights activists at the Center for Constitutional Rights say that the Bush administration is trying increasingly aggressively to find ways to get around giving even US citizens fair trials. "Enemy combatant" is a status offence - it is not even something you have to have done. "We have absolutely moved over into a preventive detention model - you look like you could do something bad, you might do something bad, so we're going to hold you," says a spokeswoman of the CCR.

Most Americans surely do not get this yet. No wonder: it is hard to believe, even though it is true. In every closing society, at a certain point there are some high-profile arrests - usually of opposition leaders, clergy and journalists. Then everything goes quiet. After those arrests, there are still newspapers, courts, TV and radio, and the facades of a civil society. There just isn't real dissent. There just isn't freedom. If you look at history, just before those arrests is where we are now.

10. Suspend the rule of law
The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and its citizens.
Even as Americans were focused on Britney Spears's meltdown and the question of who fathered Anna Nicole's baby, the New York Times editorialised about this shift: "A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night ... Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any 'other condition'."

Critics see this as a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act - which was meant to restrain the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement. The Democratic senator Patrick Leahy says the bill encourages a president to declare federal martial law. It also violates the very reason the founders set up our system of government as they did: having seen citizens bullied by a monarch's soldiers, the founders were terrified of exactly this kind of concentration of militias' power over American people in the hands of an oppressive executive or faction.

Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing-down of the system that followed Mussolini's march on Rome or Hitler's roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic habits are too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for any kind of scenario like that.

Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion.

It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere - while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing: "dogs go on with their doggy life ... How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster."

As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are "at war" in a "long war" - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.

That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of all these still- free-looking institutions - and this foundation can give way under certain kinds of pressure. To prevent such an outcome, we have to think about the "what ifs".

What if, in a year and a half, there is another attack - say, God forbid, a dirty bomb? The executive can declare a state of emergency. History shows that any leader, of any party, will be tempted to maintain emergency powers after the crisis has passed. With the gutting of traditional checks and balances, we are no less endangered by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani - because any executive will be tempted to enforce his or her will through edict rather than the arduous, uncertain process of democratic negotiation and compromise.
What if the publisher of a major US newspaper were charged with treason or espionage, as a rightwing effort seemed to threaten Keller with last year? What if he or she got 10 years in jail? What would the newspapers look like the next day? Judging from history, they would not cease publishing; but they would suddenly be very polite.

Right now, only a handful of patriots are trying to hold back the tide of tyranny for the rest of us - staff at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who faced death threats for representing the detainees yet persisted all the way to the Supreme Court; activists at the American Civil Liberties Union; and prominent conservatives trying to roll back the corrosive new laws, under the banner of a new group called the American Freedom Agenda. This small, disparate collection of people needs everybody's help, including that of Europeans and others internationally who are willing to put pressure on the administration because they can see what a US unrestrained by real democracy at home can mean for the rest of the world.

We need to look at history and face the "what ifs". For if we keep going down this road, the "end of America" could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might have a different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: that is how it was before - and this is the way it is now.

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... is the definition of tyranny," wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry.

· Naomi Wolf's The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot will be published by Chelsea Green in September.

Global Warming: A Circular Consensus

2007-09-26T13:19:00.000-04:00

Bacon's Rebellion: Kaine Administration De-funds Global Warming Heretic Patrick Michaels

Dying Professor Delivers Last Lecture

2007-09-24T07:09:00.000-04:00

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid452319854/bctid1199157902

BOW 2007

2007-09-17T12:21:00.000-04:00

Secretary of Technology Announces National Web Awards
~ Virginia receives more honors than any other state ~

RICHMOND - Secretary of Technology Aneesh P. Chopra today announced that Virginia’s Web site and three state agencies have received prestigious Digital Government Achievement Awards from the Center for Digital Government.

The Center recognized the state’s official Web site, http://www.virginia.gov/, managed by the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, as a top Best of the Web winner.

Other state honorees include the Council on Virginia’s Future, the Virginia Department of Transportation and the Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy.

Additionally, Fairfax County ranked first in the nation in the county category and Virginia Beach received an honorable mention in the city category of Best of The Web.The Digital Government Achievement Award (DGAA) is a national program that recognizes outstanding agency and department Web sites and applications that enhance information interactions, transactions and/or services. The Best of Web awards program recognizes the most innovative, user-friendly state and local government portals based on their innovation, Web-delivery of public services, efficiency, economy, and functionality for improved citizen access.

“Across Virginia, we are using information technology to develop innovative and cost effective tools to improve customer service, management and business processes,” said Secretary Chopra. “These prestigious national awards for our state Web site, our agencies and our localities demonstrate our commitment to improve citizen service and the way we manage government by working smarter, not by spending more.”

Virginia.gov, the state’s official Web site, moved up in the Best of the Web rankings from fourth to third place among the 50 states. This year, all Virginia agencies worked closely with Virginia.gov in a pioneering partnership with Google to simplify and improve citizen access to government information via the Web, and this honor clearly reflects their work. (Read the Governor’s press release about the Google partnership.) Other changes to the state Web site enhanced the user experience through the most current advancements in technology, best practices and design. Virginia.gov is the only portal in the nation to have ranked in the Best of the Web top five every year it has been eligible to compete since 2001; it is managed by the Virginia Information Technologies Agency through a public-private partnership with Virginia Interactive.

"2007 was an amazing year for our Best of Web and Digital Government Achievement Awards,” said Cathilea Robinett, Executive Director of the Center for Digital Government. The competition was fierce and there were many applications and portals that were top notch. It’s clear that America’s state and local governments are unrelenting in their pursuit of excellence for the citizens they serve.”

Thanks to its three outstanding agency project wins, Virginia received more honors than any other state in the 2007 recognition program.

The Council on Virginia’s Future was honored with the Digital Government Achievement Award in the Government to Citizen category for its Web site, “Virginia Performs,” http://www.vaperforms.virginia.gov/. Virginia Performs is a performance accountability system which ties rich data from many sources directly to the business of state government, greatly improving the way Virginia measures progress and reports results. It provides seamless transparency, supports broad policy decisions in pursuit of long-term objectives and engages citizens in informed dialogue about Virginia's future.

The Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy was honored with the Digital Government Achievement Award in the Government to Business category for its WaterTrans application for the Division of Mined Land Reclamation (DMLR). It provides the division and its customers with information critical to the development, permitting, regulation and operation of surface mining operations in Virginia. This application provides DMLR staff and customers, with the most up to date information in an easy-to-use and integrated fashion and is part of DMME's long-term commitment to provide cost effective information management tools that bring value to the agency and its customers.

The Department of Transportation’s Integrated Project Management system (iPM) was honored with the Digital Government Achievement Award in the Government Internal category. It is a joint technology and business effort that provides a state of the art integrated platform to manage transportation projects. iPM collects data from multiple applications and presents it as meaningful information via Web pages. iPM has improved access to project information, simplified existing work processes, improved data quality and accuracy, enabled changes in business processes, and ensured simplistic system maintenance and usability.Winners will be acknowledged at the 11th Anniversary Awards Gala in Las Vegas, Nevada on September 21, 2007. More information is available online at the Center for Digital Government’s Web site, http://www.centerdigitalgov.com/surveys.php?survey=cdg_bow.

Provocateurs

2007-09-12T15:15:00.000-04:00

Is it a protest turned violent, or a setup?

Remembering 9/11

2007-09-11T09:07:00.000-04:00

Remembering...

10 Reasons Why Gay Marriage is UnAmerican

2007-09-10T09:47:00.000-04:00

Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.
Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.
Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.
Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britany Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.
Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.
Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.
Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.
Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

Brown University Report

2007-09-04T09:43:00.000-04:00

Delaware and Michigan Are Best States for American e-Government. Virginia.gov moves up from 35th to 29th (whee. We suck).

Web sites are evaluated for the presence of various electronic features, such as online publications, databases, audio clips, video clips, foreign language content, translation services, advertisements, premium fees, user payments or fees, disability access, privacy policy, security policy, online services, digital signatures, credit card payments, e-mail addresses, comment forms, automatic e-mail updates, Web site personalization, PDA accessibility, and readability level.

Citizens are being asked to shoulder more of the cost of providing online services, the survey found. Seventeen percent of sites charge visitors a fee to use online services, up from 12 percent last year. In terms of online services, 86 percent of state and federal sites have services that are fully executable online, up from 77 percent last year. In addition, a growing number of sites offer privacy and security policy statements. This year, 73 percent have some form of privacy policy on their site, up from 71 percent in 2006. Fifty-two percent now have a visible security policy, down from 63 percent last year. Twenty-two percent of sites offer some type of foreign language translation.

In terms of disability access for the visually impaired, automated Bobby software, available from Watchfire, Inc., found that 54 percent of federal sites and 46 percent of state sites meet the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) disability guidelines. The federal numbers are the same as last year, while the state numbers are up from 43 percent.

The study also ranks the 50 states and various federal agencies on overall e-government performance. Using measures such as online services, attention to privacy and security, disability access, and foreign language translation, researchers rated the various state sites and compared their performance to last year.
The top ranking states include Delaware, Michigan, Maine, Kentucky, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Maryland, Texas, New Jersey, and Utah. The following table shows where each state ranked in 2006, with the previous year’s ranking and score in parentheses.
[read the article]

“They wanted them poor niggers out of there.”

2007-09-03T12:42:00.000-04:00

Among the miles and miles of devastated houses, rubble still there today in New Orleans, we found dry, beautiful homes. But their residents were told by guys dressed like Ninjas wearing “Blackwater” badges: “Try to go into your home and we’ll arrest you.”

These aren’t just any homes. They are the public housing projects of the city; the Lafitte Houses and others. But unlike the cinder block monsters in the Bronx, these public units are beautiful townhouses, with wrought-iron porches and gardens right next to the tony French Quarter.

Raised up on high ground, with floors and walls of concrete, they were some of the only houses left salvageable after the Katrina flood.

Yet, two years later, there’s still bars on the windows, the doors are welded shut and the residents banned from returning. On the first anniversary of the flood, we were filming this odd scene when I saw a woman on the sidewalk, sobbing. Night was falling. What was wrong?

[read entire article]

Black Sites

2007-08-10T01:29:00.000-04:00

An inside look at the CIA's methods of torture. A sad day indeed for America. Remember the saying (badly paraphrashed), "When you fight monsters, be careful that you do not become a monster...for when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you."

The C.I.A.’s interrogation program is remarkable for its mechanistic aura.
“It’s one of the most sophisticated, refined programs of torture ever,” an outside expert familiar with the protocol said. “At every stage, there was a rigid attention to detail. Procedure was adhered to almost to the letter. There was top-down quality control, and such a set routine that you get to the point where you know what each detainee is going to say, because you’ve heard it before. It was almost automated. People were utterly dehumanized. People fell apart. It was the intentional and systematic infliction of great suffering masquerading as a legal process. It is just chilling.”

Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media

2007-08-06T07:58:00.000-04:00

Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media

Sources:
Buzzflash.com, July 18, 2005
Title: “Web of Deceit: How Internet Freedom Got the Federal Ax, and Why Corporate News Censored the Story”
Author: Elliot D. Cohen, Ph.D.
Student Researchers: Lauren Powell, Brett Forest, and Zoe HuffmanFaculty Evaluator: Andrew Roth, Ph.D.

Throughout 2005 and 2006, a large underground debate raged regarding the future of the Internet. More recently referred to as “network neutrality,” the issue has become a tug of war with cable companies on the one hand and consumers and Internet service providers on the other. Yet despite important legislative proposals and Supreme Court decisions throughout 2005, the issue was almost completely ignored in the headlines until 2006.1 And, except for occasional coverage on CNBC’s Kudlow & Kramer, mainstream television remains hands-off to this day (June 2006).2Most coverage of the issue framed it as an argument over regulation—but the term “regulation” in this case is somewhat misleading. Groups advocating for “net neutrality” are not promoting regulation of internet content. What they want is a legal mandate forcing cable companies to allow internet service providers (ISPs) free access to their cable lines (called a “common carriage” agreement). This was the model used for dial-up internet, and it is the way content providers want to keep it. They also want to make sure that cable companies cannot screen or interrupt internet content without a court order.

Those in favor of net neutrality say that lack of government regulation simply means that cable lines will be regulated by the cable companies themselves. ISPs will have to pay a hefty service fee for the right to use cable lines (making internet services more expensive). Those who could pay more would get better access; those who could not pay would be left behind. Cable companies could also decide to filter Internet content at will.

On the other side, cable company supporters say that a great deal of time and money was spent laying cable lines and expanding their speed and quality.3 They claim that allowing ISPs free access would deny cable companies the ability to recoup their investments, and maintain that cable providers should be allowed to charge. Not doing so, they predict, would discourage competition and innovation within the cable industry.

Cable supporters like the AT&T-sponsored Hands Off the Internet website assert that common carriage legislation would lead to higher prices and months of legal wrangling. They maintain that such legislation fixes a problem that doesn’t exist and scoff at concerns that phone and cable companies will use their position to limit access based on fees as groundless. Though cable companies deny plans to block content providers without cause, there are a number of examples of cable-initiated discrimination.

In March 2005, the FCC settled a case against a North Carolina-based telephone company that was blocking the ability of its customers to use voice-over-Internet calling services instead of (the more expensive) phone lines.4 In August 2005, a Canadian cable company blocked access to a site that supported the cable union in a labor dispute.5 In February 2006, Cox Communications denied customers access to the Craig’s List website. Though Cox claims that it was simply a security error, it was discovered that Cox ran a classified service that competes with Craig’s List.

In June of 1999, the Ninth District Court ruled that AT&T would have to open its cable network to ISPs (AT&T v. City of Portland). The court said that Internet transmissions, interactive, two-way exchanges, were telecommunication offerings, not a cable information service (like CNN) that sends data one way. This decision was overturned on appeal a year later.

Recent court decisions have extended the cable company agenda further. On June 27, 2005, The United States Supreme Court ruled that cable corporations like Comcast and Verizon were not required to share their lines with rival ISPs (National Cable & Telecommunications Association vs. Brand X Internet Services).7 Cable companies would not have to offer common carriage agreements for cable lines the way that telephone companies have for phone lines.According to Dr. Elliot Cohen, the decision accepted the FCC assertion that cable modem service is not a two-way telecommunications offering, but a one-way information service, completely overturning the 1999 ruling. Meanwhile, telephone companies charge that such a decision gives an unfair advantage to cable companies and are requesting that they be released from their common carriage requirement as well.

LegislationOn June 8, the House rejected legislation (HR 5273) that would have prevented phone and cable companies from selling preferential treatment on their networks for delivery of video and other data-heavy applications. It also passed the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement (COPE) Act (HR 5252), which supporters said would encourage innovation and the construction of more high-speed Internet lines. Internet neutrality advocates say it will allow phone and cable companies to cherry-pick customers in wealthy neighborhoods while eliminating the current requirement demanded by most local governments that cable TV companies serve low-income and minority areas as well.

Comment: As of June 2006, the COPE Act is in the Senate. Supporters say the bill supports innovation and freedom of choice. Interet neutrality advocates say that its passage would forever compromise the Internet. Giant cable companies would attain a monopoly on high-speed, cable Internet. They would prevent poorer citizens from broadband access, while monitoring and controlling the content of information that can be accessed.

Notes1. “Keeping a Democratic Web,” The New York Times, May 2, 2006. 2. Jim Goldman, Larry Kudlow, and Phil Lebeau, “Panelists Michael Powell, Mike Holland, Neil Weinberg, John Augustine and Pablo Perez-Fernandez discuss markets,” Kudlow & Company CNBC, March 6, 2006. 3. http://www.handsofftheinternet.com/.4. Michael Geist, “Telus breaks Net Providers’ cardinal rule: Telecom company blocks access to site supporting union in labour dispute,” Ottawa Citizen, August 4, 2005.5. Jonathan Krim, “Renewed Warning of Bandwidth Hoarding,” The Washington Post, November 24, 2005.6. David A. Utter, “Craigslist Blocked By Cox Interactive,” http://www.webpronews.com/, June 7, 2006.7. Yuki Noguchi, “Cable Firms Don’t Have to Share Networks, Court Rules,” Washington Post, June 28, 2005.8. “Last week in Congress / How our representatives voted,” Buffalo News (New York), June 11, 2006.

UPDATE BY ELLIOT D. COHEN, PH.D.Despite the fact that the Court’s decision in Brand X marks the beginning of the end for a robust, democratic Internet, there has been a virtual MSM blackout in covering it. As a result of this decision, the legal stage has been set for further corporate control. Currently pending in Congress is the “Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006”(HR 5252), fueled by strong telecom corporative lobbies and introduced by Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX). This Act, which fails to adequately protect an open and neutral Internet, includes a “Title II—Enforcement of Broadband Policy Statement” that gives the FCC “exclusive authority to adjudicate any complaint alleging a violation of the broadband policy statement or the principles incorporated therein.” With the passage of this provision, courts will have scant authority to challenge and overturn FCC decisions regarding broadband. Since under current FCC Chair Kevin Martin, the FCC is moving toward still further deregulation of telecom and media companies, the likely consequence is the thickening of the plot to increase corporate control of the Internet. In particular, behemoth telecom corporations like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T want to set up toll booths on the Internet. If these companies get their way, content providers with deep pockets will be afforded optimum bandwidth while the rest of us will be left spinning in cyberspace. No longer will everyone enjoy an equal voice in the freest and most comprehensive democratic forum ever devised by humankind.

As might be expected, none of these new developments are being addressed by the MSM. Among media activist organizations attempting to stop the gutting of the free Internet is The Free Press (http://www.freepress.net/), which now has an aggressive “Save the Internet” campaign.

Virginia’s “abusive drivers” fees found unconstitutional

2007-08-02T12:05:00.000-04:00

A Henrico County General District Judge has found Virginia’s new and controversial abusive driver fees unconstitutional. Judge Archer Yeatts’ decision will be appealed.

Some truth escapes

2007-07-31T13:32:00.001-04:00

Bush's Blog

Pimping Myself Again

2007-07-30T02:23:00.000-04:00

Like it's a bad thing...

Take a look at my books and maybe buy one or two. If you buy the hardback, I'll even sign it for you.

Virginia town may ignore abuser fees

2007-07-23T09:04:00.000-04:00

FRONT ROYAL -- The town of Front Royal may ignore Virginia's new controversial abusive driver fees.Town council is scheduled to vote today on a resolution that would prevent Front Royal, which is North of Harrisonburg, from enforcing the fees -- except for drunken driving.

The fees went into effect July first. They are added to court costs and range from 900 dollars to three-thousand dollars.The fees apply to charges such as reckless driving, drunken driving and felonious acts that involve driving such as hit-and-run or vehicular manslaughter. But they're so unpopular that some Front Royal council members don't want their police force to be associated with them.

The sponsor of the measure, Councilman Thomas Sayre, says the fees are unfair to the town's 14-thousand residents and drivers who pass through Front Royal's two-lane highways.Under the Front Royal proposal, people cited for driving under the influence would still be subject to the state fees. The resolution would apply only to tickets written by the Front Royal police.

WTF Are We Doing There?

2007-07-20T12:28:00.000-04:00

Is this the progress? Is this winning against the terrorists? Do we have them on the run?

[watch video]

Loudoun County Hyperlocal

2007-07-16T10:12:00.000-04:00

The Washington Post, well known for its detailed coverage of the White House and global affairs, will introduce a Web site today with news and other information for a rarefied group: people who live in Loudoun County, Va., population 272,000.

The site, LoudounExtra.com, is an experiment in hyperlocal news; it will have church schedules, restaurant menus and real-time high school football scores. The county, in northern Virginia, includes Dulles International Airport and the town of Leesburg.

“There will be stories about things that normally would not make it into the pages of The Washington Post, like mailboxes being knocked down,” said Rob Curley, vice president of product development for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive. “It has every Rotary meeting, every Bible study group. It is very local.”

Readers will be able to download restaurant guides and other content from the site onto their iPods, phones and even video-game consoles. In late August, a new feature will let readers click on a street address and see all the closest events and news nearby.

If LoudounExtra catches on, The Post may add sites for other counties or towns in the Washington area as it tries to increase online advertising revenue.

“Local retail advertising has not been as successful on the Web as it has been in print,” said Caroline H. Little, chief executive and publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive. “I think we’ll have a much greater opportunity to reach out to smaller advertisers who are not going on Washingtonpost.com.”

The Post will be treading where others have failed. Recently, Backfence.com, a group of sites focused on communities around Washington, announced that it will be closing in a few days.
Ms. Little said that The Post’s new site should fare better because of its deep newsroom resources and built-in audience in Loudoun County. The paper publishes a section about the county twice a week.

“Most hyperlocal sites are 100 percent community publishing sites,” Mr. Curley said. “This is 1 percent community publishing.”

[read the original article]

Gotta Love the Japanese

2007-07-12T16:25:00.000-04:00

How About Dangerous Owners?

2007-07-08T08:01:00.000-04:00

The Dangerous Dog Registry provides a mechanism for consumers to determine if dangerous dogs reside in their neighborhoods and for local animal control officials to post information about dogs that have been declared dangerous by the local court. Consumer may click here for a registry of dangerous dogs. Jurisdictions should click here to enter information about dangerous dogs; this page requires a password to enter.

Something about this feels wrong, but I'm not sure what.

Updated: Here's an example of one of the "Dangerous Dogs." The infamous "Golden Retriever of Death." The first picture is clearly a PR photo, but the second is a true representation of the diabolical nature of these creatures called, "Man's Best Friend."

Olbermann Calls for Bush to Resign

2007-07-05T16:03:00.000-04:00

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on what is, in everything but name, George Bush’s pardon of Scooter Libby.

“I didn’t vote for him,” an American once said, “But he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”

That — on this eve of the 4th of July — is the essence of this democracy, in seventeen words.
And that is what President Bush threw away yesterday in commuting the sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

The man who said those seventeen words — improbably enough — was the actor John Wayne.

And Wayne, an ultra-conservative, said them, when he learned of the hair’s-breadth election of John F. Kennedy instead of his personal favorite, Richard Nixon in 1960.

“I didn’t vote for him but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”

The sentiment was doubtlessly expressed earlier. But there is something especially appropriate about hearing it, now, in Wayne’s voice.

The crisp matter-of-fact acknowledgement that we have survived, even though for nearly two centuries now, our Commander-in-Chief has also served, simultaneously, as the head of one political party and often the scourge of all others.

We as citizens must, at some point, ignore a president’s partisanship. Not that we may “prosper” as a nation, not that we may “achieve”, not that we may “lead the world” — but merely that we may “function.”

But just as essential to the seventeen words of John Wayne is an implicit trust — a sacred trust:That the president for whom so many did not vote, can in turn suspend his political self long enough, and for matters imperative enough, to conduct himself solely for the benefit of the entire Republic.

Our generation’s willingness to state “we didn’t vote for him, but he’s our president, and we hope he does a good job,” was tested in the crucible of history, and far earlier than most. And in circumstances more tragic and threatening.

And we did that with which history tasked us.

We enveloped “our” President in 2001.

And those who did not believe he should have been elected — indeed, those who did not believe he had been elected — willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath of non-partisanship.

And George W. Bush took our assent, and re-configured it, and honed it, and sharpened it to a razor-sharp point, and stabbed this nation in the back with it.

Were there any remaining lingering doubt otherwise, or any remaining lingering hope, it ended yesterday when Mr. Bush commuted the prison sentence of one of his own staffers.

Did so even before the appeals process was complete…

Did so without as much as a courtesy consultation with the Department of Justice…

Did so despite what James Madison –at the Constitutional Convention — said about impeaching any president who pardoned or sheltered those who had committed crimes “advised by” that president…

Did so without the slightest concern that even the most detached of citizens must look at the chain of events and wonder:

To what degree was Mr. Libby told: break the law however you wish — the President will keep you out of prison?

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you broke that fundamental compact between yourself and the majority of this nation’s citizens — the ones who did not cast votes for you.

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you ceased to be the President of the United States.

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you became merely the President… of a rabid and irresponsible corner of the Republican Party.

And this is too important a time, sir, to have a Commander-in-Chief who puts party over nation.
This has been, of course, the gathering legacy of this Administration. Few of its decisions have escaped the stain of politics.

The extraordinary Karl Rove has spoken of “a permanent Republican majority,” as if such a thing — or a permanent Democratic majority — is not antithetical to that upon which rests: our country, our history, our revolution, our freedoms.

Yet our democracy has survived shrewder men than Karl Rove.

And it has survived the frequent stain of politics upon the fabric of government.

But this administration, with ever-increasing insistence and almost theocratic zealotry, has turned that stain… into a massive oil spill.

The protection of the environment is turned over to those of one political party, who will financially benefit from the rape of the environment.

The protections of the Constitution are turned over to those of one political party, who believe those protections unnecessary and extravagant and “quaint.”

The enforcement of the laws is turned over to those of one political party, who will swear beforehand that they will not enforce those laws.

The choice between war and peace is turned over to those of one political party, who stand to gain vast wealth by ensuring that there is never peace, but only war.

And now, when just one cooked book gets corrected by an honest auditor…

When just one trampling of the inherent and inviolable “fairness” of government is rejected by an impartial judge…

When just one wild-eyed partisan is stopped by the figure of blind justice…

This President decides that he, and not the law, must prevail.

I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.

I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.

I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.

I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but instead to stifle dissent.

I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought.

I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents.

I accuse you of handing part of this republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.

And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of you becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.

When President Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre” on October 20th, 1973, Mr. Cox initially responded tersely, and ominously:

“Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men, is now for Congress, and ultimately, the American people.”

President Nixon did not understand how he had crystallized the issue of Watergate for the American people.

It had been about the obscure meaning behind an attempt to break in to a rival party’s headquarters; and the labyrinthine effort to cover-up that break-in and the related crimes.
But in one night, Nixon transformed it.

Watergate — instantaneously — became a simpler issue: a President overruling the inexorable march of the law. Of insisting — in a way that resonated viscerally with millions who had not previously understood — that he was the law.

Not the Constitution.

Not the Congress.

Not the Courts.

Just him.

Just - Mr. Bush - as you did, yesterday.

The twists and turns of Plame-Gate, your precise and intricate lies that sent us into this bottomless pit of Iraq; your lies upon the lies to discredit Joe Wilson; your lies upon the lies upon the lies to throw the sand at the “referee” of Prosecutor Fitzgerald’s analogy… these are complex and often painful to follow, and too much, perhaps, for the average citizen.

But when other citizens render a verdict against your man, Mr. Bush — and then you spit in the faces of those jurors and that judge and the judges who were yet to hear the appeal — the average citizen understands that, sir.

It’s the fixed ballgame and the rigged casino and the pre-arranged lottery all rolled into one — and it stinks. And they know it.

Nixon’s mistake, the last and most fatal of them, the firing of Archibald Cox, was enough to cost him the presidency.

And in the end, even Richard Nixon could say he could not put this nation through an impeachment.

It was far too late for it to matter then, but as the decades unfold, that single final gesture of non-partisanship, of acknowledged responsibility not to self, not to party, not to “base,” but to country, echoes loudly into history.

Even Richard Nixon knew it was time to resign

Would that you could say that, Mr. Bush.

And that you could say it for Mr. Cheney.

You both crossed the Rubicon yesterday.

Which one of you chose the route, no longer matters.

Which is the ventriloquist, and which the dummy, is irrelevant.

But that you have twisted the machinery of government into nothing more than a tawdry machine of politics, is the only fact that remains relevant.

It is nearly July 4th, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a King who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them — or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them — we would force our independence, and regain our sacred freedoms.

We of this time — and our leaders in Congress, of both parties — must now live up to those standards which echo through our history:

Pressure, negotiate, impeach — get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our Democracy, away from its helm.

And for you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task.

You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed.

Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on August 9th, 1974.

Resign.

And give us someone — anyone – about whom all of us might yet be able to quote John Wayne, and say, “I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”

Good night, and good luck.

There Goes The Neighborhood

2007-07-05T13:48:00.000-04:00

I know I'm cross-posting, but DUDE!

Expected yet dissappointing

2007-07-03T08:05:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, July 2 — President Bush spared I. Lewis Libby Jr. from prison Monday, commuting his two-and-a-half-year sentence while leaving intact his conviction for perjury and obstruction of justice in the C.I.A. leak case.

[read the article]

Pissing off Musims

2007-06-25T14:03:00.000-04:00

My oh my.

Ministry of Information

2007-06-22T08:59:00.000-04:00

Cheney forms his own shadow government. Sort of.

[read the article]

Update: More on Cheney and how he seems to be bent on world domination.

Webmasters Meet

2007-06-18T09:36:00.000-04:00

It looks like at long last someone is hosting the Webmasters meetings again. Three cheers! It's been years since we last had a meeting of the minds under that venue. This may be the first positive thing I've ever said about VITA (feel free to correct me on that point).

Hopefully this is the beginning of a real dialogue between those that call the shots and those that fire the actual bullets. Come prepared to ask questions, those of you invited. Things I've seen and heard lately that should be brought up are:

The service distributor vs the service receiver view of the new banner
The inconsistant implementation of the standards. Look at the following sites (not picking on anyone, just grabbing some with different looks) and compare their implementation of the standards: http://www.voc.state.va.us/index.html , http://www.boa.virginia.gov/ , http://www.governor.virginia.gov/ , http://www.virginia.gov/cmsportal2/ , http://www.sbe.virginia.gov/cms/ , http://www.ehealth.vi.virginia.gov/
How often will the banner and related standards change? And how much notice will Webmasters get?
What *really* happens if someone refuses to use the standards?
Whatever happened to the statewide content management system plans from way back?
Who ate all the apple danishes?

Ok, this is kinda cool

2007-06-12T12:34:00.000-04:00

Plastic skin that heals itself.

Virginia.gov again

2007-06-01T18:30:00.000-04:00

Well, it's that time of year again it seems. The new state banner designed by Virginia.gov - which almost everyone hates other than Virginia.gov and the SOTECH - is to have been live by today, June 1. You'd think Virginia.gov would have been one of the early adopters, but they are just now rolling out their new site. Which looks pretty much like their old site, but broken.

This raises some questions, common ones it seems.

Why does Virginia.gov have so much trouble getting their site live? It's not that big a site, and they're the Web experts. We know they're the experts because they keep telling us. Yet time and time again they can't get their act together.

Why do they get to be different? Everyone else has to follow the Standard and put out the same banner. But Virginia.gov, who came up with the thing, gets to go off in a different direction. Take a look: no goofy duplicated searches, and they use whatever colors they want when we have to use black.

Is "burnt urine" such a wonderful color that they can't seem to break away from it?

This time I'm even going to suggest a solution. It's one that has worked very well for us in the past. It's called "training."

Virginia Joins the Climate Registry

2007-05-24T15:12:00.001-04:00

Joining 33 other states in a national effort to track greenhouse gas emissions by large industries, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has signed onto The Climate Registry. The goal is to replace the patchwork reporting system with standardized and verified measurements of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide that can inform the debate over global climate change.

Expect the Best = Expect Delays

2007-04-30T10:04:00.000-04:00

Virginia's government will no longer be told to expect the best from the state's IT agency.
The Virginia Information Technologies Agency has quietly dropped "Expect the best" as its signature slogan.
While saying the internal criticism from customer agencies did not prompt the change, the state's IT organization admits its consolidation and outsourcing has been a rough road.
"It will get tougher before it gets easier," said Lemuel C. Stewart Jr., the state's chief information officer, in VITA's customer newsletter this month. "Expect delays."

[entire article]

Mourning

2007-04-21T12:59:00.000-04:00

WTF

2007-04-11T10:29:00.000-04:00

While there were two Easter Bunnies walking around the White House Easter Egg Roll, only one was the Easter Bunny. The other was the Vice Easter Bunny, who was really running the Egg Roll.
The “puppet president” Easter Bunny was played by 30-year-old Eugene J. Huang of Beverly Hills, pictured above. He’s a White House fellow focusing on “macroeconomic policy and technology, competitiveness and innovation.”
According to our Wonkette Operative, Huang “has no sense of humor” and was given the humiliating duty as a punishment.
More hilarious furry pictures, after the hop hop hop (jump).

The comments section is even more harsh on our former SOTECH. Nothing like going back to school to ruin one's opinion of themselves...

Ain't I a Hoot?

2007-04-10T09:40:00.000-04:00

I have this image in my mind, drawn from years of listening to my father’s old radio shows and watching tapes of early live television programs. My son is sitting in his kindergarten class getting ready to learn about how Hannibal marched across Richmond on a band of war elephants to invade Scotland when the teacher closes the book and says, “More of our lesson after this word from our sponsor, Lucky Strike, makers of the cool and invigorating Black Lung Cigarette.”
[entire article]

I'm Sold

2007-04-04T10:02:00.000-04:00

Unless, of course, you consider salmonella life..?

From the Governor’s Leadership Communique on March 12

2007-03-19T15:05:00.000-04:00

From the Governor’s Leadership Communique on March 12: Connecting Citizen Services And State Web Presence

The National Association of State CIO’s (NASCIO) has just released Harmony Helps: A Progress Report on State Government Internet Presence. The findings in the NASCIO brief strongly reinforce Secretary Chopra’s two current Web initiatives – statewide Google search functionality and an expanded common banner with enterprise functionality for state agency Web sites. These citizen-focused initiatives support simplification of government and greater access to services, as described in the NASCIO brief:“Most marketplace websites focus on organizing their product and service offerings according to arrangements that are intuitive to the typical customer. For example, retail websites are not organized according to the governance structure of the business itself...In contrast, public sector websites…presented citizens with an organization around the way government is structured—by branch, agency, department and commission."Since the way that government is organized varies markedly across and within levels of government, a citizen may know what he or she wants to do — obtain a copy of his or her birth certificate, for example — but may not know which state agency performs that function. If the citizen goes to the state’s website, unless that service is listed separately from the agency that performs that function, the citizen may have to do what, in some cases, may be extensive searching of the state’s website in order to find out how to obtain a birth certificate.” The complete NASCIO brief is available online. Please share with your communication, Web and IT staff as a resource for understanding the continuing changes in service and information delivery via Virginia’s state Web sites. Many thanks to the agencies and their Web staffs who have already made significant contributions to this effort, both through building and implementing sitemaps and by participating in the Web Standards workgroup reviewing the proposed changes. These efforts greatly assist Virginia’s participation in the national Google pilot and help keep the Commonwealth at the forefront of effective service delivery. Sitemaps are still due from several of the pilot agencies; all have been previously contacted by Secretary Chopra and project manager Sheri Wood of Virginia Interactive. It is very important for these agencies to complete and publish their sitemaps as soon as possible to ensure Virginia’s continued participation. Assistance is available to any Webmaster; if you have questions, contact Sheri.

So he's not out?

2007-03-08T20:56:00.000-05:00

Spoof e-mail sent under IT boss's name
BY PETER BACQUE Times-Dispatch Staff Writer

Someone sent an embarrassing e-mail to employees of the Virginia Information Technologies Agency using the state IT chief's e-mail address.

VITA is responsible for establishing information security practices for the state.
"It has nothing to do with the [state's IT] network or security," Lemuel C. Stewart Jr., the state's chief information officer, said of the fraudulent e-mail incident. "As bad as it is, it's not a breach of information security."

The perpetrator of the offensive message faces legal action if the state can determine who sent it, he said.

However, that is not likely. VITA was able to trace the message back to a computer server in Germany, he said, but no further.

Cast in vulgar terms, the Feb. 14 phony e-mail to about 200 employees was critical of Stewart's handling of the state's information technology system.

"This one, of course, did not originate from me," Stewart wrote VITA employees shortly after the e-mail incident. "I am sorry for any consternation this nuisance e-mail may have caused."
The message was a "spoofed" e-mail, Stewart said.

Spoofing is forging an e-mail so that the message appears to have originated from someplace other than the real source.

Since 2004, Stewart has overseen the consolidation of about 90 government agency IT systems into VITA and the subsequent outsourcing of the state's information-technology infrastructure in a $2 billion contract with industry giant Northrop Grumman.

---

The email in question:

From: MC Lemmy Lem[SMTP:LEM.STEWART@VITA.VIRGINIA.GOV]
Creation
time: Wednesday, February 14, 2007 2:40:35 PM
To: VITA
Subject: [Possible
SPAM] Sad news...
Auto forwarded by a Rule
I seem to have run out of Viagra. Unfortunately this will mean less
vigorous screwings of the Commonwealth citizens. My apologies.
-Lem
[Possible SPAM] -- Virginia
Information Technology Agencies' (VITA's)
SPAM prevention system has flagged
this message. Many parameters are considered when determining if an e-mail is
possible SPAM. If this message is from a known and trusted source, you may
disregard this warning, otherwise this message may contain unwanted or
objectionable material. For questions or concerns, please contact the VCCC Help
Desk at vccc@vita.virginia.gov
or
(804)786-3932.

And the follow up email sent by (I assume) VITA:

From: CIO of the Commonwealth[SMTP:CIO@VITA.VIRGINIA.GOV]
Sent:
Wednesday, February 14, 2007 3:43:25 PM
To: VITA
Subject: Spoofed
Message
Auto forwarded by a Rule
Please ignore the message you received earlier. VITA Security and Northrop Grumman technical staff are working to determine the source of this message. We will engage law enforcement to take appropriate disciplinary action against the perpetrator(s) of this offensive message.
This was a "spoofed" e-mail. E-mail spoofing is the forgery of an e-mail so that the message appears to have originated from someone or somewhere other than the actual source. This one, of course, did not originate from me. I am sorry for any consternation this nuisance e-mail may have caused.
Lem

Budget flap at state IT agency

2007-03-05T09:57:00.000-05:00

Because of changes in the way VITA charges its government customers for information services, heavily federally funded agencies could be out as much as $4.7 million this year. Virginia's chief information officer, however, said the additional costs -- which those agencies may not be able to get the federal government to cover -- will probably be less.

VITA chief Lemuel C. Stewart Jr. said he expects the actual cost to be no more than $2.5 million.

"Some of the [federally funded] agencies will need to go back to their federal counterparts and say, 'We need more dollars,'" Stewart said.

Virginia officials "can balance the budget between agencies . . . for state funds," said one state information systems manager, "but they can't balance budgets between federally funded agencies."

U.S. grants, the manager said, will not change to match the billing just because VITA raised prices.

Well, I feel better already. ONLY $2.5 million, when properly spun. That's chump change.

Secret CIA Prisoners Still Missing

2007-03-02T09:19:00.000-05:00

Human Rights Watch:

The US government should account for all the missing detainees once held by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.The 50-page report, "Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention," contains a detailed description of a secret CIA prison from a Palestinian former detainee who was released from custody last year. Human Rights Watch has also sent a public letter to US President George W. Bush requesting information about the fate and whereabouts of the missing detainees.

Human Rights Watch's letter to Bush contained two lists of missing detainees. The first list names 16 people whom Human Rights Watch believes were held in CIA prisons and whose current whereabouts are unknown. The second list names 22 people who may have been held in CIA prisons and whose current whereabouts are unknown.

Human Rights Watch expressed concern about what may have happened to the missing prisoners. One possibility is that the US may have transferred some of them to foreign prisons where they remain under the CIA's effective control.

Another worrying possibility is that prisoners were transferred from CIA custody to places where they may face torture. A serious concern is that some of the missing prisoners might have been returned to their countries of origin, which include Algeria, Egypt, Libya and Syria, where the torture of terrorism suspects is common.

Global Warming: Who Said It's Over?

2007-02-28T14:46:00.000-05:00

Recently such proponents of Global Warming as Al Gore have declared victory and announced the debate over. Well, the debate isn't as over as it would seem. Below I have listed both sides of the argument, and I would be interested in hearing opinions from the Peanut Gallery.

Listed here are some of the assertions made by supporters and opponents of the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming. Assertions are included solely because they have been made by one side or the other, without comment on their scientific validity or lack thereof.

Assertions by supporters
Supporters of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis assert that:

The fact that carbon dioxide absorbs and emits IR radiation has been known for over a century.[34]
Gas bubbles trapped in ice cores give us a detailed record of atmospheric chemistry and temperature back more than eight hundred thousand years,[35] with the temperature record confirmed by other geologic evidence. This record shows a correlation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature.[36]
The recent rise in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is greater than any in hundreds of thousands of years[37] and this is human-caused, as shown by the isotopic signature of CO2 from fossil fuels.
The historical temperature record shows a rise of 0.4–0.8 °C over the last 100 years.[38]
The current warmth is unusual in the past 1000 years (see Temperature record of the past 1000 years).
Climate change attribution studies, using both models and observations, find that the warming of the last 50 years is likely caused by human activity; natural variability (including solar variation) alone cannot explain the recent change.
Climate models can reproduce the observed trend only when greenhouse gas forcing is included.[39]
The IPCC reports correctly summarize the state of climate science.
Humankind is performing a great geophysical experiment, and if it turns out badly—however that is defined—we cannot undo it. We cannot even abruptly turn it off. Too many of the things we are doing now have long-term ramifications for centuries to come.[40]
Climate models predict more warming, sea level rise, more frequent and severe storms, drought and heat waves, spread of tropical diseases, and other climactic effects in the future.
The current warming trend will accelerate when melting ice exposes more dark sea and land that will reflect less sunlight; and when the tundra thaws and releases large quantities of trapped greenhouse gases.[41]
Atlantic hurricane trends have been recently linked to climate change.
The Precautionary principle requires that action should be taken now to prevent or mitigate warming.
Proponents of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis tend to support the IPCC position, and thus represent the scientific consensus (though with considerable differences over details, and especially over what action should be taken).

Assertions by opponents

Some of the assertions made in opposition to the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming include:

IPCC draws firm conclusions unjustified by the science, especially given the acknowledged weakness of cloud physics in the climate models.[60][61]
The influential "Hockey Stick" study by Mann has been shown to contain errors .
Using "consensus" as evidence is an appeal to the majority argument rather than scientific discussion. Some have proposed that, because the issue has become so politicized, climatologists who disagree with the consensus may be afraid to speak out for fear of losing their positions or funding. [62]
Climate models will not be able to predict the future climate until they can predict solar and volcanic activity, [63] changes in sea temperature [64], and changes to cosmic ray levels that make the low level clouds that cool the earth [65], and take into account other recently discovered feedback mechanisms.
Water vapor, not CO2, is the primary greenhouse gas. Depending on the referenced source, water vapor and water droplets account for 36-70% of the greenhouse effect, while CO2 accounts for 9-26%.
Global warming is largely a result of reduced low-altitude cloud cover from reduced Galactic cosmic rays (GCRs). It is similar in concept to the Wilson cloud chamber but on a global scale, where earth's atmosphere acts as the cloud chamber.
The concern about global warming is analogous to the concern about global cooling in the 1970s. The concern about global cooling was unnecessarily alarmist. Therefore, the concern about global warming is equally alarmist.
The Medieval warm period, which lasted from the 10th to the 14th century, had above-average temperatures for at least Western Europe, and possibly the whole Earth. This period was followed by the Little Ice Age, which lasted until the 19th century, when the Earth began to heat up again.
Satellite temperature records show less warming than surface land and sea records.
The relationship between historic temperatures and CO2 levels, based on ice-core samples, shows that carbon dioxide increases have always followed a rise in temperature rather than the other way around. [66]
Climatic changes equal to or even more severe than those on Earth are also happening on other bodies within this solar system, including Mars, Jupiter, Pluto and Triton. [67]
Opponents tend to define themselves in terms of opposition to the IPCC position. They generally believe that climate science is not yet able to provide us with solid answers to all of the major questions about global climate. Opponents often characterize supporters' arguments as alarmist and premature, emphasizing what they perceive as the lack of scientific evidence supporting global-warming scenarios.

Many opponents also say that, if global warming is real and man-made, no action need be taken now, because:

Future scientific advances or engineering projects will remedy the problem before it becomes serious, and do it for less money.
A small amount of global warming would be benign or even beneficial, as increased carbon dioxide would benefit plant life, thus potentially becoming profitable for agriculture world-wide.
There is a distinct correlation between GDP growth and greenhouse-gas emissions. If this correlation is assumed to be a causation, a cutback in emissions might lead to a decrease in the rate of GDP growth [68].

In the Dead of Night our Freedoms Errode

2007-02-21T11:46:00.000-05:00

A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night. So it was with a provision quietly tucked into the enormous defense budget bill at the Bush administration’s behest that makes it easier for a president to override local control of law enforcement and declare martial law.

The provision, signed into law in October, weakens two obscure but important bulwarks of liberty. One is the doctrine that bars military forces, including a federalized National Guard, from engaging in law enforcement. Called posse comitatus, it was enshrined in law after the Civil War to preserve the line between civil government and the military. The other is the Insurrection Act of 1807, which
provides the major exemptions to posse comitatus. It essentially limits a president’s use of the military in law enforcement to putting down lawlessness, insurrection and rebellion, where a state is violating federal law or depriving people of constitutional rights.

The newly enacted provisions upset this careful balance. They shift the focus from making sure that federal laws are enforced to restoring public order. Beyond cases of actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or to any “other condition.”

Changes of this magnitude should be made only after a thorough public airing. But these new presidential powers were slipped into the law without hearings or public debate. The president made no mention of the changes when he signed the measure, and neither the White House nor Congress consulted in advance with the nation’s governors.

There is a bipartisan bill, introduced by Senators Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and Christopher Bond, Republican of Missouri, and backed unanimously by the nation’s governors, that would repeal the stealthy revisions. Congress should pass it. If changes of this kind are proposed in the future, they must get a full and open debate.

So, in a broader scale, the current Administration believes that the White House has the authority to:

Take people off the streets and imprison them without due process
Use torture to get information
Lie to the public about information and cause for war
Use the military to "restore order" for any reason it sees fit within its borders
Send soldiers off to die against the wishes of Congress and the citizens of the United States

There's an old saying that I use here a lot (or at least I think I do). It follows (badly paraphrased):

"When they came for the gypsies, I said nothing, because I wasn't a gypsy. When they came for the intellectuals, I said nothing, because I wasn't an intellectual. When they came for the Jews, I said nothing, because I wasn't a Jew. Now they're coming for me, and there's no one left to say anything."

Virginia: Ignorant and Proud of It

2007-02-19T10:13:00.000-05:00

Virginia won't take part in party Lawmakers there reject bill to create panel for 2009 Lincoln celebration

By LARRY O'DELL
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published Monday, February 19, 2007

RICHMOND, Va. - Virginia lawmakers meeting on the grounds of the former Confederate Capitol killed legislation creating a commission to oversee the state's participation in the national commemoration of the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth.

"He sent armies into Virginia to lay waste to our land," Lamb said. He said Marsh's bill should be amended to replace the Lincoln commemoration with a June 3, 2008, celebration of the 200th birthday of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

The House Rules Committee rejected Sen. Henry L. Marsh III's bill on a voice vote Wednesday. The Senate had passed the bill unanimously.

Marsh, D-Richmond, said several states have established panels to work with the federal Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, which is coordinating three years of events surrounding the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth on Feb. 12, 2009.

"Lincoln is regarded by many as the most outstanding president of all time," said Marsh, who noted that the 16th president's parents were born in Virginia.

Robert Lamb of Richmond, a lawyer and a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, told the committee that supporters of a Virginia celebration of Lincoln's birth suffer from "historical myopia and amnesia."

"He sent armies into Virginia to lay waste to our land," Lamb said. He said Marsh's bill should be amended to replace the Lincoln commemoration with a June 3, 2008, celebration of the 200th birthday of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

House Majority Leader H. Morgan Griffith of Salem said he opposed Marsh's bill, but not for the reasons cited by Lamb.

"My concern is that we do not need a commission in light of the fact that he was not a Virginian," Griffith said.

The committee rejected the bill with little further discussion.

David Early, spokesman for the federal Lincoln commission, said 10 states have established their own commissions either by statute or executive order. He said state commissions "make it easier to coordinate and plan" but are not necessary for participation in the observance.
In the absence of a commission, Virginia's participation will be guided by John McGlennon, a College of William and Mary government professor serving as the state's liaison to the federal panel.

McGlennon said in a telephone interview that his mission is to "bring people's attention to the importance of 2009 and remind them of the significance of Abraham Lincoln on Virginia, recognizing that some of that experience may be viewed by some people as controversial."
He said "it would be desirable to have Virginia play a prominent role in commemorating the birth of a president who really kept the country together."

--

Well, Yee-haw.

Board of Elections chief announces departure

2007-02-14T10:36:00.000-05:00

Board of Elections chief announces departure
Kaine didn't reappoint her at the expiration of her four-year term
BY TYLER WHITLEY
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Feb 14, 2007

Jean R. Jensen will step down as secretary of the State Board of Elections on May 1. A successor has not been named.

Kevin Hall, spokesman for Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, said Jensen asked not to be reappointed.
Kaine did not reappoint Jensen when her four-year term expired Feb. 1. At Kaine's request, she agreed to stay on until May 1 to give the governor a chance to pick her successor.

Jensen's tenure has been widely praised by Democrats and Republicans. She is a longtime Democratic activist who once served as the executive director of the Democratic Party of Virginia.

She was appointed to the post four years ago by then-Gov. Mark R. Warner, a fellow Northern Virginian.

Asked why she was leaving, Jensen said: "I wasn't reappointed."

Jensen announced her departure yesterday to members of the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee.

"All I know is that the governor is not pleased [with her]," said Sen. Stephen H. Martin, R-Chesterfield, chairman of the committee. Martin said she had done a very good job.

The secretary presides over the state's elections and election laws. The job pays $82,106 a year.
The committee, which considers changes to election laws, quickly dispatched two proposed constitutional amendments that would have brought far-reaching changes to Virginia governance.

Recall amendment killed One, proposed by Del. Frank D. Hargrove Sr., R-Hanover, would have allowed Virginia's governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general to be recalled from office if 25 percent of registered voters sign a recall petition.

Hargrove said voters should have a chance to replace a bad office-holder. Opponents said this would put Virginia on the road to a California-style initiative-and-referendum type of government.

Regulations veto killed -- A second proposal, by Del. H. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, would have allowed the General Assembly to veto regulations. Griffith said the plan would put the assembly on a more equal footing with the executive branch.

The 8-7 vote against the proposal drew a stinging rebuke from Martin.

"You will never get a two-term governor now," he said, looking at the committee's Democrats.
The governor's office opposed the proposed amendment.

Ban on fundraising events killed -- The committee also killed a proposal that would have barred legislators from attending party fundraising events during the legislative session. The plan was aimed primarily at the Democratic Party of Virginia's top fundraising event, the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner, which is held in February while the assembly is in session.

A Pop Culture Icon Dies

2007-02-09T11:49:00.000-05:00

Anna Nicole Smith. Rest in peace.

State Web Standards

2007-02-06T16:48:00.000-05:00

Proposed changes to the existing Commonwealth of Virginia Web Standard:

In early January, Secretary of Technology Chopra announced two important Web initiatives: enterprise Google search functionality and a new common banner for posting at the top of all executive branch agency Web sites. To accomplish these objectives, revisions are necessary to the Commonwealth Web policies, standards and guidelines (PSG’s). Today, the suggested revisions and common top banner have been posted to ORCA, for your review and comment during the next 30 days.

The major changes include:
The agency banner space will be expanded from the current 50 pixel height to 100 pixels; agencies will be able to use banners between 50-100 pixels.
A new common top banner (50 pixels) will be deployed across state Web sites including the state portal, Virginia.gov. The intent is to provide enterprise Google search and helpful enterprise navigational aids to assist citizen users.
"Contact Us" and "Web Policy" links move to the bottom of sites.
The common banner will be posted above the agency banner of each site. It will contain a link to the state portal, Virginia.gov, as well as enterprise links including Online Services, State Web site list, and the Governor’s site. The “Skip to Content” link will be hidden within the code of the common banner to allow screen reader access at the beginning of each page.

Also included is an enterprise link to Virginia Interactive’s “Live Help” feature. Agencies do NOT have to provide any support for this feature. Virginia Interactive will provide all staffing for this service.

Finally, the common banner will contain the enterprise search feature which will allow users to access the Google search functionality across all state sites. Agency search boxes should contain the text “Search this site” to differentiate between statewide and agency search.

Oops...

2007-01-31T09:48:00.000-05:00

Keith Olbermann takes a look at Bush's claims about thwarted terrorists plots and fact checks them. Seems someone needs a fact-checker on staff...

[watch the video]

Blog the Vote

2007-01-30T12:37:00.000-05:00

Jan. 29, 2007 — The Virginia State Legislature may be the oldest
statehouse in the United States, but the minority Democratic Party is using modern video technology in its latest political tactic against the Republican majority. Anger over Republicans killing bills without recording the vote, Democratic operatives began videotaping early morning and late-night statehouse proceedings and posting them on their assembly's blog and the Internet-based video site YouTube. "We're providing openness and access to Virginia government," said Mark Bergman, spokesman for the Virginia Democratic Party. Bergman argues that the videos are the only way for Virginians to see these committee proceedings because the Republican majority changed the rules in 2006 to allow off-hour committee and subcommittee votes to go unrecorded.

[the entire article]

You would too...

2007-01-25T15:27:00.000-05:00

...if you lived here.

(RICHMOND, Va.) – Suicides are more common in Virginia than homicides according to a report released this month by the Virginia Department of Health’s (VDH) Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

[press release]

Well, Crap.

2007-01-25T11:59:00.000-05:00

In one of the most chilling public statements ever made by a U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales questioned whether the U.S. Constitution grants habeas corpus rights of a fair trial to every American.

[read the entire article]

State of the Union

2007-01-24T10:55:00.000-05:00

Not sure if this is the real one or not, which makes it just as sad as it is funny.

"Bloggers have become a real force"

2007-01-22T10:02:00.000-05:00

Well, duh.

The blog Crooks and Liars has an interesting piece on blogging, freedom of speech, and getting your panties in a bunch.

Photon Torpedoes, alpha spread, fire!

2007-01-18T09:37:00.000-05:00

Ok, I'm a geek. I freely admit it. Doesn't bother me. In fact, I'm often proud of the fact. But I'm aware that not everyone is, and the quickest way to lose someone is to talk "geek speak" to a non geek.

Like making Star Trek references in Congress.

http://www.kentonngo.com/750volts/2007/01/17/klingons-in-the-white-house/

Defense Dept. warns about Canadian spy coins

2007-01-11T09:24:00.000-05:00

Tiny transmitters found on contractors with classified security
clearances

WASHINGTON - Money talks, but can it also follow your movements?
In a
U.S. government warning high on the creepiness scale, the Defense Department
cautioned its American contractors over what it described as a new espionage
threat: Canadian coins with tiny radio frequency transmitters hidden
inside.
The government said the mysterious coins were found planted on U.S.
contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate
occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors traveled
through Canada.

Read the entire article

Former Virginia governor sets up exploratory presidential campaign

2007-01-09T14:44:00.000-05:00

RICHMOND, Virginia: Jim Gilmore, Virginia's former tax-slashing Republican
governor, on Tuesday took the first step in a long-shot bid for the
presidency.

Gilmore filed papers with the Federal Election Commission in Washington
to form the Jim Gilmore for President Exploratory Committee, said his aide, Matt
Williams.

Citing the absence of what he considered a true conservative, Gilmore
said in interviews last month that he would assess his own chances for a
presidential run.

Gilmore was elected governor in 1997, after promising to cut the
property tax that local governments in Virginia levy on personal cars and pickup
trucks. He was later ousted by Democrat Mark Warner after a legislative
stalemate over the cuts and soaring tax reimbursements, and the state was unable
to reconcile its budget for the first time ever.
He becomes the sixth
Republican to form an exploratory committee for 2008. Former Massachusetts Gov.
Mitt Romney, Sen. John McCain, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former
Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson and Sen. Sam Brownback also have taken the initial
step.

Little known outside Virginia, Gilmore was among the earliest
supporters of Texas Gov. George W. Bush's 2000 presidential quest, and Bush
rewarded Gilmore by appointing him chairman of the Republican National
Committee. Within a year, however, Gilmore left the job after disagreements with
senior White House staff.

Ok...this scares me a bit

2007-01-05T09:39:00.000-05:00

Bush says feds can open mail without warrant
By James Gordon Meek
New York Daily News

WASHINGTON — President Bush quietly has claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant.

Bush asserted the new authority Dec. 20 after signing legislation that overhauls some postal regulations. He then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open mail under emergency conditions, contrary to existing law and contradicting the bill he had just signed, according to experts who have reviewed it.

A White House spokeswoman disputed claims that the move gives Bush any new powers, saying the Constitution allows such searches.

Still, the move, one year after The New York Times' disclosure of a secret program that allowed warrantless monitoring of Americans' phone calls and e-mail, caught Capitol Hill by surprise.

"Despite the president's statement that he may be able to circumvent a basic privacy protection, the new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people's mail without a warrant," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the incoming House Government Reform Committee chairman, who co-sponsored the bill.

Experts said the new powers could be easily abused and used to vacuum up large amounts of mail.

"The [Bush] signing statement claims authority to open domestic mail without a warrant, and that would be new and quite alarming," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington.

"You have to be concerned," a senior U.S. official agreed. "It takes executive-branch authority beyond anything we've ever known."

A top Senate Intelligence Committee aide promised a review of Bush's move.
"It's something we're going to look into," the aide said.

Most of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act deals with mundane changes. But the legislation also explicitly reinforces protections of first-class mail from searches without a court's approval.

Bush cited as examples the need to "protect human life and safety against hazardous materials and the need for physical searches specifically authorized by law for foreign intelligence collection."

White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore denied Bush was claiming new authority.
"In certain circumstances — such as with the proverbial 'ticking bomb' — the Constitution does not require warrants for reasonable searches," she said.

Bush, however, cited "exigent circumstances" that could refer to an imminent danger or a long-standing state of emergency.

Critics noted the administration could obtain a warrant quickly from a court or a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge, and the Postal Service could block delivery.

But the Bush White House appears to be taking no chances, national-security experts agreed.
Martin said Bush is "using the same legal reasoning" as he did with warrantless eavesdropping.

Why Everyone I Know Hates Virginia.gov

2007-01-04T11:07:00.000-05:00

I have a part time job in government IT, and one thing that everyone seems to complain about all the time is the state web page at www.virginia.gov. I thought I would quickly list the top reasons everyone hates them. Shadow, feel free to add to the list.

They don't follow the rules - they spent years telling everyone how they should design their webpages, then when it became an official standard, they were the first ones to do whatever they felt like and ignore the standard. They spent years telling everyone to be P3P compliant, and now they aren't.
They're difficult to work with - they talk down to state employees, they don't manage projects well, they lie about deliverables and fees, and they generally act like whatever they think is what you should think.
They think they're the experts in everything - as if no one else in government has ever done anything. If you show them research or documentation that contradicts what they think, then you're a liar or the experts are wrong.
They take the credit for everything - they take credit for every online service ever created by Virginia government, even though they have only been involved in a sall fraction of them. They think if they link to it, they own it.
They're more concerned about making money that helping - they charge what they feel like it when they feel like it, ignoring market averages or common sense. It's like they charge whatever they were short in their budget,and we're supposed to shut up and pay.
The home page is really ugly - pretty obvious.
They charge too much then don't deliver - I know people who have had projects dropped because Virginia.gov wasn't making enough money off of them. I'm seen then charge as much as 500% more than the market rate for hosting and design services.
They're jerks - summary of above.

UFO? Please look at the light...

2007-01-04T08:48:00.000-05:00

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- -- Federal officials say it was probably just
some weird weather phenomenon, but a group of United Airlines employees swear
they saw a mysterious, saucer-shaped craft hovering over O'Hare Airport in
November.

The workers, some of them pilots, said the object didn't have
lights and hovered over an airport terminal before shooting up through the
clouds, according to a report in Monday's Chicago Tribune.
The Federal Aviation Administration acknowledged that a United supervisor had called the control tower at O'Hare, asking if anyone had spotted a spinning disc-shaped object. But the controllers didn't see anything, and a preliminary check of
radar found nothing out of the ordinary, FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory
said.

"Our theory on this is that it was a weather phenomenon," Cory said. "That night was a perfect atmospheric condition in terms of low (cloud) ceiling and a lot of airport lights. When the lights shine up into the clouds, sometimes you can see funny things."

The FAA is not investigating, Cory said.

United spokeswoman Megan McCarthy said company officials don't recall discussing any such incident from November 7. At least one O'Hare controller, union official
Craig Burzych, was amused by it all. "To fly 7 million light years to O'Hare
and then have to turn around and go home because your gate was occupied is
simply unacceptable," he said.

Another Exception

2007-01-03T13:51:00.000-05:00

Another Commonwealth of Virginia web page has launched. Again, it seems to be exempted from the Web Standard, and again - despite its vague claims - it's not accessible. Which begs the question, who's auditing and enforcing the Standard? And why are our tax dollars going for web pages that aren't compliant?

Ok, this is kinda cool

2006-12-28T11:58:00.000-05:00

Helium is what seems to be an experiment in focusing the blogosphere. I've joined, as I have a weakness for sharing my opinions. I haven't yet decided if the reward system is feasibile or not; I guess only time will tell. Drop by and take a look; let me know what you think.

Poor Kerry

2006-12-28T09:47:00.000-05:00

Soldiers snub Senator Kerry at media event in Iraq.

President Ford; Rest in peace.

2006-12-28T09:38:00.000-05:00

Former President Gerald
R. Ford, who gently led the United States out of the tumultuous Watergate
era but who lost his own bid for election after pardoning President Richard
M. Nixon, died at 6:45 p.m. Tuesday at his home in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

Former Gov. Jim Gilmore considers presidential run

2006-12-20T09:14:00.000-05:00

The icing on the cake...

Mark Warner has declined the opportunity, but another former governor says
he is considering a run for the White House in 2008. Jim Gilmore plans to set up
a committee next month to explore his chances.

Be The First to Do It Wrong

2006-12-13T11:20:00.000-05:00

The Commonwealth of Virginia is teaming up with MySpace to require sex offenders to register their email addresses with the state as well as their home addresses. That way, if one of them there pervs creates a MySpace account, the PO-Leese can swoop down and nab them.

Wonderful. Brilliant. And showing a complete misunderstanding of how the Internet works.

An email address and a home address are fundamentally different. Most people only live in one, maybe two locations. You just can't be in two places at the same time. But email is not bound by those physical restraints. You can have as many email accounts that you want, as anonymous as you want. There are companies that provide email accounts that only exist for ten minutes. Some go through proxies and are untraceable. How on earth can you expect a sex offender - who already has issues with follow social norms to begin with - to use only one email account when they're setting up a profile with the goal of committing sex crimes?

I have no less than ten email accounts, some of which aren't even mine. Think there's any way to ensure that I've listed all ten? Or can't get more?

It's a waste of manpower and resources.

Sometimes, the reason no one has done something before is because it's a stupid idea. Virginia just seems to be behind the curve in realizing it.

Interview with Lem Stewart

2006-12-12T13:39:00.000-05:00

Lem Stewart, CIO, Virginia
October 12, 2006
CDG In the Arena with Lem Stewart, CIO, Virginia

[entire article]

Mutants Drink Milk!

2006-12-11T11:08:00.000-05:00

A surprisingly recent instance of human evolution has been detected among the peoples of East Africa. It is the ability to digest milk in adulthood, conferred by genetic changes that occurred as recently as 3,000 years ago, a team of geneticists has found.

[read the whole thing]

Digital State

2006-12-06T10:05:00.000-05:00

Ever the publicity hounds, Virginia.gov has announced that they are responsible for Virginia placing second in the Digital State Survey.

Well, not exactly, but the placement of the banner and the history of Virginia.gov's glory hogging give that impression to state employees. But when you think about it, Virginia.gov itself hasn't contributed any new online services at all this year. I guess that $4 million a year gives them the right to stand for the Commonwealth.

Virginia transitions to online job applications

2006-11-27T09:07:00.000-05:00

By the Associated Press
November 26, 2006
RICHMOND, Va. -- The state government is moving from paper to electronic applications that allow potential employees to apply from an Internet-linked computer at their convenience.

The transition has been under way since July and follows the lead of private employers making use of computer software to streamline their application process.

"We think it's a good step forward in efficiency," said Sara Redding Wilson, director of the Department of Human Resource Management.

But paper applications are not disappearing completely--those applying for jobs like laborers and housekeepers will still be able to fill out forms by hand.

"Most of the agencies that are paperless are phasing in," said Pat Waller, the state's recently installed recruitment manager.

The state's Recruitment Management System was designed by PeopleAdmin of Austin, Texas, and paid for by the Council on Virginia's Future, a three-year-old agency that promotes modernization in government.

While the system cost taxpayers less than $100,000, it could save much more in paper, printing, postage, storage, clerical and other expenses.

The state also posts job openings on the Internet. It is advertising vacancies in about 7,400 jobs and has received for just under 3,000 electronic applications.

The human resources agency has worked with other departments to ensure that the system can be used by non-English-speaking applicants or those with disabilities.

The Virginia Department of Transportation and the human resources agency are both completely paperless. The Department of Corrections and the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services have both opted for a hybrid approach.

Target doesn't care if you're blind

2006-11-06T09:05:00.000-05:00

Since I'm a big accessibility advocate, I wanted to pass along this article about the lawsuit against Target. If anyone needs help with making sure their site is compliant with accessibility guidelines, drop me an email.

----

ACCORDING to an advocacy group, Target declined last year to make its Web site fully accessible to blind people with specialized screen-reading technology last year. If true — and Target has denied the accusation in court — it was a public relations blunder, and it may have been illegal as well.

The National Federation of the Blind sued Target, contending that the company’s inaction violated the Americans with Disabilities Act because the Web site is essentially an extension of its other public accommodations, and as such, should be easily accessible to people with disabilities.

A Target spokeswoman would not comment on those assertions, but in court the company offered testimony from three blind users rebutting the federation’s arguments.

On Sept. 6, a federal judge in California held, in a preliminary ruling on the suit, that in some instances, Web sites must cater to disabled people.

Legal scholars say the full reach of that ruling will not be clear until the case is decided, if it reaches that point.

But in the meantime, the dispute shows that although commercial Web sites have made considerable strides in serving this small fraction of their customer base, there are still substantial difficulties on both sides of the screen.

“Web sites are more useful than they used to be, but there are still a few more hurdles than you’d like to have to go through,” said James Gashel, an executive director of the federation, based in Baltimore.

Mr. Gashel said that most sites accommodate screen-reading technology, which tells blind users the layout of a Web page and describes images, search prompts and other fields into which users can type information to find a product or complete a purchase. (The most popular screen-reading software, Jaws for Windows from Freedom Scientific, sells for around $900.)

When sites do not accommodate screen-reading software, the online shopping or browsing experience breaks down for the 200,000 or so of the nation’s 1.3 million people with vision disabilities who are online, according to Mr. Gashel.

Most online stores go to great lengths to make sure that their sites are accessible to people with disabilities, simply because it is good business to allow as many people as possible to shop. And online-shopping technology specialists say it is not so difficult or costly a task.

“It’s very straightforward to make a site accessible,” said Dayna Bateman, senior information architect at Fry Inc., which operates e-commerce Web sites on behalf of large retailers including Brookstone, Eddie Bauer and Spiegel.

Ms. Bateman said that the more software coding a Web site could offer to help screen readers and other technologies navigate a site, the more likely it was that the Web site would show up on search engine results, because Google, Yahoo and others looked to the same coding for clues about the Web page’s content.

“So it’s actually an advantage in the marketplace,” she said. “I just don’t think a lot of folks are schooled enough in accessibility to know that.”

For advocates of people with disabilities, the most effective tool for ensuring a smooth online experience has been the Americans with Disabilities Act. But because the law was signed in 1990, before the Web was in common use, its language offers little guidance on how to approach questions of online accessibility.

A variety of lawsuits based on Disabilities Act provisions have been brought against online companies, notably one brought by Mr. Gashel’s organization against AOL in 1999, but the suits were settled before judges could offer clear guidance on how, or whether, the law applied to Web sites.

In denying Target’s motion to dismiss the suit two months ago, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of United States District Court in San Francisco held that the law’s accessibility requirements applied to all services offered by a place of public accommodation. Since Target’s physical stores are places of public accommodation, the ruling said, its online store must also be accessible or the company must offer equally effective alternatives.

So what about online-only Web merchants like Amazon.com, BlueNile, Drugstore.com and RedEnvelope as well as fast-growing young online companies like YouTube and MySpace?

“That issue is still up for grabs,” said Michael R. Masinter, a law professor who specializes in Disabilities Act and civil rights issues for Nova Southeastern University, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Mr. Masinter said the Target suit, since it involved an offline merchant’s online operations, would not address that issue.

The case, though, is important to Amazon, because it runs Target’s online store as it does those of a handful of other big offline merchants.

An Amazon spokeswoman, Patricia Smith, said that “as a matter of course we work cooperatively with all of our retail partners to develop and implement the tools and features they want incorporated onto their Web sites.” Amazon, she added, “is already generally usable for people with screen readers.” It has offered a text-only, streamlined site designed for such devices (amazon.com/access).

Mr. Masinter said one potentially thorny issue in the Target suit was whether phone services offered by online merchants were suitable substitutions for the Web site when the site did not work well for technologies like screen-reading software. Given the high cost of maintaining phone-based customer service operations, the question would be of particular interest to retailers and disabled people.

Companies in one emerging category of Internet commerce, online education, have the most ground to make up in adapting their offerings for the disabled, according to Jane Jarrow, president of Disability Access Information and Support, an education industry consultancy.

Most online-only schools, Ms. Jarrow said, “are oblivious to the fact that they have a significant issue here.” Many online-only schools rely on chat rooms, for instance, for class discussions, and screen-reading software does not function properly with chat rooms — nor can learning-disabled students often keep pace with the discussions.

The issue has become critical because many online-only schools became eligible this summer to receive federal student aid. But to get such funds, organizations must adhere to regulations in the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which has been updated to say that all Web sites of groups receiving federal money must be accessible to people with disabilities.

Capella University, a Minneapolis-based institution known for online courses, employs a full-time disabilities specialist, who, among other things, has guided the school to avoid using online chat rooms for its courses. Some online schools follow similar approaches, but most do not, said Richard Allegra, director of professional development for the Association on Higher Education and Disability, an industry group.

“I think people are starting to understand their obligations to make their services accessible,” he said. “The question they have is, how to do that?”

VITA Trying to Work Out Billing

2006-10-25T20:37:00.000-04:00

Virginia could see millions of dollars in federal funds held up because of the
way the Virginia Information Technologies Agency bills state agencies for IT
services.

The article quotes Glen S. Tittermary with the Joint Legislative and Audit Review Commission as saying:

"They're paying exactly the same as they were before," he said, "and
everybody's all tied up in a knot over it."

The thing is, according to VITA clients I've talked with, that's not true. Items do cost more than before VITA, and that's why they're all tied up in a knot over it. And VITA knows this, which is why they haven't documented their billing practices. You don't document that you charge inconsistently and unfairly.