:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 7.31.2003 ::

:: A fond farewell ::

From The Guardian UK:
Poindexter to Go Amid Terror Market Flap
Friday August 1, 2003 1:19 AM
By PAULINE JELINEK

WASHINGTON (AP) - Retired Adm. John Poindexter will resign his position at the Pentagon after the uproar over a research project he was overseeing that included a kind of futures market on political violence in the Middle East.

posted by me

:: 8:30:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Bush's Gaffes - Forgivable?" ::

From Newsday:

Norman Ornstein, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, agrees that Bush's history of malaprops have so lowered public expectations that he can commit a gaffe with little fallout. But he adds that questions of credibility strike directly at Bush's greatest political strength - his reputation as a straight shooter.

"The question is, when does that image slip, and then everything, no matter how small, becomes a big deal," he said. "We're not there yet. But now for the first time there's some tarnish out there."

ALSO:
From The Herald Sun (AU):
Bush: I take blame for uranium error

posted by me

:: 11:29:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Devil in the Details" ::

From Wired:
Antispam Bills: Worse Than Spam?

Many online advocates would love to see spammers burn in hell. But they caution that Congress' zeal to pass antispam legislation is more likely to wreak havoc on the Net than to solve the junk e-mail problem. By Ryan Singel.

posted by me

:: 11:19:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "So many peace plans, so little peace" ::

A chronology of the Middle East conflict
From The Economist

[Thanks to Reugen for the link.]

posted by me

:: 9:35:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Online music update ::

From The Inquirer:
RIAA will take 2191.78 years to sue everyone

From USA Today:
Internet song swappers say legal threats won't stop them

From Wired:
RIAA Chief's Republican Pedigree

The recording industry has turned to a well-connected Republican to lead it through the upcoming legal fights it has picked with consumers.

On Sept. 1, Mitch Bainwol, former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), will replace Hilary Rosen as chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America.

posted by me

:: 4:20:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Surveillance nation report ::

From CNET News.com:
Feds target Net phone calls
The FBI wants the ability to tap phone calls placed over broadband connections.

ALSO from CNET News.com:
Gates: Dot-com dreams to come true

posted by me

:: 12:28:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Online music update ::

From Wired:
Napster, But in Name Only

Napster may be dead, but the name and the "kitty" logo of the pioneer online music-swapping program could return to cyberspace before the year is out.

Roxio Inc., which owns the rights to the Napster name, plans to shelve its current online music service, pressplay, and roll out Napster 2.0 by Christmas, said Chris Gorog, CEO of the Santa Clara, California software maker.

[This may or may not qualify as news, but here you go.]

posted by me

:: 10:27:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Hitting the Pavement" ::

From Wired:
Signs of Life in Silicon Valley
As the tech industry struggles to recover from recession, area recruiters are seeing a slight upturn in job openings. But the high unemployment rate means firms can still be extraordinarily picky about whom they choose. By Joanna Glasner.

"I wouldn't tell anyone to pop the bottle of champagne because the recession in the Valley is over, but it's definitely better than it was six or seven months ago," said Alan Hattman, a recruiter with Technology Search, based in San Jose.

posted by me

:: 10:14:00 PM [+] ::
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:: So Weird ::

From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird:

Earlier this year in Mobile, Ala., Daina Sancho, 42, and Irwin Vincent ("I.V.") O'Rourke III, 14, were married after a several-months' courtship. Said the boy's approving father (of Sancho's infatuation), "If you've met the man of your dreams, why wait?" The couple live in Gonzales, La., but I.V. could not marry there until he turns 16; Alabama permits 14-year-olds to marry if they have their parents' permission. [Birmingham News, 3-30-03]

On May 25 in the town of Baqubah, Iraq, Ms. Iman Salih Mutlak, 22, was gunned down by U.S. soldiers, who said she relentlessly charged at them, despite orders to halt, intending to explode the 10 grenades she was carrying. While some Iraqis treated her as a courageous martyr, her family in Zaqaniyah, Iraq, was disgusted with her, not because they are pro-American, but because she shamed them by leaving home without permission. Said her father, to an Associated Press reporter in May, "Had she returned home, I would have killed her myself and drunk her blood." [Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle-AP, 5-31-03]

Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net

posted by me

:: 10:07:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Declan's latest ::

From CNET News.com:
Is privacy making a comeback?
By Declan McCullagh

In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, the worry in Washington, D.C., was more about national security than about individual privacy.

A couple days after the terror attacks, the U.S. Senate voted to grant the Federal Bureau of Investigation sweeping Internet surveillance powers that in some cases would not require a judge's approval. Huge portions of that bill, self-importantly titled the Combating Terrorism Act, eventually became part of the even more grandly named law called the USA Patriot Act.

Soon after the law's enactment, Attorney General John Ashcroft began likening criticism of such dubious legislation to the treasonous offense of "aiding terrorists." Noted civil libertarians such as Alan Dershowitz began to suggest that entrepreneurial judges could issue "torture warrants" against suspected terrorists, while automated face-recognition cameras began popping up in airports, and politicians began scheming about how to ban encryption products without backdoors for government snoops.

Suffice to say that privacy was not exactly paramount in everyone's mind. But as the two-year anniversary of Sept. 11 approaches, there are signs that Congress realizes it went too far in allowing electronic surveillance and other invasions of personal privacy.

Consider some recent evidence:

• By a 309 to 118 vote last Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation that would essentially block part of the USA Patriot Act that permitted police to seek a court order that let them surreptitiously enter a home or business. The amendment to the Commerce, Justice and State spending bill would not repeal the "secret search" law but instead would deny federal agencies any funds that could be used in order to take advantage of it.

• During the floor debate, Rep. C.L. "Butch" Otter, R-Idaho, the amendment's sponsor, offered this impassioned defense of liberty: "Sneak-and-peek searches give the government the power to repeatedly search a private residence without informing the residents that he or she is the target of an investigation. Not only does this provision allow the seizure of personal property and business records without notification, but it also opens the door to nationwide search warrants and allows the CIA and the NSA to operate domestically."

• Also last week, some House members tried to nix the part of the USA Patriot Act that handed the FBI broad powers to search library or bookstore records without the usual need for search warrants or judicial oversight. Offered by Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., the amendment was ruled to be out of order--but it enjoys the support of 129 members of Congress and advocacy groups like the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.

• On July 17, the U.S. Senate yanked funding for the Pentagon's creepy Total Information Awareness plan (TIA), which aims to weave together strands of data from various sources--such as travel, credit card, bank, electronic toll and driver's license databases--with the stated purpose of identifying terrorists before they strike. (Earlier, the Pentagon had responded to public outcry by changing the project's name to Terrorist Information Awareness.)

• Last Tuesday, at a meeting of a U.S. Department of Defense advisory committee, top intelligence officers said TIA wasn't really all that spectacular an idea, anyway. "They need to work on the underlying business model before it is implemented," said Maureen Baginski, the FBI's executive assistant director for intelligence, according to Federal Computer Week. Alan Wade, chief information officer at the CIA, warned that "the scope may be too big."

Ouch. And this is from the cadre of spooks who supposedly wanted TIA in the first place?

[READ MORE]

posted by me

:: 9:51:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "When the going gets weird ..." ::

The AP has their own Weird News.
Here's one from today:

Man hires limo to drive him to holdup

posted by me

:: 10:50:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Windows Left Open (AGAIN) ::
[From the anyone-bother-to-keep-count-anymore? dept.]

A BBC News report:
'Critical' flaw found in Windows

Microsoft has issued a warning about a critical security flaw that affects most versions of its Windows software.
The flaw involves DirectX, an extensive collection of programming add-ons for Windows used by computer games.

If exploited, the flaw could allow a malicious hacker to run their own specially crafted computer code to plant a virus or even take over a machine.

Microsoft has given the flaw its highest severity rating.

Embarrassingly for Microsoft one of the products affected is Windows Server 2003. [Even as Microsoft Touts Win Server 2003 Sales.]

This was supposed to be much more secure as it was one of the first products to go through Microsoft's improved systems for weeding out bugs and security problems.

:: /. coverage ::
DirectX Flaw Leaves Windows Vulnerable

"Just when you thought it was safe to start buying music from BuyMusic, another another Windows security flaw is found, in DirectX this time, that basically affects every possible windows configuration that is still supported. I wonder, will they indemnify me for this?"

Join the Slashdot discussion. Here's a sample:

Re: patch me up baby!
by GammaTau (636807) on Thursday July 24, @10:27AM (#6521274)
(Last Journal: Wednesday July 23, @01:08PM)

Well, you know what they say about downloading and applying Windows patches...
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Deep Thoughts w/ Jack Slashdot:
"The knowledge that makes us cherish innocence makes innocence unattainable." -- Irving Howe

posted by me

P . S .
P l e a s e
d o n ' t
l i t t e r .

:: 11:21:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Quote of the day ::

"As far as I am concerned we have found two WMD's and eliminated them."
- Tim Hutchings, RE the death of Saddam Hussein's sons, Qusay and Uday.

Send your own thoughts to the BBC.

Sample public comment:
"I'd like to hear the sound of two brinks being smashed together!"
- R.J. Gumby, RJGumby@Luddite.com, UK

posted by me

:: 10:45:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "9/11 report cites intelligence lapses" ::

'Best chance' to foil terror attacks missed because information on 2 eventual hijackers not passed on to FBI office, inquiry finds
From an AP report
Originally published July 24, 2003, 8:54 PM EDT

WASHINGTON -- Failure to share intelligence on two future Sept. 11 hijackers destroyed perhaps the best chance to stop the attacks, says the final report of a congressional inquiry that details a maddening government chain of actions not taken, information not shared and help not given.

The 850-page report, released Thursday, shows that wide-ranging parts of the nation's intelligence and law enforcement apparatus detected threads that were only later connected to the hijacking plot. Tips not shared with the San Diego FBI were key.

Taken together, the details show a pre-Sept. 11 federal government that handled terrorism information poorly and was unable to mount defenses against potential al-Qaida strikes inside the United States, according to congressional officials who put together the report.

OTHER REPORTS:
From the Austin American-Statesman:
Congress says U.S. intelligence missed changes to disrupt 9/11

The report, heavily redacted to protect classified information, provides new details about potential clues that were ignored or simply not shared between federal intelligence agencies:

— An FBI informant's contacts with at least two of the Sept. 11 hijackers in San Diego, "had they been capitalized on, would have given the San Diego field office perhaps the intelligence community's best chance to unravel the Sept. 11 plot."

— Parts of several intelligence reports warned about the possibility of an al-Qaida attack with airplanes in the United States, including one in December 1998 that referred to two individuals who had evaded checkpoints in a "dry run" at a New York airport.

— Several of the hijackers may have interacted with more than a dozen individuals known to the FBI because of current or previous investigations, contradicting earlier notions that the hijackers lived highly secluded lives and were therefore, difficult to spot.

Secrecy Surrounded US's Intelligence Before Attacks
From A Washington Post report:

President Bush was warned in a more specific way than previously known about intelligence suggesting that al Qaeda terrorists were seeking to attack the United States, a report on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks indicated yesterday.

posted by me

:: 10:10:00 PM [+] ::
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:: This is the end? ::

From an AP report:
Bush proclaims Saddam Hussein regime gone

(Washington-AP, July 23, 2003, 10:45 a.m.) President Bush on Wednesday hailed the deaths of Saddam Hussein's two sons as the clearest sign yet that "the former regime is gone and will not be coming back."

President Bush called Odai and Qusai Hussein, who were both killed on Tuesday during a firefight with U.S. forces, "two of the regime's chief henchmen ... responsible for torture, maiming and murder of countless Iraqis."

Still, in a Rose Garden appearance with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. occupation governor for Iraq, President Bush said that "a few remaining holdouts" loyal to Saddam's government are complicating efforts to stabilize Iraq and advance freedom.

While the White House was exhibiting obvious pleasure in deaths of the two Saddam sons, questions continued to dog the administration over the president's use of discredited intelligence to bolster his case for war with Iraq.

posted by me

:: 11:58:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Patriot Act Complaints Reviewed" ::

From Wired:

WASHINGTON - Justice Department investigators found that 34 claims were credible of more than 1,000 civil rights and civil liberties complaints stemming from anti-terrorism efforts, including allegations of intimidation and false arrest.

According to a report Monday, Glenn A. Fine, the Justice Department's inspector general, looked into allegations made between Dec. 16, 2002, and June 15 under oversight provisions of the USA Patriot Act. Many complaints were from Muslims or people of Arab descent who claimed they were beaten or verbally abused while being detained.

posted by me

:: 10:50:00 AM [+] ::
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:: /. ::

Amazon Plan Would Allow Text Search of Books

"The New York Times is running a story about a new development at Amazon - they plan to assemble "a searchable online archive with the texts of tens of thousands of books of nonfiction." Users would only be able to read a certain portion of the text from any one book, but it sounds promising nonetheless. The Times article suggests that this is part of a larger strategy to compete with Google and Yahoo by making Amazon an authoritative source of information on everything book-related."

[Join the Slashdot discussion]

posted by me

:: 11:15:00 AM [+] ::
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:: File-trading update ::

From internetnews.com:
Lawmaker Seeks Greater FBI Role in Online Piracy War
By Roy Mark

The Piracy Deterrence and Education Act of 2003 (H.R. 2517), introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith (R.-Tex.), calls for greater FBI and Department of Justice (DoJ) involvement in Hollywood's ongoing war against file swappers.

posted by me

:: 11:07:00 AM [+] ::
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:: The Pengiun & copyright violation ::

From internetnews.com:
SCO Escalates Linux Battle
By Thor Olavsrud

Laying the ground work to take its battle with Linux directly to Linux customers, SCO Group said it has received U.S. copyright registrations for its Unix System V source code, just the firepower it needs to pursue copyright violation suits.

Until now, SCO's conflict with Linux, which it claims is an unauthorized derivation of its Unix code, has centered on a breach of contract suit aimed at IBM. But with the copyrights in hand, SCO said using Linux is essentially software piracy, and it is ready to open a new revenue stream by giving Linux users immunity to copyright violations through licensing.

ALSO
From The Register:
SCO says its time for Linux users to pay up
By Ashlee Vance

SCO is giving the "tainted" Linux users out there a way to clean up their filthy ways via a licensing program that will begin in the coming weeks.

posted by me

:: 11:00:00 AM [+] ::
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:: So Weird ::

From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird:

Least Competent People
In Racine, Wis., in January, city and state officials knocked on Angie Anderson's door to inform her that they were about to capture a sickly owl in a tree in her yard, but she explained that the reason it appeared immobile was that it was a fake owl, purchased two years earlier from Wal-Mart for $14.99. And a consciousness-raising stunt by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals hit a snag in March at the Palm Springs Middle School in Hialeah, Fla., when PETA was informed that its sign in Spanish on its life-size cow prop, reading "Echar la Leche" (translation of their slogan, "Dump Dairy") was also slang for "ejaculate." [Newsday-AP, 1-20-03] [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 3-31-03]

Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net

posted by me

:: 10:08:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Kelly & the WMD mess in the UK ::

From The Guardian UK:
BBC admits Kelly was source
5pm: The BBC's credibility was called into question today after they named David Kelly as Andrew Gilligan's main source in the story which sparked the ferocious row with the government.

In a statement, the director of news Richard Sambrook revealed that the Ministry of Defence microbiologist, who committed suicide on Friday, was the principle source for reports that intelligence on Iraq was "sexed up".

ALSO:
Kelly 'hung out to dry' by MOD
Focus: A haunted man
'Events made David's life intolerable'

Kelly killed himself hours after sending an email to an unnamed journalist in which he told of 'many dark actors playing games'.

The words appeared to refer to officials at the Ministry of Defence and the UK intelligence agencies with whom he had sparred over interpretations of weapons reports, the New York Times reported.

The message gave no indication that he was depressed, and said he was waiting 'until the end of the week' before judging how his appearance before the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee had gone.

It also emerged last night that Kelly took his life 24 hours after being called to give evidence in private to the the Intelligence and Security Committee at Westminster.

posted by me

:: 5:04:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Bushwhacked Nation ::

Experts: Iraq nuke proof was thin"
From MSNBC.com:
Data of weapons work and evidence of research were missing

Even as the Bush administration concluded Iraq was reviving its nuclear weapons program, key signs — such as scientific data of weapons work and evidence of research by Iraq’s nuclear experts — were missing, according to several former intelligence officials.

ALSO...
From Slate:
Whopper of the Week: President Bush
Mr. President, it wasn't Saddam who kicked out the U.N. inspectors this last time. It was … um … nevermind.
By Timothy Noah

"[W]e gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region."

—President Bush, in a Q and A with reporters after an Oval Office meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, July 14.

posted by me

:: 10:52:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Interdisez ceci! ::

From cnn.com:

France bans 'e-mail' from vocabulary

PARIS, France (AP) -- Goodbye "e-mail", the French government says, and hello "courriel" -- the term that linguistically sensitive France is now using to refer to electronic mail in official documents.

The Culture Ministry has announced a ban on the use of "e-mail" in all government ministries, documents, publications or Web sites, the latest step to stem an incursion of English words into the French lexicon.

The ministry's General Commission on Terminology and Neology insists Internet surfers in France are broadly using the term "courrier electronique" (electronic mail) instead of e-mail -- a claim some industry experts dispute. "Courriel" is a fusion of the two words.

"Evocative, with a very French sound, the word 'courriel' is broadly used in the press and competes advantageously with the borrowed 'mail' in English," the commission has ruled.

posted by me

:: 8:09:00 PM [+] ::
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:: RE the FCC & Monopoly ::

From /.:
Congress May Overturn FCC's Media Consolidation Plan

"A congressional committee voted yesterday to prevent the FCC from allowing even more consolidation of the media industry. The original ruling was covered on Slashdot. The committee attached the pro-consumer proposal to a bill funding the Justice and State departments for 2004. But the Bush administration has threatened to veto the funding because they support ever-larger corporations owning ever-bigger chunks of the spectrum that theoretically belongs to the public. Clear Channel may need to cough up some more money for their lobbyists."

[Join the Slashdot discussion.]

posted by me

:: 10:59:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Tron Reloaded" ::

From Wired:
The sci-fi classic gets a sequel and an upgrade. The inside of your computer will never be the same.
By Chris Baker

A young hacker. An evil mainframe. A mind-bending motorcycle chase. Sound familiar? Long before The Matrix uploaded us into a computer world, Tron provided a glimpse of what life would be like with a master program in control.

Two decades of f/x innovation later, Tron fans will soon be back in the middle of the film's futuristic bike race, this time on the computer screen. Tron 2.0, due in August in the form of a PC game, upgrades the bright colors and sharp angles that made Tron a cult favorite - and finally puts you inside the system.

Game developer Monolith stayed true to the 1982 motion picture's minimalist aesthetic but upped the visual ante. Syd Mead, one of the film's production designers and a contributor to the game, was impressed with how well the developer understood and respected Tron's vision. "Monolith perfectly exploited the movie's look," says Mead, "but made it much more layered and colorized." He had a blast updating his designs for Tron's signature race sequence. "For the movie, the light cycles had to be geometrically simplistic to suit the severe limitations of the early computers. The game has the classic cycles, but I designed a new supercycle that incorporates some of my initial ideas, like making the rider visible."

The film's lo-res glory was deceptively difficult to replicate. Back in '82, CG visuals were expensive and time-consuming to produce, so Tron included just 13 minutes of 3-D animation. The rest consisted of old-school effects work and matte paintings. The gaudy glowing circuitry that crisscrosses every character and environment had to be hand-painted onto each frame of the film, adding eight months to production. For the game, the eerie effect is rendered on the fly thanks to a revamped gaming engine and a powerful pixel shader engineered by graphics chipmaker Nvidia. The result is a stunning neon gleam that pops off monitors and gives Tron 2.0 its distinctive visual style.

The core man-versus-machine story line was also ported to the game. The first-person shooter mode casts you as the son of the Tron program's creator (voiced by Bruce Boxleitner, who reprises his role). There are 31 levels spanning various 21st-century devices - PDA, laptop, Internet hub. Players rely on weapons and tactics that harness the particular computing power of each environment. Users, start your engines.

posted by me

:: 10:46:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Online music update (FYC - for you consideration) ::

The Chili Peppers' Sour Grapes Over iTunes
This rock group's refusal to be included on Apple's popular new music-download service is a backward move that's doomed to fall flat

These guys call themselves rock musicians? Where, I ask you, is their sense of storming the Establishment ramparts, of thumbing their noses at authority? Instead, by refusing to let Apple (AAPL ) sell their music online at the new iTunes Music Store, the Red Hot Chili Peppers are leading a vanguard in the wrong direction. They might as well put their clothes back on.

posted by me

:: 10:38:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Blogging for Bucks" ::

From a Wired report:

Journalist Rafat Ali is an unusual beast: a laid-off dot-com reporter who's making money online writing about, well, making money online.

Ali, a former reporter for Inside.com and an editor at the Silicon Alley Reporter, is making a comfortable living as an independent journalist-cum-blogger.

Working out of his East London flat, Ali publishes PaidContent, a one-man trade newsletter about the business of online media.

After six months of publication, Ali has earned as much as he would make in a year as an editor at the Silicon Alley Reporter. And he has just won a prestigious European Online Journalism Award for News Weblog of the Year.

Published daily, Ali's site mixes weblog entries with Ali's original reporting. The site boasts a healthy readership and a full roster of advertisers. Though Ali puts in odd hours (he works on New York time), he doesn't seem too stressed about paying the rent. Wired News asked him by e-mail how he does it.

Q: What are the sources of your income? Is PaidContent your only source of revenue, or do you have a trust fund?

A: Advertising and sponsorships. My newsletter commands premium rates. It goes out now to about 2,500 subscribers daily and (has) about 10,000 pageviews on the site daily. Plus, I estimate about 500 to 700 people get my (site summary) feed. I do not freelance. This is my sole work. And I wish I had a trust fund!

Q: Describe your typical working day.

A: I work U.S. hours. I wake up around 11 a.m. or noon every day. I ferret out the first set of links and then send out the newsletter by about 2 p.m. London time, which is 9 a.m. EST. Then I ... catch up on news outside my work (I read the Guardian and The New York Times online). Then I catch up on e-mail, breaking news if any, and update the site until about 5 p.m. I catch up with friends in London and U.S. on the phone. Then I do the last set of updates on the site. I might call up sources in U.S. on the West Coast. I do that until about 1 or 2 a.m.

However, I do travel a lot, mainly to conferences. In the last three or four months I've been to Germany, Holland, New York City three times, Boston, Spain. I live-blog these conferences as much as possible.

Q: How did PaidContent get started?

A: I started PaidContent.org in June 2002, as a way to raise my profile as a journalist.... I wanted to get out of my Silicon Alley Reporter job, and getting into this area seemed logical.

I kept doing it on the side, and started doing some original stories, which got linked from other places ...

ALSO from the piece:

One thing I guess I was smart about was starting an e-mail newsletter for PaidContent very early on. All the links/stories went into that daily newsletter, which helped solidify my position with the site. And the viral nature of e-mail perhaps helped.

And...

Q: What are the tools of your trade? How do you go about finding/blogging/publishing stories?

A: I am lucky in that I have done freelance Web design, so I'm pretty comfortable with design and technical issues. I use Movable Type, which is very good. I still think pMachine is the best nano-publishing tool but I am too lazy to move from MT to PM.

For blogging, I have my own personal portal of daily sources I go to. I get stories the same way every other journalist does it: working the phone, speaking to contacts, sources in the industry, getting tips.

I do, however, make sure that I get links or stories first, and from many non-obvious sources. As a journalist, I value my neutrality above all else, and then the speed.

Q: Do you work harder as an independent, or is life easier?

A: Harder. If anyone told you life as an independent is easy, well, dream on. If you work for yourself, you're working all the time. But it is the good kind of work, the work you want to wake up to every day.

Q: How do you motivate yourself to post every day?

A: My traffic figures, subscriptions to the newsletter, the e-mails I get. I know people are reading my work and expect it. It has become a social obligation of sorts -- in a very good way.

When I wake up every morning, the two steps I take from my bed to my work table are the best two steps I take -- the best two I have taken in all my life.

posted bye me

:: 9:55:00 AM [+] ::
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:: e-Mailing Dubya ::

White House e-mail system becomes less user-friendly
By John Markoff
The New York Times

Do you want to send an e-mail message to the White House?

Good luck.

In the past, to tell President Bush--or at least those assigned to read his mail--what was on your mind it was necessary only to sit down at a personal computer connected to the Internet and dash off a note to president@whitehouse.gov.

But this week, Tom Matzzie, an online organizer with the AFL-CIO, discovered that communicating with the White House had become a bit more daunting. When Matzzie sent an e-mail protest against a Bush administration policy, the message was bounced back with an automated reply, saying he had to send it again in a new way.

Under a system deployed on the White House Web site for the first time last week, those who want to send a message to President Bush must now navigate as many as nine Web pages and fill out a detailed form that starts by asking whether the message sender supports White House policy or differs with it.

The White House says the new e-mail system, at www.whitehouse.gov/webmail, is an effort to be more responsive to the public ...

Join the Slashdot discussion.

by sweeney37 (325921)

> He said he particularly disliked being forced to specify whether he was offering a "supporting comment" or a "differing opinion" to Bush.

So when those emails come in, I guess they go in either one of two mailboxes. "With us" or "Against Us".

The "Against Us" email automatically get forwarded to Ashcroft.

posted by me

:: 9:43:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: TIA update ::

Senate votes to ax computer dragnet funds
By Reuters
July 17, 2003, 8:15 PM PT

WASHINGTON--The U.S. Senate voted Thursday to cut off funding for a widely criticized computer-surveillance program that would comb travel records, credit-card bills and other private records to sniff out suspected terrorists.

In a military spending bill it passed unanimously, the Senate forbade the Defense Department to spend any portion of its $369 billion budget on the Terrorism Information Awareness program, brushing aside a request by the Bush administration to keep development efforts intact.

"No funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the Department of Defense...may be obligated or expended on research and development on the Terrorism Information Awareness program," the bill said.

The fate of the $54 million program will likely be determined in negotiations with the House of Representatives ...

posted by me

:: 9:36:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Injected under your skin" ::

From cnn.com:
Implantable human tracking chip launched
Friday, July 18, 2003 Posted: 9:59 AM EDT (1359 GMT)

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- Borrowing from technology for tracking pets, a U.S. company on Thursday launched Mexican sales of microchips that can be implanted under a person's skin and used to confirm health history and identity.

The microchip, the size of a grain of rice, is implanted in the arm or hip. Hospital officials and security guards use a scanning device to download a serial number, which they then use to access blood type, name and other information on a computer.

posted by me

:: 9:30:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "The spies who pushed for war" ::

Julian Borger reports on the shadow rightwing intelligence network set up in Washington to second-guess the CIA and deliver a justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force
Thursday July 17, 2003
The Guardian

As the CIA director, George Tenet, arrived at the Senate yesterday to give secret testimony on the Niger uranium affair, it was becoming increasingly clear in Washington that the scandal was only a small, well-documented symptom of a complete breakdown in US intelligence that helped steer America into war.

It represents the Bush administration's second catastrophic intelligence failure. But the CIA and FBI's inability to prevent the September 11 attacks was largely due to internal institutional weaknesses. This time the implications are far more damaging for the White House, which stands accused of politicising and contaminating its own source of intelligence.

According to former Bush officials, all defence and intelligence sources, senior members of the administration created a shadow agency of Pentagon analysts staffed mainly by ideological amateurs to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defence Intelligence Agency.

The agency, known as the Office of Special Plans (OSP) was set up by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to second-guess CIA information and operated under the patronage of hardline conservatives in the top rungs of the administration, the Pentagon and at the White House, including Vice-President Dick Cheney.

The ideologically driven network functioned like a shadow government, much of it off the official payroll and beyond congressional oversight. But it proved powerful enough to prevail in a struggle with the state department and the CIA by establishing a justification for war.

posted by me

:: 11:11:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Son of a Bush & the WMD deception ::

From MoveOn.org:

Three weeks ago, MoveOn launched a petition asking Congress to create an independent commission to investigate whether the Bush Administration manipulated and distorted evidence to take the country to war in Iraq. Over 190,000 of us joined the effort. Now Congress is literally taking up our call: Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has written a bill that would create just such a commission, and it's already co-sponsored by a wide array of moderate Democrats -- including many who voted for the war.

This commission can really happen -- and the truth about the Bush Administration's manipulation of evidence can really come out -- but we'll need your help. We're launching a drive to get every member of Congress to personally pledge to support and vote for the independent commission. Please take a moment to ask Congressman Bartlett to pledge today.

Tell Congress to Do Its Job!

Across the country, hundreds of thousands of citizens are asking their Members of Congress to pledge to support an independent investigative commission on WMD evidence.

If you sign right now, your comment may be among those read on the House floor by some of the Representatives pushing this resolution. Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), George Miller (D-CA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), and a number of others are looking forward to hearing what you have to say and reading some of the messages into the Congressional Record on the House floor.

It's hardly a secret that members of the Bush Administration used misleading and scanty evidence to bolster their case. As US News and World Report noted in early June, even Colin Powell became alarmed at the level of intelligence distortion. When he read the first draft of his speech to the UN -- prepared for Powell by Vice President Richard Cheney's chief of staff -- he was so upset at the weakness of some of the evidence that he lost his temper, throwing several pages in the air and declaring, "I'm not reading this. This is bullshit." (US News and World Report, 6/9/03)

ALSO:
Truth and Consequences
By Bruce B. Auster, Mark Mazzetti and Edward T. Pound
US News & World Report

Monday 02 June 2003

New questions about U.S. intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass terror

On the evening of February 1, two dozen American officials gathered in a spacious conference room at the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Va.

The time had come to make the public case for war against Iraq. For six hours that Saturday, the men and women of the Bush administration argued about what Secretary of State Colin Powell should--and should not--say at the United Nations Security Council four days later. Not all the secret intelligence about Saddam Hussein's misdeeds, they found, stood up to close scrutiny. At one point during the rehearsal, Powell tossed several pages in the air. "I'm not reading this," he declared. "This is bulls- - -."

Just how good was America's intelligence on Iraq? Seven weeks after the end of the war, no hard evidence has been turned up on the ground to support the charge that Iraq posed an imminent threat to U.S. national security--no chemical weapons in the field, no Scud missiles in the western desert, no biological agents. At least not yet. As a result, questions are being raised about whether the Bush administration overstated the case against Saddam Hussein. History shows that the Iraqi regime used weapons of mass terror against Iraqi Kurds and during the war against Iran in the 1980s. But it now appears that American intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs was sometimes sketchy, occasionally politicized, and frequently the subject of passionate disputes inside the government. Today, the CIA is conducting a review of its prewar intelligence, at the request of the House Intelligence Committee, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has conceded that Iraq may have destroyed its chemical weapons months before the war.

posted by me

:: 10:28:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Truth is stranger ..." ::

Jimmy Hoffa and Nessie: Two big clues in one day
Police digging in Michigan, fossil find in Scotland
Zev Singer
The Ottawa Citizen; with files from CanWest News Service

Jimmy Hoffa and the Loch Ness monster may have more in common than the fact that they both sleep with the fishes.

Just as authorities were digging into a Michigan back yard yesterday with renewed hope of finding James R. Hoffa -- whose middle initial stands for Riddle -- Scottish scientists were conferring on the discovery of bones matching those of the Loch Ness monster.

The independent discoveries, with impeccably coincidental timing, have shed light on two cases that have long been among the world's most conspicuously unanswered questions.

posted by me

:: 1:27:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Archaelogy in the "Quote Marks" ::

From Wired:
"Most archaeological sites are sticks, stones and bones. The organic content gets eaten up. And so much of our history has been created on something edible, like people or paper."
— An excavator of old shipwrecks is excited by an ancient Black Sea find that preserves rare cultural insight.

posted by me

:: 11:58:00 AM [+] ::
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:: P2P update ::

From Wired:
Upload a File, Go to Prison
By Katie Dean

A new bill proposed in Congress on Wednesday would land a person in prison for five years and impose a fine of $250,000 for uploading a single file to a peer-to-peer network.

The bill was introduced by Reps. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Howard Berman (D-Calif.). They said the bill is designed to increase domestic and international enforcement of copyright laws.

Jason Schultz, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, called the bill "a sign of desperation" by the recording industry and Hollywood as they try to hold on to their business models.

The bill, called the Author, Consumer and Computer Owner Protection and Security Act of 2003, or ACCOPS, would allocate more money to the justice department to investigate copyright crimes: up to $15 million a year, compared with the current budget of $10 million. The bill would also enable information sharing between countries to help in copyright enforcement abroad.

The bill "clarifies" that uploading a single file of copyright content qualifies as a felony. Penalties for such an offense include up to five years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine. In addition, filming a movie in a theater without authorization would immediately qualify as a federal offense.

posted by me

:: 11:56:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Soldiers Stuck in Iraq" ::

From an ABCNEWS.com report
By Jeffrey Kofman

FALLUJAH, Iraq (July 16) -- The sergeant at the 2nd Battle Combat Team Headquarters pulled me aside in the corridor. "I've got my own 'Most Wanted' list," he told me.

He was referring to the deck of cards the U.S. government published, featuring Saddam Hussein, his sons and other wanted members of the former Iraqi regime.

"The aces in my deck are Paul Bremer, Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush and Paul Wolfowitz," he said.

He was referring to the four men who are running U.S. policy here in Iraq -- the four men who are ultimately responsible for the fate of U.S. troops here.

Those four are not popular at 2nd BCT these days. It is home to 4,000 troops from the 2nd Brigade of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division.

The soldiers were deployed to Kuwait last September. They were among the first troops in Baghdad during the war. And now they've been in the region longer than other troops: 10 months and counting.

They were told they'd be going home in May. Then in early July. Then late July. Then last week they heard that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had mentioned them on Capitol Hill.

‘I Don’t Care Anymore’

Now comes word from the Pentagon: Not so fast.

The U.S. military command in Iraq said Tuesday it plans to complete the withdrawal of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division by September, but officials said they could make no hard promises because of the unsettled state of security in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq.

"If Donald Rumsfeld were sitting here in front of us, what would you say to him?" I asked a group of soldiers who gathered around a table, eager to talk to a visiting reporter.

"If he was here," said Pfc. Jason Punyahotra, "I would ask him why we're still here, why we've been told so many times and it's changed."

posted by me

:: 5:56:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Another poll ::

This one from aohell:

Do you think the U.S. has a clear plan for post-war Iraq?
79% No
21% Yes
Total votes: 64,013

posted by me

:: 5:48:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Supper poll on Bush ::

From Wolf Blitzer Reports @ cnn.com:

Created: Wednesday, July 16, 2003, at 14:10:39 EST
Do you have confidence in the way President Bush is handling the situation in Iraq?
Yes 5% 121 votes
No 95% 2466 votes
Total: 2587 votes

I'm proud to announce a rare moment of being in the majority!

posted by me

:: 4:30:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Valium turns 40 ::

From an AP report
By Linda A. Johnson

The drug owes its success to the stubborn streak of chemist Leo Sternbach, who refused to quit after his boss at Hoffmann-La Roche ended a project to develop a tranquilizer to compete with a rival company's drug.

Sternbach tested one last version and in just a day, he got the results: The compound made animals relaxed and limp.

Sternbach had made the discovery that eventually led to Valium. It was approved for use in 1963 and became the country's most prescribed drug from 1969 to 1982.

``It had no unpleasant side effects. It gave you a feeling of well-being,'' Sternbach, now 95, said recently at Hoffmann-La Roche's headquarters in Nutley. ``Only when the sales figures came in, then I realized how important it was.''

The Roche Group, Hoffman-La Roche's parent, sold nearly 2.3 billion pills stamped with the trademark ``V'' at its 1978 peak.

While its name was derived from the Latin word for being strong, Valium soon picked up nicknames: ``Executive Excedrin,'' for its use by the corporate jet set, and ``Mother's Little Helper,'' the title of a classic Rolling Stones tune about an overstressed housewife who ``goes running for the shelter of a mother's little helper.''

Valium also was referred to as a ``doll'' - one of the pills popped by female characters in novelist Jacqueline Susann's racy 1966 best-seller ``Valley of the Dolls.'' Most of the prescriptions were written by family doctors rather than psychiatrists, and the majority of users were women.

``It was chic,'' said Dr. Norman Sussman, professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine. ``Everyone was on it and talking about it'' in an era of anxiety called the rat race.

posted by me

:: 9:01:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Could your computer be a criminal?" ::

PCs hijacked to send spam, serve porn, steal credit cards
By Bob Sullivan
MSNBC

One thousand home computers hijacked and used to serve up pornography. Perhaps tens of thousands co-opted by the “SoBig” virus, many of them turned into spam machines. Hundreds of other home computers loaded with secret software used to process stolen credit cards. If your biggest computer crime fear was lost or stolen files, think again: Someone may be using your PC to commit crimes.

posted by me

:: 8:53:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Exhuming McCarthy! WHOO! ::

From Time.com:
I N T E R V I E W : 10 Questions For Ann Coulter

When Ann Coulter published Slander last year, she didn't just score a surprise No. 1 best seller; she also discovered an entire new audience hungry for her notoriously sharp-tongued, unabashedly right-wing rhetoric. Now she's back with Treason (Crown Forum; 355 pages), and as TIME's Lev Grossman discovered, she has in no way mellowed with age.

So what's the new book about?
The idea of the book is that liberals have a tendency to take the position most disadvantageous to their country. This isn't anything new. They have taken patriotism off the table as a topic for political debate. And they've done that by invoking McCarthyism, a myth of their own creation.

Do you see a way forward for Americans to come together politically, as a country?
Oh, yes. I do. The Democratic Party has got to go away. It's got to just hang up its stirrups. I really think it has functionally gone the way of the Whigs, and it's just a matter of enough Democrats figuring that out. Can't both parties agree on the defense of America? I mean, it was not like this in World War II. The Republicans were not constantly taunting F.D.R., "Well, he doesn't have Hitler yet! He doesn't have Hitler! Where are these alleged death camps?" The country pulled together! Both parties!

Are you concerned that President Bush may have exaggerated evidence for the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
No. People who love their country ought to be more concerned about what happened to those weapons. Are they in Syria? Are they in al-Qaeda's hands? Are they going to end up in New York? And instead, all we get is female taunting from the Democrats.

posted by me

:: 5:28:00 PM [+] ::
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:: TIA update ::

From Wired:
Funding for TIA All But Dead

The controversial Terrorism Information Awareness program, which would troll Americans' personal records to find terrorists before they strike, may soon face the same fate Congress meted out to John Ashcroft in his attempt to create a corps of volunteer domestic spies: death by legislation.

The Senate's $368 billion version of the 2004 defense appropriations bill, released from committee to the full Senate on Wednesday, contains a provision that would deny all funds to, and thus would effectively kill, the Terrorism Information Awareness program, formerly known as Total Information Awareness. TIA's projected budget for 2004 is $169 million.

TIA is the brainchild of John Poindexter, a key figure from the Iran-Contra scandal, who now heads the research effort at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Critics on the left and right have called TIA an attempt to impose Big Brother on Americans. The program would use advanced data-mining tools and a mammoth database to find patterns of terrorist activities in electronic data trails left behind by everyday life.

The Senate bill's language is simple but comprehensive: "No funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the Department of Defense ... or to any other department, agency or element of the Federal Government, may be obligated or expended on research and development on the Terrorism Information Awareness program."

The removal of funds from the program marks the strongest Congressional reaction to TIA since it first gained prominent media attention in November 2002.

ALSO from Wired:
Pentagon Alters LifeLog Project

Monday is the deadline for researchers to submit bids to build the Pentagon's so-called LifeLog project, an experiment to create an all-encompassing über-diary.

But while teams of academics and entrepreneurs are jostling for the 18- to 24-month grants to work on the program, the Defense Department has changed the parameters of the project to respond to a tide of privacy concerns.

Lifelog is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's effort to gather every conceivable element of a person's life, dump it all into a database, and spin the information into narrative threads that trace relationships, events and experiences.

It's an attempt, some say, to make a kind of surrogate, digitized memory.

"My father was a stroke victim, and he lost the ability to record short-term memories," said Howard Shrobe, an MIT computer scientist who's leading a team of professors and researchers in a LifeLog bid. "If you ever saw the movie Memento, he had that. So I'm interested in seeing how memory works after seeing a broken one. LifeLog is a chance to do that."

Researchers who receive LifeLog grants will be required to test the system on themselves. Cameras will record everything they do during a trip to Washington, D.C., and global-positioning satellite locators will track where they go. Biomedical sensors will monitor their health. All the e-mail they send, all the magazines they read, all the credit card payments they make will be indexed and made searchable.

By capturing experiences, Darpa claims that LifeLog could help develop more realistic computerized training programs and robotic assistants for battlefield commanders.

Defense analysts and civil libertarians, on the other hand, worry that the program is another piece in an ongoing Pentagon effort to keep tabs on American citizens. LifeLog could become the ultimate profiling tool, they fear.

posted by me

:: 9:49:00 PM [+] ::
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:: P2Politics? ::

From Slate:
Peer-to-Peer Politics
Should Howard Dean be a little bit afraid of the Internet?
By Chris Suellentrop

It's too early to say for certain, but Howard Dean may turn out to be the Napster of presidential politics: the force that enables the Internet to upend an entire industry, threatens to transform the way it collects money, and opens the eyes of the average person to yet another way to use the Net. But if Dean is a political Napster, it will probably mean more for politics in general than it means for Howard Dean. After all, two years after Napster went dark, people are still logging on to the Internet to swap music files. Ultimately, Napster empowered music users more than it empowered itself. Something analogous will probably be true with Internet politics. That's good news for political junkies, but it could be bad news for Howard Dean.

posted by me

:: 9:36:00 PM [+] ::
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:: RE Ari ::

From The Seattle PI:
Media will miss doing battle with ...
By HELEN THOMAS

Fleischer, who has taken his share of potshots at the French, recently joked about the fact that his last day in the White House will be ... "Bastille Day," commemorating the French Revolution.

He expressed hope that at his final briefing, he would be accorded "a brief, momentary honeymoon, easy, nice, softball questions, Helen behaving herself, hopefully."

I confess, I did ask Ari some tough questions -- questions I would have preferred to ask the president if he had been accessible, such as: "Why would we kill thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians to take out one man?"

I believe that it is important to pin down official government spokesmen and go beyond their spin to better understand momentous White House moves. It's the job of the media to seek answers and demand accountability from our elected officials on a daily basis. I like to think we do that as surrogates for all of the American people.

ALSO:
From Newsday.com:
CIA Work 'Darn Good'
Bush defends intelligence used in State of the Union

posted by me

:: 9:18:00 PM [+] ::
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:: So Weird ::

From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird:

Anthony Perks, an endocrinologist and professor of gynecology at the University of British Columbia, reporting in the July issue of Discover magazine, set out his unique theory of the symbolic meaning of the prehistoric Stonehenge monument in England: The paired, capped stones (one smooth, one rough) represent the female's smooth skin as against the male's rough skin, and the smooth stones match the locations of the vulva's labia minora and labia majora, with an altar stone in the position of the clitoris. "Stonehenge," he said, "could represent the opening by which the earth mother gave birth to the plants and animals on which ancient people so depended." [Discover, July 2003]

Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net

posted by me

:: 11:06:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Good planet hunting ::

Distant giant planet is oldest yet discovered
David Adam, science correspondent
Saturday July 12, 2003
The Guardian

The oldest and most distant planet yet discovered has been found 5,600 light years from Earth. It is 800 times bigger than our planet.

The Jupiter-like gas giant is believed to have been formed 13bn years ago, more than 8bn years before any other planet identified so far, and a mere 1bn years after the big bang.

The discovery, announced yesterday, could force astronomers to rethink theories of how planets are made. The early universe had little of the relatively heavy elements such as carbon, silicon and oxygen, which experts currently think are needed to kick-start planet creation.

"This offers tantalising evidence that planet formation processes are quite robust and efficient at making use of a small amount of heavier elements," said Professor Steinn Sigurdsson of Pennsylvania State University, who led the research. "This implies that planet formation happened very early in the universe."

ALSO...

The fact that planets can form in such an unlikely place means there could be a lot more of them out there than astronomers thought.

"This is tremendously encouraging that planets are probably abundant in globular star clusters," said Professor Harvey Richer of the University of British Columbia.

More planets means a greater chance of life; and the chance of forms of life that arose and died out billions of years before the Earth was even formed.

posted by me

:: 9:44:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Surveillance Nation ::

From The Village Voice:
Big Brother Gets a Brain
by Noah Shachtman

The cameras are already in place. The computer code is being developed at a dozen or more major companies and universities. And the trial runs have already been planned.

Everything is set for a new Pentagon program to become perhaps the federal government's widest reaching, most invasive mechanism yet for keeping us all under watch. Not in the far-off, dystopian future. But here, and soon.

The military is scheduled to issue contracts for Combat Zones That See, or CTS, as early as September. The first demonstration should take place before next summer, according to a spokesperson. Approach a checkpoint at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, during the test and CTS will spot you. Turn the wheel on this sprawling, 8,656-acre army encampment, and CTS will record your action. Your face and license plate will likely be matched to those on terrorist watch lists. Make a move considered suspicious, and CTS will instantly report you to the authorities.

Fort Belvoir is only the beginning for CTS. Its architects at the Pentagon say it will help protect our troops in cities like Baghdad, where for the past few weeks fleeting attackers have been picking off American fighters in ones and twos. But defense experts believe the surveillance effort has a second, more sinister, purpose: to keep entire cities under an omnipresent, unblinking eye.

This isn't some science fiction nightmare. Far from it. CTS depends on parts you could get, in a pinch, at Kmart.

posted by me

:: 9:27:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Also from the LA Times story ::

In a rare direct shot at the president involving national security policy, Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said, "This may be the first time in recent history that a president knowingly misled the American people during the State of the Union address. This was not a mistake. It was no oversight and it was no error."

posted by me

:: 9:07:00 AM [+] ::
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:: White House on Defensive Over Intelligence ::

From the LA Times:

WASHINGTON — The White House scrambled Tuesday to defend President Bush's credibility, one day after conceding that he had been wrong to assert in his State of the Union address in January that Saddam Hussein had tried to obtain uranium from Africa.

That statement had been one of Bush's central arguments as he presented the case for war against Iraq to the United States and the world.

At the core of the claim was a British report, now acknowledged to have been bogus, that Iraq had tried to obtain a form of uranium, known as yellowcake, that can be used to make a nuclear bomb. The administration used the British allegation to bolster its assertion that Hussein had embarked on a program to build weapons of mass destruction that would threaten the United States.

On Tuesday, the administration's use of that intelligence entered the presidential election debate.

Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, a candidate for the Democratic nomination, called for a broad inquiry into the intelligence available to the administration as it prepared for war. Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, another Democratic hopeful, agreed, saying, "This continued recklessness represents a failure of presidential leadership."

And Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), joining the call for an investigation, said: "It's bad enough that such a glaring blunder became part of the president's case for war. It's far worse if the case for war was made by deliberate deception We cannot risk American lives based on shoddy intelligence or outright lies."

posted by me

:: 8:58:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Wired "Quote Marks" ::

"No matter how skeptical you are … for a split second you abandon all logic and think, wow, there's a freakin' UFO hovering three feet from me."
— Writer Clive Thompson on the mad-scientist sensation he gets from watching an antigravity craft levitate six feet off the ground.

posted by me

:: 8:16:00 AM [+] ::
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:: The Blair Journalism Project ::

Editor loses job over 'Caddyshack' embellishment
Associated Press

ROSWELL, N.M. -- The sports editor of the Roswell Daily Record has been fired for fabricating part of a news story about a golf tournament in which he quoted a fictional character from the movie "Caddyshack."

Gregory M. Jones was dismissed by the Daily Record on June 17, the day after his article about a Father's Day golf tournament at the Roswell Country Club appeared on the sports page, editor Mike Bush said.

"He got a bunch of scores and wanted to make it more interesting," Bush said Thursday. He said he did not know if Jones attended the tournament.

He said the newspaper insists on accuracy and objectivity and "we don't tolerate anything less than that."

Jones, 24, said he was shocked by his firing and did not intend to deceive his editors or readers.

"It was tongue-in-cheek. It was sports. I was trying to be light and breezy. I was trying to put out a story that people might like to read," he said in a telephone interview.

Jones was hired in July 2002 as a reporter, was promoted to state-business editor in November and became sports editor in April.

Bush said the story contained three fictitious paragraphs referring to a "Carl Spangler" who claimed to work at the course. In "Caddyshack," Bill Murray played a golf course worker named Carl Spackler.

Jones quoted "Spangler" as saying he invented a new kind of grass for the tournament. The quotation in Jones' story is taken directly from "Caddyshack."

" 'This is a hybrid ... of bluegrass, Kentucky bluegrass, featherbed bent and northern California sensemilia (sic),' " Spangler said. " 'The amazing stuff about this, is that you can play 36 holes on it in the afternoon, take it home and just get stoned to the bejeezus-belt that night on the stuff.' "

Bush said the Daily Record received "a couple of complaints" about the story. The newspaper ran a correction.

posted by me

:: 7:35:00 AM [+] ::
...