:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 11.30.2005 ::

:: "Podcast Chaos Be Gone" ::

From Wired News
The anarchic state of audio on the internet is about to become more organized. A handful of new technologies scan entire podcasts for specific words. By Kim Zetter.

Story links:
Podzinger
Blinkx
Podscope

posted by me

:: 9:33:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Protestors unveil monument honoring Sheehan" ::

Bush supporters, opponents converge in Texas for dueling ralliesANGELA K. BROWN
San Jose Mercury News

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) - Three months after the mother of a fallen soldier led a 26-day anti-war vigil near President Bush's ranch, peace activists and Bush supporters converged again Saturday for dueling rallies that drew much smaller crowds.

Cindy Sheehan, whose 24-year-old Casey died in Iraq, called for anti-war activists to return to Crawford this week as Bush celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 12:51:00 PM [+] ::
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:: RE Black Friday ::

Put Your Money Where Your Mind Is
From Wired News

Kalle Lasn, founder of Buy Nothing Day, acknowledges that the movement's gone global thanks to the net. But he calls bloggers passive and claims iPods cut us off from the real world. Wired News interview by David Cohn.

posted by me

:: 9:51:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "House Erupts in War Debate" ::

From Los Angeles Times
By Maura Reynolds

Lawmakers launch personal attacks as Republicans force a vote on whether to pull out of Iraq immediately. The measure is rejected.

WASHINGTON — House Republicans forced a vote Friday over a proposal to begin the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, sparking a raw and raucous debate during which lawmakers hurled insults and jeered each other.

The GOP-sponsored proposal, intended to fail and aimed at embarrassing war critics, was overwhelmingly defeated shortly before midnight, 403 to 3.

But the debate vividly exposed the widening rifts between Democrats and Republicans over the course of the war — a disagreement that increasingly has dominated congressional proceedings.

The resolution grew out of a proposal made Thursday by Rep. John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania — a Democrat, a decorated Marine Corps veteran of the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and one of the House's most respected military hawks — that the United States start pulling out of Iraq.

Republicans responded Friday by introducing a simplified version of his plan — a move Democrats denounced as a political stunt designed to force the hand of Murtha and his fellow Democrats.

But Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon), who sponsored the resolution, responded: "This is a legitimate question."

Explaining his demand for a vote, Hunter said the escalating debate over the war had left the impression around the world "that Congress is withdrawing support of the mission in Iraq."

During the debate, House members frequently spoke out of turn. The presiding officer repeatedly called for order.

At one point, Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. of Tennessee and other Democrats surged toward the Republican side of the chamber, after Rep. Jean Schmidt, an Ohio Republican, suggested that Murtha — the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee and the recipient of two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star — was a coward.

Read the entire story here.

posted by me

:: 6:59:00 AM [+] ::
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:: RE Bob ::

Woodward Enters--Not Breaks--the Story
By David Corn
The Nation
via Yahoo! News

This week, Bob Woodward didn't break a story. He entered the story. On Wednesday, The Washington Post, Woodward's home base, disclosed that two days earlier the nation's most prominent reporter had given a sworn deposition to special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. According to a statement issued by Woodward, the week after Fitzgerald indicted Scooter Libby, Fitzgerald asked Woodward to come in for a chat--under oath. What had happened was that a senior administration official had recently revealed to Fitzgerald that in mid-June 2003--a month before conservative columnist Bob Novak published the administration leak that outed Valerie Wilson as an undercover CIA official--this Bush official had told Woodward that Valerie Wilson worked for the CIA as a WMD analyst. (The official apparently has not permitted Woodward to disclose his or her name publicly.) This revelation changes the chronology of the leak case. Previously, Libby's June 23, 2003 conversation with New York Times reporter Judith Miller was the first known instance of a Bush administration official telling a reporter about former ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife and her employment at the CIA. Now, it turns out, another top administration figure shared this classified information with Woodward a week or so earlier.

Yet another round of Plamegate guessing has exploded.

Read more here.

ALSO

Post urged to probe Woodward's role in CIA case
Reuters

Miller Gets Distinguished Company in the Hot Seat
NPR (audio)

Watergate hero shame over White House leak
Independent, UK

Source: Cheney Isn't Woodward's Source
Washington Post

posted by me

:: 11:13:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "An Iraq Deadline for Bush" ::

From The Washington Post
An Op-Ed piece By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, November 18, 2005; Page A23

This will be remembered as the week when President Bush lost control over the Iraq war debate. His administration has perhaps six months to get things right. If the situation in Iraq fails to improve significantly, public pressure for withdrawal will become irresistible.

There was a political thunderclap across the capital yesterday when Rep. John Murtha -- Marine veteran, defense specialist, longtime hawk and traditional supporter of presidential prerogatives in foreign policy -- called for pulling American troops out of Iraq. American soldiers, he said, "have done all they can in Iraq." Continued engagement by American troops was "not in the best interest of the United States."

Murtha's comments came just days after the Senate sent Bush a signal of its own. Only five of 44 Democrats voted against the party's amendment to the defense bill calling for estimated timetables on withdrawing from Iraq. The tally pointed to the end of Democratic fear of retaliation from Bush on national security issues. The political shock and awe that the administration regularly deployed after Sept. 11, 2001, no longer works.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:55:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "More than 80,000 held by US since 9/11 attacks" ::

From The Guardian
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington

· Growing worries over treatment of prisoners
· Fury in Europe over secret CIA terror suspect flights

The US has detained more than 80,000 people in facilities from Afghanistan to Cuba since the attacks on the World Trade Centre four years ago, the Pentagon said yesterday. The disclosure comes at a time of growing unease about Washington's treatment of prisoners in its "war on terror" and Europe's unknowing help in the CIA's practice of rendition.

The Bush administration has defended the detentions from criticism by human rights organisations, saying the interrogation of suspected militants has been crucial in its attempt to dismantle terror networks. At least 14,500 people are in US custody in connection with the war on terror, Pentagon officials in Washington and Baghdad said yesterday. Some 13,814 people are being held in Iraq and there are approximately 500 at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.

But it was an even less visible aspect of America's detention policy that was causing a furore in European capitals yesterday: the CIA practice of rendering terror suspects for interrogation to secret prisons in third countries. Washington faced mounting pressure yesterday to respond to reports of secret landings by private jets used by the CIA to transport terror suspects in at least six countries. "If these allegations turn out to be true, the crucial thing is whether these flights landed in the member states with or without the knowledge and approval of the authorities," Terry Davis, the Council of Europe's secretary general, said.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:51:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Taking Back the Web" ::

How wikis are changing our view of the world
By Daniel Terdiman
CNET News.com

Moments after the eye of Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, news agencies everywhere rushed to report the story. But among the quickest to begin offering comprehensive coverage wasn't a formal news organization at all.

Instead, it was a loose collection of self-appointed "citizen journalists" reporting, linking and photographing from Louisiana and around the world. And the organization for which they were working, called Wikinews, wasn't paying them a dime.

"With all of that bad news, it's nice to know that at least one cool thing has emerged from this: The Katrina Information Map, which brings together the power of wikis and Google Maps to create a useful public resource for tracking or reporting flood damage," former Louisianan Matt Barton wrote on the blog Kairosnews. "I see that most people are using the service to inquire about loved ones or report flooding on various streets."

News is one of the most effective uses of an oddly named technology created in 1995 by a Portland, Ore., programmer named Ward Cunningham, which was based on the idea that information should be shared openly and remain accountable to everyone. Known as "wiki," the software allows the creation of Web pages that can be edited indefinitely by anyone with access, regardless of who wrote the original work.

Although initially conceived as a form of communal publishing, the wiki is quickly evolving into a multipurpose interactive phenomenon. As evidenced in the aftermath of Katrina and the London bombings a month earlier, wikis can be a life-saving resource that provides real-time collaboration, instant grassroots news and crucial meeting places where none exist in the physical world.

The popularity and proliferation of wikis are particularly significant in an age of increasing distrust of mainstream media. In many ways, wikis are emblematic of the democratizing principles of the Information Age that seek to give voice to ordinary citizens.

"With the distributed nature of the Internet, you now have the ability for people with common interests to rapidly aggregate themselves and apply their nearly unbounded knowledge of different subjects into cohesive organization in a matter of hours," said Rob Kline a product manager for Marchex who helped create the KatrinaHelp.info wiki. "Because it's distributed, it's global, so when I have to go to sleep, someone else can pick it up and keep working on it."

Read more here.

ALSO
from CNET News.com
Taking Back the Web Day 1
Grassroots 'taste makers' define opinions

Late on a Sunday evening last month, a caravan of mildly intoxicated moviegoers wound their way down a dark gravel road to a shooting range at the outskirts of Austin, Texas.

Most of the cars were coming from an advance screening of the film "Domino," which included an appearance by its screenwriter. The studio had supplied drinks at the theater and was sponsoring a shotgun-toting after-party at the insistence of Harry Knowles, whose "Ain't It Cool News" site of rumors, reviews and industry gossip has a wide following from "fanboy" circles to studio offices.

Hardly a typical release event--but well worth the price of a few liability lawyers to put Knowles in a good mood. For he and others like him are, in effect, defining America's tastes.

"I'm sure we made studio lawyers go into hissy fits," said the flame-haired, larger-than-life Knowles, 33, who called the movie "one hell of a film" in a subsequent review posted on the Web site he founded a decade ago. "But still, we actually got them to loosen up and have fun with their own movie, which is something that rarely happens in this industry."

posted by me

:: 12:51:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "US Senate wants Iraq exit reports" ::

BBC News

The US Senate has voted to demand regular reports from the White House on progress towards a phased pullout of troops from Iraq. The Republican-controlled body supported the plan in a 79-19 vote.

But senators rejected a Democratic proposal that called on President George W Bush to outline a timetable for the withdrawal.

The move comes after the UK announced it could begin pulling out its troops from the beginning of next year.

posted by me

:: 12:14:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "The White House Criminal Conspiracy" ::

The Nation
[from the November 14, 2005 issue]
By ELIZABETH DE LA VEGA

Legally, there are no significant differences between the investor fraud perpetrated by Enron CEO Ken Lay and the prewar intelligence fraud perpetrated by George W. Bush. Both involved persons in authority who used half-truths and recklessly false statements to manipulate people who trusted them. There is, however, a practical difference: The presidential fraud is wider in scope and far graver in its consequences than the Enron fraud. Yet thus far the public seems paralyzed.

In response to the outcry raised by Enron and other scandals, Congress passed the Corporate Corruption Bill, which President Bush signed on July 30, 2002, amid great fanfare. Bush declared that he was signing the bill because of his strong belief that corporate officers must be straightforward and honest. If they were not, he said, they would be held accountable.

Ironically, the day Bush signed the Corporate Corruption Bill, he and his aides were enmeshed in an orchestrated campaign to trick the country into taking the biggest risk imaginable--a war. Indeed, plans to attack Iraq were already in motion. In June Bush announced his "new" pre-emptive strike strategy. On July 23, 2002, the head of British intelligence advised Prime Minister Tony Blair, in the then-secret Downing Street Memo, that "military action was now seen as inevitable" and that "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Bush had also authorized the transfer of $700 million from Afghanistan war funds to prepare for an invasion of Iraq. Yet all the while, with the sincerity of Marc Antony protesting that "Brutus is an honorable man," Bush insisted he wanted peace.

Americans may have been unaware of this deceit then, but they have since learned the truth. According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted in June, 52 percent of Americans now believe the President deliberately distorted intelligence to make a case for war. In an Ipsos Public Affairs poll, commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org and completed October 9, 50 percent said that if Bush lied about his reasons for going to war Congress should consider impeaching him. The President's deceit is not only an abuse of power; it is a federal crime. Specifically, it is a violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 371, which prohibits conspiracies to defraud the United States.

So what do citizens do? First, they must insist that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence complete Phase II of its investigation, which was to be an analysis of whether the Administration manipulated or misrepresented prewar intelligence. The focus of Phase II was to determine whether the Administration misrepresented the information it received about Iraq from intelligence agencies. Second, we need to convince Congress to demand that the Justice Department appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Administration's deceptions about the war, using the same mechanism that led to the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the outing of Valerie Plame. (As it happens, Congressman Jerrold Nadler and others have recently written to Acting Deputy Attorney General Robert McCallum Jr. pointing out that the Plame leak is just the "tip of the iceberg" and asking that Fitzgerald's authority be expanded to include an investigation into whether the White House conspired to mislead the country into war. )

Third, we can no longer shrink from the prospect of impeachment. Impeachment would require, as John Bonifaz, constitutional attorney, author of Warrior-King: The Case for Impeaching George Bush and co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, has explained, that the House pass a "resolution of inquiry or impeachment calling on the Judiciary Committee to launch an investigation into whether grounds exist for the House to exercise its constitutional power to impeach George W. Bush." If the committee found such grounds, it would draft articles of impeachment and submit them to the full House for a vote. If those articles passed, the President would be tried by the Senate. Resolutions of inquiry, such as already have been introduced by Representatives Barbara Lee and Dennis Kucinich demanding that the Administration produce key information about its decision-making, could also lead to impeachment.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 11:56:00 AM [+] ::
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:: The Drone Report ::

DRONES 'TO FLY OVER CITIES'
The Drudge Report

HONEYWELL is developing a micro flying spy drone -- that would be used for civilian law enforcement!

The device, a hovering robot carrying video cameras and other sensors, is being created and tested at HONEYWELL's Albuquerque, NM plant.

The first round of testing on the drone [MICRO AIR VEHICLE] has been completed, reports Bob Martin of CBS affiliate KRQE.

The battery powered craft can stay in the air for 50-60 minutes at a time, and moves around at up to 55 kilometers an hour.

The Micro Air Vehicle has flown more than 200 successful flights, including flying in a representative urban environment.

"If there is an emergency, you could provide "eyes" on whatever the emergency is, for police or Homeland Security," explains Vaughn Fulton of HONEYWELL.

In the meantime, the U.S. Army has prepared a promotional video showing the craft zooming over war-zone streets.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 11:12:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Bush Rewrites History To Criticize His Anti-war Critics" ::

The Nation
via Yahoo! News
By David Corn

In a Veterans Day speech on Friday, delivered to troops and others at the Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania, George W. Bush veered from the usual commemoration of sacrifice to strike at critics who have questioned whether he steered the country into war by using false information. This has become a tough and troubling issue for his presidency. A poll taken before his speech found that 57 percent of the respondents now believe that Bush "deliberately misled" the nation into war. That is astounding and, I assume, without precedent in history. Has there been another wartime period during which a majority of Americans believed the president had purposefully bamboozled them about the reasons for that war? Addressing this charge is tough for Bush because it calls more attention to it, and the on-ground-realities in Iraq only cause more popular unease with the war. But Bush and his aides calculated that it was better to punch back than ignore the criticism, and that's a sign that they're worried that Bush is coming to be defined as a president who conned the nation into an ugly war. So Bush tried. Let's break down his effort:

Our debate at home must also be fair-minded. One of the hallmarks of a free society and what makes our country strong is that our political leaders can discuss their differences openly, even in times of war.

Conservative who claim raising questions about the war does a disservice to the troops and is anti-American might want to keep these words in mind.

When I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support.

Actually, Congress did not approve Bush's decision to remove Saddam. In October 2002, the House and Senate approved a resolution that gave Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq if he deemed that appropriate. At the time, Bush and his aides were claiming it was their goal to force Saddam Hussein to give up his weapons of mass destruction and his WMD programs (which, we know now, did not exist). When the resolution passed---and in the weeks after---the White House insisted that Bush was not bent on "regime change" and that he was willing to work within the UN to force Saddam to accept UN inspectors (which Saddam did) in pursuit of the goal of disarming Iraq. Is Bush now saying that he had already resolved to invade Iraq at this point and all his talk about achieving disarmament through the UN process was bunk? Is he rewriting history--or telling us the real truth? In any event, when Bush did order the invasion of Iraq months later in March 2003, he did not ask Congress to vote on his decision to remove Saddam.

I also recognize that some of our fellow citizens and elected officials didn't support the liberation of Iraq. And that is their right, and I respect it. As President and Commander-in-Chief, I accept the responsibilities, and the criticisms, and the consequences that come with such a solemn decision.

Bush might accept "the responsibilities and criticisms," but has yet to acknowledge the mistakes he and his aides made before and after the invasion about planning for a post-invasion Iraq. He also has not insisted on any accountability for these mistakes. For instance, he gave a spiffy medal to former CIA chief George Tenet, who was responsible for the prewar intelligence failure.

While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began.

When was the last time Bush talked about how the war began--that is, when did he mention that his primary reason for war (protecting the American public from the supposed WMD threat posed by Saddam Hussein) was discredited by reality? Is ignoring history the same as rewriting it?

Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs.

This is not the full and accurate explanation of the controversy at hand. The issue of whether the Bush administration misled the nation in the run-up to the war has two components. The first is the production of the intelligence related to WMDs and the supposed al Qaeda-Sadam connection. The second is how the Bush crowd represented the intelligence to the public when trying to make the case for war. As for the first, the Senate intelligence committee report did say the committee had found no evidence of political pressure. But Democratic members of the committee and others challenged this finding. Several committee Democrats pointed to a CIA independent review on the prewar intelligence, conducted by a panel led by Richard Kerr, former deputy director of the CIA, which said,

Requests for reporting and analysis of [Iraq's links to al Qaeda] were steady and heavy in the period leading up to the war, creating significant pressure on the Intelligence Community to find evidence that supported a connection.

More to the point, Kerr told Vanity Fair that intelligence analysts did feel pressured by the go-to-war gang. The magazine in May 2004 reported,

"There was a lot of pressure, no question," says Kerr. "The White House, State, Defense were raising questions, heavily on W.M.D. and the issue of terrorism. Why did you select this information rather than that? Why have you downplayed this particular thing?...Sure, I heard that some of the analysts felt pressure. We heard about it from friends. There are always some people in the agency who will say, 'We've been pushed to hard.' Analysts will say, 'You're trying to politicize it.' There were people who felt there was too much pressure. Not that they were being asked to change their judgments, but there were being asked again and again to restate their judgments--do another paper on this, repetitive pressures. Do it again."

Was it a case, then, of officials repeatedly asking for another paper until they got the answer they wanted? "There may have been some of that," Kerr concedes. The requests came from "primarily people outside asking for the same paper again and again. There was a lot of repetitive tasking. Some of the analysts felt this was unnecessary pressure. The repetitive requests, Kerr made clear, came from the C.I.A.'s "senior customers," including "the White House, the vice president, State, Defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff."

Despite Bush's assertion, the question remains whether undue pressure was applied by the White House.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 11:04:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Miller Time ::

Judith Miller's scoops the Times on her own "Farewell Letter"
mediabistro.com

I haven't checked Judith Miller's website since early in her prison term -- but today it just got relevant. Today Judy has posted not only her own "Farewell Letter" (aka "hotly-contested op-ed piece") but she's also made public all her communiqués with Bill Keller, Barney Calame, and Maureen Dowd regarding what was printed about her in the paper.

Judy to MoDo: "I agree with you that reporters must be more than stenographers. The same is true of columnists. I hope you will correct the record soon."

Judy to Barney: "I'm saddened that you, like so many others, have blurred the core issue of that stand and I am stunned that you refused to post my answers to issues we had discussed on your web site at the critical moment that Times readers were forming their opinions" (Ed. Ooh. That is kind of uncool. In the paper is one thing, responses to specifically-posed questions is another."

Judy to you: "The right of reply and the obligation to correct inaccuracies are also the mark of a free and responsible press. I am gratified that Bill Keller, The Times executive editor, has finally clarified remarks made by him that were unsupported by fact and personally distressing. Some of his comments suggested insubordination on my part. I have always written the articles assigned to me, adhered to the paper's sourcing and ethical guidelines, and cooperated with editorial decisions, even those with which I disagreed."

Full farewell after the jump, but before the Paper of Record.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 9:51:00 PM [+] ::
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:: UPDATE: The Same Plame Name Game ::

Judith Miller to leave New York Times

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York Times reporter Judith Miller, a journalist at the center of the CIA leak controversy that led to the indictment of a White House aide, will leave the paper, the New York Times said on Wednesday.

ALSO
Reporter Judith Miller to leave New York Times
Reuters.uk

[excerpt]

New York Magazine wrote in June 2004 that Miller produced "stunning stories about Saddam Hussein's ambition and capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction, based largely on information provided by Chalabi and his allies -- almost all of which have turned out to be stunningly inaccurate."

The flap over Miller's reportage was another blow to the storied paper's reputation. The Times, which prides itself on being America's paper of record, is still trying to restore credibility lost after former reporter Jayson Blair was found to have fabricated and plagiarised dozens of news stories, which The Times detailed in a nearly 14,000-word article.

That scandal led to the exit of two top editors, Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd in 2003.

It also led to the establishment of a public editor to critique Times coverage, and in coming months Miller's reporting of the run-up to the Iraqi war came under fire.

"It's a calamity," Michael Wolff, media critic for Vanity Fair Magazine, told Reuters. "They are going from one calamity to another, like a drunken bunch lurching this way and lurching that way." Wolff characterised the Times as having a "leadership problem of massive proportion."

AND
Times Reporter Agrees to Leave the Paper
New York Times

posted by me

:: 9:10:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Parliament defeats Blair over terrorism law" ::

Reuters.uk

LONDON (Reuters) - Tony Blair suffered his first major parliamentary defeat as prime minister on Wednesday, over plans to let police hold terrorist suspects for up to 90 days without charge.

The House of Commons voted by 322 to 291 against the proposal as about 40 Labour MPs refused to support him, raising new questions about his authority.

Financial markets reacted swiftly, the pound dropping a 1/4 cent against the dollar straight after the vote.

Blair had dramatically recalled his two top ministers -- Chancellor Gordon Brown from Foreign Secretary Jack Straw -- from abroad in a bid to avoid defeat, but to no avail.

He had earlier put his personal authority on the line, telling parliamentarians it was their "duty" to support the measure.

Read more here.

ALSO

Blair defeated over terror laws
BBC News

AND

Q&A: Blair's terror bill defeat
BBC News
The BBC News website explains what Tony Blair's defeat in the Commons means for his authority and the government's anti-terror legislation.

Point-by-point: Terror debate
BBC NEWS

posted by me

:: 11:51:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Homer says "Intelligament what now?" ::

Kansas Education Board First to Back Intelligent Design
Washington Post

TOPEKA, Kan., Nov. 8 -- The Kansas Board of Education voted Tuesday that students will be expected to study doubts about modern Darwinian theory, a move that defied the nation's scientific establishment even as it gave voice to religious conservatives and others who question the theory of evolution.

By a 6 to 4 vote that supporters cheered as a victory for free speech and opponents denounced as shabby politics and worse science, the board said high school students should be told that aspects of widely accepted evolutionary theory are controversial. Among other points, the standards allege a "lack of adequate natural explanations for the genetic code."

The bitterly fought effort pushes Kansas to the forefront of a war over evolution being waged in courts in Pennsylvania and Georgia and statehouses nationwide.

posted by me

:: 11:42:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Another Lawyer in Hussein's Trial Is Slain by Gunmen" ::

From The New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 8 - Gunmen today ambushed two more defense lawyers involved in the prosecution of Saddam Hussein and his underlings, killing one and deepening the obstacles to plans for a resumption of the war crimes trial by an Iraqi tribunal here later this month.

It was the second such killing of a defense lawyer in less than three weeks.

Police spokesmen said the attack, in a western suburb of Baghdad, involved two lawyers representing Taha Yassin Ramadan, a former vice president under Mr. Hussein and a prominent co-defendant. The second lawyer was wounded and taken to a hospital, where he was reported to be in serious condition.

On Oct. 20, gunmen killed the lead lawyer for another defendant in the trial, the former chief judge of Mr. Hussein's revolutionary court.

The police said the ambush today appeared to have been carefully planned, with three carloads of gunmen attacking the lawyers' car as it drove through the suburb of al-Adel at lunchtime.

Attackers in one car then boldly followed the ambulance carrying the surviving lawyer to the Yarmouk hospital, the police said, perhaps looking for a second chance to kill him. The spokesman said there were no immediate suspects.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 5:59:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Beware your trail of digital fingerprints" ::

From The New York Times
By Tom Zeller Jr.

It hardly ranks in the annals of "gotcha!" but right-wing blogs were buzzing for at least a few days last week when an unsigned Microsoft Word document was circulated by the Democratic National Committee.

The memo referred to the "anti-civil rights and anti-immigrant rulings" of Samuel A. Alito Jr., the federal appeals court judge who has been nominated to the Supreme Court by President Bush.

The stern criticisms of Judge Alito rubbed some commentators the wrong way (Chris Matthews of MSNBC called it "disgusting" last Monday). But whatever the memo's rhetorical pitch, right-leaning bloggers revealed that it contained a much more universal, if unintended, message: It pays to mind your metadata.

Technically, metadata is sort of the DNA of documents created with modern word-processing software. By default, it is automatically saved into the deep structure of a file, hidden from view, with information that can hint at authorship, times and dates of revisions (along with names of editors) and other tidbits that, while perhaps useful to those creating the document, might be better left unseen by the wider world.

(If you use Microsoft Word, open a document, go to the File menu and choose Properties. You should see some metadata. Third-party programs are available that will crack open even more.)

According to some technologists, including Dennis M. Kennedy, a lawyer and consultant based in St. Louis, (denniskennedy.com), metadata might include other bits of information like notes and questions rendered as "comments" within a document ("need to be more specific here," for example, or in the case of my editors, "eh??"), or the deletions and insertions logged by such features as "track changes" in Microsoft Word.

"If you take the time to educate yourself a little and know the issues," Kennedy said, "you can avoid problems pretty easily."

The Word doc trail

With the Alito memo--which was distributed on a not-for-attribution basis, with no authors named--the DNC was a little sloppy.

Mike Krempasky, a conservative blogger at RedState.org, mined the document's metadata and came up with juicy, code-cryptic tidbits like this:

{lcub}o:Author>prendergastc{lcub}/o:Author{rcub}

Or this:

{lcub}o:Company>DNC{lcub}/o:Company{rcub}

"The technical wizards at the Democratic National Committee never got the 'don't forward Word documents' memo," Krempasky wrote, eventually identifying "prendergastc" as Chris Prendergast and "adlerd," which also showed up in the metadata, as Devorah Adler--both members of the DNC.

The metadata also coughed up a file creation date of July 7, 2005, which the detectives at RedState.org identified as being "just after O'Connor resigned."

None of these amounted to earth-shattering revelations, of course, but taken together they offered a level of detail into the Alito memo that the DNC had not intended.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 11:20:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Black Hat Organizer Unbowed" ::

From Wired News
By Kim Zetter

On Wednesday, Cisco Systems released a patch for what has become known as the Black Hat Bug: a serious vulnerability in the operating system running Cisco routers, which drive traffic through much of the internet and control critical infrastructure systems.

Cisco's move closes the book on a controversy that began last July, when Mike Lynn, a computer security researcher speaking at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, demonstrated that an attacker could use the bug to crash Cisco routers or control them remotely. Before Lynn's talk concluded, the dark conference room was already lit with the glow of cell phones from audience members urging their IT departments to immediately patch their Cisco routers.

Lynn was lauded by much of the security community for disclosing the problem. But for his troubles, he and Black Hat organizers were slapped with legal injunctions. Lynn had been asked by his employer, Internet Security Systems, to reverse-engineer the Cisco router to find the flaw, and both Cisco and ISS initially sanctioned his Black Hat presentation. But two days before the talk, Cisco demanded that slides of the presentation be removed from the conference book and CD-ROM. And after the talk, the FBI began investigating Lynn for allegedly stealing trade secrets.

The legal wrangling finally ended this week, and the FBI case against Lynn has closed. Lynn spoke with Wired News in July to tell his side of the story. Now Black Hat founder Jeff Moss talks about what happened from his perspective and why companies continue to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors in trying to suppress the full disclosure of security bugs and punish security researchers.

Read the Moss interview here.

ALSO
from Wired News

FBI Pushing Patriot Act Powers
As the Patriot Act comes up for renewal, lawmakers react to a Washington Post report of the FBI's use -- and possible abuse -- of the law to gain access to private phone and financial records of ordinary citizens.

posted by me

:: 11:02:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Intelligent design case draws to close" ::

Reuters.uk

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania - One attorney accused a witness of lying on Friday during closing arguments in the trial over whether U.S. public schools should teach the theory of intelligent design.

U.S. District Judge John Jones said he wants to decide by year's end the case that addresses whether a Pennsylvania school district violated the U.S. Constitution when it introduced intelligent design -- a theory that competes with evolution -- into science classes.

The first legal challenge to the teaching of intelligent design is being watched in at least 30 states where Christian conservatives are planning similar initiatives.

Attorney Eric Rothschild, arguing for 11 parents who sued the Dover, Pennsylvania, Area School District and oppose the theory's inclusion in the curriculum, told the court that intelligent design was creationism in disguise.

He said it was introduced by Christians on the school board whose agenda was clearly religious.

He accused former school board member William Buckingham of lying when Buckingham testified he had mistakenly spoken in favor of creationism in a television interview because he had never been interviewed before and felt "like a deer in the headlights."

"That was no deer in the headlights," Rothschild said. "That deer was wearing shades and was totally at ease."

Intelligent design holds that some aspects of nature are so complex they must have been the work of an unnamed intelligent creator instead of the result of natural selection, as argued by Charles Darwin in his 1859 theory of evolution.

Intelligent design foes say it is a thinly disguised form of creationism -- the belief that God created the world as described in the Bible -- whose teaching in public schools has been outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court as a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state.

The nonjury courtroom drama over man's origins is reminiscent of the famous Scopes Monkey trial, when lawyers squared off in a courthouse in Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 3:44:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "No trade deal for Bush" ::

MarketWatch

SAN FRANCISCO -- Hopes of uniting the hemisphere from Canada to Chile within a common free trade zone were stalled until further notice as the Americas Summit wrapped up Saturday without even a blueprint for advancing the proposal.

President George Bush attended the two-day summit in Mar Del Plata, Argentina hoping to burnish relations between the United States and the region, as well as inject new vigor into the decade-old proposal to create the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

But the resort area just south of Buenos Aires quickly became a magnet for anti-U.S. demonstrators led by Venezuela's populist leader Hugo Chavez and became the scene of fiery violence as some protestors torched stores and battled with riot police.

Chavez, who has repeatedly accused Bush of wanting to invade his oil-rich nation, triumphantly gathered with local icons, such as famed soccer player Diego Maradona, and declared the deal dead at a peacefully stadium rally that attracted more than 20,000 protestors.

"Every one of us has brought a shovel, because Mar del Plata is going to be the tomb of F.T.A.A.," Mr. Chavez told a crowd carrying banners calling Bush a "fascist," "child-killer" and "genocidal-beast," the New York Times reported.

"F.T.A.A. is dead, and we, the people of the Americans, are the ones who buried it."

Chavez believes Latin American and Caribbean nations should band together and reject U.S. style capitalism, instead adopting more socialist inspired ideals.

Several hundred rioters ransacked at least 30 businesses and confronted riot police with rocks, slingshots and sharpened sticks. Some threw gasoline bombs into a bank, causing a fire that destroyed the ground floor, while others set alight a pile of looted furniture in the middle of the street.

Amid the smoky backdrop, regional leaders were unable to forge a compromise between those who supported the removal of regional trade barriers and others who believe such a union would unfairly benefit the U.S.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 3:23:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Thousands in Argentina Protest Bush" ::

Guardian Unlimited

MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina (AP) - More than 1,000 rampaging anti-American protesters set a bank ablaze Friday as the Summit of the Americas opened, shattering shopfront windows with wooden clubs and throwing rocks.

Scores of riot police with plastic shields responded with tear gas.

The violence capped a day of protests by more than 10,000 demonstrators who marched through the streets and shouted slogans against President Bush.

ALSO
Summit Protests Turn Violent in Argentina
AP Photo DLMX123

MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina (AP) - An anti-American rally turned violent Friday as more than 1,000 rioters clashed with police, setting bonfires in the streets and destroying storefronts across about six square blocks less than a mile from the inauguration of the fourth Summit of the Americas.

The violence in Argentina came after a massive, peaceful march by about 10,000 demonstrators who listened to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urge them to fight U.S. policies, including a proposal to create a hemisphere-wide free trade agreement.

Later, a group of demonstrators wearing bandanas over their faces and beating wooden clubs against the pavement faced off with riot police, who responded by firing tear gas.

Car sirens wailed as frightened pedestrians fled. Police held fast behind the barricade and prevented what appeared to be an attempt by the demonstrators to break through.

Demonstrators then lit American flags on fire, while others shot rocks with slingshots at police. Several shops, including a minimarket and a pastry store, had their windows shattered during the rioting.

posted by me

:: 3:51:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Bush Sidesteps CIA Leak Questions at Summit" ::

In Argentina, President Tries to Improve America's Image
By William Branigin
Washington Post

President Bush, attending a summit meeting in Argentina with leaders of the Western Hemisphere, promoted free trade and democratic values today as part of an effort to improve America's tarnished image in Latin America.

In a brief news conference on the opening day of the Summit of the Americas in the seaside resort of Mar del Plata, Bush skirted questions on the fate of top strategist Karl Rove, possible White House staff changes and his plummeting job approval ratings.

Sticking to a position he has adopted in recent weeks, Bush said he would not discuss Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff, until an investigation of his role in a CIA leak case is complete. Nor would he say anything about calls for a staff shakeup in the White House in the wake of last week's indictment of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges of lying to FBI agents and a federal grand jury about the leak to reporters of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity. Libby resigned and left the White House when the indictment was returned. He pleaded not guilty yesterday.

Asked if he owed the American people an apology for his administration's past assertions that Rove and Libby were not involved in the leak, Bush said, "I'm not going to discuss the investigation until it's completed."

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 3:44:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Libby pleads not guilty" ::

" ... as White House braces for scandal hearing"
Julian Borger in Washington
Guardian Unlimited

· Case will delve deeply into argument for Iraq war
· Vice president likely to be called as witness

Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice presidential adviser who helped build the US case for the Iraq war, stood before a judge yesterday, then had his fingerprints and mugshot taken as a long-simmering intelligence leak scandal arrived in court.

Mr Libby pleaded not guilty to five counts in total, including lying to a grand jury, making false statements to federal investigators, and obstruction of justice. Later his lawyers vowed he would not strike a plea deal but would fight to clear his name. However, the appearance in court of a top neo-conservative who only a few days ago was one of the most powerful men in the White House marked an ominous milestone for the embattled Bush administration.

Mr Libby was the first White House official to be indicted while in office since Orville Babcock, President Ulysses Grant's secretary, who was charged 130 years ago for a whisky tax scam. High-placed miscreants since then, including the Watergate defendants, have chosen to resign before being charged.
Mr Libby stuck to his post as vice president Dick Cheney's chief of staff until last week's indictment, for lying about his role in the 2003 outing of a CIA agent, Valerie Plame, the wife of a critic of the Iraq war.

Yesterday, he stood in the same spot in the same Washington courtroom as Colonel Oliver North, the central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal that overshadowed the last years of the Reagan administration.

This affair is threatening to take as great a toll on the Bush White House. Karl Rove, President Bush's closest adviser, is still under active investigation by the special prosecutor in the case, Patrick Fitzgerald, and there were signs yesterday that the strain was beginning to show.

"Top White House aides" quoted in the Washington Post said Mr Rove's future was being privately discussed, and argued he may have become too heavy a burden on an already distracted administration.

Mr Cheney is almost certain to be a witness in Mr Libby's case and could be in legal jeopardy himself if he turns out to be one of the unnamed officials mentioned in the indictment who discussed Ms Plame on Air Force Two in June 2003.

The case will also delve deeply into the building of the White House case for war in Iraq, based largely on alleged weapons of mass destruction that turned out not to exist. It was an argument Mr Libby, a former lawyer himself, took a lead role in assembling on his boss's behalf.

The sensitivity of the coming trial was clear in yesterday's proceedings as lawyers discussed the declassifying of thousands of documents and seeking security clearance for defence lawyers to hear secret evidence, which will take up to six weeks. The next hearing will not be until February 3.

In a sign of its nervousness the White House has issued a memo to its staff ordering them not to communicate with Mr Libby. He limped into court ...

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 7:59:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Nominee's past rulings give hint of tech views" ::

From CNET News.com
By Declan McCullagh

As a federal judge at the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, Samuel Alito has accumulated a lengthy record of written decisions that hint at how he would rule in technology-related cases that come before the Supreme Court.

President Bush nominated Alito for the court on Monday, to succeed retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, widely viewed as a swing vote. Democratic politicians have already promised stiff opposition, with at least one senator saying that a filibuster to block debate is possible.

Alito's confirmation hearings are certain to focus on hot-button constitutional issues such as his views on abortion, affirmative action and gun rights. But a few cases show that the broadly conservative philosophy of Alito, 55, means he takes a limited view of copyright, which could bode well for tech companies, as well as a permissive approach toward electronic surveillance by police.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:43:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "CIA 'running secret terror jails" ::

The CIA is running a network of secret prison facilities around the world to hold high-profile terror suspects, according to a US newspaper report.
Such prisons are, or have been, located in Eastern Europe, Afghanistan and Thailand, the Washington Post claims.
BBC News

It says more than 100 people have been sent to the facilities, known as "black sites", since they were set up in the wake of the 11 September attacks.

An intelligence agency spokesman told the BBC the CIA declined to comment.

Questioned about the report, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: "I am not going into discussing any specific intelligence activities.

Read more here.

ALSO
East Europe 'has secret CIA jails for al-Qaida'
Guardian Unlimited

posted by me

:: 7:49:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Democrats close Senate doors in Iraq protest" ::

By Vicki Allen
Reuters

WASHINGTON - Democrats accusing the ruling Republicans of stalling tactics imposed a rare closed session of the Senate on Tuesday to force the majority to complete a probe on whether the Bush administration misused intelligence before the Iraq war.

Republicans, angered that the maneuver was sprung on them without warning, dismissed it as a stunt but agreed to form a bipartisan task force to report by November 14 on how the Intelligence Committee was progressing with its investigation.

Senate Republican leaders were livid about the tactic, which drew public attention back to Iraq as President George W. Bush faced the fall-out from an indictment of a senior aide related to the handling of pre-war intelligence.

"The United States Senate has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership," Majority leader Bill Frist of Tennessee said. "Never have I been slapped in the face with such an affront to the leadership of this grand institution."

But Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said what he called Republican stalling on the issue had been "a slap in the face for the American people".

Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, top Intelligence Committee Democrat, said, "My colleagues and I have tried for two years to do our oversight work, and for two years we have been undermined, avoided, put off, and vilified by the other side."

Democrats invoked a little used rule to temporarily shut down television cameras in the chamber, clear galleries of reporters, tourists and other onlookers, force removal of staff members and recording devices and stop work on legislation.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 7:23:00 PM [+] ::
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