Investigators believe American soldiers spent nearly a week plotting an attack in which they raped an Iraqi woman, then killed her and her family in an insurgent-ridden area south of Baghdad, a U.S. military official said Saturday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said the attack appeared "totally premeditated" and that the soldiers apparently "studied" the family for about a week before carrying out the attack.

According to the official, the Sunni Arab family had just moved into a new home in the religiously mixed area about 20 miles south of Baghdad. The Americans entered the home, separated three family members from the woman, then raped her and set fire to her body, the official said. The three others were also slain. A senior Army official who also requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing said one of the victims was a child .

[snip]

One of the officials familiar with details of the investigation told The Associated Press that a flammable liquid was used to burn the woman's body in a cover-up attempt. It was unclear if it was gasoline or lighter fluid.

A parked car bomb exploded at a popular outdoor market Saturday in a Shiite slum in Baghdad, killing at least 66 people and wounding dozens, authorities said. It was the bloodiest attack to hit Iraq since the death of terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The blast, which occurred around 10 a.m. when the Sadr City market was packed with shoppers, destroyed the stalls where food and clothes are peddled and sent up a plume of gray smoke. Flames shot out the windows of several scorched cars.

Ambulances rushed to the scene and carried the victims to hospitals, where men cradled crying babies as doctors bandaged them. Rasoul Zaboun, an official from the Imam Ali Hospital in Sadr City, said 66 people were killed and 87 wounded.

Police Col. Hassan Jaloob also said 22 shops and stalls were destroyed, along with 14 vehicles.

Angry residents swarmed around the wreckage, with several young men chanting as they rocked the burned out hulk of the car that apparently held the explosives.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack. But car bombings and suicide attacks against Shiite civilians have often been blamed on al-Qaida in Iraq, which al-Zarqawi led until he was killed in a U.S. airstrike June 7.

Al-Zarqawi's death has not brought a halt to the attacks. At least 631 Iraqi civilians and security forces were killed between June 8 and June 30, according to Associated Press figures. That includes 25 people killed Monday in a bicycle bombing in Baqouba.

The seven men who were arrested here last week on terror charges were shown Friday on undercover videotapes solemnly reciting oaths of loyalty to Al Qaeda, repeating the words that an F.B.I. informant had given them to say.

The tapes, played at a federal court hearing by prosecutors, did not provide any evidence that the men had the money or firepower to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and federal buildings in five cities, as they are accused of conspiring to do, or that they had any actual ties to Al Qaeda.

[snip]

And while federal authorities described Mr. Batiste and the other defendants last week as "a radical Islamic group," neighbors say his religious teachings came from the Moorish Science Temple of America, a group founded in Illinois in the early 1900's that blends Christianity, Judaism and Islam with an emphasis on self-discipline through martial arts.

The group's headquarters was a 750-square-foot former convenience store with an old sofa in the back and no running water. People who live near the building, which had no windows or air-conditioning, say they would sometimes see Mr. Batiste and a dozen or so other men there in the evenings, either inside with the doors open or practicing martial arts in the backyard.

Others say that while the group — which called itself the Seas of David — read the Koran at times, Mr. Batiste's favorite text was Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

At first, relatives and lawyers said, the defendants were intrigued by Mr. Batiste's religious teachings, which some of the men saw as an alternative to the drug-dealing streets in Liberty City, one of Miami's poorest neighborhoods. But by this past April, the lawyers said, some defendants had grown suspicious of Mr. Batiste and had left the group after he seemed to become more focused on raising money than on his religious teachings.

According to the indictment, the criminal investigation began last October, after Mr. Batiste began expressing ominous goals. He told someone who was traveling to Yemen that he wanted to raise an army to overthrow the United States government and needed help, one document says, "in locating foreign Islamic extremists to fund his mission."

The American military is investigating accusations that soldiers raped an Iraqi woman in her home and killed her and three family members, including a child, American officials said Friday.

The investigation is the fourth into suspected killings of unarmed Iraqis by American soldiers announced by the military in June. In May, it was disclosed that the military was conducting an inquiry into the deaths of 24 civilians in Haditha last November.

The alleged rape and killings took place March 12 in the vicinity of the volatile market town of Mahmudiya, an insurgent stronghold about 20 miles south of Baghdad. The killing of the family was originally reported by the military as due to "insurgent activity," American officials said.

A senior police official in Mahmudiya said in a telephone interview that he received a report of the killings in March. The victims were a woman, her child, her husband and the husband's brother, he said. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said a sheik from the family's tribe immediately reported the episode to the police.

The American investigation began June 24, one day after two soldiers "reported alleged coalition force involvement" in the deaths of the Iraqi civilians, the military said in a written statement. A preliminary inquiry conducted after that report determined that there was sufficient evidence to merit a criminal investigation, the military said.

In May, Hasbrouck Heights library director Michele Reutty refused to turn over circulation records to local police seeking a man who had allegedly made sexually threatening comments to a 12-year-old girl outside the library. Citing state law, Reutty told authorities they would need a subpoena before she could comply with their request.

Investigators secured subpoenas and eventually received the information they requested, but Reutty is now under fire from borough officials who decried her "blatant disregard" for law enforcement and accused her of putting the interests of the library above the interest of police.

Warren Buffett's new philanthropic alliance with fellow billionaire Bill Gates won widespread praise this week, but antiabortion activists did not join in, instead assailing the two donors for their longtime support of Planned Parenthood and international birth-control programs.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to which Buffett has pledged the bulk of his $44 billion fortune, devotes the majority of its funding to combating disease and poverty in developing countries. Less than 1 percent has gone to Planned Parenthood.

"The merger of Gates and Buffett may spell doom for the families of the developing world," said the Rev. Thomas Euteneuer, a Roman Catholic priest who is president of Human Life International.

Referring to Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi death camp doctor, Euteneuer said Buffett "will be known as the Dr. Mengele of philanthropy unless he repents."

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America issued statements praising Buffett and Gates for their generosity. Gloria Feldt, a former Planned Parenthood president, said she was appalled by the harsh attacks on them.

"What an outrage that these people have the gall to cast aspersions on other citizens for standing up for what they believe," Feldt said Thursday. "They have no right whatsoever to criticize people who put their money where their mouths are."

RU-486 Opposition
The foundation started by Buffett, and now named after his late wife, Susan, came under fire from some antiabortion groups in the 1990s after it gave $2 million to fund clinical trials of mifepristone, more commonly known as the RU-486 abortion pill. The foundation also has supported various abortion-rights and family-planning groups.

Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, wrote a commentary this week holding the Buffetts partially responsible for the approval of RU-486 in 2000.

"Since then, approximately 500,000 American babies have been killed with RU-486," Perkins wrote. "Buffett's billions have the potential to do damage like this on a global scale."

Staff at the Susan T. Buffett Foundation in Omaha, Neb., said its executive director, Allen Greenberg, would not comment on the criticisms.

The Gates Group
The Gates Foundation also is a patron of reproductive-health programs, funding studies on contraceptive technologies and initiatives to improve access to birth control.

• "Health issues that cause relatively few problems in developed countries continue to spread sickness and death in poorer regions of the world. The foundation concentrates its support on efforts to prevent and treat these diseases and conditions." [Hmmm....that sounds like it might save some lives, doesn't it?]
  
  
• "For each of the priority diseases and conditions, the foundation supports scientific research to develop new and better tools for preventing and treating disease." [Gee, that also sounds like it's geared towards saving lives.]
  
  
• "To make a difference, new tools and strategies for better health must be available to those who need them most. The foundation supports projects that help finance, test, deliver, and sustain access to health interventions." [Last time I looked, healthier people tended to live longer and better lives.]
  

Despite the array of breakthroughs we've seen for AIDS treatment, prevention efforts still rely on the three practices described by the abbreviation ABC ("Abstain, be faithful, use condoms"). These approaches work, and we must encourage them, but they all depend on a man's cooperation. For millions of married women, abstinence is unrealistic, being faithful is insufficient and the use of condoms is not under their control.

The point here is that the AUMF does not authorize activity that was not specifically contemplated in the text or legislative history. This is incredibly significant. The administration is relying on the AUMF to justify its warrantless wiretapping program. Here’s Alberto Gonzales on 12/19/05:

Our position is, is that the authorization to use force, which was passed by the Congress in the days following September 11th, constitutes that other authorization, that other statute by Congress, to engage in this kind of signals intelligence.

The Bush administration doesn’t argue that warrantless wiretapping was something specifically contemplated in the text or by Congress. Rather, the administration argues that it is implied as part of a broad authorization to “use all necessary and appropriate force.”

The Supreme Court has rejected that expansive interpretation. It’s a huge blow to the administration’s legal rationale for warrantless wiretapping.

The Hamdan decision represents, in my opinion, a fatal blow to the Addington/Yoo theory of executive power. For the last four years, the Bush administration has been advancing the theory, both publicly and in its internal legal memoranda, that, as Commander in Chief, the president has the sole discretion to make all decisions regarding war-related issues, even when a duly enacted statute purports to limit his authority. This legal theory serves as the basis for not only the system of military tribunals at Guantanamo, but also the NSA program and the interrogation methods endorsed by the administration.

But if a statute can place valid and enforceable limits on the president's power to try foreign enemy combatants captured on foreign soil, then can there really be any doubt that a statute can place similar limits on the president's power to conduct surveillance of U.S. citizens within the United States? Of course not.

And the Hamdan opinion completely eviscerates the administration's only other argument in defense of the NSA surveillance program, i.e., that the Authorization for Military Force (AUMF) somehow authorized the circumvention of FISA. The Court notes that "there is nothing in the text or legislative history of the AUMF even hinting that Congress intended to expand or alter the authorization set forth in . . . the UCMJ." All you have to do is substitute "FISA" for "UCMJ" and you know exactly what the Court would say about that argument.

In other words, if there was ever any reasonable doubt as to whether the NSA program is illegal, the Hamdan opinion dispels it. The same is true with respect to the administration's use of "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Mr. President, the major telecommunications legislation reported today by the Senate Commerce Committee is badly flawed. The bill makes a number of major changes in the country's telecommunications law but there is one provision that is nothing more than a license to discriminate. Without a clear policy preserving the neutrality of the Internet and without tough sanctions against those who would discriminate, the Internet will be forever changed for the worse.

This one provision threatens to divide the Internet into technology "haves" and "have nots." This one provision concentrates even more power in the hands of the special interests that own the pipelines to the Internet. This one provision codifies discrimination on the Internet by a handful of large telecommunications and cable providers. This one provision will allow large, special interests to saddle consumers and small businesses alike with new and discriminatory fees over and above what they already pay for Internet access. This one small provision is akin to hurling a giant wrecking ball at the Internet.

The inclusion of this provision compels me to state that I would object to a unanimous consent request to the Senate proceeding with this legislation until a provision that provides true Internet neutrality is included. . . .

The large interests have made it clear that if this bill moves forward, they will begin to discriminate. A Verizon Communications executive has called for an "end to Google's `free lunch.'" A Bell South executive has said that he wants the Internet to be turned into a "pay-for-performance marketplace." What they and other cable and phone company executives are proposing is that instead of providing equal access for everyone to the same content at the same price, they will set up sweetheart arrangements to play favorites. Without net neutrality protections, this bill is bad news for consumers and anyone who today enjoys unlimited access to all of the Net's applications, service and content.

A political consultant whose company was behind a television ad accusing the Clinton-Gore administration of giving away nuclear technology was convicted of child molestation charges.

A jury deliberated almost two days before convicting Carey Lee Cramer, 44, of aggravated sexual assault of a child, two counts of indecency with a child by contact and one count of indecency with a child by exposure. He was cleared of nine other charges Tuesday.

The sentencing phase of the trial was scheduled to begin Wednesday. Cramer faces up to 149 years in prison.

Cramer, who now lives in Tucson, Ariz., gained national attention during the 2000 presidential election when his company created the ad that accused the administration of giving nuclear technology to China in exchange for campaign contributions.

The spot was modeled after the infamous 1964 "Daisy" nuclear scare commercial and was pulled after a barrage of Democratic criticism.

Cramer, who had been free on bond since his 2005 arrest, was taken into custody on a $4 million appeal bond after the verdict, The (McAllen) Monitor reported in its Wednesday editions

Bush administration officials have been lining up to condemn The New York Times for revealing a program to track financial transactions as part of the war on terrorism. But if the Times’ revelation about a program to monitor international exchanges is so damaging, why has the administration been chattering about efforts to monitor domestic transactions for nearly five years?

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, many journalists — including this one — were briefed by U.S. Customs officials on Operation Green Quest, an effort to roll up terrorist financiers by monitoring, among other things, "suspicious" bank transfers and ancient money lending programs favored by people of Middle Eastern descent.

I interviewed Marcy Forman, director of Green Quest, at her Washington offices in December 2001, when I was a writer for Government Executive magazine. Our meeting was sanctioned by Customs' public affairs office, and came at a time when the White House was eager to talk about all the work federal agencies were doing to hunt down terrorists. Forman told me the kinds of people, transactions, even locations that the government was targeting. (These are details, it should be noted, that the recent Times piece did not reveal.) Among the potentially sensitive items Forman told me, which were published:

“Operation Green Quest is focusing on the informal, largely paperless form of money exchange known as hawala, which is Arabic for ‘to change.’”

“Few undercover agents can penetrate Middle Eastern communities and money laundering rings because they look like outsiders and don't speak the language…. As a result, Green Quest has to be more clever, by setting traps on the Internet and working to flush currency traffickers out of their hiding places.”

“Treasury and FBI investigators have identified hawala as a means by which the alleged Sept. 11 terrorists may have received money from overseas.”

“Green Quest investigators, who've spent their careers dismantling money laundering rackets, were blindsided by the existence of the system. ‘Most of us couldn't spell hawala’ before Sept. 11,’ Forman said.”

“The agencies' [involved in Green Quest] cooperative efforts have recently culminated in raids of alleged money laundering operations that aid suspected terrorist networks.”

“Green Quest also wants to lower the threshold at which bank deposits and electronic funds transfers must be documented. Dropping the ceiling from $10,000 to $750, Forman said, may force money traffickers to try to get their cash out of the country by hand. They would then be subject to capture by a beefed-up cadre of Customs Service officers at border crossings, airports and seaports.”

Green Quest was only one of the administration’s efforts to combat terrorist financing which officials discussed publicly. More than two years after 9/11, federal officials testified before a congressional field hearing in Miami and "detailed efforts to stop the illegal financing of terrorist networks." A senior adviser for the Treasury Department "named several initiatives, such as the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which is developing technology to let financial institutions report suspicious transactions more easily and quickly." The adviser also named the system FinCEN was developing to manage a database built to search financial transactions. And he said the department was working directly with financial institutions to help them "develop software to better identify potential terrorist-financing activities."

These details, provided by Customs and Treasury officials, undoubtedly gave terrorists some insight into how the U.S. government was tracking them, and what investigators knew about terrorism financing. These officials weren’t whistleblowers—they were sanctioned by the administration to dispense this information.

In the wake of the latest Times revelation, Rep. Peter King of New York, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, wants the attorney general to investigate and prosecute reporters and editors of the Times for “aiding the cause of our enemies.” What King and others critics haven’t addressed is how the publication of specific details, over the past half decade, about the techniques the government employees to track terrorists’ money doesn’t also aid their cause.

-- Shane Harris

This is the pension squeeze companies aren't talking about: Even as many reduce, freeze or eliminate pensions for workers -- complaining of the costs -- their executives are building up ever-bigger pensions, causing the companies' financial obligations for them to balloon.

Companies disclose little about any of this. But a Wall Street Journal analysis of corporate filings reveals that executive benefits are playing a large and hidden role in the declining health of America's pensions. Among the findings:

• Boosted by surging pay and rich formulas, executive pension obligations exceed $1 billion at some companies. Besides GM, they include General Electric Co. (a $3.5 billion liability); AT&T Inc. ($1.8 billion); Exxon Mobil Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. (about $1.3 billion each); and Bank of America Corp. and Pfizer Inc. (about $1.1 billion apiece).

• Benefits for executives now account for a significant share of pension obligations in the U.S., an average of 8% at the companies above. Sometimes a company's obligation for a single executive's pension approaches $100 million.

• These liabilities are largely hidden, because corporations don't distinguish them from overall pension obligations in their federal financial filings.

• As a result, the savings that companies make by curtailing pensions for regular retirees -- which have totaled billions of dollars in recent years -- can mask a rising cost of benefits for executives.

• Executive pensions, even when they won't be paid till years from now, drag down earnings today. And they do so in a way that's disproportionate to their size, because they aren't funded with dedicated assets.

One reason executive pensions have grown so large is that they are linked to ballooning overall executive compensation. Companies often design retirement payouts to replace a percentage of what a person earns while active.

[snip]

David Dorman was chief executive of AT&T Corp. from 2002 until its merger with SBC Communications in November. He left in January. His total of five years at AT&T earned him a yearly pension of $2.1 million. That will replace 60% of his annual salary and bonus in his final three years.

By contrast, former AT&T accountant Ralph Colotti's $28,800 annual pension replaces 33% of his final pay. He was at the company for 33 years.

Mr. Colotti's pension was held down by a change AT&T made in 1998 in the formula used to calculate pensions. The switch had the effect of freezing pension growth for older workers like him. The 55-year-old now works at another company with a pension plan. "Working here another 10 years won't make up for what my old pension would have been" without AT&T's change in formula, he said.

AT&T described its retirement benefits as excellent and said a pension on the scale of Mr. Colotti's is good in the telecommunications industry. Mr. Dorman's richer deal is "reasonable, customary and comparable to what similarly sized companies offer," AT&T said. A spokeswoman noted that "in any industry, senior executives are almost always provided with enhanced levels of benefits as a way to recruit and retain the best talent and the best leadership possible to lead the company."

In percentage of pay replaced, Pfizer's chairman and CEO, Henry McKinnell, does best of all. His future $6.5 million-a-year pension will replace 100% of his current salary and bonus.

Cutting Back

Even as executives' pensions grow, many companies are curtailing those for the rank and file. In one move, hundreds of employers, including Boeing Co., Xerox Corp. and Electronic Data Systems Corp., have switched to pension formulas known as "cash balance" plans. One effect is to slow the growth of older workers' pensions or halt it altogether. That's what happened to Mr. Colotti at AT&T.

Other companies, including Verizon Communications Inc., Unisys Corp. and Sears Holdings Corp., are freezing their pension plans for some workers. A freeze leaves intact pensions already earned but prevents any further growth during a worker's career.

Some employers have added pensions for executives at about the same time as they limited those for others. McKesson Corp. established a special pension plan for its executives in 1995 and froze those of other workers two years later. McKesson didn't respond to requests for comment.

It's about those damn Support Our Troops magnets and the like. Please take them off your car.

I am the wife of an army reservist. My husband has not been called to active duty, but could be at any time. Every day there is a possibility that my life as I know it could be drastically changed. I know other military families who are in the same situation, and I know military families whose lives have already been drastically affected. It is the sword of Damocles hanging over our heads.

All that being said, what in the world does slapping a magnet on your vehicle have anything to do with supporting our troops? Everytime I see one, particularly when it mixed in with the "W" sticker and the screaming American eagle decal, I am insulted. Many times, the yahoo whose got the sticker on his car is of military service age, but would rather talk tough than put their ass on the line.

If you really want to support our troops, start calling for accountability and truth from this administration. If you really want to support our troops, start bugging your congress critters for a smart and strategic plan of action to bring our troops home. If you really want to support our troops, examine your congress critter's voting record with respect to their votes on legislation the aides our active and veteran military. If you really want to support our troops, ask your congress critter (where applicable) why s/he has voted against legislation benefitting our military men and women. If you want to support our troops, put your money where your mouth is and enlist - I hear they just raised the age to 42 to placate the throngs of folks who want to join

But for gawdsakes, take the damn magnets off your car.

The Citizens Flag Alliance, a group pushing for the Senate this week to pass a flag-burning amendment to the Constitution, just reported an alarming, 33 percent increase in the number of flag-desecration incidents this year.

The number has increased to four, from three.

TITLE 4 > CHAPTER 1 > § 8 Prev | Next

§ 8. Respect for flag

(g) The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.

(i) The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever. It should not be embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed or otherwise impressed on paper napkins or boxes or anything that is designed for temporary use and discard. Advertising signs should not be fastened to a staff or halyard from which the flag is flown.

(k) The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.

GARY COLEMAN:
Right now you are down and out and feeling really crappy

NICKY:
I'll say.

GARY COLEMAN:
And when I see how sad you are
It sort of makes me...
Happy!

NICKY:
Happy?!

GARY COLEMAN:
Sorry, Nicky, human nature-
Nothing I can do!
It's...
Schadenfreude!
Making me feel glad that I'm not you.

NICKY:
Well that's not very nice, Gary!

GARY COLEMAN:
I didn't say it was nice! But everybody does it!

D'ja ever clap when a waitress falls and drops a tray of glasses?

NICKY:
Yeah...

GARY COLEMAN:
And ain't it fun to watch figure skaters falling on their asses?

NICKY:
Sure!

GARY COLEMAN:
And don'tcha feel all warm and cozy,
Watching people out in the rain!

NICKY:
You bet!

GARY COLEMAN:
That's...

GARY AND NICKY:
Schadenfreude!

GARY COLEMAN:
People taking pleasure in your pain!

-- Schädenfreude, from Avenue Q

Sources have confirmed to CBS4 News that conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh has been detained at Palm Beach International Airport for the possible possession of illegal prescription drugs Monday evening.

Limbaugh was returning on a flight from the Dominican Republic when officials found the drugs, among them Viagra.

Schädenfreude...
Making the world a better place...
Making the world a better place...
Making the world a better place...
To be!

The incident comes as Limbaugh waits in legal limbo, a felony charge of doctor-shopping still hanging over his head. Prosecutors charged him with the crime in late April, but entered an agreement with him whereby the charge would be dropped after 18 months upon completion of substance-abuse treatment. He is required to submit to random drug analysis.

State attorney's office spokesman Mike Edmondson said his office also will look into whether Limbaugh violated that agreement with prosecutors. Prosecutors also will examine the possibility of "any doctor being complicit and the possibility of doctors being charged as well."

According to the deferred-prosecution agreement, Limbaugh must refrain from violation of any law.

If prosecutors determine the Viagra possession to be a crime, Limbaugh could again face the felony doctor-shopping charge. Doctor-shopping is a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

Limbaugh's attorney, Roy Black, said in a statement Monday night that Limbaugh was detained after returning from an international trip.

The drug "had been prescribed by Mr. Limbaugh's treating physician but labeled as being issued to the physician rather than Mr. Limbaugh for privacy purposes," the statement said.

There are more than 120 security threats to the three most commonly purchased electronic voting systems, the study by the Brennan Center for Justice says. For what it calls the most comprehensive review of its kind, the New York City-based non-partisan think tank convened a task force of election officials, computer scientists and security experts to study e-voting vulnerabilities.

The study, which took more than a year to complete, examined optical scanners and touch-screen machines with and without paper trails. Together, the three systems account for 80% of the voting machines that will be used in this November's election.

While there have been no documented cases of these voting machines being hacked, Lawrence Norden, who chaired the task force and heads the Brennan Center's voting-technology assessment project, says there have been similar software attacks on computerized gambling slot machines.

"It is unrealistic to think this isn't something to worry about" in terms of future elections, he says.

[snip]

The new threat analysis does not address specific machines or companies. Instead, it "confirms the suspicions about electronic voting machines that people may have had from individual reports" of problems, Norden says.

Among the findings:

• Using corrupt software to switch votes from one candidate to another is the easiest way to attack all three systems. A would-be hacker would have to overcome many hurdles to do this, the report says, but none "is insurmountable."

• The most vulnerable voting machines use wireless components open to attack by "virtually any member of the public with some knowledge and a personal digital assistant." Only New York, Minnesota and California ban wireless components.

• Even electronic systems that use voter-verified paper records are subject to attack unless they are regularly audited.

• Most states have not implemented election procedures or countermeasures to detect software attacks.

"There are plenty of vulnerabilities that can and should be fixed before the November election," says David Jefferson, a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory computer scientist who served on the task force. "Whether they will or not remains to be seen."

Among the many superlatives associated with Hurricane Katrina can now be added this one: it produced one of the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes and stupefying bureaucratic bungles in modern history, costing taxpayers up to $2 billion.

A hotel owner in Sugar Land, Tex., has been charged with submitting $232,000 in bills for phantom victims. And roughly 1,100 prison inmates across the Gulf Coast apparently collected more than $10 million in rental and disaster-relief assistance.

There are the bureaucrats who ordered nearly half a billion dollars worth of mobile homes that are still empty, and renovations for a shelter at a former Alabama Army base that cost about $416,000 per evacuee.

And there is the Illinois woman who tried to collect federal benefits by claiming she watched her two daughters drown in the rising New Orleans waters. In fact, prosecutors say, the children did not exist.

The tally of ignoble acts linked to Hurricane Katrina, pulled together by The New York Times from government audits, criminal prosecutions and Congressional investigations, could rise because the inquiries are under way. Even in Washington, a city accustomed to government bloat, the numbers are generating amazement.

"The blatant fraud, the audacity of the schemes, the scale of the waste — it is just breathtaking," said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and chairwoman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Such an outcome was feared soon after Congress passed the initial hurricane relief package, as officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the American Red Cross acknowledged that their systems were overwhelmed and tried to create new ones on the fly.

"We did, in fact, put into place never-before-used and untested processes," Donna M. Dannels, acting deputy director of recovery at FEMA, told a House panel this month. "Clearly, because they were untested, they were more subject to error and fraud."

Officials in Washington say they recognized that a certain amount of fraud or improper payments is inevitable in any major disaster, as the government's mission is to rapidly distribute emergency aid. They typically send out excessive payments that represent 1 percent to 3 percent of the relief distributed, money they then ask people to give back.

What was not understood until now was just how large these numbers could become.

The estimate of up to $2 billion in fraud and waste represents nearly 11 percent of the $19 billion spent by FEMA on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as of mid-June, or about 6 percent of total money that has been obligated.

"This started off as a disaster-relief program, but it turned into a cash cow," said Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas, a former federal prosecutor and now chairman of a House panel investigating storm waste and fraud.

• $213 million in overcharges by Kellogg, Brown and Root for importing fuel into Iraq.
  
• A contractor who paid $2 million in bribes in order to steer $8.6 million in Iraq contracts to his business.
  
• The company Custer Battles being handed $2 million of government funds in shrink-wrapped bundles of $100 bills.
  
• Halliburton giving >polluted water and expired food to American troops.
  

So where are these watchdogs when it comes to waste in Iraq and Afghanistan? Are they investigating favored contractors making billions for work not performed, or shoddily performed? (See the links below) What about wartime contractors who bill the American public for work not requested? Yes, it all adds up to fraud in the billions, but I see no congressional rush to call these people into account.

Clearly, it’s a bit safer politically to chase down Katrina fraud than to take on corrupt contractors in Iraq, who figure among the top Republican Party donors. So brace yourself for more accounts of FEMA debit card abuse. You can count on it. But are those antics really responsible for $1.4 billion in Katrina fraud? Think about it. Who’s doing the rebuilding, the heavy lifting at New Orleans redux ground zero? Why, it’s Halliburton, and a handful of other names very familiar amongst certain fund-raising circles. So you can be sure the libatious habits of aid recipients are going to continue to be the main focus of any congressional investigation into Katrina fraud. Overbilling and waste by the President’s supporters will be reported by only a handful of brave media outlets.

Schumer, a consummate Washington insider, is now using his position as head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to try to crush his own party's activists in Connecticut. According to Time Magazine, Schumer has pressed Senate candidate Ned Lamont (D) to abandon his run against Sen. Joe Lieberman (D) - the Democratic incumbent who has repeatedly and destructively undermined the Democratic Party for years. Schumer has also said he would consider backing Lieberman's bid for re-election even if Lieberman leaves the Democratic Party.

None of this is surprising. Schumer's been a Washington politician for decades - and grassroots energy frightens people like him. But what is surprising is how Schumer has become so desperate, he is now flinging out wild stories to justify his actions. Time reports that "Schumer has told colleagues he thinks that if Lieberman lost the primary, it would send a bad signal to moderate voters and might hurt the party's chances of winning Senate seats in places like Montana and Missouri in November."

One of two things explains this comment - either Schumer is even more out of touch with American politics than previously thought, or he's so desperate he's resorted to fabricating patently laughable stories to justify his nauseating behavior. It is definitely possible Schumer is totally and completely out of touch - he's made similar comments in the past that expose him as having positively no understanding of anything that goes on outside his insulated world in Washington.  And self-important politicians and political operatives in our nation's capital do have a tendency to believe ordinary voters are super keyed into the minutia of politics - often making these insiders look particularly stupid and more out of touch.

But I believe Schumer's just desperate, and thus resorting to open dishonesty - because I just can't believe he could be so intellectually impaired that he actually believes Joe Lieberman losing would imperil Democrats chances in states thousands of miles away from Connecticut, with totally different political dynamics. The idea that a voter in, say, the critical swing area of Yellowstone County here in Montana is going to vote against Jon Tester in November because Joe Lieberman was defeated in a Democratic primary in August is beyond the scope of what can even be called "totally absurd" - it's an out and out lie, and one that could only be mouthed with a straight face in a place as sadly comical as Washington, D.C. is today.

Here's the deal: what's going on in Connecticut is good for the Democratic Party and good for democracy. No politician - not Joe Lieberman, not Chuck Schumer - owns a congressional seat. We the people do, and thankfully, at least some courageous Democrats like Sen. Russ Feingold (D) understand that and are willing to use their position to give voice to that truism. When incumbents get challenged by courageous people like Ned Lamont because those incumbents are selling out America, that's democracy in action. And any politician or political operative who tries to thwart that contest shows an ugly contempt for the democratic tradition our country was built on.

Schumer claims to be concerned with winning elections - but what he's really concerned about is maintaining his and his insulated colleagues' increasingly weakening hold on power. What will help Democrats win elections will be a surge in grassroots energy and a reengaged corps of activists who are working to take their party and country back - energy like we are seeing in Connecticut. What will hurt Democrats ability to win elections is New York Senators sitting in their comfortable offices in Washington, D.C. embarrassing themselves by making statements that show their isolation from America's heartland and using their quickly fading power to try to depress the grassroots energy that makes all the difference at the ballot box.

But there are bigger changes coming to MSNBC, especially in prime time, where the network will apparently be dropping some of its talk-show lineup in favor of more taped reports. That change is likely to take place as soon as the next couple of months. "I think we're going to have some program changes this summer," Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, said in a telephone interview. "Prime time is the focus. That's where the money is."

Mr. Capus said he would like the channel to change its identity in ways that would distinguish it from its two chief competitors, the Fox News Channel and CNN.

"All three channels are doing a variation of headline news all day and talk shows at night," Mr. Capus said. "We need to get away from that."

[snip]

One senior NBC executive said, "There will probably be one to two hours of long-form taped shows every night in prime time." The executive spoke on condition of anonymity because the decisions were not final and would affect some of the prime-time hosts, like Rita Cosby, Tucker Carlson and Joe Scarborough, now working on the channel.

Two of the channel's hosts, Chris Matthews of "Hardball" and Keith Olbermann of "Countdown," clearly will not be affected, because MSNBC's managers consistently cite those programs as long-sought breakthroughs.

"We've just got to build on those two shows," Mr. Griffin said, sitting beside Mr. Abrams in the conference room at MSNBC. "It's critical. We have to capitalize on their success."

[snip]

Mr. Olbermann, meanwhile, has picked up both viewers and some strong word-of-mouth for his irreverent style. His show is up 36 percent since January in that 25-54 group. MSNBC points out that during the same period, CNN and Fox have been down that those hours.

Of course, a little bump goes a long way at MSNBC, where ratings have been mainly dwarfish over the years, especially next to Fox News. Even with Mr. Olbermann's surge, for example, he draws well less than half of what Bill O'Reilly of Fox does in that age group — and only a fifth of Mr. O'Reilly's total viewer number.

But Mr. Griffin noted that MSNBC's two big shows were going in the right direction now, gaining viewers, while most of those on Fox and CNN were showing declines. CNN especially is a target of opportunity for MSNBC, Mr. Griffin said, because Mr. Olbermann has beaten that network on many nights recently.

President Hamid Karzai criticized the U.S.-led coalition's anti-terror campaign Thursday, deploring the deaths of hundreds of Afghans and appealing for more help for his government.

Karzai's sharp assessment came as Osama bin Laden's deputy urged Afghans to revolt against coalition forces, and four more U.S. soldiers were killed.

More than four years after U.S.-led forces toppled the extremist Taliban government, Afghanistan is gripped by its deadliest spate of post-invasion violence. To try curb the bloodshed, more than 10,000 coalition forces have launched a major offensive against militants across southern Afghanistan. More than 600 people, mainly militants, have been killed since May.

But Karzai, who has previously scorned large-scale anti-militant campaigns, rejected the continued spilling of Afghan blood in military operations.

"It is not acceptable for us that in all this fighting, Afghans are dying. In the last three to four weeks, 500 to 600 Afghans were killed. (Even) if they are Taliban, they are sons of this land," a clearly frustrated Karzai told reporters in Kabul.

On Thursday, Afghan and coalition forces raided a Taliban compound northwest of Tirin Kot, the capital of Uruzgan province, killing eight militants, the coalition said. Six others were captured.

Karzai said the current focus on hunting militants didn't address terrorism's root causes. "We must engage strategically in disarming terrorism by stopping their sources of supply of money, training, equipment and motivation," he said.

He also said the war on terror needs to be broadened beyond Afghan borders.

"We are concerned about the increase of attacks in our country," he said. "Some of the reasons are the internal weakness of administration in our country, but most of the factors are foreign factors, terrorism and organized attacks."

He did not elaborate on which "foreign factors" were involved, but many Afghan officials have accused neighboring Pakistan of doing too little to catch Taliban militants planning attacks. Islamabad denies the claims.

Karzai said Afghanistan has received considerable help in reconstruction but has been given inadequate assistance to strengthen its police force, army and government administration.

"This amendment effectively calls on the United States to cut and run from Iraq. Let me be clear: retreat is not a solution. Our national security requires us to follow through on our commitments. Artificial deadlines are not the solution — and those calling for an early withdrawal of American troops from Iraq utterly fail to understand the potentially catastrophic implications of their proposal. Cutting and running is bad policy that threatens our national security and poses unacceptable risks to Americans." -- Sen. Bill Frist, 6/19/06

...has drafted a plan that projects sharp reductions in the United States military presence there by the end of 2007, with the first cuts coming this September

The commander met this week with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On Friday, General Casey and Mr. Rumsfeld met with President Bush at the White House. A senior White House official said that General Casey did not present a formal plan for Mr. Bush's approval but rather a concept of how the United States might move forward after consulting with Iraqi authorities, including Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

A timetable for withdrawal of occupation troops from Iraq. Amnesty for all insurgents who attacked U.S. and Iraqi military targets. Release of all security detainees from U.S. and Iraqi prisons. Compensation for victims of coalition military operations.

In the general's briefing, the future American role in Iraq is divided into three phases. The next 12 months was described as a period of stabilization. The period from the summer of 2007 through the summer of 2008 was described as a time when the emphasis would be on the restoration of the Iraqi government's authority. The period from the summer of 2008 though the summer of 2009 was cast as one in which the Iraqi government would be increasingly self-reliant.

In line with this vision, some cuts would begin soon. The United States has 14 combat brigades in Iraq, plus many other support troops. Under the plan, the Unites States would shrink this force to 12 combat brigades by September. This would be done by not replacing two brigades that are scheduled to be withdrawn: the First Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division and the Third Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division.

A combat brigade would be kept on alert in Kuwait or elsewhere in case American commanders needed to augment their forces to deal with a crisis. Another brigade would be kept on a lesser state of alert elsewhere in the world, but still prepared to deploy quickly. As a result of these arrangements, the plan to bring the combat force down to 12 active brigades in Iraq is being called 12-1-1.

Still further reductions might be made by the end of the year. By December, the number of American combat brigades in Iraq would be 10 to 12. As with the September reduction, a brigade would be kept on alert and another brigade would be ready to deploy.

According to the projections in General Casey's briefing, the number of combat brigades would shrink to seven to eight brigades by June 2007 and finally to five to six brigades by December 2007.

At the same time the number of bases in Iraq would decline as American forces consolidated. By the end of the year the number of bases would shrink to 57 from the current 69. By June 2007, there would be 30 bases, and by December 2007 there would be only 11. By the end of 2007, the United States would have three principal regional military commands: in Baghdad and the surrounding area, in Anbar Province and the west and in northern Iraq.

1. Bush just adopted the Democrats' plan. A plan he and Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman and the Republican Congress savaged all week.

2. To use Bush's own language, he just provided "the enemy" with DETAILED dates for the withdrawal and the exact number of troops we would withdraw and where they remaining troops would be stationed.

3. What changed in Iraq for the better in the past two days that let the White House come up with a timetable for a partial withdrawal? Was it the kidnapping of 85 to 100 people north of Baghdad? Was it the US embassy memo saying the situation is deteriorating? There are no facts whatsoever to suggest that the situation in Iraq has improved at all, so what possibly can Bush be basing this on other than political pandering for the upcoming US elections?

4. Isn't it nice to know that the US military is now actively trying to influence US elections?

5. Check out the small mention the NYT gives the hypocrisy of the GOP:

Now, after criticizing Democratic lawmakers for trying to legislate a timeline for withdrawing troops, skeptics say, the Bush administration seems to have its own private schedule, albeit one that can be adjusted as events unfold.

Skeptics? Would the Times report that "skeptics say humans breathe oxygen?" Do facts not exist any longer in American media circles? The Republicans spent all week savaging the Dems for talking about beginning a withdrawal. Does the Murtha plan sound vaguely familiar to anyone over at the Times? And now that Bush has a plan for a partial withdrawal, suddenly only "skeptics" are the ones seeing some rather large hypocrisy here. The GOP about-face should be THE story, not a few lines in the story. Not to mention, where is the quote in the story about the administration being asked about the hypocrisy? There's nothing - it would seem the Times didn't bother asking.

The next step, of course, will be for the same people who three days ago were demanding the execution of John Kerry and John Murtha for even daring to suggest a withdrawal timetable to immediately begin calling for a withdrawal timetable -- that is, when they're not hailing the Cheney administration for having won a smashing victory in Iraq. In fact it's already started.

At least 50,000 Iraqis have died violently since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, according to statistics from the Baghdad morgue, the Iraqi Health Ministry and other agencies — a toll 20,000 higher than previously acknowledged by the Bush administration.

Many more Iraqis are believed to have been killed but not counted because of serious lapses in recording deaths in the chaotic first year after the invasion, when there was no functioning Iraqi government, and continued spotty reporting nationwide since.

The toll, which is mostly of civilians but probably also includes some security forces and insurgents, is daunting: Proportionately, it is equivalent to 570,000 Americans being killed nationwide in the last three years.

In the same period, at least 2,520 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq.

Iraqi officials involved in compiling the statistics say violent deaths in some regions have been grossly undercounted, notably in the troubled province of Al Anbar in the west. Health workers there are unable to compile the data because of violence, security crackdowns, electrical shortages and failing telephone networks.

The Health Ministry acknowledged the undercount. In addition, the ministry said its figures exclude the three northern provinces of the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan because Kurdish officials do not provide death toll figures to the government in Baghdad.

In the three years since Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled, the Bush administration has rarely offered civilian death tolls. Last year, President Bush said he believed that "30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis."

Nongovernmental organizations have made estimates by tallying media accounts; The Times attempted to reach a comprehensive figure by obtaining statistics from the Baghdad morgue and the Health Ministry and checking those numbers against a sampling of local health departments for possible undercounts.

The Health Ministry gathers numbers from hospitals in the capital and the outlying provinces. If a victim of violence dies at a hospital or arrives dead, medical officials issue a death certificate. Relatives claim the body directly from the hospital and arrange for a speedy burial in keeping with Muslim beliefs.

If the morgue receives a body — usually those deemed suspicious deaths — officials there issue the death certificate.

Health Ministry officials said that because death certificates are issued and counted separately, the two data sets are not overlapping.

The Baghdad morgue received 30,204 bodies from 2003 through mid-2006, while the Health Ministry said it had documented 18,933 deaths from "military clashes" and "terrorist attacks" from April 5, 2004, to June 1, 2006. Together, the toll reaches 49,137.

However, samples obtained from local health departments in other provinces show an undercount that brings the total well beyond 50,000. The figure also does not include deaths outside Baghdad in the first year of the invasion.

The documented cases show a country descending further into violence.

At the Baghdad morgue, the vast majority of bodies processed had been shot execution-style. Many showed signs of torture — drill holes, burns, missing eyes and limbs, officials said. Others had been strangled, beheaded, stabbed or beaten to death.