A technical glitch gave the F.B.I. access to the e-mail messages from an entire computer network — perhaps hundreds of accounts or more — instead of simply the lone e-mail address that was approved by a secret intelligence court as part of a national security investigation, according to an internal report of the 2006 episode.

F.B.I. officials blamed an “apparent miscommunication” with the unnamed Internet provider, which mistakenly turned over all the e-mail from a small e-mail domain for which it served as host. The records were ultimately destroyed, officials said.

Bureau officials noticed a “surge” in the e-mail activity they were monitoring and realized that the provider had mistakenly set its filtering equipment to trap far more data than a judge had actually authorized.

The episode is an unusual example of what has become a regular if little-noticed occurrence, as American officials have expanded their technological tools: government officials, or the private companies they rely on for surveillance operations, sometimes foul up their instructions about what they can and cannot collect.

The problem has received no discussion as part of the fierce debate in Congress about whether to expand the government’s wiretapping authorities and give legal immunity to private telecommunications companies that have helped in those operations.

But an intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because surveillance operations are classified, said: “It’s inevitable that these things will happen. It’s not weekly, but it’s common.”

A report in 2006 by the Justice Department inspector general found more than 100 violations of federal wiretap law in the two prior years by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, many of them considered technical and inadvertent.

Bureau officials said they did not have updated public figures but were preparing them as part of a wider-ranging review by the inspector general into misuses of the bureau’s authority to use so-called national security letters in gathering phone records and financial documents in intelligence investigations.

In the warrantless wiretapping program approved by President Bush after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, technical errors led officials at the National Security Agency on some occasions to monitor communications entirely within the United States — in apparent violation of the program’s protocols — because communications problems made it difficult to tell initially whether the targets were in the country or not.

Past violations by the government have also included continuing a wiretap for days or weeks beyond what was authorized by a court, or seeking records beyond what were authorized. The 2006 case appears to be a particularly egregious example of what intelligence officials refer to as “overproduction” — in which a telecommunications provider gives the government more data than it was ordered to provide.

The problem of overproduction is particularly common, F.B.I. officials said. In testimony before Congress in March 2007 regarding abuses of national security letters, Valerie E. Caproni, the bureau’s general counsel, said that in one small sample, 10 out of 20 violations were a result of “third-party error,” in which a private company “provided the F.B.I. information we did not seek.”

In the cyber era, the incident is the equivalent of law enforcement officials getting a subpoena to search a single apartment, but instead having the landlord give them the keys to every apartment in the building.

Labels: FISA, icepick meet forehead, NSA wiretapping

From the safety of the Home of Economy store he manages in North Dakota, Pajamas Media blogger Rob Port takes the students of Northern Illinois to task for not throwing their laptops at the gunman in the recent shooting tragedy there:

In a recent post about the campus shooting at Northern Illinois University one reader, who lives near the campus, posted this:

I am discouraged that no one took their books, laptops, anything and just threw it at the guy, no one fought back. It’s that passivity that troubles me.

That’s a great point.

Is this dirtbag really that stupid? Does he have any idea how far you can hurl a laptop or even how far bullets go? Obviously, Port gets his exercise and his view of reality from playing first-person shooters where he can find a magic laptop that can be thrown 100 feet at 600 mph and will completely waste the reptilian alien monster chasing him through subterranean tunnels.

And why are college students just a bunch of panty-waists who won’t throw their Dells at crazed gunmen? Because of liberals, of course:

It seems that far too often modern Americans have an instinct to cower or run away when threatened instead of fighting back. Especially younger Americans, and based on my personal experience I’d have to say that it’s being learned in our schools. When I went to school fighting, even when fighting back against a bully who was threatening you, was enough to warrant suspension. Maybe even a call to the police and/or expulsion. I think the kids who grew up with that approach to discipline are the same ones who don’t fight back as adults.

Woohoo! More schoolyard brawling! That’s the ticket. If kids got gold stars instead of detention for beating up on classmates, you can be certain that each and every one of the kids in that classroom would have challenged the gunman to a fight by the bike rack during recess.

Labels: icepick meet forehead, wingnuttia

Pakistan's election commission has received more than 1,200 complaints of cheating so far. The allegations concern bribes to acquire ID numbers in order to cast fraudulent ballots, the misuse and counterfeiting of postal votes, and fake reports which allow police to arrest campaign workers without charge, as well as kidnappings and shooting.

Florida parents don't have much faith in evolution.

Only 22 percent want public schools to teach an evolution-only curriculum, while 50 percent want only faith-based theories such as creationism or intelligent design, according to a new St. Petersburg Times survey.

"I have a very firm religious background," said Betty Lininger of Lecanto, who is raising her 15-year-old niece and thinks public schools should teach intelligent design but not evolution. "I can't just shove it out the door."

The survey findings stand in stark contrast to the state's proposed new science standards, which describe evolution as the pillar of modern biology and do not include alternative theories.

If the state Board of Education approves them Tuesday, the new standards will guide what Florida students are taught and tested on.

The Times survey - which included questions about evolution and a host of other education issues - was administered to 702 registered voters Feb. 6-10, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

It revealed a huge gulf between scientists and the public.

While the vast majority of scientists consider evolution to be backed by strong evidence, nearly two-thirds of those polled were skeptical.

Twenty-nine percent said evolution is one of several valid theories. Another 16 percent said evolution is not backed up by enough evidence. And 19 percent said evolution is not valid because it is at odds with the Bible.

"It just shows we have a lot of work to do," said Christopher D'Elia, a marine biologist who is an interim vice chancellor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

Fundamentalist Christians, often portrayed as the heart of the antievolution opposition, weren't the only ones who expressed doubt. While only 9 percent of respondents who described themselves as evangelicals or fundamentalists wanted an evolution-only curriculum, the numbers still weren't very high for Protestants overall 16 percent or Catholics (21 percent).

Sue Sams of Spring Hill, a retired English teacher who describes herself as Protestant, said schools should teach creationism only.

"I don't disagree with the theory of evolution," said Sams, 65. "I'm just not sure it's 100 percent right."

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade, icepick meet forehead, idiocy

The House of Representatives defied the White House yesterday by refusing to make an expiring surveillance law permanent, prompting a harsh exchange between Republicans and Democrats as they prepared for an extended, election-year battle over national security.

The episode was a rare uprising by Democrats against the White House on a terrorism issue, and it inspired caterwauling on both sides about the dire ramifications of the standoff.

Republicans said Democrats were putting the nation at risk, while President Bush offered to delay his scheduled departure for Africa today to reach a deal. Democrats responded with charges of administration recklessness and fearmongering.

The conflict erupted on the same day that House Democrats approved contempt citations against White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet E. Miers over their refusal to cooperate with an investigation into the mass firings of U.S. attorneys.

That vote -- resulting in the first citations ever issued against White House officials -- infuriated the Bush administration and helped torpedo a short-lived political truce with Democrats, who had celebrated the signing of a bipartisan economic stimulus package on Wednesday. Republicans staged a walkout before the vote.

The surveillance dispute centers on the Protect America Act, a temporary law approved over Democratic misgivings last August. It expanded the powers of the government to monitor the communications of foreign suspects without warrants, including international phone calls and e-mails passing through or into the United States. It is set to expire at the end of the day tomorrow.

The Bush administration wants to make the law permanent, while adding legal immunity for telecommunication companies that were sued for invasions of privacy after helping U.S. intelligence agencies conduct warrantless wiretapping. The Senate has approved a bill backed by the White House, but the House has balked at the immunity provision and raised other objections because of civil-liberties concerns.

Without the law, administration officials said yesterday in interviews and statements, the monitoring of terrorist groups overseas will be severely hampered. Telecom firms may also become reluctant to help the National Security Agency and other U.S. intelligence agencies conduct surveillance, officials said.

"If Congress does not act by that time, our ability to find out who the terrorists are talking to, what they are saying, and what they are planning will be compromised," Bush said in a hastily arranged news appearance on the South Lawn of the White House. He said that intelligence officials were "waiting to see" if Congress would "tie their hands."

Democrats immediately said that the expiration of the temporary law would have little, if any, immediate impact on intelligence gathering. "He has nothing to offer but fear," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters after Bush's address.

Labels: Bush Administration, FISA

Regarding Obama and the flag pin, here's something from the corporate media that repeats exactly what he said. You have to admit, he's right. The Republicans DO use the flag as a weapon.

Media Matters (a good site to watch) weighs in on the talking points your online friends have been listening to:

...and points out how Sean Hannity doesn't wear one either:

...and this blog from the NY Times shows most of the other candidates, including John McCain, don't wear one either.


Had enough?

On to the "salute the flag" controversy...

I assume that the photo here was sent to you.

Did you know that you do NOT have to put your hand over your heart when the national anthem is played? The Code for the National Anthem of the United States says:

"On all occasions, in singing the National Anthem, the audience will stand facing the flag, or the leader in an attitude of respectful attention. Outdoors, the men will remove hats."

Do your friends like those shrieking versions of the National Anthem played by American Idol pop divas before baseball games? Those are a lot more of a violation of the flag code than Barack Obama standing respectfully. The code also says:

"It is inappropriate to make or use sophisticated "concert" versions of the National Anthem."

That should take care of that one.

How about the madrassa issue?

Here you go, courtesy of CNN:

Allegations that Sen. Barack Obama was educated in a radical Muslim school known as a "madrassa" are not accurate, according to CNN reporting.
Insight Magazine, which is owned by the same company as The Washington Times, reported on its Web site last week that associates of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, had unearthed information the Illinois Democrat and likely presidential candidate attended a Muslim religious school known for teaching the most fundamentalist form of Islam.

Obama lived in Indonesia as a child, from 1967 to 1971, with his mother and stepfather and has acknowledged attending a Muslim school, but an aide said it was not a madrassa.

Insight attributed the information in its article to an unnamed source, who said it was discovered by "researchers connected to Senator Clinton." A spokesman for Clinton, who is also weighing a White House bid, denied that the campaign was the source of the Obama claim.

He called the story "an obvious right-wing hit job."

Insight stood by its story in a response posted on its Web site Monday afternoon.

[snip]

But reporting by CNN in Jakarta, Indonesia and Washington, D.C., shows the allegations that Obama attended a madrassa to be false. CNN dispatched Senior International Correspondent John Vause to Jakarta to investigate.

He visited the Basuki school, which Obama attended from 1969 to 1971.

"This is a public school. We don't focus on religion," Hardi Priyono, deputy headmaster of the Basuki school, told Vause. "In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don't give preferential treatment."

Vause reported he saw boys and girls dressed in neat school uniforms playing outside the school, while teachers were dressed in Western-style clothes.

"I came here to Barack Obama's elementary school in Jakarta looking for what some are calling an Islamic madrassa ... like the ones that teach hate and violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Vause said on the "Situation Room" Monday. "I've been to those madrassas in Pakistan ... this school is nothing like that."

Vause also interviewed one of Obama's Basuki classmates, Bandug Winadijanto, who claims that not a lot has changed at the school since the two men were pupils. Insight reported that Obama's political opponents believed the school promoted Wahhabism, a fundamentalist form of Islam, "and are seeking to prove it."

"It's not (an) Islamic school. It's general," Winadijanto said. "There is a lot of Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian. ... So that's a mixed school."

The Obama aide described Fox News' broadcasting of the Insight story "appallingly irresponsible."

Fox News executive Bill Shine told CNN "Reliable Sources" anchor Howard Kurtz that some of the network's hosts were simply expressing their opinions and repeatedly cited Insight as the source of the allegations.

That last paragraph is important, because it's a window into how these wingnut memes get into the general consciousness. Thanks to Fox News, "fair and balanced" means that when you have two sides to a story, and one is factual and the other is completely and demonstrably utter horsepuckey, they both have to be given equal credibility as two sides to the story. Sort of like the evolution/creationism battle. A lie repeated often enough becomes conventional wisdom and eventually truth.

It was Joseph Goebbels who said “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

And that's where these wingnuts get their inspiration from -- Adolf Hitler's propaganda minister.

Now for the issue of Obama's church:

I'll bet this e-mail at Snopes.com is the one you got from your friend. Am I right?

If you're interested in another perspective on any of these issues, please tell me what you're hearing and I'll look it up for you. Don't forward me this stuff, because it makes me nuts. But if there's a specific issue that you want a perspective on, let me know. It may very well be that people are uncomfortable with Obama's international heritage and history, but after eight years of George W. Bush, don't you think that having someone who HAS not only visited but lived in other countries and seen other cultures might be an ASSET in trying to undo the damage this president has done?

Labels: Barack Obama, wingnuttia

If you're distracted by lolcats at work all day, new evidence from evolutionary biology suggests it's not your fault. Human visual attention evolved thousands of years ago to track the movements of animals, and even today people are far more distracted by images involving changes in animals than they are by images of inert Mac laptops or moving cars. This research, conducted by psychologists at Yale, goes a long way towards explaining the bizarrely mesmerizing effect of lolcats, despite the fact that there are plenty of other funny, cute things out there on the Web.

A report on the Yale study explains:

What our eyes look at is guided by brain mechanisms that pick out some portions of a scene over others. Since keeping an eye on predators and prey was important during our evolution, Joshua New and colleagues investigated whether animals, both human and otherwise, are more likely to grab our visual attention. The researchers showed subjects pairs of photographs of natural scenes in rapid alternation, with the second photograph including a single change. As predicted, subjects were faster and more accurate detecting changes involving animals than inanimate objects. If experience were producing this bias, then people should also be good at detecting changes involving automobiles, which as drivers and pedestrians they have been trained all their lives to monitor for sudden, life-or-death changes in trajectory. Yet subjects were much slower in detecting changes to vehicles than to more rarely experienced animal species, indicating that learning is not the source of this difference. The bias for animals, the authors conclude, is like the appendix: present in modern humans because it was useful for our ancestors, even if useless now.

What's great about this research is that it inadvertently targeted exactly what's happening in lolcat images: the animal has been changed from being just a regular cute kitty, to being a cute kitty with special attributes created by the caption. So a lolcat is an animal image with "a single change."

I really want to see a study that specifically looks at what happens to our brains while looking at pictures of lolcats to see exactly what part of the brain lights up when I can haz a cheezburger.

Labels: cat blogging

Labels: bloggers

Neither candidate is expected to win the 2,025 pledged delegates needed to claim the nomination by the time the voting ends in June. But Mr. Obama’s campaign began making a case in earnest on Wednesday that if he maintained his edge in delegates won in primaries and caucuses, he would have the strongest claim to the backing of the 796 elected Democrats and party leaders known as superdelegates who are free to vote as they choose and who now stand to determine the outcome.

Mrs. Clinton’s aides said she could still pull out a victory with victories in the biggest primaries still to come, including Ohio and Texas next month. But Mr. Obama’s clear lead in delegates allocated by the votes in nominating contests is one of a number of challenges facing her after a string of defeats in which Mr. Obama not only ran up big popular vote margins but also made inroads among the types of voters she had most been counting on, including women and lower-income people.

Should the cracks in her support among those groups show up in Ohio and Texas as well, it could undermine her hopes that those states will halt Mr. Obama’s momentum and allow her to claim dominance in many of the biggest primary battlegrounds.

With every delegate precious, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers also made it clear that they were prepared to take a number of potentially incendiary steps to build up Mrs. Clinton’s count. Top among these, her aides said, is pressing for Democrats to seat the disputed delegations from Florida and Michigan, who held their primaries in January in defiance of Democratic Party rules.

[snip]

Mrs. Clinton’s advisers acknowledged that it would be difficult for her to catch up in the race for pledged delegates even if she succeeded in winning Ohio and Texas in three weeks and Pennsylvania in April. They said the Democratic Party’s rules, which award delegates relatively evenly among the candidates based on the proportion of the vote they receive, would require her to win by huge margins in those states to match Mr. Obama in delegates won through voting.

The delegate math set up a new front in the battle for the party’s presidential nomination, one based on competing views of how the party leaders and elected officials whose vote will determine the outcome should make their decisions.

Mrs. Clinton’s aides said the delegates should make their decision based on who they thought would be the stronger candidate and president. Mr. Obama argues that they should follow the will of the Democratic Party as expressed in the primary and caucuses — meaning the candidate with the most delegates from the voting.

Even if he loses, his friends say, he doesn't lose. He'll just change the score, or change the rules, or make his opponent play until he can beat him. "If you were playing basketball and you were playing to 11 and he was down, you went to 15," says Hannah, now a Dallas insurance executive. "If he wasn't winning, he would quit. He would just walk off.… It's what we called Bush Effort: If I don't like the game, I take my ball and go home. Very few people can get away with that." So why could George get away with it? "He was just too easygoing and too pleasant."

Another fast friend, Roland Betts, acknowledges that it is the same in tennis. In November 1992, Bush and Betts were in Santa Fe to host a dinner party, but they had just enough time for one set of doubles. The former Yale classmates were on opposite sides of the net. "There was only one problem—my side won the first set," recalls Betts. "O.K., then we're going two out of three," Bush decreed. Bush's side takes the next set. But Betts's side is winning the third set when it starts to snow. Hard, fat flakes. The catering truck pulls up. But Bush won't let anybody quit. "He's pissed. George runs his mouth constantly," says Betts indulgently. "He's making fun of your last shot, mocking you, needling you, goading you—he never shuts up!" They continued to play tennis through a driving snowstorm.

It is something of an in-joke with Bush's friends and family. "In reality we all know who won, but George wants to go further to see what happens," says an old family friend, venture capitalist and former MGM chairman Louis "Bo" Polk Jr. "George would say, 'Play that one over,' or 'I wasn't quite ready.' The overtimes are what's fun, so you make your own. When you go that extra mile or that extra point … you go to a whole new level."

Labels: Hillary Clinton

Labels: FISA

Citing an effort to hold down costs, health insurance giant Blue Cross wants doctors in California to report conditions it could use to cancel new patients' medical coverage, it was reported Tuesday.

The state's largest for-profit health insurer is sending physicians copies of health insurance applications filled out by new patients, along with a letter advising them that the company has a right to drop members who fail to disclose "material medical history," the Los Angeles Times reported on its Web site.

"Any condition not listed on the application that is discovered to be pre-existing should be reported to Blue Cross immediately," according to the letter obtained by the newspaper.

One of the conditions noted in the letter that could force a new patient to be dropped by Blue Cross - pre-existing pregnancies.

WellPoint Inc., the Indianapolis-based company that operates Blue Cross of California, said it was sending out the letters in an effort to keep costs at a minimum.

"Enrolling an applicant who did not disclose their true condition (and the condition is chronic or acute), will quickly drive increased utilization of services, which drives up costs for all members," WellPoint spokeswoman Shannon Troughton said in an e-mail to the newspaper.

"Blue Cross feels it is our responsibility to assure all records are accurate and up to date for HMO providers," she said. "We send these letters to identify members early on in the process who may not have been honest in their application."

Troughton added doctors are not required, but rather can volunteer, patients' information to Blue Cross.

Doctors were unhappy about the letter, warning that some patients might hide any medical history that could affect their prospects of receiving health insurance.

"We're outraged that they are asking doctors to violate the sacred trust of patients to rat them out for medical information that patients would expect their doctors to handle with the utmost secrecy and confidentiality," said Dr. Richard Frankenstein, president of the California Medical Association.

Labels: corporatism, greed, health care

Rep. Albert Wynn (D-Md.) is losing overwhelmingly to non-profit executive Donna Edwards in tonight’s primary, and will be the first incumbent headed to defeat this election cycle.

With 51 percent of precincts reporting, Edwards leads Wynn by a 22-point margin – 59 to 37 percent. Wynn conceded to Edwards late this evening.

The defeat of the eight-term congressman can be attributed squarely to ideology.

Edwards’ progressive profile – she has been an activist for various liberal causes – played very well among the affluent, well-educated white Democrats in Montgomery County. She is overwhelmingly carrying the county – by an even larger margin than her 25-point victory over Wynn in Montgomery County in 2006.

But even more impressively, she is defeating Wynn in his home base of Prince George’s County by a 12-point margin, suggesting that Edwards’ criticism of his ties to corporate interests and his initial support for the Iraq war resonated throughout the district.

Labels: Progressives

• 90% of black voters
  
• 75% of those under age 30
  
• 67% of those under age 45
  
• 52% of those over age 60 (so much for the oldsters keeping the nomination away from him, eh?)
  
• 50% of white voters
  
• 59% of women
  
• 61% of union households
  
• 65% of those making less than $50,000/year
  

But the latest results suggest that the race might be tilting back to a more normal form, where the goal is achieving a series of splashing victories and thus momentum. That has provided Mr. Obama with the opportunity, which he plans to seize in a more full-throated way starting on Wednesday, to argue that voters across a wide cross-section of the country have embraced his candidacy, and that the time has come for the group that could hold the balance of power, those 796 unpledged superdelegates — party leaders and elected officials who have an automatic seat at the national convention — to follow suit.

“We are in a momentum phase of the process now,” said Tad Devine, a Democratic consultant.

Mrs. Clinton’s advisers dispute that, noting that his victories have come in relatively small states and that she has invested most of her attention in two big contests coming up on March 4: Ohio and Texas. Her aides have long argued that by the end of the voting, the difference between the two candidates in delegate count would be minimal, leaving the final decision to superdelegates, who in their view would favor Mrs. Clinton.

But if party leaders begin to think this is no longer simply a mathematical race to the 2,025-delegate line, that could have big consequences for Mrs. Clinton.

For one thing, if this is an election where a candidate wins by virtue of being seen as winning — a definition of momentum — that would mean that voters in coming states would be influenced by the outcome of earlier races. And Mr. Obama might then be in a position to encroach on Mrs. Clinton’s firewall of Texas and Ohio.

Perhaps most problematically, the delegate selection process — in which delegates are allocated to the candidates in proportion to how many votes they win — could now begin to work against Mrs. Clinton. Both candidates get a share of the delegates, even if one wins by a margin of 20 points. That is a reason Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama had stayed so close on delegate numbers, and why it becomes harder for her to reclaim a lead.

But whatever challenges Mrs. Clinton faces, she has repeatedly proved to be a resourceful candidate with a sharp campaign organization and a passionate base of supporters. Should she win in Ohio and Texas, she could halt Mr. Obama’s claim to momentum and keep the race for pledged delegates from breaking against her. And there has been a history in this campaign of Mr. Obama winning, only to have Mrs. Clinton return and win.

“You can’t make a judgment until Ohio and Texas,” said Jonathan Prince, who was a senior adviser to John Edwards of North Carolina, who quit the race two weeks ago. “In this campaign, every time he has surged ahead, voters take a pause. If momentum keeps slamming into a wall, than you do have to come down to the numbers.”

“John McCain is an American hero,” Mr. Obama said before a huge, cheering crowd. “We honor his service to our nation. But his priorities don’t address the real problems of the American people, because they are bound to the failed policies of the past.”

Mr. McCain picked up the challenge. While not mentioning Mr. Obama by name, he offered an unmistakable put-down of the theme that has become so closely identified with Mr. Obama.

“To encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people is not a promise of hope,” he said. “It is a platitude.”

"...an American hero" -- Barack Obama

Labels: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton

In a separate voice vote Tuesday, the Senate expanded the power of the court to oversee government eavesdropping of Americans. The amendment would give the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court the authority to monitor whether the government is complying with procedures designed to protect the privacy of innocent Americans whose telephone or computer communications are captured during surveillance of a foreign target.

The US administration is pressing the 27 governments of the European Union to sign up for a range of new security measures for transatlantic travel, including allowing armed guards on all flights from Europe to America by US airlines.

The demand to put armed air marshals on to the flights is part of a travel clampdown by the Bush administration that officials in Brussels described as "blackmail" and "troublesome", and could see west Europeans and Britons required to have US visas if their governments balk at Washington's requirements.

According to a US document being circulated for signature in European capitals, EU states would also need to supply personal data on all air passengers overflying but not landing in the US in order to gain or retain visa-free travel to America, senior EU officials said.

And within months the US department of homeland security is to impose a new permit system for Europeans flying to the US, compelling all travellers to apply online for permission to enter the country before booking or buying a ticket, a procedure that will take several days.

The data from the US's new electronic transport authorisation system is to be combined with extensive personal passenger details already being provided by EU countries to the US for the "profiling" of potential terrorists and assessment of other security risks.

Washington is also asking European airlines to provide personal data on non-travellers - for example family members - who are allowed beyond departure barriers to help elderly, young or ill passengers to board aircraft flying to America, a demand the airlines reject as "absurd".

Labels: Global politics, icepick meet forehead, insanity, paranoia, police state

Barack Obama is a member of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. Its minister, and Obama's spiritual adviser, is the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. In 1982, the church launched Trumpet Newsmagazine; Wright's daughters serve as publisher and executive editor. Every year, the magazine makes awards in various categories. Last year, it gave the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to a man it said "truly epitomized greatness." That man is Louis Farrakhan.

Maybe for Wright and some others, Farrakhan "epitomized greatness." For most Americans, though, Farrakhan epitomizes racism, particularly in the form of anti-Semitism. Over the years, he has compiled an awesome record of offensive statements, even denigrating the Holocaust by falsely attributing it to Jewish cooperation with Hitler -- "They helped him get the Third Reich on the road." His history is a rancid stew of lies.

It's important to state right off that nothing in Obama's record suggests he harbors anti-Semitic views or agrees with Wright when it comes to Farrakhan. Instead, as Obama's top campaign aide, David Axelrod, points out, Obama often has said that he and his minister sometimes disagree. Farrakhan, Axelrod told me, is one of those instances.

Fine. But where I differ with Axelrod and, I assume, Obama is that praise for an anti-Semitic demagogue is not a minor difference or an intrachurch issue. The Obama camp takes the view that its candidate, now that he has been told about the award, is under no obligation to speak out on the Farrakhan matter. It was not Obama's church that made the award but a magazine. This is a distinction without much of a difference. And given who the parishioner is, the obligation to speak out is all the greater. He could be the next American president. Where is his sense of outrage?

Any praise of Farrakhan heightens the prestige of the leader of the Nation of Islam. For good reasons and bad, he is already admired in portions of the black community, sometimes for his efforts to rehabilitate criminals. His anti-Semitism is either not considered relevant or is shared, particularly his false insistence that Jews have played an inordinate role in victimizing African Americans.

In this, Farrakhan stands history on its head. It was Jews who disproportionately marched for civil rights and, in Mississippi, died for that cause. Farrakhan and, in effect, Wright, despoil the graves of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and, of course, their black colleague James Chaney.

I can even see how someone, maybe even Obama, could dismiss Farrakhan as a pest, a silly man pushing a silly cause that poses no real threat to the Jewish community. Still, history tells us that anti-Semitism is not to be trifled with. It is a botulism of the mind.

Labels: Barack Obama, bigotry, icepick meet forehead, utter horseshit

The Huckabee Presidential Campaign will be exploring all available legal options regarding the dubious final results for the state of Washington State Republican precinct caucuses, it was announced today. Campaign Chairman Ed Rollins issued the following statement:

“The Huckabee campaign is deeply disturbed by the obvious irregularities in the Washington State Republican precinct caucuses. It is very unfortunate that the Washington State Party Chairman, Luke Esser, chose to call the race for John McCain after only 87 percent of the vote was counted. According to CNN, the difference between Senator McCain and Governor Huckabee is a mere 242 votes, out of more than 12,000 votes counted—with another 1500 or so votes, apparently, not counted. That is an outrage.

“In other words, more than one in eight Evergreen State Republicans have been disenfranchised by the actions of their own party. This was an error in judgment by Mr. Esser. It was Mr. Esser’s duty to oversee a fair vote-count process. Washington Republicans know, from bitter experience in the 2004 gubernatorial election, the terrible results that can come from bad ballot-counting.

“Frankly, I am disappointed in the way that Mr. Esser has handled this urgent matter. So I call upon Mr. Esser and his colleagues to cooperate fully with the Huckabee campaign—and all Republicans, everywhere, who care about honest and transparent vote-counting—to make sure that every vote is counted and that all Republicans in Washington have the chance to make their votes count. Attempts by our campaign to contact Mr. Esser have been unsuccessful. Our lawyers will be on the ground in Washington State soon, and we look forward to sitting down with Mr. Esser to evaluate this process, to see why the count took so long, and why the vote-counting was stopped prematurely.

“It would be a disservice to every voter in Washington State to not pursue a full accounting of all votes cast.

“This is not about Mike Huckabee. This is not about Senator John McCain. This is about the failings of the Washington State Republican Party. All Republicans should unite to demand an honest accounting of the votes, so that Republicans can have full confidence in the results, and full confidence in the eventual Republican nominee.

Labels: 2008 election

On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, it appeared that Clinton was ready to replace Doyle and make other changes, but some Clinton loyalists said yesterday that the senator's unexpected victory forestalled widespread changes.

After her win there, the campaign began to expand, with advisers from the Clinton White House and from the Clintons' vast political network recruited to join the campaign's tight inner circle.

[snip]

The campaign long has had a very tight inner circle of Doyle, chief strategist Mark Penn, communications director Howard Wolfson, media adviser Mandy Grunwald and policy director Neera Tanden. Harold Ickes, former White House deputy chief of staff, has played an increasingly important role.

Since New Hampshire, others have been brought in to help. That group includes Doug Sosnik, former White House political director; Steve Richetti, who served as congressional liaison in the Clinton White House; and Linda Moore Forbes, who also served in the Clinton White House and who is helping nail down endorsements from superdelegates to the national convention.

Doug Hattaway, a veteran of the Gore campaign, has joined Clinton's communications operation. Roy Spence, a longtime friend of both the senator and the former president, has been offering advice on messaging and will play a lead role in overseeing the Texas campaign.

But for all the efforts to expand the operation, Democratic strategists said the Clinton campaign remains opaque, even to those on the outside willing to be helpful. "They have more walls around them than you've seen in many castles," said one prominent Democrat.

Labels: Hillary Clinton

Will America close the books on the Bush dynasty when George W. leaves office in January? Or is it still possible that his younger brother, Jeb, will rise from the ashes of the second Bush presidency -- perhaps even as part of the Bush clan's ongoing duel with the House of Clinton?

While one should never say never in politics, such a rematch in 2012 or 2016 is beginning to seem extremely unlikely. Even Jeb himself apparently regards prospects for a Bush resurrection as largely hopeless. To understand why, one needs to look more closely at the relationship between George and Barbara Bush's two eldest sons.

George Walker, 61, and John Ellis Bush (who turns 55 Monday) have long been their family's principal rivals, and by various accounts they are not close. In 2004, George W. told Brit Hume of Fox News that he and Jeb speak by phone only about once a month. The competition is not always obvious because of the way George and Jeb function as allies when the family enterprise's collective interests are at stake, as they did in the 2000 Florida recount. But as a factor in George's own drive to succeed, sibling rivalry has been second only to his relationship with his father. And in a way, it is the primary expression of it, because the ultimate stake in the rivalry was inheritance of their father's mantle.

George W. was always keenly aware, according to friends and family members, that Jeb was viewed the smarter of the two. Jeb, for his part, has always known that the cousins, aunts and uncles like Junior better. Jeb is relentlessly focused, introverted and serious. Though his political future was regarded as the most promising by the rest of the family, he has never had the glib banter or the gift for friendship of his older brother.

[snip]

Florida in the 1980s, like Texas in the 1960s, was a Democratic state poised to turn Republican, with a group of feverish conservatives -- the Cuban exiles -- leading the charge. Like his dad and unlike his impatient older brother, Jeb was happy to endure a dry policy discussion and a political slog. Rather than start with Congress, he ran in 1983 for Dade County Republican Party chairman, a position in which he served as a bridge between the new extremists and the national party establishment -- just as his father had for members of the John Birch Society in Harris County, Texas, in the early 1960s.

To ally himself with them, Jeb positioned himself well to the right. "I'm a hang-'em-by-the-neck conservative," he declared. When Bob Martinez was elected governor of Florida in 1986, Jeb moved to Tallahassee to become Florida's secretary of commerce.

By that point, the Bush parents had come to focus on Jeb as the family's next-generation political leader. After George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton in 1992, they looked to Jeb as their best hope for vindication. Jeb's position as favorite son rankled his brother, and people I've spoken to who know the president well speculate that it was a factor in George's effort to pull his life together at age 40, when he found God and quit drinking.

In politics, George would often drop comments that suggested he measured himself principally in relation to Jeb. Asked once on the campaign trail what he was going to do for "the little guy," he responded: "I am the little guy. Jeb is 6-4. I am only 5-11."

When George first proposed running for governor of Texas in 1990, his parents strongly opposed the idea. When he returned to the idea in 1994, they reacted the same way. Barbara Bush, in particular, worried that George's campaign would drain money and attention away from Jeb's contest for the governorship in Florida, according to Doug Wead, an aide to the father who became close to George around that time. When George chose to run despite their objections, the parents expected, as did others in the family, that he would lose to Ann Richards and that Jeb would defeat Lawton Chiles. When George won and Jeb lost, their positions were reversed.

In the hotel suite in Houston where George was celebrating, his aunt, Nancy Ellis, heard him speaking to his father over the phone. "Why do you feel bad about Jeb?" he asked his dad, according to one biography of the family. "Why don't you feel good about me?" Such feelings notwithstanding, primogeniture -- inheritance by the firstborn son -- was now restored. By the time Jeb was elected Florida governor in 1998, his brother was already planning his own presidential campaign.

As the second Bush presidency grinds to its dismal conclusion, both Jeb and his parents seem to think that George's mistakes have destroyed the second son's chances of ever occupying the White House, family friends say. Jeb was merely recognizing reality when he opted not to run for president in 2008. While a campaign in 2012 or beyond is theoretically possible, Jeb says he has no interest and complains that no one will believe him.

Among those who don't want to take no for an answer is his brother the president, for whom, ironically, Jeb's election would provide a measure of historical vindication.

While Jeb seems resigned to abandoning politics, family friends have described his parents as devastated that the older son spiked the chances of the younger one.

[snip]

Jeb, the obedient son, the one who was supposed to be president, who even after George Junior's election was regarded as a potential third in the line, now faces a political impasse. His older brother dashed ahead and blew up the bridge behind him. At this point, not many people inside or outside the family think it can be rebuilt.

Labels: Bush family