Do You Trust These Jokers?

Flashback: Obama vowed to end federal probe of Teamsters corruption

2011-09-07T06:10:00.000-05:00

http://michellemalkin.com/2011/09/06/flashback-obama-vowed-to-end-federal-probe-of-teamsters-corruption/

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Buddy Roemer Speech about our Economy!

2011-09-02T14:48:00.001-05:00

You just HAVE to listen to this speech if you are a conservative. It will delight your heart! http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/BuddyR The speech is by Buddy Roemer, former governor of Louisiana and a former Congressman. Ha! What a joy it is to hear the truth!

Tweet from @infowarsstories

2011-08-20T19:38:00.001-05:00

Ron Paul Addresses Plans For 'Civil Unrest' Detention Camps: Alex
Jones Channel | Paul went on to say that "they... http://t.co/UD1tgif

http://twitter.com/#!/infowarsstories/status/105042621046595585

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@Nworder89, 8/16/11 6:17 AM

2011-08-16T06:21:00.001-05:00

NwOrder89 (@Nworder89)
8/16/11 6:17 AM
@oreillyfactor #tcot : Of Al Gore... "... his mouth is the leading source of all that supposedly deadly carbon dioxide." Rick Perry

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@Right2Liberty, 8/15/11 12:54 PM

2011-08-15T21:17:00.000-05:00

I Stand With Israel (@Right2Liberty)
8/15/11 12:54 PM
LMAO!!!! / #Rush: "Next time Obama has a colonoscopy, I wonder who they'll find in there? Which NBC personality will show up first?"

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Bonus

2011-07-07T08:01:00.000-05:00

IT'D was a big deal because someone's BONUS was in jeapordy.

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Ge

2011-07-01T10:27:00.001-05:00

Constantly making comments over the wall about sniffing, burping, etc.
"That doesn't sound good", etc.

Best Regards,

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Big Sighs

2011-06-27T13:18:00.000-05:00

Nate has constant big sighs

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GEEEEEEEE Whiz

2011-06-27T11:59:00.001-05:00

Larry is a college drop-out. Only took "2 years".

Keith states he has a degree in Mechanical Engineering. No one believes it. It can't be true.

LK has no clue.

The discussion was on Statistical Methods. None of them in the meeting had a clue! Major problem. What if this tubesheet issue went to a lawyer?

7 buyers in 10 years

2011-06-07T14:24:00.000-05:00

Vendor, Ph., just told me that there have been 7 buyers in this job in
the last ten years.

Best Regards,

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Sick Man

2011-05-25T15:06:00.001-05:00

Calls sick man at home and tells him to keep up on emails. Questions
him at length on business questions . About Brian

Best Regards,

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Wrongo again!

2011-05-12T09:22:00.000-05:00

Some review-abuse-session. Hundreds of forms no closed. Wrong. My
button to click on form. Wrong. There is no button. No admission of
error from the little creep.
Whew!

Best Regards,

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Supervisor borrows money

2011-05-09T10:22:00.001-05:00

From the new guy.

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Architect

2011-05-04T14:17:00.000-05:00

"I am the architect of the 52% concept" on the phone.... Kingdom

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Malleable ethics

2011-05-04T10:13:00.001-05:00

Ethics here are politically driven and have changing meanings.

Best Regards,

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Property Manager

2011-04-29T13:32:00.001-05:00

Introduced his wife as "the property manager of our rental properties".

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Property Manager

2011-04-29T13:31:00.000-05:00

Introduce

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Fascinating!

2011-04-28T08:00:00.001-05:00

These jokers are actually fascinated with themselves. The Emporer has
no clothes.

Best Regards,

Sent from my iPod

Electronic watching

2011-04-20T09:21:00.000-05:00

We will be watched for the number of printer uses, electronically.
Will we be reprimanded for too many printoffs?

Best Regards,

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Obfuscacious Language

2011-04-18T13:05:00.002-05:00

Buyers were told to use deliberately Obfuscacious Language on POs
which could very easily invalidate the contract. I told him that this
created ambiguity, but he sent email to do so anyway.

Also the phony self-deprication. And the inappropriate unctuosity in
addressing persons.

Best Regards,

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Genius

2011-04-18T12:14:00.001-05:00

He said, you didn't tell me I'm a genius.
Lost his temper and acted tough when I didn't RSVP his Christmas
coffee quick enough. He stared at me the entire evening. Very strange,
as usual.

Best Regards,

Sent from my iPod

Silos within silos

2011-04-15T11:20:00.001-05:00

Also mention the acronym game

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Not Drinking the Kool Aid?

2011-04-14T19:09:00.001-05:00

I just found out that GE fired one of the most competent women in the entire building. She was a real champ and I really appreciated her. She bent over backwards to help everybody with problems. So many people went to her for help because she knew the systems inside and out. What a loss. But this is GE. Drink the Kool Aid or you are out of here!

Tattle-tale Spreadsheets

2011-04-14T08:10:00.001-05:00

Reports with "lates" and individual names.

Also encouraged to "report" other employees on late receipts.

Best Regards,

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In the Belly of the Beast

2011-04-13T19:12:00.000-05:00

For the past year I have worked as a "contractor" for GE. This is the second time I have worked for GE as a contractor. The first round was so-so; this time was a bizarre trip through the looking glass where truth and facts are malleable depending on the day and which is more convenient. Looking good to peers and supervisors far outweighs doing a good job or treating vendors or customers fairly.

GE has a policy where no contractor can work for GE for more than one year at a time. What a relief. They will either have to cut me loose or hire me. If they cut me loose, I can have a little vacation. If they want to hire me, which they have dangled before me five or six times, teasingly, like a carrot on a stick, I will tell them I would rather wait the obligatory three months, and then come back as a contractor. It is insulting to be handled so crudely. I don't really like them enough to want to be one of them.

GE is a punitive environment in which "blame" is swiftly placed. The atmosphere must be like what I imagine it would be in India, a country with a long history of caste ranking of peoples. At GE, if you are a contractor, you are constantly reminded of it. You are not included in meetings, plans, or even benefits. It atmosphere has tightened even more against non-GE employees in recent months. We walk among them, but are not of them.

Beware those Crooks in Washington

2011-04-11T19:19:00.001-05:00

They are all crooks. Will Rogers said it best: I am more concerned about the return OF my money, than the return ON my money. I have lost 1/2 of my retirement THREE TIMES. How about you?

Tea Party Sabatuers

2010-04-15T07:08:00.001-05:00

Beware!

Best Regards,

Sent from my iPod

Masters of WAR- Bob Dylan

2009-11-23T10:18:00.002-06:00

MASTERS OF WAR
Bob Dylan

Come you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
While the death count gets higher
Then you hide in your mansion
While the young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead

Do you trust City Leaders?

2009-02-25T09:10:00.002-06:00

Iowa Guard ends urban war exercise amid outcry By WILLIAM PETROSKI • bpetroski@dmreg.com • February 24, 2009

The Iowa Army National Guard has dropped plans for urban warfare training in the western Iowa town of Arcadia after being deluged by nearly 100 e-mails and phone calls from gun-rights advocates nationwide.

The four-day event in April would have involved between 90 and 100 combat troops arriving in the Carroll County community in a convoy with a Blackhawk military helicopter flying overhead.

Troops would have gone door to door, asking the town's 443 residents about a suspected arms dealer and conducting searches of homes if property owners volunteered in advance to cooperate.

There was no opposition to the Guard's plans from city leaders. But gun-rights advocates were outraged, and news about the exercise became a hot topic nationally on radio talk shows and the Internet.

Arcadia Mayor Oran Kohorst said Monday he was disappointed the exercise had been canceled. He said he had not heard of a single objection from residents, and he said the City Council supported it. At least two guardsmen live in Arcadia, and many residents either have served in the military or have family members who have served in the armed forces, he said.
"This was completely blown out of proportion," Kohorst said. "They were going to come through and meet with the townspeople and just practice going in and out of their homes. They were never, ever going to confiscate guns or anything like that."

Talk show host Alex Jones of Austin, Texas, whose syndicated radio program is carried on about 60 stations, said he had received phone calls on and off the air from people in Arcadia and nearby towns who objected to the plans.
He said he believes oil companies, in concert with central banks, are creating a worldwide economic crisis to set up a world government.

"This is part of an acclimation for martial law," Jones said of the National Guard's plans.

Lt. Col. Gregory Hapgood Jr., the Iowa Guard's public affairs officer, said Monday that some urban warfare training will still be conducted, but it will be held at the armory in Carroll instead of in Arcadia.

Rather than holding a large company-sized exercise, the training will be in small groups at the platoon and squad level.
He said Guard officials changed their plans not because of the protests, but because the unit — Company A, 1st Battalion, 168th Infantry — has recently installed new leadership at the company and battalion level. Smaller unit training would be more beneficial, he said.

Company A is an infantry unit that served in Afghanistan for 13 months in 2004 and 2005, and it is expected to receive orders to return overseas within the next 24 months, Hapgood said.
One tactic used by infantry units is known as cordon and search. It involves creating layers of security in an area and then searching for weapons caches, explosive devices and bomb-making materials, and people of interest.

Hapgood said he considered the surge of e-mails and phone calls as a protest from outside of Iowa.

"We have been doing training in our communities for decades, so this is very routine business for us," Hapgood said. "We were quite surprised when we received e-mails from out of state criticizing the event. We have a responsibility to have our men and women ready to go into combat, and we are not going to change that."
Many of the e-mails were hostile, even threatening, Hapgood said.

One e-mail from a Texas resident said, "I am appalled the Iowa National Guard does not know what the Constitution of the United States says. ... How dare you?"

A man who described himself as a "Nevada citizen" wrote that it was good the exercise was called off: "It is possible that there would have been some dead Iowa Guardsmen."

Arcadia City Clerk Nancy Schmitz said she had 14 messages when she arrived at work Monday. All were apparently from listeners of Jones' show, she said.
"They all basically left the same message; they talked about it being like the Nazis and having the troops coming into our homes and confiscating weapons. It was very different from what was actually going to take place," Schmitz said.

She added she supported the training, calling it "a good opportunity to help out the troops."

How about Cops banging on your door?

2009-02-24T13:21:00.001-06:00

Ex-Atlanta cops sentenced in deadly botched raid

By KATE BRUMBACK, Associated Press Writer Kate Brumback, Associated Press Writer 23 mins ago

ATLANTA – Three former Atlanta police officers who each pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge in connection with the death of an elderly woman during a botched drug raid were sentenced Tuesday to federal prison.

Jason R. Smith, Gregg Junnier and Arthur Tesler received sentences ranging from five years to 10. Kathryn Johnston, 92, was killed by police gunfire during the 2006 raid at her home.

Police used a "no-knock" warrant to enter Johnston's house to look for drugs. But prosecutors say officers found none and tried to cover up the mistake by planting baggies of marijuana.

U.S. District Judge Julie E. Carnes on Tuesday sentenced Smith to 10 years in federal prison. She sentenced Junnier to six years and Tesler to five.

Prosecutors earlier lowered their recommended sentences for Junnier and Smith. They asked for about 10 years for Smith and roughly five years for Junnier because they said the men cooperated with authorities. Tesler's recommended sentence was not lowered, and was about 10 years.

But the judge said Tuesday Tesler was a "minor participant overall" and lowered the sentence to five years. She said the government's recommendations were "unduly harsh."

All the men will get three years supervised release after they serve their sentences.

The Rev. Market Hutchins, spokesman for Johnston's family, spoke by telephone to her niece and closest living relative, Sarah Dozier, 76, of Atlanta after the sentencing. "She certainly breathed a sigh of relief that there is nearly some resolution, particularly with regard to these officers," he said.

Hutchins said Dozier was sympathetic to the officers' families because she believes they were victims as well. "Her aspiration has always been justice and not a sense of revenge," he said.

The three men earlier had each pleaded guilty to the federal charge of violating Johnston's civil rights.

Smith and Junnier also pleaded guilty to state charges, including manslaughter. They are set to be sentenced on those charges next month. Under their plea agreements, their state sentences will be served concurrently with their federal punishment, said Buddy Parker, Junnier's lawyer.

Tesler was sentenced in May to four and a half years in prison on a state charge for lying to FBI agents, but that conviction was overturned on appeal last month.

Johnston was killed by a barrage of bullets fired by officers who stormed into her home on Nov. 21, 2006, with a special "no-knock" warrant to search for drugs.

Tesler, who did not fire a shot, was in Johnston's back yard when plainclothes officers burst in through the front door. Johnston fired a single shot from a rusty revolver at the intruders, but hit no one, and officers fired 39 bullets, hitting the woman five or six times, prosecutors said.

Lawyers for Smith and Tesler said they had hoped for lesser sentences but praised the judge for weighing the facts in the case. "There are no winners in this case," said Smith's attorney, John Garland. "There are only losers."

Do you trust Wall Street Genius?

2009-02-22T15:55:00.000-06:00

February 21, 2009

Madoff Never Made Supposed Investments

By DIANA B. HENRIQUES

The clients who trusted Bernard L. Madoff still do not know exactly what he did with their money. But they know what he did not do with it: He did not buy any of those blue-chip stocks and Treasury bills listed on their account statements over the last 13 years.

The court-appointed trustee who is winding down Mr. Madoff's business said on Friday that his team had searched records going back almost to 1993 and found no evidence that any securities were bought for investors during that time.

That pattern probably stretches back even further, according to the trustee, Irving Picard of the law firm of Baker Hostetler. But his team, operating in a crime scene "under the watchful eyes of the F.B.I.," simply has not yet been able to dig back any further in the Madoff archives, he said.

His report, delivered at an emotional public meeting of creditors on Friday, demolishes the theory that Mr. Madoff was an honest man driven into fraud by the relentless market strain of recent years. And it raises the question of how all those fake statements and trade confirmations were generated in the absence of any genuine trading.

Mr. Picard said his team now has "a pretty good idea" of how that happened, but his lawyer, David J. Sheehan, said they could not disclose any of those details because of the continuing criminal investigation into whether others participated in the crime with Mr. Madoff.

These fresh details about the case were laid out to an intent and diverse audience that filled a courthouse auditorium in Lower Manhattan. Sweaters and flannel shirts were crowded next to lawyerly suits and expensive ties. Customers detailed hardships they or family members were suffering because of the Madoff collapse, and many expressed anger at regulators who had not stopped Mr. Madoff and lawmakers who they say have failed to respond to the disastrous aftermath of his fraud.

"This is a human tragedy like any other tragedy, and we should be getting help from the government like any other victims," said one Madoff investor, who declined to give her name. "I lost my entire life savings that I worked for my entire life."

Mr. Madoff was charged with securities fraud on Dec. 11 after confessing to family members that his money-management business was a fraud whose losses could be as high as $50 billion. His bail terms confine him to his apartment under 24-hour surveillance until his case is resolved by a trial or, more likely, by a guilty plea.

Meanwhile, investigators with the United States attorney's office in Manhattan and the Securities and Exchange Commission are trying to piece together what Mr. Madoff did in the suite where he managed clients' money, several floors below the legitimate stock-trading business that was the public face of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities.

That investigation has clearly made the trustee's task more difficult. The luxury homes that secure Mr. Madoff's $10 million bail cannot be touched by the trustee until the criminal case is resolved, and potentially helpful employees, facing questions from federal agents, have "lawyered up," Mr. Sheehan said.

Moreover, he said, many of Mr. Madoff's activities were in foreign countries, where the trustee must work with foreign regulators under different bankruptcy laws.

But claims requests have already come from 2,350 customers, claiming losses that Mr. Picard recalled as being "about $1 billion." That reflects money those customers thought they had, he cautioned, not the amount they are eligible to receive. Mr. Picard said his team had excellent records of the cash that entered and left the firm.

By law, customers can claim only the difference between the total amount they deposited over the years and the total amount they took out — regardless of whether those amounts were returned as outright withdrawals or as payments the customer thought were regular interest or dividends. That unyielding arithmetic is embedded in the law that governs the insurancelike protection program for brokerage account customers, called the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, he said.

Although customers who received substantially more from their Madoff account than they put in may be required to return the excess money — a step called a clawback — the trustee and his lawyer repeatedly tried to reassure the audience that it would not be practical for them to seek clawbacks of small amounts from customers of limited means.

Customers with valid claims, however, can be assured of receiving repayment only up to $500,000 from the SIPC fund. Any additional money they are owed must come from dividing the assets the trustee can find — and he has found less than $1 billion so far.

Thus, an investor who put in $3 million and took out $2 million over the years would have a valid claim of $1 million. If the trustee raises enough cash to pay 10 percent of the total claims, that investor would eventually be given $600,000 — 10 percent of his original $1 million claim plus the insurance payment of $500,000.

SECRET Federal Appeals Court?

2009-01-16T14:54:00.001-06:00

January 16, 2009

Court Affirms Wiretapping Without Warrants

By JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON — In a rare public ruling, a secret federal appeals court has said telecommunications companies must cooperate with the government to intercept international phone calls and e-mail of American citizens suspected of being spies or terrorists.

The ruling came in a case involving an unidentified company's challenge to 2007 legislation that expanded the president's legal power to conduct wiretapping without warrants for intelligence purposes.

But the ruling, handed down in August 2008 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review and made public Thursday, did not directly address whether President Bush was within his constitutional powers in ordering domestic wiretapping without warrants, without first getting Congressional approval, after the terrorist attacks of 2001.

Several legal experts cautioned that the ruling had limited application, since it dealt narrowly with the carrying out of a law that had been superseded by new legislation. But the ruling is still the first by an appeals court that says the Fourth Amendment's requirement for warrants does not apply to the foreign collection of intelligence involving Americans. That finding could have broad implications for United States national security law.

The court ruled that eavesdropping on Americans believed to be agents of a foreign power "possesses characteristics that qualify it for such an exception."

Bruce M. Selya, the chief judge of the review court, wrote in the opinion that "our decision recognizes that where the government has instituted several layers of serviceable safeguards to protect individuals against unwarranted harms and to minimize incidental intrusions, its efforts to protect national security should not be frustrated by the courts."

The three-judge court, which hears rare appeals from the full Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, addressed provisions of the Protect America Act, passed by Congress in 2007 amid the controversy over Mr. Bush's program of wiretapping without warrants. It found that the administration had put in place sufficient privacy safeguards to meet the constitutional standards of the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches. Because of that, the company had to cooperate, the court said.

That finding bolstered the Bush administration's broader arguments on wiretapping without warrants, both critics and supporters said.

William C. Banks, a law professor at Syracuse University who has criticized the administration's legal position on eavesdropping, said that while the ruling did not address Mr. Bush's surveillance without warrants directly, "it does bolster his case" by recognizing that eavesdropping for national security purposes did not always require warrants.

Coming in the final days of the Bush administration, the ruling was hailed by the administration and conservatives as a victory for an aggressive approach to counterterrorism. The Justice Department said in a statement that it was "pleased with this important ruling."

"It provides a very good result; it reaffirms the president's right to conduct warrantless searches," said David Rivkin, a Washington lawyer who has served in Republican administrations.

Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said the ruling "reinforces the significant, bipartisan political consensus" in favor of the president's broad assertions of wiretapping powers.

But others were cautious about the significance of the ruling.

"I think this kind of maintains the status quo," said Scott Silliman, an expert on national security law at Duke University. "I don't think it is a surprise that the FISA court found that the legislation was constitutional. They are going to defer to Congress, especially since there was a lot of discussion when the law was passed about the ability of the government to compel providers."

The ruling is the latest legal chapter in a dispute dating back to the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, when Mr. Bush secretly ordered the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the international communications of American citizens without the approval of Congress or the courts. After the agency's program was publicly disclosed in December 2005, critics said it violated a 1978 law. The White House initially opposed any new legislation to regulate surveillance, arguing that it would be an infringement of the president's powers.

But after the Democrats took control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections, the administration agreed to bring the N.S.A. program under the jurisdiction of the FISA court. In 2007, Congress passed the Protect America Act, which was replaced in 2008 by another surveillance law.

The case arose in 2007, when a telecommunications company refused to comply with the government's demands that it cooperate without warrants under the terms of the Protect America Act. The company was forced to comply, under threat of contempt, while it challenged the law in the FISA court, the opinion noted.

The company argued that the law violated the constitutional rights of its customers and that the act placed too much power and discretion in the hands of the executive branch. It also raised specific privacy problems, which the court ruling did not identify, that could occur under the surveillance directives it had received from the government.

In rejecting the company's complaint, the FISA appeals court found that the administration had so carefully carried out the Protect America Act that it was not in violation of the Fourth Amendment. It concluded that the procedures put in place under the law properly balanced the constitutional rights of American citizens and the national security interests of the government.

The company argued that "by placing discretion entirely in the hands of the executive branch without prior judicial involvement, the procedures cede to that branch overly broad power that invites abuse," the court wrote.

But, the court ruled, "this is little more than a lament about the risk that government officials will not operate in good faith.'

"That sort of risk exists even when a warrant is required," it said.

Scott Shane contributed reporting.

Prostitution - Was there any supervision at all?

2009-01-15T08:21:00.001-06:00

Very simply a case of INCOMPETENT MANAGEMENT.

Posted on Thu, Jan. 15, 2009

Two Kansas Citians indicted for operating prostitution ring

By SARA SHEPHERD and MARK MORRIS

A Kansas City woman allegedly helped run a prostitution ring from her work computer while employed as a U.S. Department of Agriculture statistician, according to a federal indictment unsealed Wednesday.

Laurie Lynn McConnell, 26, and John O. Miller, 36, also of Kansas City, allegedly recruited prostitutes, advertised their services, and took a $100 cut from each paid appointment, according to the federal charges.

All the while, McConnell — a former Blue Springs High School honor student — was working at the USDA office at 6501 Beacon Drive in Kansas City, using her government-issued laptop to manage prostitution businesses and correspond with clients, the indictment alleges.

"It's always disappointing when federal government employees misuse government resources," Michael W. Reap, a St. Louis federal prosecutor, said in a written statement.

"However, it is deeply disturbing when those resources are utilized to commit a crime and exploit women."

Authorities filed the case in St. Louis because some of the prostitution and other alleged crimes occurred there.

McConnell and Miller each face federal charges of conspiring to use computers, cell phones and other electronic means to promote prostitution, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

McConnell also faces a charge of enticement for allegedly persuading a woman to travel across state lines — from Tennessee to St. Louis — to engage in prostitution.

A St. Louis grand jury returned the indictment in early December, but it remained sealed until authorities Wednesday arrested McConnell and Miller.

The two on Wednesday made their first appearance federal court in Kansas City, where Miller told a magistrate judge that he had two children, ages 4 and 11, who lived with their mother.

McConnell said she owned two vehicles that she shared with Miller. When asked about additional assets, McConnell said she had an engagement ring.

Both said they were unemployed.

McConnell worked as a statistician for the USDA's Risk Management Agency from August 2003 until April 2008, according to the indictment.

She graduated from the University of Central Missouri, where she made the Dean's List multiple semesters. At Blue Springs High, she sang with the Senior Chorus and received a college scholarship from a local service organization.

She showed academic potential in middle school, when she qualified for state recognition in the Duke University Talent Identification Program, a feat requiring seventh-graders to score as well or better than the average college-bound senior on the SAT or ACT.

If convicted of the federal charges, she and Miller could face up to 20 years in prison and fines of up to $500,000.

Beginning in 2005, the indictment alleges, they traveled between Kansas City and St. Louis to operate the prostitution businesses under the names Darc Phoenix and USA Honies.

McConnell used the nicknames "Hollie," "Selena" and "Sasha Lynne," while Miller went by "London," "B. McNasty" and "O'Bannon," according to the indictment.

Prosecutors contend that they recruited women from Tennessee, St. Louis and Kansas City to work as prostitutes in Missouri, Illinois and Kansas.

McConnell and Miller allegedly arranged to fly at least one woman from St. Louis to Kansas City, where Miller accompanied her to a Barry Road bank.

"The defendants charged the prostitutes a service fee of approximately $100 per appointment," the indictment alleges. "In exchange for the fee, the defendants agreed to place advertisements, answer phones and find and screen clients."

Though the indictment does not specify how much the alleged businesses charged for sex, it gives an example of one client paying $400.

The pair also established a series of PayPal accounts that allowed clients to pay for prostitution services online, the charges allege.

McConnell and Miller allegedly placed ads on Craigslist and in The Pitch in Kansas City and the Riverfront Times in St. Louis.

The charges gave no hint as to how authorities uncovered the alleged businesses, but prosecutors said that the USDA's Office of Inspector General and the Maryland Heights, Mo., Police Department contributed to the investigation.

According to the charges, authorities were closing in last summer. But on July 1, when investigators confronted McConnell, she told law enforcement agents that she was unable to pick out Miller from a selection of photographs.

Bond was set at $50,000 for Miller and $25,000 bond for McConnell.

© 2009 Kansas City Star and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved

Military Commissions Act

2009-01-13T08:37:00.001-06:00

This Act, promulgated under George W. Bush, is illegal, unconstitutional, and sickens normal Americans: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/detention/commissions.html

Militarization of our Police: You trust that?

2009-01-13T08:26:00.001-06:00

Updated: 01/12/09 07:52 AM

Wounded vet of Iraq, Afghanistan hot spots ready for Buffalo's streets

Afghanistan vet set to become Buffalo police officer

By Lou Michel

NEWS STAFF REPORTER

William "Craig" Macy won't hit city streets as a Buffalo police officer until this spring, but he already has been shot at countless times, wounded once and patrolled some of the world's toughest neighborhoods.

The 27-year-old North Buffalo man was supposed to begin service with the city force a year ago. He was, in fact, sworn in with about 80 other new recruits.

But Uncle Sam had other plans — a trip to Afghanistan, where he frequently engaged in combat.

That wasn't his first call to active duty as a member of the Army National Guard.

While on patrol Memorial Day 2005 in Baghdad, he narrowly escaped a mortal wound when a sniper shot him in the pelvis, less than an inch from his femoral artery.

"If it hit the femoral artery, I probably would have bled out. It was a close call," he said with an uncanny sense of calm. "I was lying in the street, and the sniper was still shooting at me, and a friend of mine ran through the gunfire and dragged me to cover."

After eight months of recovery in Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D. C., he was certified well enough to return to his Lockport Guard unit.

In April, he headed off to Afghanistan with the Guard's 27th Brigade Combat Team and returned home last month eager to put on the police cadet uniform and begin his career in law enforcement, something he has aspired to for a decade.

So, you could say he does not mind danger.

"Excitement and danger go hand in hand," Macy said.

But he's not just an adrenaline junkie. Police work for him goes way deeper than that.

"You can do a lot of community service and at the end of the day have a lot of satisfaction," he said.

His military experiences, he says, will make him a better cop.

"You use a lot of discretion when you're fighting wars like the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan," he said. "You come into a lot of situations that are not uncommon to police officers in the city.

"You have to search people and make quick decisions on whether this is someone you want to take into custody. Everything is very quick. I'm not expert on police work, but I've been on one police ride-along, and I saw officers making all of those same fast decisions."

His ride-along occurred the night of Jan. 1 with Central District Lt. Steve Malkowski, who is also an Army National Guardsman.

A ride-along in the downtown section of Buffalo and the lower West Side is a lot different from training Afghan army members on the border of Pakistan.

Macy, the recipient of a Purple Heart, Combat Action Badge and Army Commendation Medal, will be the first to tell you that.

Embedded with an Afghan army combat engineer unit, he taught basic soldiering and leadership skills.

"The soldiers we worked with were great. They were motivated, and they were hard fighters. We never left their side, and we were in many battles together."

Of the Afghan people, Macy, who grew up in Williamsville, offered a more complicated observation.

"Some villages were pro-government. Others had strong allegiances to their tribe, and other villages were pro- Taliban," he said.

Can democracy flourish over there?

"From where we were, by Pakistan, there is a lot of work that needs to be done in that region. Other areas up north, where the security is much stronger, the government is succeeding," he said.

The experience there and in Iraq as an infantryman also has given him a broader view of the world that Macy says allows him to rely on his own personal observations, rather than depending on news accounts.

His service has also gained him something police officers covet among their peers — respect.

"We appreciate everything he did for his country, and we're happy to have him back. He'll do great," said Capt. Patrick Mann, head of the department's training academy.

Macy is one of three siblings devoted to helping others. His sister Kelly works as an elementary teacher in Vermont, and his other sister, Krista, is at the University at Buffalo studying to become a physical therapist.

Police Shoot Unarmed Man

2009-01-08T13:19:00.001-06:00

BART police shooter quits job, skips interview

By Sean Maher and Josh Richman
Oakland Tribune

Posted: 01/07/2009 10:38:41 AM PST

OAKLAND — The BART police officer under investigation for the fatal New Year's Day shooting of an unarmed man quit his job Wednesday rather than speak with investigators, an official said.

Former officer Johannes Mehserle, 27, has given no comment to BART investigators since the incident in which cell phone videos appeared to capture Mehserle shooting Oscar Grant III as Grant lay facedown on the ground at the Fruitvale station, BART spokesman Linton Johnson said Wednesday.

"We had a meeting scheduled for him to talk, and his attorney and a union rep came in his place and dropped off a letter of resignation instead," Johnson said. "It's interesting, because he was supposed to be talking for the administrative

part of our investigation, which is privileged information and couldn't have been used in any criminal investigation anyway."

While BART officials said they've been trying to get Mehserle to talk ever since the shooting, Mehserle's attorney said he hadn't received any requests for an interview from Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff's office as of Wednesday night.

"In general, a prosecutor would contact the attorney of anyone under investigation for a crime," said Christopher Miller, Mehserle's Sacramento-based union attorney. "So that would have come to me."

Orloff declined Wednesday to discuss any details of his office's investigation with the media, citing a standing policy his office has to allow police departments

to act as the main public face of any officer-involved shooting investigation.

"We've confirmed the investigation, and that's about as much as we'll say," Orloff said. "The normal thing in a situation like this is to interview anyone who can shed light on it."

Mehserle's resignation takes away BART's ability to leverage a statement out of him, since he can no longer be fired for remaining silent, Orloff said.

Orloff met with a group of about 50 clergy and community members in his office, after they held a rally outside the courthouse and packed the lobby outside his office with wall-to-wall demonstrators demanding he meet with them.

Among the demonstrators was Oakland Councilmember Desley Brooks (Eastmont-Seminary), who called the shooting an "execution" and demanded an explanation of the behavior of the other officers present during the shooting.

Brooks and the clergy spoke with a crowd of about 100 people outside the courthouse just after 9 a.m. and said they'd been denied a meeting with Orloff and demanded swift justice for Grant's killing.

"What shall we tell our sons?" said the Rev. Dr. J. Alfred Smith Sr. of Alan Temple Baptist Church. "Shall we tell them to fear the law? Is the law their enemy? If Oscar Grant is not safe, then I am not safe."

Minister Christopher Muhammad of the Nation of Islam said Mehserle should be arrested immediately.

"What is left to investigate? The whole world has seen this," Muhammad said, referring to widespread Internet videos taken from witnesses' cell phones. "We can discuss his mindset later. But right now he should be detained and held on criminal charges."

At a demonstration in protest of the shooting Wednesday afternoon at the Fruitvale station, Grant's younger sister, Audrena Gilbert, said Mehserle has not talked to the bereaved family.

"I want him to start. I want him to apologize for what he did," said Gilbert, 19, of Oakland. "I want him to tell the truth, why he shot him, what he shot him for. That's all I want."

The afternoon protest, which had a microphone open for anyone to speak but was led by speakers for the Coalition Against Police Executions, drew a crowd of 500 people, police estimated. The station was temporarily shut down, and trains let passengers off at stations on either side of the stop.

"It's not enough the officer resigned today," said Sean Dugar, president of the California National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Youth and College Division. "We demand he be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. "... We shut down one BART station this afternoon. Let's do another one next week."

Speakers at both the morning and afternoon protests led the crowd in a call-and-return chant, shouting, "I am Oscar Grant."

Several clergymen at the morning protest, speakers at the Fruitvale station protest and Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums all expressed an understanding for the community's anger but urged demonstrators to refrain from violence.

"As we handle ourselves in this moment, so shall our children," Dellums said. "I think that in a community that's trying to get its hands around violence, that it's important for us to maintain the integrity of a peaceful community going forward, even in this moment of great anger, great loss and great tragedy."

Despite this appeal, protesters shouted angrily at a representative from Dellums' office sent to the Fruitvale station, and when the crowd later moved toward Lake Merritt, it prompted the police shutdown of the BART station there, lighting a Dumpster's content on fire and ramming it into a police car.

Dellums said the city of Oakland and its Police Department should not become involved in the shooting investigation at this point.

"You deal with the appropriate agencies on the ground, and I think right now that's Bay Area Rapid Transit and that's the district attorney's office," he said. "At this point, I view my role as simply trying to articulate the pain and the sorrow and even the anger that people feel at the loss of human life."

Dave Rose, a retired Placer County sheriff's lieutenant who's now an expert witness on police use of force and the co-author of "Police Use-of-Force Case Law," said every bit of Mehserle's training and all circumstances of the situation on the BART platform that night must be taken into account. All the videos should be professionally enhanced and then reviewed frame by frame for every detail, every twitch, he said.

Based on Mehserle's experience and how officers react physiologically in high-stress situations, Rose said, it could well have been nothing more than a tragic, noncriminal accident.

But UC Berkeley Boalt Hall Law School professor Franklin Zimring, a criminal justice expert, said "absolutely conclusive" videos of the shooting have convinced him there's no possible justification for Mehserle's actions.

"Normally, what you get in a police deadly force interaction is a 'he said, she said' in which there's at least an accusation like, 'There was a flash of metal as he reached toward his pocket,'"‰" Zimring said. "But this guy was already down on the ground. "... He's not in a position to be threatening anybody."

Use of deadly force is considered "in terms of a threat to the physical safety of the officer or somebody else, and there's none there in this case," he added. "So it's accident versus intention, but justification is off the table."

Whether Mehserle meant to draw his Taser but accidentally drew his firearm, or whether he meant to draw his sidearm but didn't mean to fire it, it looks like involuntary manslaughter, Zimring said.

"My money is on that second horse: I think it was an accident, but I don't think the drawing of the gun was an accident," he said, noting it probably wouldn't have been appropriate to draw the Taser but "under no circumstance I could imagine" should Mehserle have drawn his firearm given what's seen on the videos.

Zimring said accidental shootings by officers are rarely charged.

"They don't even have to meet criminal juries most of the time, but most of the time there's a plausible officer vulnerability," he said. "That's what juries can identify with, and that's what's missing in action here. If I were a U.S. or prosecuting attorney, I would not be afraid of taking a criminal case here, certainly for involuntary manslaughter, before an Alameda County jury."

In the absence of a statement from Mehserle, the proper thing to do is to charge the case based on the evidence at hand and then hear his side of the story later, Zimring said: "Not giving a statement in this context may be motivated by an unwillingness to incriminate oneself, but it also deprives the officer of an opportunity to allege that the conduct was unintended."

Staff Writers Angela Woodall and Kelly Rayburn contributed to this story.

You don't trust Russia, do you?

2009-01-06T10:50:00.001-06:00

They should have left Paton alone. We wouldn't have this problem today.

Gas from Russia is down 90 percent in Austria
The Associated Press

Central Europe's largest oil and gas company, says Austria's natural gas supplies from Russia are down 90 percent.

Austria's Economics Ministry has called an emergency meeting to review the situation. But OMV says it has a three-month reserve which it says is enough to get businesses and homes that heat with gas through the coldest part of winter.

OMV said by early afternoon Tuesday, the gas it imports from Russia was just 10 percent of its normal volume.

Austria gets about 51 percent of its natural gas from Russia. Of the rest, officials say about 31 percent comes from Norway and other countries, and about 18 percent comes from Austria itself.

Al Franken - Elected? Many vote counts

2009-01-06T09:39:00.001-06:00

January 2, 2009, 3:08 pm

Republican Leader Threatens to Block Seating of Franken

By Michael Falcone

With Al Franken holding on to a razor-thin lead over incumbent Norm Coleman in the protracted contest for the United States Senate seat from Minnesota, Republicans say they are planning to block any attempt by Democrats to seat Mr. Franken when the new Congress is sworn in next week.

If the recount in Minnesota, which has entered its sixth week, remains undecided, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the incoming chairman of the Republican National Senatorial Committee, said on Friday that G.O.P. senators were ready to filibuster the provisional seating of Mr. Franken.

Mr. Cornyn said that without a certificate of election, which cannot be issued under Minnesota state law if there were legal challenges pending, the Senate should not seat Mr. Franken, the Democrat, or Senator Coleman.

Democrats have not said whether they intend to allow Mr. Franken to take office when the 111th Congress opens it session on Tuesday, but at the very least, it would be an awkward split-screen for party leaders to seat Mr. Franken while denying a seat to Roland W. Burris, the Senate appointee of Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich.

If lawmakers push to seat Mr. Franken, who holds a 49-vote lead over Mr. Coleman, Mr. Cornyn said on Friday the move would leave the Senate with a "reputation for chaos."

Though the Minnesota State Canvassing Board has concluded its review of ballots challenged by both campaigns during the recount, the elections panel is now turning its attention to more than 1,000 questionable absentee ballots (that were rejected) and that could again tip the balance of the results. The Coleman campaign said that as it stands, Mr. Franken's lead is artificial, and lawyers for the Republican senator have threatened to challenge the results in court.

Was the Anthrax Guy Set UP?

2009-01-05T09:51:00.001-06:00

January 4, 2009

Portrait Emerges of Anthrax Suspect's Troubled Life

By SCOTT SHANE

FREDERICK, Md. — Inside the Army laboratory at Fort Detrick, the government's brain for biological defense, Bruce Edwards Ivins paused to memorialize his moment in the spotlight as the anthrax panic of 2001 reached its peak.

Dr. Ivins titled his e-mail message "In the lab" and attached photographs: the gaunt microbiologist bending over Petri dishes of anthrax, and colonies of the deadly bacteria, white commas against blood-red nutrient.

Outside, on that morning of Nov. 14, 2001, five people were dead or dying, a dozen more were sick and fearful thousands were flooding emergency rooms. The postal system was crippled; senators and Supreme Court justices had fled contaminated offices. And the Federal Bureau of Investigation was struggling with a microbe for a murder weapon and a crime scene that stretched from New York to Florida.

But Dr. Ivins was chipper — the anonymous scientist finally at the center of great events. "Hi, all," he began the e-mail message. "We were taking some photos today of blood agar cultures of the now infamous 'Ames' strain of Bacillus anthracis. Here are a few." He sent the message to those who ordinarily received his corny jokes and dour news commentaries: his wife and two teenage children, former colleagues and high school classmates. He even included an F.B.I. agent working on the case.

Dr. Ivins, who had helped develop an anthrax vaccine to protect American troops, had spent his career waiting for a biological attack. Suddenly, at 55, he was advising the F.B.I. and regaling friends with scary descriptions of the deadly powder, his expertise in demand.

One recipient of his e-mail message, however, a graduate-school colleague, looked at the photograph of Dr. Ivins and leapt to a shocking conclusion.

"I read that e-mail, and I thought, He did it," the fellow scientist, Nancy Haigwood, said in a recent interview.

Nearly seven years and many millions of dollars later, after an investigation that included both path-breaking science and costly bungling, the F.B.I. concluded that Dr. Haigwood had been right: the anthrax killer had been at the investigators' side all along. Prosecutors said they believed they had the evidence to prove that Dr. Ivins alone carried out the attacks, but their assertions immediately met with skepticism among some scientists, lawmakers and co-workers of Dr. Ivins.

With the F.B.I. preparing to close the case, The New York Times has taken the deepest look so far at the investigation, speaking to dozens of Dr. Ivins's colleagues and friends, reading hundreds of his e-mail messages, interviewing former bureau investigators and anthrax experts, reviewing court records, and obtaining, for the first time, police reports on his suicide in July, including a lengthy recorded interview with his wife.

That examination found that unless new evidence were to surface, the enormous public investment in the case would appear to have yielded nothing more persuasive than a strong hunch, based on a pattern of damning circumstances, that Dr. Ivins was the perpetrator.

Focused for years on the wrong man, the bureau missed ample clues that Dr. Ivins deserved a closer look. Only after a change of leadership nearly five years after the attacks did the bureau more fully look into Dr. Ivins's activities. That delay, and his death, may have put a more definitive outcome out of reach.

Brad Garrett, a respected F.B.I. veteran who helped early in the case before his retirement, said logic and evidence point to Dr. Ivins as the most likely perpetrator.

"Does that absolutely prove he did it? No," Mr. Garrett said. With no confession and no trial, he said, "you're going to be left not getting over the top of the mountain."

The Times review found that the F.B.I. had disproved the assertion, widespread among scientists who believe Dr. Ivins was innocent, that the anthrax might have come from military and intelligence research programs in Utah or Ohio. By 2004, secret scientific testing established that the mailed anthrax had been grown somewhere near Fort Detrick. And anthrax specialists who have not spoken out previously said that, contrary to some skeptics' claims, Dr. Ivins had the equipment and expertise to make the powder in his laboratory.

F.B.I. agents, moreover, have shown that Dr. Ivins, a church musician and amateur juggler whom colleagues cherished, hid from them a shadow side of mental illness, alcoholism, secret obsessions and hints of violence.

Still, doubts persist. The case will be reviewed this year by the National Academy of Sciences and by Congress. If the F.B.I. is wrong, then a troubled man was hounded to death and the anthrax perpetrator is still at large, as many of Dr. Ivins's colleagues at Fort Detrick believe. When institute scientists began their own review of the evidence, nervous Army officials ordered the inquiry dropped.

In November, four of Dr. Ivins's closest co-workers wrote a glowing obituary of their "valued collaborator" for Microbe, the leading microbiology journal. It did not mention the anthrax accusations and was a singular protest by the four scientists against the F.B.I.'s conclusion.

"His colleagues and friends will remember him not only for his dedication to his work," the obituary said, "but also for his humor, curiosity and great generosity."

Fearing an Attack

The Sunday night after the Sept. 11 attacks, Dr. D. A. Henderson, who led the global campaign to eradicate smallpox and had long been a lonely Cassandra warning of the bioterrorism threat, was summoned to an emergency meeting with the secretary of health and human services, Tommy Thompson.

Fearing a germ attack, officials had grounded crop dusters. Apocalyptic warnings were all over the news media: one study said 100 kilograms of anthrax released over Washington could kill 1 million to 3 million people.

Now, Dr. Henderson was told, intelligence reports indicated that there might be a second attack by Al Qaeda, most likely biological. Dr. Henderson gave Mr. Thompson and his aides a disturbing tutorial on anthrax and smallpox. As the meeting ended, an aide thanked him.

"I just hope we're not too late," Dr. Henderson replied.

Days later came word of the anthrax letters. First, the death of a tabloid photo editor in Florida, Robert Stevens. Then the poison letters mailed to NBC News and The New York Post with notes declaring "Death to America! Death to Israel!"

And finally the letters to Senators Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota, and Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, spewing deadly spores through the postal system and across official Washington.

Whoever had ignited panic with a tablespoon of anthrax powder, officials assumed, would not stop there. Dr. Henderson wondered if the powder came from the tons of anthrax weaponized by the Soviet Union. Some assumed Al Qaeda was behind the letters; others suspected Iraq.

"My fear was that this first mailing was the tip of the iceberg," said Bill Raub, a senior official at the Health and Human Services Department. "We feared we would be at their mercy."

Then — nothing. Within days, investigators were piecing together clues pointing to a domestic source.

First, there were the notes. One warned, "We have this anthrax," and advised the recipients to take penicillin. Al Qaeda, F.B.I. agents reasoned, would hardly reduce the death toll with an alert that might have saved lives.

Then there was the strain of anthrax. Dr. Paul S. Keim, an anthrax geneticist at Northern Arizona University, identified the spores as Ames, a lethal strain most common in United States research. "It was chilling," Dr. Keim recalled, but also puzzling. "How in the world did Stevens get a lab strain?"

An alternative theory of a possible perpetrator took shape: the bioevangelist. An American obsessed by the bioterrorism threat — maybe a biodefense insider who might gain in pay or prestige from an attack — had decided to alert the nation.

That meant the potential suspects included the very Army scientists now working so closely with the F.B.I. And at the core of that group was Bruce Ivins.

In 21 years at the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Dr. Ivins supplied Hershey's Kisses to office visitors and always showed concern when a colleague was ill. He toasted departing colleagues with humorous poems. He livened up parties with his juggling act and led songs from a portable keyboard at his Catholic church.

Colleagues knew Dr. Ivins, whose e-mail Christmas card one year spelled out "Happy Holidays" in anthrax spores, was an oddball, wearing outmoded bellbottoms and lunching on concoctions of tuna, peas and yogurt. But in a place where red tape and petty rivalry often darkened spirits, he was a bright spot.

"He actually thought of other people," said Melanie Ulrich, who worked with him on an anthrax project and invited him to the house she shared with her husband, Ricky Ulrich, also an Army scientist. "He was fun."

Arthur O. Anderson, the top ethicist at the institute, bonded with Dr. Ivins in the 1980s over their shared experience of adopting children. After that, every corridor encounter led to a long, probing talk on adoption or the ethical conundrums of biodefense.

Dr. Anderson said Dr. Ivins had relished provocative conversation. "If you didn't bite at one of his emotionally laden questions, he'd find another way to shock you," he said.

They often discussed what they considered groundless criticism of the anthrax vaccine Dr. Ivins had helped produce, which some soldiers blamed for their illnesses. "Bruce was thin-skinned," Dr. Anderson said.

In the emotional days after Sept. 11, friends were not surprised when Dr. Ivins signed up as a Red Cross volunteer. On Sept. 22, 2001 — a date, it would turn out, between the two anthrax mailings — he attended a Red Cross class, Introduction to Disaster Services. He liked the atmosphere, he told friends, and three months later, as the crushing workload created by the anthrax letters began to ease, he applied for more training.

Noting that he worked at the Army institute, he wrote in his December 2001 application, "Perhaps I could help in case of a disaster related to biological agents."

Odd and Pressing

There was more to Bruce Ivins than his Army colleagues imagined, and Nancy Haigwood knew it.

She met him in 1976 in the biology department at the University of North Carolina, where he was a post-doctoral fellow and she was a graduate student. She found him odd and tried gently to disengage, but he kept in touch, pressing her with questions about her sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma.

Dr. Ivins's boss at U.N.C., Dr. Priscilla B. Wyrick, received similar queries about her sorority, Chi Omega. "He'd say, 'What's your secret password? What's your secret handshake?' " she recalled. "I thought he was intellectually interested in secret things."

Dr. Wyrick said she thought of him then as "a goody-two-shoes, aggressive about his science but very sensitive about how he was portrayed by other people." She kept up a correspondence with him, and after the letter attack, arranged for him to give a talk at her current university, East Tennessee State.

Dr. Haigwood's experience with Dr. Ivins was not so benign. Outside her home in Maryland in 1982, a vandal spray-painted her sorority's Greek initials, "KKG," on her fence, sidewalk and fiancé's car window. A year later a letter she had not written appeared under her name in The Frederick News-Post, defending Kappa Kappa Gamma and the hazing of recruits. She was certain Dr. Ivins was responsible.

She said she had found Dr. Ivins's attentions creepy. She never told him her Maryland address, but he found it anyway. Later, in e-mail messages, he mentioned details about her sons that she had not shared with him.

"He damaged my property, he impersonated me and he stalked me," said Dr. Haigwood, now director of the Oregon National Primate Research Center.

In November 2001, when she got the e-mailed photograph of Dr. Ivins working with anthrax in the laboratory, she noticed that he was not wearing gloves — a safety breach she thought showed an unnerving "hubris." That fed her hunch that he had sent the deadly letters.

Knowing her suspicion was an extraordinary leap, she kept it to herself. But three months later, the American Society for Microbiology sent an appeal from the F.B.I. to its 40,000 members.

"It is very likely that one or more of you know this individual," the message said. F.B.I. profilers thought the killer might have made the anthrax during "off-hours in a laboratory."

Dr. Haigwood called the bureau, and two agents visited her. After that, they called periodically but gave no hint that they had tried to confirm the vandalism and stalking.

Soon after Dr. Haigwood's call, there was another reason for investigators to scrutinize Dr. Ivins. The Army found that in December 2001 he had secretly swabbed for anthrax spores outside his secure laboratory space.

Suspecting a technician's desk was contaminated, he later told an Army investigator, he had tested and found a bacillus, the class of bacteria that includes anthrax. He scrubbed the desk with bleach but did not report the spill, though he mentioned it several weeks later to Dr. Anderson, his ethicist friend.

"I had no desire to cry 'Wolf!' " Dr. Ivins wrote to Army investigators in April 2002. "I would have been agitating many people for no real reason." Yet Dr. Ivins wrote that he could not recall whether he had retested the desk for anthrax after his cleanup, as regulations required.

His conduct was a flagrant violation of biosafety standards. Anthrax spores outside containment areas could endanger anyone who was not vaccinated. When the spill was properly investigated, three strains of anthrax were found outside the laboratory, including the Ames strain on Dr. Ivins's desk.

By then, too, the bureau had detailed records showing when scientists entered and left the secure laboratories. The documents showed that Dr. Ivins had worked unusually late hours in his laboratory for several nights before each of the anthrax mailings, a pattern that stood out even at an institute where night hours were common.

Yet neither the spill nor the night hours sparked the suspicions of the anthrax investigators. They were intently focused on another suspect.

Focus on Hatfill

Dr. Ivins's modest bungalow was across the street from Fort Detrick, and he often walked to work. If he did so on June 25, 2002, a sunny Tuesday, he would have noticed the hubbub as he passed by the Detrick Plaza apartments.

F.B.I. agents and postal inspectors trudged in and out of one unit, toting away items for inspection. A horde of reporters milled around nearby; television helicopters circled overhead. It was one of the most heavily publicized searches in the history of criminal investigations.

Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, who had given permission for the search, never imagined this media circus. It was just the beginning of an intrusion into his life by the F.B.I. and the news media that would show just how tantalizing a case could be built against a man the government would, six years later, officially clear.

For months, agents had been growing more focused on Dr. Hatfill, a physician and virologist who had worked from 1997 to 1999 at the Fort Detrick institute.

He had earned a medical degree but had forged his Ph.D. diploma, written an unpublished novel about a covert bioattack on Washington and bragged on his résumé of a "working knowledge" of biowarfare pathogens. In his apartment, agents found a harmless bacteria commonly used as an anthrax simulant and a notebook on anthrax dissemination.

Then there was the timing. One month before the anthrax attacks, the government suspended Dr. Hatfill's security clearance after questionable results on a polygraph test, and he told friends he expected to be fired from his job as a bioterrorism consultant. Two days before each of the two anthrax mailings, Dr. Hatfill filled a prescription for Cipro, an antibiotic that protected against anthrax.

Could it all be a coincidence? F.B.I. officials did not think so.

Desperate to find something more definitive against Dr. Hatfill, lead investigators — who had to brief the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, on their progress every week — ordered round-the-clock surveillance. Meticulous study of tiny brown fibers found stuck to the envelopes led nowhere. Handwriting comparisons proved useless because the perpetrator had printed in block letters. DNA found on the outside of the Leahy anthrax envelope turned out to be inadvertent contamination by a laboratory worker.

Ignoring the grave doubts of some F.B.I. scientists, agents used bloodhounds to try to link the letters by scent to Dr. Hatfill. They sent divers into a pond outside Frederick, and when that did not turn up anything, they drained two ponds hunting for discarded anthrax-making equipment.

Agents were excited when they dredged from the mud a plastic box that they thought might have been a homemade biological "glove box," built to work safely on dangerous germs. The excitement lasted only until a Fort Detrick scientist with a rural Southern upbringing took one look and recognized what the $20,000-a-day pond-draining had turned up: a turtle trap.

Soon after the pond debacle, Dr. Hatfill began fighting back, filing lawsuits and dragging F.B.I. officials to all-day depositions. But investigators did not want to give up on him as a suspect — in part because overwhelming scientific evidence was tying the mailed anthrax to Fort Detrick.

By early 2004, F.B.I. scientists had discovered that out of 60 domestic and foreign water samples, only water from Frederick, Md., had the same chemical signature as the water used to grow the mailed anthrax.

By late 2005, genetic analysis by top outside experts had matched the spores to a flask of anthrax at the Army institute. Dr. Ivins had custody of the flask, but some agents were still convinced Dr. Hatfill was the culprit.

The science alone could not close the case. "We could get to a lab, to a refrigerator, to a flask," said Dwight E. Adams, the F.B.I. laboratory director until 2006. "But that didn't put the letters in anyone's hand."

Sudden Interest

Early in 2006, with the investigation largely stalled, Nancy Haigwood heard from two different F.B.I. agents. Four years after she had reported her suspicions of Dr. Ivins, the bureau suddenly seemed interested.

"They said, 'We need your help,' " Dr. Haigwood recalled. She was frustrated by the delay, but when the agents asked her to strike up a new correspondence with Dr. Ivins, she reluctantly complied. "I was afraid of this man," she said. "I was convinced he had done it, and I was afraid he'd send me an anthrax letter."

Some agents believed that their bosses were stuck on Dr. Hatfill, and an internal F.B.I. investigation confirmed their complaint. In mid-2006, Mr. Mueller, the F.B.I. director, quietly moved Richard Lambert Jr., who had led the anthrax investigation since 2002, to a new job running the bureau's office in Knoxville, Tenn. His replacement, Edward Montooth, a veteran of security and intelligence cases who had worked overseas in places from the Balkans to Indonesia, ordered a fresh look at the evidence.

For four years, Dr. Ivins, like others at Fort Detrick, had simultaneously been a trusted F.B.I. technical consultant and a possible suspect. Now the balance was tipping.

As the bureau's undercover informant, Dr. Haigwood struck up a breezy e-mail correspondence about scientific grants, pets and travel. Dr. Ivins complained about psychological screening and other "rather obnoxious and invasive measures" imposed at Fort Detrick since the anthrax attacks.

"I got so tired of the endless questions that I finally got a lawyer, after almost three dozen interviews," he wrote in late 2006, referring to interviews by the F.B.I. agents. One session, he said, was "virtually an interrogation."

In another message, Dr. Ivins complained about feeling "thoroughly beaten down" but said his volunteer work with the Red Cross had provided welcome relief. "The Red Cross is my fraternity/sorority," he said.

For Dr. Haigwood, the reference carried disturbing overtones, reflecting the old obsession with sororities, and with certain women, that Dr. Ivins had hidden from family and colleagues.

Dr. Ivins still carried resentment from four decades earlier at Lebanon High School in Ohio, where he had been a nerdy, awkward teenager devoted to photography and, even then, to the study of bacteria.

In recent years, said Rick Sams, a pharmacologist who had been among Bruce Ivins's few school friends, Dr. Ivins "shared with me feelings about how he'd been treated in high school. He was bitter about being excluded."

When Dr. Sams urged him to attend their 40th class reunion, Dr. Ivins refused. "He said, 'Why should I go? Look how they treated me,' " Dr. Sams said.

The agents learned, in part from Dr. Ivins himself, that he had in his post-college years made uninvited visits to Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority houses at U.N.C., the University of Maryland and West Virginia University, once making off with a sorority's ritual book and cipher device.

That was more than 20 years ago. But more recently, agents discovered, Dr. Ivins had left a long trail of online postings about Kappa Kappa Gamma. There were inquiries about arcane details of sorority rituals and a bitter editing battle over the KKG entry on Wikipedia.

Dr. Ivins hid behind the online handles he used for his proliferating e-mail addresses — KingBadger, Jimmyflathead, goldenphoenix. Once, on GreekChat.com, he described what he said was a family history of mental illness, calling his mother "an undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenic."

The agents learned that Dr. Ivins had long maintained a post office box to receive mail without his family's knowledge and took long walks or drives on sleepless nights. Once, he admitted, he drove all night to Ithaca, N.Y., and back to leave gifts for a young woman who had left her job in his laboratory to attend Cornell University.

The agents also found e-mail messages in which Dr. Ivins confessed to alarming psychiatric problems. During paranoid episodes, he wrote, he felt like "a passenger on a ride." Even as he worked at his desk, he wrote, "I'm also a few feet away watching me do it."

Of his group therapy program, he wrote on Sept. 26, 2001, between the two anthrax mailings, "I'm really the only scary one in the group."

On the face of it, Dr. Ivins's strange secret life seemed less relevant to the case than Dr. Hatfill's boasts about his bioweapons expertise. But anthrax was the core of Dr. Ivins's working life.

"He was in charge of producing large quantities of wet spores for research," said John W. Ezzell, a Fort Detrick colleague whose anthrax expertise rivaled that of Dr. Ivins. "So if anybody could have produced a lot of spores without arousing suspicion, it was him."

Though a public debate had raged for years over whether the mailed anthrax had been "weaponized" with sophisticated chemical additives, the F.B.I. had concluded early on that it was not. Dr. Ezzell agreed, as did Jeff Mohr, an expert on anthrax and other pathogens at the Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah.

Without giving an opinion of Dr. Ivins's guilt or innocence, both Dr. Ezzell and Dr. Mohr said they believed that any experienced microbiologist could have grown and dried the anthrax using equipment Dr. Ivins had in his laboratory. The trickiest step, they said, was producing anthrax with the letters' high concentration of spores per gram, a skill Dr. Ivins had mastered.

Evidence Problems

But even if Dr. Ivins could have made the anthrax, did he? "It's been difficult for a lot of us to accept this," Dr. Ezzell said. "He was a loyal friend. He was a diligent worker."

The agents were building what they thought was a prosecutable case against Dr. Ivins, but gaping holes remained. No evidence placed him in Princeton, N.J., where the letters were mailed. No receipt showed that he had bought the same type of envelopes. No security camera had caught him photocopying the notes.

Nor, in his e-mail messages and conversations with confidants, could agents find any hint of a confession. One colleague who knew Dr. Ivins well told them, "If Bruce had done this, he never would have been able to keep quiet about it."

Yet the agents knew he led a compartmentalized life. He went on vacation with his brother, Charles, each year, but Charles had no idea Bruce had a drinking problem for which he had been in residential treatment and Alcoholics Anonymous. Dr. Ivins spent hours in online exchanges about sororities, but his family knew nothing about it.

Some F.B.I. agents were haunted by the Hatfill precedent. Dr. Hatfill, too, was eccentric. He, too, had begun drinking heavily as he came under scrutiny. He, too, had grown depressed and erratic under the F.B.I.'s relentless gaze.

What if Dr. Hatfill had committed suicide in 2002, as friends feared he might? Would the investigators have released their evidence and announced that the perpetrator was dead?

In May 2007, Dr. Ivins — assured by prosecutors that he was not a target of the investigation — testified under oath to a grand jury on two consecutive days. He answered all the questions about anthrax. Only once did he plead his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, when he was asked about his secret interest in sororities.

A Life Coming Apart

Starting with the search of his house on Nov. 1, 2007, Bruce Ivins's life began to come irrevocably apart. While some agents carted files, computers and guns from the house, others questioned his wife and children, intimating that they knew he was the killer. Fort Detrick officials banned him from working with anthrax. His career was over.

Last March, after drinking the fruit juice and vodka mix that he had come to rely on and adding a big dose of Valium, he passed out and was discovered by his wife, Diane. Despite his denials, she was convinced it was a suicide attempt.

"You know, he's been incredibly, incredibly stressed, because of the way he's been hounded by the F.B.I.," Mrs. Ivins would later tell Frederick police officers in a recorded interview. "They've always treated him as if he was guilty, and I just felt that he couldn't take it anymore."

Dr. Ivins spent much of the spring in residential alcohol treatment outside Washington and in western Maryland. But when he returned, the F.B.I. agents were still there, watching his house and trailing him around Frederick.

On July 10, Dr. Ivins reached a breaking point. With a strange smile, he told his therapy group that he expected to be charged with five murders and rambled on about killing himself and taking others with him, using his .22-caliber rifle, Glock handgun and bulletproof vest.

Tipped off by the therapist, Frederick police officers removed Dr. Ivins from the Army laboratory that day. He voluntarily checked himself in at the Sheppard Pratt psychiatric hospital in Baltimore.

After a two-week stay, Dr. Ivins was brought home by his wife. She had left a heartfelt note in his bedroom, saying she hoped that he could turn his life around and that they could enjoy life together.

"He didn't understand that so many people in the treatment program with him had lost their families because of their alcoholism," Mrs. Ivins later told the police. "So I wanted to write down how I felt because I loved him — you know, I wanted him to come back and get healthy again so we could continue. He was retiring in September, and we were going to travel and enjoy our adult children finally."

Her note was blunt. "I'm hurt, concerned, confused and angry about your actions the last few weeks," she wrote. "You tell me you love me but you have been rude and sarcastic and nasty many times when you talk to me. You tell me you aren't going to get any more guns, then you fill out an online application for a gun license."

Mrs. Ivins wrote to her husband that he was paying his lawyers a lot of money but ignoring their advice by contacting two former female laboratory assistants he was preoccupied with. He was keeping odd hours, walking the neighborhood late at night and drinking so much caffeine that he was "jumpy and agitated," she wrote.

But Mrs. Ivins's note also expressed support. "I had written on the bottom of the paper that I knew he had not been involved in the anthrax letters in any way and I never doubted his innocence," said the woman who thought she knew him best.

Even as Mrs. Ivins picked up her husband at the Baltimore hospital last July 24, his group therapist, Jean C. Duley, was in a Frederick courtroom, testifying about threats he had left on her answering machine. A judge signed an order at 10:37 a.m. directing Dr. Ivins to stay away from her.

The order would not be necessary. At 12:31 p.m., according to records checked by the Frederick police, Dr. Ivins stopped in at the Giant Eagle grocery store near his house and bought Tylenol PM, acetaminophen and an antihistamine. He bought a few groceries and filled three prescriptions for his psychiatric illness, possibly a sign that he was thinking about the future.

Then, at 1:21 p.m., evidently concerned that he did not have enough medication for the purpose he was contemplating, he bought a second container of Tylenol PM.

Over the next two days, Mrs. Ivins worked her lunchtime shift at a nearby cafe, went for a swim at Fort Detrick and ran her regular Friday bingo game. In and out of the house, she saw that her husband was sleeping but had risen at least a few times, bringing in the mail and eating breakfast.

She did not worry much; depressed, banned from his laboratory, he had been spending many days in bed. And on the back of her note, he had scribbled that he had a terrible headache and was going to rest.

"Please let me sleep," he wrote. "Please."

When she found him on the bathroom floor in the middle of a Saturday night, her voice on the 911 tape was calm and methodical: "He's unconscious. He's breathing rapidly. He's clammy."

She had been through this before. The dispatcher offered to stay on the line until the ambulance arrived. "I'm O.K.," Mrs. Ivins said.

One Last Message

Bruce Ivins, the connoisseur of secrets, took with him any knowledge he had of the anthrax attacks. But he left one more surprise for his family: a clause in his will intended to enforce his wish to be cremated and have his ashes scattered. If his demands were not met, $50,000 from his estate would go not to the family but to Planned Parenthood of Maryland, whose abortion services Mrs. Ivins abhorred.

It was one last, devious step for a man whose oddities, for many people, made the F.B.I.'s anthrax accusation more plausible.

But like so much about Dr. Ivins, it cut the other way, too. The F.B.I. theorized that Dr. Ivins had sent anthrax letters to Senators Leahy and Daschle because they were pro-choice Catholics, offending his anti-abortion views. Would an anti-abortion absolutist have flirted with a donation to a cause he despised?

On Oct. 6, a lawyer for the Ivins family filed with the Orphans' Court of Frederick County certification that Planned Parenthood would not receive the money. His ashes, the document said, "were scattered or spread on the ground, as he directed."

So, You Trust the Police?

2008-12-26T22:19:00.001-06:00

US police could get 'pain beam' weapons

10:11 24 December 2008 by David Hambling
For similar stories, visit the Weapons Technology Topic Guide

The research arm of the US Department of Justice is working on two portable non-lethal weapons that inflict pain from a distance using beams of laser light or microwaves, with the intention of putting them into the hands of police to subdue suspects.

The two devices under development by the civilian National Institute of Justice both build on knowledge gained from the Pentagon's controversial Active Denial System (ADS) - first demonstrated in public last year, which uses a 2-metre beam of short microwaves to heat up the outer layer of a person's skin and cause pain.

'Reduced injuries'

Like the ADS, the new portable devices will also heat the skin, but will have beams only a few centimetres across. They are designed to elicit what the Pentagon calls a "repel response" - a strong urge to escape from the beam.

A spokesperson for the National Institute for Justice likens the effect of the new devices to that of "blunt trauma" weapons such as rubber bullets, "But unlike blunt trauma devices, the injury should not be present. This research is looking to reduce the injuries to suspects," they say.

Existing blunt trauma weapons can break ribs or even kill, making alternatives welcome. Yet ADS has recorded problems too - out of several thousand tests on human subjects there were two cases of second-degree burns.

Dazzle and burn

The NIJ's laser weapon has been dubbed Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response - PHaSR - and resembles a bulky rifle. It was created in 2005 by a US air force agency to temporarily dazzle enemies (see image, right), but the addition of a second, infrared laser makes it able to heat skin too.

The NIJ is testing the PHaSR in various scenarios, which may include prison situations as well as law enforcement.

The NIJ's portable microwave-based weapon is less developed. Currently a tabletop prototype with a range of less than a metre, a backpack-sized prototype with a range of 15 metres will be ready next year, a spokesperson says.

The truly portable mini-ADS could prove the more useful, as microwaves penetrate clothing better than the infra-red beam, which is most effective on exposed skin. Although the spokesman says: "In LEC [Law Enforcement and Corrections] use there is always a little bit of skin to target."

Torture concerns

The effect of microwave beams on humans has been investigated for years, but there is little publicly available research on the effects of PHaSR-type lasers on humans. The attraction of using a laser is that it can be less bulky than a microwave device.

Human rights groups say that equipping police with such weapons would add to the problems posed by existing "non-lethals" such as Tasers. Security expert Steve Wright at Leeds Metropolitan University describes the new weapons as "torture at the touch of a button".

"We have grave concerns about the deployment and use of any such devices, which have the potential to be used for torture or other ill treatment," says Amnesty International's arms control researcher Helen Hughes, adding that all research into their effects should be made public.

Mark Felt - Real Name?

2008-12-19T09:49:00.001-06:00

'Deep Throat' Mark Felt Dies at 95

By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 19, 2008; 3:05 AM

W. Mark Felt Sr., the associate director of the FBI during the Watergate scandal who, better known as "Deep Throat," became the most famous anonymous source in American history, died yesterday. He was 95.

Felt died at 12:45 p.m. at his home in Santa Rosa, Calif.

Felt "was fine this morning" and was "joking with his caregiver," according to his daughter, Joan Felt. She said in a phone interview that her father ate a big breakfast before remarking that he was tired and going to sleep. "He slipped away," she said.

As the second-highest official in the FBI under longtime director J. Edgar Hoover and interim director L. Patrick Gray, Felt detested the Nixon administration's attempt to subvert the bureau's investigation into the complex of crimes and coverups known as the Watergate scandal that ultimately led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon.

He secretly guided Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward as he and his colleague Carl Bernstein pursued the story of the 1972 break-in of the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate office buildings and later revelations of the Nixon administration's campaign of spying and sabotage against its perceived political enemies.

Felt insisted on remaining completely anonymous, or on "deep background." A Post editor dubbed him "Deep Throat," a bit of wordplay based on the title of a pornographic movie of the time. The source's existence, but not his identity, became known in Woodward and Bernstein's 1974 book, "All the President's Men," and in the subsequent movie version, in which actor Hal Holbrook played the charismatic but shadowy source.

Felt, a dashing figure with a full head of silver hair, an authoritative bearing and a reputation as a tough taskmaster, adamantly denied over the years he was Deep Throat, even though Nixon suspected him from the start.

"It was not I and it is not I," Felt told Washingtonian magazine in 1974. Five times, Nixon ordered Gray to fire Felt, but Gray, convinced by Felt's denials, never did.

Felt, a master of bureaucratic infighting and misdirection, seized upon a Post story that had not used him as a source. In a bold stroke, he denounced it in an internal memo and ordered an investigation into the leak. "Expedite," he commanded. The next day, in a notation on another memo that passed over his desk, he pointed to a prosecutor as the source of the leak.

"I was impressed. My guy knew his stuff," Woodward wrote in "Secret Man: The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat" (2006). "The memo was an effective cover for him, the very best counterintelligence tradecraft. Not only had he initiated the leak inquiry, but Felt appeared to have discovered the leaker."

It wasn't until May 30, 2005, that Felt's family revealed his identity in an article for Vanity Fair magazine. The article, written by San Francisco lawyer John D. O'Connor, did not make clear why Felt, who was suffering from dementia, admitted his identity after more than 30 years. Woodward confirmed the revelation, and secret was finally out.

Few could imagine such a straight-arrow career employee, known for enforcing the FBI's strict rules of behavior and demeanor, playing such a dangerous game. Although Deep Throat was a hero to the counterculture, civil rights advocates and Nixon's opponents, Felt was no friend to the political left.

In 1980, he was convicted of approving illegal "black bag" break-ins against of the families and friends of Weather Underground radicals. He was later pardoned by President Ronald Reagan.

In his 1979 book, "The FBI Pyramid From the Inside," co-authored with conservative writer Ralph de Toledano, Felt supported Hoover's bugging of the Rev. Martin Luther King during the Kennedy administration. He opposed Gray's decisions to hire women as FBI agents, to loosen the dress code and to ease the weight restrictions for FBI agents.

He came from the traditional crime-fighting FBI, having started with the agency in 1942. He unmasked a German spy in the United States, chased bank robbers and for years led what was known internally as the "goon squad," which monitored the performance of field agents. Even after he was promoted to deputy associate director in 1971, his reputation was that of a hard-line Hoover loyalist.

No one knows exactly what prompted Felt to leak the information from the Watergate probe to the press. He was passed over for the post of FBI director after Hoover's 1972 death, a crushing career disappointment.

But by the time he told O'Connor "I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat," he was enfeebled by a stroke and his memory of the era had almost vanished because of Alzheimer's disease.

In his 2006 book with O'Connor, "A G-Man's Life," Felt expressed his anger at White House officials who attempted to interfere with the FBI investigation.

"It's impossible to exaggerate how high the stakes were in Watergate," he and his co-author wrote. "We faced no simple burglary, but an assault on government institutions, an attack on the FBI's integrity, and unrelenting pressure to unravel one of the greatest political scandals in our nation's history.

"From the start, it was clear that senior administration officials were up to their necks in this mess and would stop at nothing to sabotage our investigation. White House staffers, high and low, were either evasive or obstructive. They drew the Justice Department and the CIA into their cover-up. They used the acting director of the FBI, a political appointee, to inform them of the information we dug up and attempt to limit our inquiries. . . .

"I really can't describe adequately how bad it was," the book went on. "As investigators trying to bring the truth to light, we could not rely on Justice Department prosecutors or even federal grand juries to bring indictments. What we needed was a 'Lone Ranger' who could bypass the administration's hand-picked FBI director and Justice Department leadership and derail the White House cover-up."

Felt, who saw all the FBI investigative paperwork on Watergate, was acquainted with Woodward from a chance meeting at the White House in 1970 when Woodward was still in the Navy. After Woodward became a reporter, Felt helped him on a story about the attempted assassination in May 1972 of George C. Wallace Jr., the segregationist Alabama governor then running for president.

Days after the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Watergate, Felt told Woodward that The Post could safely make a connection between the burglars and a former CIA agent working at the White House, E. Howard Hunt.

Months later, Felt again provided key context and reassurance, telling Woodward that a story tying Nixon's campaign committee to the break-in could be "much stronger" than the first draft and still be on solid ground.

One of the most important encounters between Woodward and his source came Oct. 8, 1972. In the wee hours in a deserted parking garage in Rosslyn, Felt laid out a much broader view of the scandal than Woodward and Bernstein had yet imagined.

"On evenings such as these, Deep Throat had talked about how politics had infiltrated every corner of government -- a strong-arm takeover of the agencies by the Nixon White House. . . . He had once called it the 'switchblade mentality' -- and had referred to the willingness of the president's men to fight dirty and for keeps," Woodward and Bernstein wrote in "All the President's Men." "The Nixon White House worried him. 'They are underhanded and unknowable,' he had said numerous times."

Felt urged Woodward to follow the case to the top: to Nixon's former attorney general, John N. Mitchell; to Nixon's inner brace of aides, H.R. "Bob" Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman; and even to Nixon himself.

"Only the president and Mitchell know" everything, he hinted.

It took many newspaper stories, a House and Senate investigation, the revelation of a secret tape recording system in the Oval Office, the firing of a special prosecutor, the opening of articles of impeachment and the discovery of a "smoking gun" tape recording before Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974.

The Post won journalism's highest honor, the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for public service for its investigation of the Watergate case.

Felt was passed over for the job of FBI director a second time, in 1973, and retired from the bureau that summer.

But in 1978, he was drawn back into the public view when he and another top FBI official, Edward G. Miller, were indicted for nine illegal break-ins in New York and New Jersey that had happened in 1972 and 1973.

Felt said he approved the break-ins of the relatives of fugitives with the Weather Underground, a radical leftist movement, believing he was acting with the approval of the FBI director. When he was arraigned, several hundred FBI agents greeted him at the courthouse in a show of solidarity.

It was during that period that Felt came closest to losing his secret identity. Under questioning by grand jurors, he cavalierly mentioned that he was often suspected of being Deep Throat. A grand juror immediately asked him if he was. Felt, according to assistant attorney general Stanley Pottinger, turned pale and denied it. According to Woodward's book, Pottinger went off the record, reminded Felt he was under oath, and offering to withdraw the "irrelevant" question if Felt preferred. Withdraw it, Felt snapped.

Few others came that close. After his wife, Audrey Felt, committed suicide in 1984, Felt told a close friend, Yvette LaGarde, of his secret identity, and she told her son.

On the day of his conviction in 1980, he told reporters, "I spent my entire adult life working for the government, and I always tried to do what I thought was right and what was in the best interest of this country and what would protect the safety of this country."

Five months later, Reagan pardoned Felt and Miller.

William Mark Felt Sr. was born Aug. 17, 1913, in Twin Falls, Idaho, the son of a general contractor and a housewife. He worked his way through the University of Idaho, waiting tables and stoking furnaces, and graduated in 1935.

After completing law school at George Washington University in 1940, he worked briefly at the Federal Trade Commission before joining the FBI to work in counterintelligence.

He moved to Washington to work for two Idaho Democrats, Sen. James P. Pope and then Sen. David Worth Clark while attending night law school at George Washington University. He graduated in 1940.

Working at the Federal Trade Commission, Felt was assigned to ask consumers about their impression of the Red Cross brand of toilet paper. He disliked the job, and in 1942, he joined the FBI.

Assigned to counterintelligence work, he thrived. In his 1979 book, Felt said he that he learned techniques and the uses of misinformation which allowed him to unmask a German spy on U.S. soil just before World War II.

After the war, he chose to go to the FBI's Seattle office, and then Houston, San Antonio, Washington, New Orleans, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, where he was named special agent in charge in 1956. He led the FBI field office in Kansas City, a town that was a hotbed of political corruption, and finally, back to Washington in 1962 -- 17 moves by the time he retired.

He formed firm opinions about some government officials. "Bobby Kennedy thought of the FBI as a kind of private police department, with Hoover as its desk sergeant," he wrote disapprovingly.

In 1964, Felt began a six-year stint as chief inspector, making sure that all agents and field offices toed the line on regulations. During that time, he also served as FBI liaison and technical adviser to MGM Studios for "The FBI" television series.

By all accounts, he was loyal to Hoover and suspicious of the Nixon White House effort to bring the FBI under its control. He resisted a directive from the White House in 1971 to begin massive wiretaps to find the source of leaks about the administration's national security strategy. But he won the administration's confidence when he quietly closed a Hoover-ordered investigation into "a ring of homosexualists at the highest levels," an allegation that proved unfounded.

In early 1972, the administration was embarrassed by a memo from ITT lobbyist Dita Beard that said if her employer contributed to Nixon's campaign fund, the Justice Department would drop its anti-trust investigation. Hoping to prove the memo was a forgery, the White House sought the FBI's cooperation. But Felt reported that the FBI laboratory could not make a definitive finding. White House special counsel Charles W. Colson pressured Felt to change the FBI's summary of its investigation, but Felt would not budge.

After Hoover's death on May 2, 1972, Nixon appointed Gray as acting director of the agency. Felt was infuriated by Gray's capitulation to the administration's demands, including turning over FBI investigative files to the White House staff. But he succeeded in persuading Gray to resist Nixon's attempt to get the FBI off the case of the Watergate burglary.

While Gray worked with the White House, and spent part of each week visiting most of the FBI's bureaus across the country, Felt was in operational charge of the agency. But after a disastrous confirmation hearing, Gray resigned, and Nixon refused to promote Felt, instead appointing William D. Ruckelshaus to the top FBI spot.

Ruckelshaus soon accused Felt of leaking information about illegal wiretaps -- not to The Washington Post, but to the New York Times. Felt angrily denied the charge, then immediately retired. Even in retirement, he stayed in touch with sources and reporters and tipped off Woodward one last time. The secret White House tape recordings that were rumored to exonerate Nixon contained "one or more . . . deliberate erasures," he said.

Felt moved to Santa Rosa from Alexandria in 1989. He had a stroke in 1999 and a second stroke in 2001.

His son, Mark, became an Air Force pilot and flew then-Vice President George H.W. Bush in Air Force Two. His daughter, after living a countercultural life in California, became a teacher and lives in Santa Rosa. Survivors also include several grandchildren.

Because of questions about his memory by 2005, it is unclear whether Felt or co-author O'Connor wrote in his last book: "People will debate for a long time whether I did the right thing by helping Woodward. The bottom line is that we did get the whole truth out, and isn't that what the FBI is supposed to do?"

Staff writers Clarence Williams and Anita Kumar contributed to this report.

Pentagon - Trust Them inside the U.S.?

2008-12-18T10:39:00.001-06:00

Pentagon to Detail Troops to Bolster Domestic Security

By Spencer S. Hsu and Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, December 1, 2008; A01

The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.

The long-planned shift in the Defense Department's role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said.

There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military's role in domestic law enforcement.

But the Bush administration and some in Congress have pushed for a heightened homeland military role since the middle of this decade, saying the greatest domestic threat is terrorists exploiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, dedicating 20,000 troops to domestic response -- a nearly sevenfold increase in five years -- "would have been extraordinary to the point of unbelievable," Paul McHale, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, said in remarks last month at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But the realization that civilian authorities may be overwhelmed in a catastrophe prompted "a fundamental change in military culture," he said.

The Pentagon's plan calls for three rapid-reaction forces to be ready for emergency response by September 2011. The first 4,700-person unit, built around an active-duty combat brigade based at Fort Stewart, Ga., was available as of Oct. 1, said Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., commander of the U.S. Northern Command.

If funding continues, two additional teams will join nearly 80 smaller National Guard and reserve units made up of about 6,000 troops in supporting local and state officials nationwide. All would be trained to respond to a domestic chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or high-yield explosive attack, or CBRNE event, as the military calls it.

Military preparations for a domestic weapon-of-mass-destruction attack have been underway since at least 1996, when the Marine Corps activated a 350-member chemical and biological incident response force and later based it in Indian Head, Md., a Washington suburb. Such efforts accelerated after the Sept. 11 attacks, and at the time Iraq was invaded in 2003, a Pentagon joint task force drew on 3,000 civil support personnel across the United States.

In 2005, a new Pentagon homeland defense strategy emphasized "preparing for multiple, simultaneous mass casualty incidents." National security threats were not limited to adversaries who seek to grind down U.S. combat forces abroad, McHale said, but also include those who "want to inflict such brutality on our society that we give up the fight," such as by detonating a nuclear bomb in a U.S. city.

In late 2007, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England signed a directive approving more than $556 million over five years to set up the three response teams, known as CBRNE Consequence Management Response Forces. Planners assume an incident could lead to thousands of casualties, more than 1 million evacuees and contamination of as many as 3,000 square miles, about the scope of damage Hurricane Katrina caused in 2005.

Last month, McHale said, authorities agreed to begin a $1.8 million pilot project funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency through which civilian authorities in five states could tap military planners to develop disaster response plans. Hawaii, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Washington and West Virginia will each focus on a particular threat -- pandemic flu, a terrorist attack, hurricane, earthquake and catastrophic chemical release, respectively -- speeding up federal and state emergency planning begun in 2003.

Last Monday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates ordered defense officials to review whether the military, Guard and reserves can respond adequately to domestic disasters.

Gates gave commanders 25 days to propose changes and cost estimates. He cited the work of a congressionally chartered commission, which concluded in January that the Guard and reserve forces are not ready and that they lack equipment and training.

Bert B. Tussing, director of homeland defense and security issues at the U.S. Army War College's Center for Strategic Leadership, said the new Pentagon approach "breaks the mold" by assigning an active-duty combat brigade to the Northern Command for the first time. Until now, the military required the command to rely on troops requested from other sources.

"This is a genuine recognition that this [job] isn't something that you want to have a pickup team responsible for," said Tussing, who has assessed the military's homeland security strategies.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the libertarian Cato Institute are troubled by what they consider an expansion of executive authority.

Domestic emergency deployment may be "just the first example of a series of expansions in presidential and military authority," or even an increase in domestic surveillance, said Anna Christensen of the ACLU's National Security Project. And Cato Vice President Gene Healy warned of "a creeping militarization" of homeland security.

"There's a notion that whenever there's an important problem, that the thing to do is to call in the boys in green," Healy said, "and that's at odds with our long-standing tradition of being wary of the use of standing armies to keep the peace."

McHale stressed that the response units will be subject to the act, that only 8 percent of their personnel will be responsible for security and that their duties will be to protect the force, not other law enforcement. For decades, the military has assigned larger units to respond to civil disturbances, such as during the Los Angeles riot in 1992.

U.S. forces are already under heavy strain, however. The first reaction force is built around the Army's 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team, which returned in April after 15 months in Iraq. The team includes operations, aviation and medical task forces that are to be ready to deploy at home or overseas within 48 hours, with units specializing in chemical decontamination, bomb disposal, emergency care and logistics.

The one-year domestic mission, however, does not replace the brigade's next scheduled combat deployment in 2010. The brigade may get additional time in the United States to rest and regroup, compared with other combat units, but it may also face more training and operational requirements depending on its homeland security assignments.

Renuart said the Pentagon is accounting for the strain of fighting two wars, and the need for troops to spend time with their families. "We want to make sure the parameters are right for Iraq and Afghanistan," he said. The 1st Brigade's soldiers "will have some very aggressive training, but will also be home for much of that."

Although some Pentagon leaders initially expected to build the next two response units around combat teams, they are likely to be drawn mainly from reserves and the National Guard, such as the 218th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade from South Carolina, which returned in May after more than a year in Afghanistan.

Now that Pentagon strategy gives new priority to homeland security and calls for heavier reliance on the Guard and reserves, McHale said, Washington has to figure out how to pay for it.

"It's one thing to decide upon a course of action, and it's something else to make it happen," he said. "It's time to put our money where our mouth is."

Kansas Attorney General - Upstanding Citizen, Right?

2008-12-17T16:18:00.001-06:00

Morrison resigning amid sex scandal

By Tim Carpenter

The Capital-Journal
Published Saturday, December 15, 2007

Attorney General Paul Morrison's reign as the brightest new star in the state's Democratic Party ended Friday with his resignation amid a sex scandal that triggered criminal and ethics investigations.

Morrison said fallout from an affair with a former work colleague in Johnson County — she accused him of sexual harassment and legal misconduct — had undermined the attorney general's office and harmed his family to such an extent that his resignation was necessary.

AT A GLANCE

Name: Paul Morrison

Age: 53. Born June 1, 1954, in Dodge City

Hometown: Lenexa

Occupation: Kansas attorney general

Political party: Democrat

Education: Graduated from Washington High School, Kansas City, Kan., 1972; undergraduate degree in criminal justice, Washburn University, 1977; Washburn University School of Law, 1980

Political career: Elected attorney general 2006 after switching to the Democratic Party to challenge GOP incumbent Phill Kline; took office in January 2007; Johnson County district attorney, 1989-2007; assistant district attorney, 1980-89. Announced resignation Friday as attorney general effective Jan. 31, 2008

Personal: He and his wife, Joyce, have three children, Mary Amanda, Drew and Cole.

Quote: "After careful thought and deliberation, I have concluded that my resignation is in the best long-term interests of the people of Kansas. Not because I have ever done anything contrary to the laws of this state or the ethical standards of my profession, but because law enforcement should be the focus of this office, not my personal life."
"Because of my actions in my personal life, many people have stopped believing in me, which is damaging the office, my staff and the state," Morrison said. "Throughout my career, I have always fought for justice as a prosecutor. I've held others accountable for their actions, and now I must be held accountable for my mistakes."

Morrison, a 53-year-old Democrat sworn into office in January, said his resignation would be effective Jan. 31, 2008.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who endorsed Morrison in his successful 2006 campaign against then-Attorney General Phill Kline, is required by the Kansas Constitution to fill the vacancy. The new attorney general will serve the remainder of Morrison's term, which expires in 2011.

"I respect Paul Morrison's decision to step down," Sebelius said. "Now we must turn our attention to selecting a new attorney general and restoring Kansas' confidence in our state's top law enforcement agency."

Separate investigations involving federal, state and Johnson County authorities were unfolding amid a story published Sunday in The Topeka Capital-Journal confirming the extramarital affair Morrison had with Linda Carter, who was director of administration in the Johnson County district attorney's office. Carter worked for Morrison in the D.A.'s office until he became attorney general.

Carter said in a signed statement that she had sex with Morrison numerous times in the Johnson County Courthouse and at motels throughout Kansas. Their affair began in September 2005 when both were married to other people, intensified during Morrison's campaign for attorney general and ended this fall.

When Kline was appointed by Republicans to complete Morrison's term as district attorney in Johnson County, Carter retained her management job at the Olathe courthouse. She continued her relationship with Morrison following the transition.

Carter said in her statement that Morrison sought from her confidential information about Kline's ongoing criminal prosecution of a Johnson County abortion clinic. She said he also unsuccessfully pressured her to use her influence to help eight former Morrison employees in the D.A.'s office who had responded to their firing by Kline by filing a federal lawsuit. That suit against Kline is pending.

Before resigning in November, Carter filed a federal sexual harassment complaint against Morrison with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Morrison was her immediate superior in the Johnson County D.A.'s office, where she was promoted to the top nonlegal staff position with a salary of $83,000.

In response to The Capital-Journal's story, Morrison asked a state ethics panel Wednesday to determine whether he violated the code of conduct that applies to lawyers in Kansas. Sanctions, if any, against Morrison would be imposed by the Kansas Supreme Court based on recommendations from the ethics panel.

The Johnson County Commission voted Thursday to finance the hiring of a special prosecutor, selected by Kline, to sort through evidence that Morrison's relationship with Carter allegedly led him to engage in telephone harassment, blackmail or other crimes. Kline told commissioners a preliminary investigation indicated it was necessary to proceed with an independent criminal probe.

Morrison had acknowledged the extramarital affair with Carter but maintained he didn't engage in sexual harassment or violate any law.

Sebelius had offered qualified support for Morrison in the aftermath of The Capital-Journal's story. If guilty of a crime, the governor said, Morrison should resign. She also endorsed the hiring of the special prosecutor in Johnson County.

Morrison deflected calls from the Kansas Republican Party and others for his resignation until Friday, when he called reporters to the marble lobby outside his office near the Statehouse.

"After careful thought and deliberation," Morrison said, "I have concluded that my resignation is in the best long-term interests of the people of Kansas. Not because I have ever done anything contrary to the laws of this state or the ethical standards of my profession, but because law enforcement should be the focus of this office, not my personal life."

Morrison said he had always fought for justice in his 27 years as a prosecutor and was confident the judicial system would bring out the truth in his case.

However, Morrison said Kansans "have every right to feel" betrayed by revelations regarding his affair with Carter.

"I've made mistakes in my personal life," Morrison said, "but I have always obeyed our laws and done the right thing as a professional."

Morrison, who took no questions at the news conference, said accomplishments during his year as attorney general included creation of a domestic violence unit, greater scrutiny of computer crime and a refocusing of the A.G.'s office on "the basics of law enforcement."

During the 2006 campaign, Morrison accused Kline of sidetracking the A.G.'s office with an ideological agenda centered on prosecution of abortion clinics. Kline is aggressively anti-abortion, while Morrison supports abortion rights.

Morrison easily defeated Kline, capturing 58 percent of the vote. Morrison secured broad support from moderate Republicans and Democrats.

Leaders of the state's Republican and Democratic parties had different opinions on the Morrison resignation.

"Kansas Democrats recruited and ran the most qualified prosecutor in Kansas for attorney general in 2006," said Larry Gates, chairman of the Kansas Democratic Party. "Mr. Morrison assembled a superb professional team who will continue to impartially discharge the duties of the office."

Kris Kobach, chairman of the Kansas Republican Party, said Morrison made the right decision to step down.

"His prior conduct had shattered the public confidence that is necessary for an attorney general to function effectively," Kobach said. "Resigning was his only plausible option."

Kobach said Kansas voters wouldn't have elected Morrison if they had been aware of his involvement with Carter. In the campaign, Kline attempted to make an issue of an 1991 sexual harassment claim against Morrison by a different woman who worked in the district attorney's office. The charge was discounted on the campaign trail, in part, because Morrison's wife, Joyce, publicly vouched for her husband's integrity.

Morrison, born in Dodge City, was raised in the Kansas City area. He earned a degree in criminal justice at Washburn University before graduating in 1980 from Washburn's law school. He was an assistant Johnson County prosecutor until 1989, when he replaced Dennis Moore as district attorney.

Morrison ran as a Republican in getting elected to the county prosecutor's job five times, starting in 1988. He switched allegiance to the Democratic Party in October 2005 to avoid a bruising GOP primary against Kline. That set the stage for the decisive showdown in the general election.

Tim Carpenter can be reached at (785) 295-1158 or timothy.carpenter@cjonline.com.

Another Crook-Madoff was "Revered" on Wall Street

2008-12-17T09:06:00.001-06:00

Also note, that the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) let him get away with felonies for decades!

SEC launches Madoff probe, says decade of warnings ignored

10 hours ago

NEW YORK (AFP) — SEC Chairman Christopher Cox late Tuesday announced a probe into how his financial regulatory body failed to detect an alleged 50-billion-dollar fraud scheme that Bernard Madoff is accused of running despite a decade of warning signs.

Madoff, 70, was arrested Thursday and allegedly confessed to the scam, which collapsed after clients asked for their money back due to the global financial crisis.

US authorities allege that Madoff secretly used money from new investors to pay interest to other investors, in a fraud known as a Ponzi or pyramid scheme. The collapse has shaken financial institutions worldwide and hit big-name investors.

The Securities and Exchange Commission "has learned that credible and specific allegations regarding Mr. Madoff's financial wrongdoing, going back to at least 1999, were repeatedly brought to the attention of SEC staff, but were never recommended to the Commission for action," Cox said in a statement.

"I am gravely concerned by the apparent multiple failures over at least a decade to thoroughly investigate these allegations," Cox said.

"A consequence of the failure to seek a formal order of investigation from the Commission is that subpoena power was not used to obtain information," Cox said, "but rather staff relied upon information voluntarily produced by Mr. Madoff and his firm."

Spain's stock market regulator said investment funds there had direct exposure of 106.9 million euros (147 million dollars), a day after Spain's biggest bank Santander announced potential losses of more than three billion dollars (2.19 billion euros) from Madoff Investment Securities.

British investment consultants PIRC noted that many of those hit were professional investors.

"We therefore might also ask what financial institutions actually do for their management fee if being able to spot, and avoid, a pyramid scheme isn't part of the service?"

Jean-Pierre Jouyet, France's former European affairs minister who this week took over at France's financial markets watchdog, the AMF, said: "For the fourth time, American regulation is in question."

He cited three previous crises: the 1998 collapse of US hedge fund managers LTCM; the 2001 false-accounting scandal involving energy giant Enron; and the collapse in September of the Lehman Brothers bank.

Japanese financial firms joined the growing list of those caught up in the scandal. The Aozora Bank said its exposure might amount to 12.4 billion yen (137 million dollars).

Nipponkoa Insurance Co. and Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co. and Daiwa Securities Group put their losses at several hundred million yen -- relatively small sums compared to those already announced elsewhere.

Private Austrian bank Medici said it had exposure of 2.1 billion dollars (1.5 billion euros) via two of its investment funds, but that the exposure did not threaten its survival.

Other big losers in the scheme included Dutch bank Fortis, which announced exposure of at least 1.2 billion dollars, and Britain's HSBC at 1.0 billion dollars. A string of other European banks have announced exposure of up to hundreds of millions of dollars.

In Germany, Deutsche Bank, Postbank and the German federation of public banks VOeB all told AFP they had no exposure to the scheme.

Germany's second biggest bank, Commerzbank, declined to comment.

Swiss insurance group Zurich Financial Services said it had no exposure, Swiss Re said it had indirectly invested less than three million dollars. Swiss Life did not give a response.

Madoff is free on a 10-million-dollar bond, but will be in court Wednesday to establish whether he has met bail conditions set after his arrest last week.

Cox said he has "directed a full and immediate review of the past allegations regarding Mr. Madoff and his firm and the reasons they were not found credible, to be led by the SEC's Inspector General."

The SEC probe will also "include all staff contact and relationships with the Madoff family and firm, and their impact, if any, on decisions by staff regarding the firm," Cox said.

Even the charitable Wunderkinder Foundation of Oscar-winning filmmaker Steven Spielberg fell victim to the mammoth fraud and suffered losses, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Citing people familiar with the case, the newspaper said about 70 percent of the dividend income and interest for the foundation had been handled by Madoff's securities firm, but it was not known if Spielberg had also invested any of his personal fortune.

The US Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), which provides a Congress-authorized special reserve fund to help investors at failed brokerage firms, said Monday it was liquidating the Madoff company.

REX 84; Get Familiar With It!

2008-12-17T08:40:00.001-06:00

Here is a link to Wikipedia: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_84">Rex 84</a> And here ia a google link; read up on this important subject. <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=rex+84&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq="> Rex 84 Google </a>

Federal Agencies Have Integrity, Right?

2008-12-16T20:26:00.001-06:00

SEC chairman says agency failed to probe Madoff

44 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox said Tuesday his agency repeatedly failed for at least a decade to pursue allegations of wrongdoing by Wall Street figure Bernard L. Madoff, the alleged perpetrator of a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

Cox ordered the SEC's inspector general to look into the failure, saying the agency's staff had never brought the Madoff matter to the attention of commissioners after relying on information voluntarily produced by Madoff and his firm.

"I am gravely concerned by the apparent multiple failures over at least a decade to thoroughly investigate these allegations or at any point to seek formal authority to pursue them," Cox said in a statement.

In a forceful condemnation of the SEC staff, Cox said there had been credible and specific allegations regarding Madoff's financial wrongdoing going back to at least 1999.

The SEC chairman's criticism of his own agency marks only the latest instance in which federal regulators have overlooked clear warning signs of possible fraud.

Its oversight of the Wall Street investment houses drew significant criticism. A review by the SEC inspector general determined that the agency's monitoring of the five biggest Wall Street firms, which included Bear Stearns, was lacking.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Financial wizard Bernard L. Madoff didn't just fool investors. He also conned the nation's top securities regulators, who investigated his business last year and apparently missed the fact that he was running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

It wasn't the first time the Securities and Exchange Commission overlooked clear warning signs of possible fraud.

"I can't comprehend how a well-run investigation would have missed a fraud of this magnitude," said Lynn Turner, a former SEC chief accountant.

Another expert agreed. "The fact that that this could go on for so long with someone who was known to the agency raises questions of the effectiveness of our regulatory scheme," said Charles Elson, the director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.

The SEC's enforcement division looked into Madoff's business in 2007. The agency did not refer the matter to commissioners for legal action. What did the investigators find and why didn't they look harder? The SEC isn't saying anything beyond a brief statement it issued Friday revealing the 2007 probe.

Securities law experts point to Madoff's written assertion to the SEC that he had 23 clients.

Demonstrably false, the experts say. Look at the dozens of well-heeled victims now strewn across the financial landscape. They include a charity of movie director Steven Spielberg; the family charitable foundation for Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J.; and a trust tied to real estate magnate Mortimer Zuckerman.

"One would think this would not have required a great deal of investigation," said Stanley Grossman, a veteran securities lawyer for plaintiffs who expects to represent many of the victims in the Madoff case.

Was the government's watchdog over Wall Street a lapdog? The SEC — the chief federal regulator protecting investors — has faced such charges before. Its oversight of the Wall Street investment houses — rotting within from piled-up securities tied to subprime mortgages — drew significant criticism. A review by the SEC inspector general determined that the agency's monitoring of the five biggest Wall Street firms, which included Bear Stearns, was lacking.

In March, a few days before Bear Stearns nearly collapsed into bankruptcy, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox told reporters the agency was closely monitoring the five firms and had "a good deal of comfort" in their capital levels. Then as federal officials orchestrated the rescue, Bear Stearns was bought by rival JPMorgan Chase with a $29 billion government backstop.

The chairman of the Senate Banking panel that oversees the SEC, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said in an interview Tuesday that the Madoff affair "illustrates the lack of credible enforcement over several years by the SEC." He criticized the agency's "lack of a strong commitment to be vigilant."

Cox responds that his has taken decisive actions in response to the market turmoil, including an unprecedented temporary ban this fall on short-selling of stocks of financial companies. The SEC also has procured billions of dollars in settlements with big investment banks that have agreed to buy back auction-rate securities from investors hurt by the collapse of that market in February. Auction rate securities are debt instruments, typically issued by a municipality, in which the yield is reset on each payment date via a Dutch auction, a method of selling in which the price is reduced until a buyer is found.

In the Madoff case a securities executive, Harry Markopolos, complained to the SEC's Boston office in May 1999. Markopolos told the SEC staff they should investigate Madoff because it was impossible for the kind of profit he was making to have been gained legally.

But the SEC's Boston office has itself been accused in the past of brushing off a whistleblower's legitimate complaints, in a case that led the head of that office to resign in 2003. The whistleblower, Peter Scannell, eventually persuaded state regulators and the SEC to act against mutual fund giant Putnam Investments, where Scannell worked.

"It's flabbergasting that nobody can nail the bums in the SEC who turn their back on and/or aid and abet people who defraud investors," Scannell said in a telephone interview Monday.

Madoff moved easily among Wall Street, Capitol Hill and SEC headquarters as the former head of the Nasdaq Stock Market, and along the way he made political campaign donations and hired lobbyists. His high profile contributed to his credibility with investors.

While Madoff contributed more and more money to politicians in Washington, the SEC's budget — now at just under $1 billion — failed to keep up with its exploding workload fueled by increasingly complex markets and the effects of the global financial crisis. Turner, the former SEC chief accountant, blamed Congress for failing to give the agency enough money.

Madoff and his employees contributed at least $267,000 at the federal level from 2001 to the present, according to campaign finance records. A member of the Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., was the top congressional recipient; his campaign received $32,000 during that period. Schumer has turned over all campaign donations from Madoff to charity. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is the top Madoff recipient overall, receiving $25,000 from Madoff each year since Schumer became its chairman in 2005.

Schumer's office said the senator has met Madoff a few times, but not in several years.

Madoff spent at least $400,000 on lobbying in Washington from 2001 to the present. His firm was represented by the lobbying office of former New York Republican Rep. Norman Lent for years until July 31, when Lent's firm dissolved and Lent retired. Madoff then hired the firm where three of his longtime lobbyists moved.

Madoff's lobbyists additionally gave roughly $270,000 in federal political donations from 2001 to the present, including at least $46,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, D-Mass., received at least $2,250 in campaign donations from Madoff lobbyists between 2005 and 2008.

In the 2007-08 presidential race, Madoff employees gave at least $4,850 to Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign and at least $2,800 to President-elect Barack Obama's campaign.

Business Associations are Trustworthy, Right?

2008-12-16T11:54:00.001-06:00

Dairy co-op, former execs fined $12 million in price manipulation case

By ERIC PALMER
The Kansas City Star

Kansas City-based Dairy Farmers of America and four former executives have agreed to pay more than $12 million in penalties to settle federal charges of attempting to manipulate the milk futures markets.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said DFA, its former Chief Executive Gary Hanman, and former Chief Financial Officer Gerald Bos will pay a $12 million civil penalty for attempting to manipulate the Class III milk futures contract and exceeding speculative position limits in that contract.

Additionally, Frank Otis, former president and CEO of a DFA subsidiary, and Glenn Millar, former executive vice president of the subsidiary, will pay $150,000 for aiding and abetting DFA's violation of the speculative position limits.

Officials with the DFA, the largest dairy cooperative in the U.S., could not be reached for comment.

Hanman, of Platte City, Mo., declined to comment. Bos, also of Platte City, Mo., could not be reached for comment. Neither could Otis of Ambler, Penn., or Millar, of Las Vegas.

In a statement, Rick Smith, chief executive of DFA said, the cooperative and the two DFA executives settled without admitting or denying the findings in the order.

Smith said settling was in the best interest of the cooperative because the probe was expensive and diverted the groups attention.

"The transactions addressed by the settlement took place over a one-month period more than four years ago," said Smith. "We have fully cooperated with the CFTC's investigation and wanted to put this matter behind us."

The commission said that from May 21 through June 23, 2004, Dairy Farmers of American, Hanman, and Bos attempted to manipulate the price of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's June, July, and August 2004 Class III milk futures contracts through purchases of block cheddar cheese on the CME Cheese Spot Call market.

According to the order the pricing relationship between the CME block cheese market and the Class III milk futures market is well known throughout the industry, and the CME block cheese market price plays a significant part in establishing Class III milk futures prices.

The order also found that on several days in 2004, DFA's speculative Class III milk futures contracts exceeded the CME's speculative position limit, in violation of the Commodity Exchange Act.

A separate order against Otis and Millar finds that they aided and abetted DFA's speculative position violation by directing trading of Class III milk futures in an internal sub-account designated for a DFA subsidiary.

In addition to imposing civil penalties, the DFA order bars Hanman and Bos from trading futures for five years.

It also bars DFA from engaging in speculative trading for two years, and orders DFA to comply with certain undertakings, including retaining a monitor to ensure that DFA does not engage in speculative trading and that DFA's Cheese Spot Call market cheese purchases are made for legitimate business purposes.

The DFA also was ordered to implement a compliance and ethics program and provide future cooperation to the CFTC.

"Today's enforcement action punishes those responsible for DFA's manipulative scheme with a $12 million civil penalty and a trading ban, and ensures future compliance with federal commodities laws through the imposition of a monitor," Stephen J. Obie, acting director of enforcement said it a statement. "Given the severity of the past misconduct, we are pleased that DFA has committed to reform its trading practices."

You trust the Election Committee, right?

2008-12-15T15:16:00.001-06:00

Unstuffing the Ballot Box

David Brauer

In the 2004 election, 126 million Americans voted, up a staggering 15 million from 2000, and voter registration soared to 72 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Call it the silver lining in the divisive Bush presidency, a tribute to registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns by political parties and ideological groups ranging from progressives to evangelical conservatives.

But since then, the right has sought to consolidate its gains and cripple the left's successes at the ballot box. The chief vehicle is state-by-state legislation to stiffen photo ID requirements for registration and voting-supposedly to reduce fraud that even proponents allow is minimal, while fundamentally erecting a huge barrier for millions of voters who don't drive or have recently moved: people in urban areas, seniors, minorities, and the disabled. Not surprisingly, those groups are among the electorate's most progressive.

Thanks to John Kerry's quick concession, 2004's troubles were swept away like so many fallen chads. But that election was rife with problems that could well be repeated in this fall's midterm elections and in 2008:

In Ohio-2004's Florida-voters in poorer areas found far too few voting machines, subjecting them to the 'three-hour poll tax' and discouraging unknown numbers from voting. No federal legislation exists to mandate a minimum ratio of reliable machines to registered voters, and state minimums are often inadequate to handle large voter turnout.
Partisan secretaries of state, charged with monitoring the election system, actively discouraged turnout. In Ohio, current Republican gubernatorial nominee Kenneth Blackwell initially disqualified voter registrations that weren't on 80-pound card stock until a public uproar caused Blackwell, who was then secretary of state, to reverse the ruling. Katherine Harris' Florida successor, Sue Cobb, ordered registration forms trashed because applicants failed to check a box indicating they were citizens, even though they signed a statement elsewhere on the form attesting to the fact. In Minnesota, Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer demanded that local officials post warnings that terrorists might attack polling places. In Ohio, a referendum to take away such power from partisan officials (Blackwell also cochaired his state's 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign) failed in November 2005.
In North Carolina, a new electronic voting machine lost more than 4,500 votes; without a verifiable paper record of ballots cast, at least one close state race was thrown into chaos. Nationally, VoteProject.org tallied more than 1,000 'machine problem' complaints, and despite millions of federal, state, and local dollars spent on new electronic machines since 2000, many that will be used again in 2008 are susceptible to hacking, result-switching, and faulty vote-tallying equipment-making their lack of a paper trail truly frightening.
In the state that became election reform's poster child, Florida, GOP governor Jeb Bush installed in Democratic Broward County a Republican elections supervisor who came under fire after 58,000 absentee ballots disappeared in the mail in the 2004 race. Many replacement ballots were issued too late to be counted. Nothing has been done to prevent a reoccurrence.

'What we learned after Florida and Ohio is that election protection needs to be 24/7 and aware of all aspects of the threat to voting rights,' says Mark Ritchie, who coordinated the wildly successful November 2 Campaign, a consortium of nonprofit groups that registered 5 million voters in 2004. 'We're seeing more and more networks of state-based groups that are fighting for good legislation and getting the public involved.'

Citizen voices have been remarkably effective at turning back some of the worst abuses and advancing the best reforms. Because states and localities administer elections (as Florida proved), the voter-rights movements have sprung up in nearly every state. Good lists of issues and groups in your state can be found at www.electionline.org and www.voteraction.org.

In Minnesota, the Voting Rights Coalition-which yoked traditional volunteer groups such as the League of Women Voters to progressive-action groups-got model legislation passed in 2005 to block voter-intimidation efforts. The bill outlaws tactics such as importing out-of-state challengers to harass voters at polling places and requires challengers to have personal knowledge that an individual isn't eligible. It also allows employees at nursing homes, shelters for battered women and the homeless, and other licensed residential facilities to vouch for residents, allowing them to vote.

In New Mexico, two citizen groups-Verified Voting in New Mexico and United Voters of New Mexico-upended voter-suppression efforts by backing a strong new state law in 2005 that requires voter-verified paper trails. In place of photo-based standards that make society's most vulnerable jump through another logistical hoop, the New Mexico paradigm allows voters to state their name and give the last four digits of their Social Security number, or show as identification a utility bill, a bank statement, a tribal ID, a government check, or an address-bearing paycheck.

Even in the most hidebound states, a single inspired voter has made a difference. David Dill is a Stanford computer science professor who according to the Seattle Weekly (March 10, 2004) 'became interested in computer voting when the state of Georgia had technical problems with its new voting machines in 2002. When Dill discovered his own county, Santa Clara in California, was about to start using electronic voting machines without paper output, he swung into action.' Dill started an online petition calling for paper trails; the nation's top computer geeks hit on it, and he eventually formed Verified Voting (www.verifiedvoting.org), which has exposed programming pitfalls and mobilized citizen lobbyists to fight the reckless purchase of paperless voting equipment. Even though Ohio proved itself a 2004 quagmire, abuses probably would have been worse if Verified Voting action alerts had not prompted 31 counties to delay or reject paper-free systems for use in that year's election.

Bev Harris was another concerned voter who unleashed a firestorm after finding 40,000 files containing proprietary source code from Diebold Election Systems, a leading touch-screen voting machine manufacturer. Somehow, the information was freely available on the Internet; fittingly, the code revealed serious security flaws.

Harris' group, Black Box Voting (www.blackboxvoting.org), has since become a magnet for whistleblowers, including a California temp who funneled 500 pages of documents showing that Diebold's law firm had warned its client about using uncertified software in its election machines. Harris' group has inspired investigative reports in major newspapers and Diebold crackdowns by California and other states. Its website continues to feature detailed accounts of electronic shenanigans and the campaigns to stop them.

Established civic groups are also fighting back. FairVote (www.fairvote.org) is working to make the registration controversy moot by making it more automatic. One initiative, dubbed Leave No Voter Behind, pushes states to register all high school seniors so they can more easily cast their first ballot. The proposal mirrors the groundbreaking 1993 federal 'motor voter' bill that pushed registration at motor vehicle and social service agencies. A progressive example is already in place: Hawaii allows citizens to preregister at 16, and FairVote is leading a similar effort in Rhode Island.

The Sentencing Project (www.sentencingproject.org), which advocates more humane tactics to reduce crime, notes that more than 4 million Americans can't vote because they are felons or ex-felons-13 percent of all black males, the group estimates. The public generally supports restoring rights for those who have completed their sentences, and since 2000 three states have liberalized their laws: Nevada, Iowa, and Maryland now automatically let ex-felons vote (though Maryland requires repeat offenders to wait three years).

A number of fights loom. Retrograde states such as Georgia have tried to make nondriving voters pay for a new photo ID-a very real poll tax-and others are fighting proposed federal legislation (HR 550) to require electronic-equipment paper trails and regular voting-equipment audits nationwide. Some activists argue even this would not be enough. Certain states refuse to enforce 2002's federal Help America Vote Act reforms. For example, the act requires voters whose status is disputed to cast a 'provisional' ballot that can be validated later. However, Electionline.org reports that 18 states, including Florida, offer no provisional recourse for voters who registered but whose names were omitted from precinct rolls.

Older gains must also be won again. Key provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act-which require federal 'preclearance' for election changes by states and localities with a history of voting discrimination-must be renewed by August 2007. Mark Ritchie says there may not be a fierce fight from the right, mostly because the Bush-controlled Justice Department has been a neutered watchdog in recent years. Still, the act remains a powerful tool for future administrations committed to voting rights, and perpetually abusive states, counties, and cities can be added to the preclearance list.

On some level, it's disheartening to have to fight for the right to vote in 21st-century America. But as Ritchie notes, American history has demonstrated a constant, if wobbly, march forward. 'When the Constitution was enacted, 4 percent of the population could vote-white male property owners,' he says. 'We added all white men, then women, then nonwhites. I couldn't vote when I graduated from high school; today, 18-year-olds can vote. Yes, we're seeing some fairly organized rearguard actions, but history is on our side as long as we realize that election protection is not just about Election Day.'

David Brauer is a freelance journalist based in Minneapolis. He is the author of Nellie Stone Johnson: The Life of an Activist (Ruminator, 2000).

Election Watchdog with a Bite

Journalist Greg Palast is unafraid to claim that Republicans stole the 2004 election-and insists that they can do it again in 2008.

Greg Palast, the author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Pluto, 2002) and the new Armed Madhouse (Dutton), is no crank: He earned election-protection acclaim in 2000, when he exposed Katherine Harris' brazen purge of Florida registration lists that swept thousands of legitimate voters, mostly black, off the rolls. And days before the 2004 election, working for the BBC, he unearthed Republican 'caging lists' designed to systematically challenge the Sunshine State's black voters-racial targeting that Palast writes is a crime under the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

In Armed Madhouse, Palast details how 3 million votes cast in 2004 went uncounted and how a 2008 repeat will go down. (The book also chronicles many other Bush-era foreign and domestic fiascoes.) Writer David Brauer asked Palast how we can fight back. Here's what he said:

Don't let them tell you nothing's wrong.

The nasty little secret of American democracy is that 3,600,380 ballots were cast and not counted in 2004. I can't make up something that crazy: The number is calculated from federal reports. These are ballots 'spoiled' and 'rejected' and other nonsense that prevents those ballots from counting. And not everyone's ballot spoils the same: If you're black, the chance that your ballot will spoil is 900 percent higher than if you're white-more than half the ballots tossed in the electoral vote Dumpster are cast by voters of color. And they don't vote Republican, if you haven't noticed. The presidential races in both 2000 and 2004 were coups d'état resulting from spoiled ballots.

What's sick is that you don't need a grand conspiracy to pull it off. Most of the problem is broken and hard-to-use voting machines that mangle ballots or fail to record them. To keep this million-vote Republican thumb on the scale, all the GOP has to do is do nothing-keep the bad machines in the ghetto, on the reservations (the 'spoilage' of Native votes is scandalous), and in the barrio.

Fix the machines, dammit!

Replace them with paper ballots that a voter can check with an optical scanner right in the precinct. That system is as foolproof and cheap as it gets.

Stop the purges.

Ninety-seven percent of [those 2000 Florida voters purged] were legal voters, not 'felons,' as they were tagged. In 2004 the purges came back, with a vengeance, nationwide. What for? We simply can't find cases of people voting illegally, yet to prevent 'vote fraud,' hundreds of thousands of legal voters lose their rights-and invariably they're people of color.
So we begin by stopping the purges. A voter's sworn statement that he or she is legal, according to federal law, is enough.

Fight the new laws calling for identification to vote.

The Republicans are pushing like crazy for this, and not because they want to protect your rights. More than 100,000 voters were turned away from the polls in '04 for lack of voter ID-yet I could not find one case in the entire United States of someone having voted through identity theft. But look who lost the right to vote because of identification: overwhelmingly Hispanic and low-income voters.

Portrait of a Politician: Vengeful and Profane

2008-12-10T08:24:00.001-06:00

December 10, 2008

By SUSAN SAULNY

CHICAGO — Little in Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich's background prepared the people of Illinois for the man who was revealed in the criminal complaint that dropped like a bombshell here on Tuesday. Delusional, narcissistic, vengeful and profane, Mr. Blagojevich as portrayed by federal prosecutors shocked even his most ardent detractors.

"I almost fell over," said Cindi Canary, executive director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform and a frequent critic of the governor. "I was speechless and sickened. In all of the millions of indictments I've read over the last years, I can't remember anything as vile as this."

Mike Jacobs, a Democratic state senator and former friend of the governor, suggested that Mr. Blagojevich may have lost his grip on reality.

"I'm not sure he's playing with a full deck anymore," Mr. Jacobs said. "I think he brought a lot of this on himself. He's so gifted, but so flawed in a number of fundamental areas. It's like he dared the feds to come get him."

Drama and suspicion have long surrounded Mr. Blagojevich, a 51-year-old Democrat known locally for his quirky love of Elvis and a big black signature hairstyle of his own. Though he ran for office as a reformer, he has been embroiled for years in a federal investigation into hiring fraud that included multiple departments under his purview.

More recently, his reputation was left badly damaged after the corruption trial of the political fund-raiser Antoin Rezko, who was convicted in June of fraud and bribery among other charges. Mr. Blagojevich's name and administration surfaced again and again during Mr. Rezko's highly publicized trial in Chicago. The governor's approval rating, according to The Chicago Tribune, had sunk to 13 percent.

Yet, despite what looked like his lead role over many years in a political theater of the absurdly corrupt, Mr. Blagojevich, the seemingly earnest son of a Serbian steelworker, was not charged with any wrongdoing. Rumors swirled, and denials were issued.

Tuesday changed all that. It was not simply the extortion and venality with which he was charged that left mouths gaping, but the ruthlessness and grandiosity revealed in the federal wiretap transcripts, even as he knew he was being investigated.

"You might have thought in that environment that pay to play would slow down," the United States attorney in Chicago, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, said at a news conference announcing the charges. "The opposite happened: it sped up. Governor Blagojevich and others were working furiously to get as much money from contractors, shaking them down, pay to play, before the end of the year."

In the words of Dick W. Simpson, head of the political science department at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and a former city alderman: "It's over the top, even for the governor."

Ms. Canary, the reform advocate, said she was trying to figure out the pathology that might explain such actions because they are not part of the classic style of Chicago corruption.

"He was raised in the old Chicago ward system where the most important principle is loyalty," she said. "It's about protecting one another, spreading perks, and earning personal power. It's not about huge personal enrichment."

But that, according to the 76-page criminal complaint, seems to be exactly what Mr. Blagojevich, who cast himself as a man of the people, was after.

Whatever his current motivation, he came into office with a very different persona. As a young congressman representing the North Side of Chicago, Mr. Blagojevich was pegged as a rising star with a populist touch. Undistinguished as a lawmaker but with proven likability in and out of Chicago, he seemed hellbent on pushing reform and cleaning house in a state with an embarrassingly overt culture of political corruption.

Running on a do-good theme as a candidate of change, he swept into the governor's office earlier this decade mainly on promises that he would be different, that he would restore integrity to the governor's office after the previous chief executive, George Ryan, was sentenced to six and a half years in federal prison for racketeering and fraud.

"Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, Illinois has voted for change," he told a crowd at his victory party on election night in 2002.

Back then, it was not a secret that Mr. Blagojevich had big dreams for himself that included the White House. The federal complaint suggested that he was disenchanted with being "stuck" as governor, and had his eyes still trained on the presidency — in 2016, since 2008 was a lost cause.

Kent Redfield, a professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Springfield, said Mr. Blagojevich had clearly come into office believing he was destined for bigger things, and may have been tripped up by that ambition.

"The combination of arrogance and stupidity that would prompt him to continue in these types of behaviors is just stunning," Dr. Redfield said. "There's no feedback loop or reality check."

Mr. Blagojevich had grown increasingly isolated in recent years, particularly from his own state's Legislature and even from his father-in-law, Dick Mell, a powerful longtime Chicago alderman who showed him the political ropes as a younger man.

The governor was rarely seen around his offices in Chicago and Springfield, preferring instead to spend time at home on the North Side.

"I believe he became a prisoner of his own home," Mr. Jacobs said.

Dr. Redfield said he had little sympathy for a man who regarded "the state of Illinois like it's a big Chicago ward, where a U.S. Senate seat is like granting a zoning variance or liquor license."

He added: "The damage to the state, it's going to take a long time to dig out."

You can trust the GOVERNOR, right?

2008-12-10T08:20:00.001-06:00

December 10, 2008

Governor Accused in Scheme to Sell Obama's Senate Seat

By MONICA DAVEY

CHICAGO — The governor of Illinois brazenly put up for sale his appointment of Barack Obama's successor in the United States Senate, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

In recorded conversations with advisers, the governor, Rod R. Blagojevich, seemed alternately boastful, flip and spiteful about the Senate choice, which he crassly likened at one point to that of a sports agent shopping around a free agent for the steepest price, a federal affidavit showed. At times, he even weighed aloud appointing himself to the job, the prosecutors said.

"I've got this thing," Mr. Blagojevich said on one recording, according to the affidavit, "and it's [expletive] golden. And I'm just not giving it up for [expletive] nothing. I'm not going to do it. And I can always use it. I can parachute me there."

Mr. Blagojevich (pronounced bluh-GOY-uh-vich), a Democrat, was arrested at his home at dawn Tuesday on charges of conspiracy and soliciting bribes. A lawyer for the governor said he denied any wrongdoing.

The corruption case extended well beyond the Senate appointment, stunned even a state that thought it had seen every brand of political corruption, created grave doubt over how or when President-elect Obama's successor in the Senate might now be selected, and left many wondering who else might yet be implicated in Mr. Blagojevich's brash negotiations, which were captured in phone calls recorded by federal agents since before Election Day.

"The conduct would make Lincoln roll over in his grave," Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said in announcing the arrest of Mr. Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris.

Under state law, Mr. Blagojevich is assigned to name a replacement for Mr. Obama, who recently resigned as Illinois' junior senator with two years remaining in his term.

Mr. Obama, who Mr. Fitzgerald said was not implicated in the case, sought to put distance between himself and the governor during brief remarks on Tuesday afternoon and later in an interview with The Chicago Tribune, saying he did not discuss his Senate seat with Mr. Blagojevich.

"I had no contact with the governor or his office, and so we were not — I was not aware of what was happening," Mr. Obama said. "And as I said, it's a sad day for Illinois. Beyond that, I don't think it's appropriate to comment."

Throughout his career, Mr. Obama has adroitly straddled the state's bruising politics, forming alliances with some old-style politicians even as he pressed for ethics reform. But Mr. Obama had long been estranged from the governor, even though some in his political circle have had relationships with both of them, including Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, and Emil Jones Jr., the retiring State Senate president and a longtime mentor.

The federal accusations against Mr. Blagojevich go beyond the Senate question into what the authorities here described as a "political corruption crime spree."

The governor is accused of racing to solicit millions of dollars in donations from people with state business before an ethics law bars such behavior in January, and threatening to rescind state money this fall from businesses, including a Chicago hospital for children, whose executives refused to give him money. He is also accused of putting pressure on The Chicago Tribune to fire members of its editorial board who had criticized him or lose the governor's help on the possible sale of Wrigley Field, which is owned by the Tribune Company and is home to the Chicago Cubs.

Mr. Blagojevich, who looked somber during an afternoon appearance in federal court, was released from custody on a $4,500 recognizance bond after surrendering his passport. A hearing in federal court will be held in January to determine whether there is probable cause to go forward with the charges.

Sheldon Sorosky, his lawyer, later told reporters that the governor was "very surprised and certainly feels that he did not do anything wrong."

According to the affidavit, in more than a month of recorded phone calls at his home and campaign office, Mr. Blagojevich considered numerous ways that he might personally and politically gain from the various Senate candidates, none of whom were identified by name in the court filing. One possible choice might be able to help him secure a post with the new administration as secretary of health and human services or energy; a "three way" deal involving a union and a candidate might win him a union leadership post; or perhaps, he could secure the high-paying helm of a nonprofit organization that could be created for him.

Mr. Blagojevich, whose administration has for years been known to be the subject of a federal corruption investigation, also spoke of his family's financial woes and said he had three criteria for selecting the new senator: "Our legal situation, our personal situation, my political situation — this decision, like every other one, needs to be based on that."

In several possible situations, the affidavit says, Mr. Blagojevich seemed to refer to plans already under way to make money or win a job (for him or his wife, Patti) in exchange for a particular Senate selection, raising the specter that there might be others, including some of the Senate candidates, who were participating or at least considering participating in such deals.

Even before Mr. Obama was elected president, Mr. Blagojevich was recorded telling an adviser on Oct. 31 that he was giving greater consideration to one candidate (described only as Senate Candidate 5) after an approach by "an associate" of that candidate who offered to raise $500,000 for Mr. Blagojevich, while another emissary of the Senate hopeful offered to raise $1 million. "We were approached 'pay to play,' " Mr. Blagojevich said on a recording.

But prosecutors, who have made it clear that the investigation is continuing and who issued a plea on Tuesday for people to come forward with information, warned against drawing any conclusions about the true roles of candidates or anyone else in Mr. Blagojevich's plans. And they emphasized repeatedly that the affidavit made "no allegations against the president-elect whatsoever."

Several people among the half-dozen whose names have been suggested publicly as Senate possibilities did not respond to requests for interviews. Others, including Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr. and Mr. Jones of the State Senate, who has been one of Mr. Blagojevich's few allies in Springfield, issued statements expressing shock over the accusations, but they did not answer requests for interviews.

"If these allegations are proved true, I am outraged by the appalling, pay-to-play schemes hatched at the highest levels of our state government," said Mr. Jackson, who had openly expressed interest in Mr. Obama's old job and who met with Mr. Blagojevich, whom he is not known to be close to, for 90 minutes on Monday afternoon to discuss the post.

In November, Mr. Blagojevich asserted to an adviser, the affidavit says, that he knew whom Mr. Obama wanted named as his successor — described in the affidavit as Senate Candidate 1, a reference apparently to Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama — but cursed him in apparent frustration that "they're not willing to give me anything except appreciation."

Ms. Jarrett later took her name out of consideration for the post. But at one point, Mr. Blagojevich spoke to an official at the Service Employees International Union, the affidavit says, with the "understanding that the union official was an emissary" to discuss the possibility of a "three-way deal" that would put Ms. Jarrett in the Senate seat, Mr. Blagojevich at the leadership of Change to Win, a union-affiliated group, and "in exchange, the president-elect could help Change to Win with its legislative agenda."

Officials at the service union said they had no reason to believe that any union officials were involved in wrongdoing, and a spokesman for Change to Win said the group had had no involvement or discussion with Mr. Blagojevich. "The idea of a position at Change to Win was totally an invention of the governor," the spokesman said.

Ms. Jarrett could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Mr. Obama's advisers made the decision on Tuesday essentially to remain silent and ignored criticism for doing so from Republicans, a strategy reminiscent of how the Bush administration reacted to the last high-profile case of Mr. Fitzgerald, who was the special prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case. Still, David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, issued a statement late Tuesday saying he had misspoken in comments he made in November that now seemed to contradict Mr. Obama's assertions that he had no contact with Mr. Blagojevich in the conversations over a replacement.

"I know he's talked to the governor," Mr. Axelrod said in an interview with "Fox News Sunday" on Nov. 23. "And there are a whole range of names, many of which have surfaced."

On Tuesday, Mr. Axelrod said he had been wrong. "They did not then or at any time discuss the subject," according to his statement.

The arrest leaves the fate of Mr. Obama's vacant Senate seat in limbo. Mr. Blagojevich, who may remain in office while charged, still has the power to name a successor to Mr. Obama, though Illinois political experts suggested that the Legislature might move quickly to impeach him — and questioned whether anyone would want an appointment so tainted.

Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said, "No appointment by this governor under these circumstances could produce a credible replacement."

Mr. Jones said he would call the State Senate back into session to write a law to schedule a special election for the seat.

And Illinois Republicans called for Mr. Blagojevich to resign immediately "for the good of the state," a possibility that would put Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat who has clashed with Mr. Blagojevich for years and who said Tuesday that they had last spoken in the summer of 2007, in charge.

Of the accusations against Mr. Blagojevich, Mr. Quinn said he was astonished, adding, "Pray for every person and every family in Illinois."

Mr. Blagojevich arrived in office in 2002, portraying himself as a fresh break from the investigations that had plagued the state for years — and most recently from the investigation and eventual conviction of Gov. George Ryan, a Republican whom Mr. Blagojevich succeeded.

Last month, Mr. Blagojevich said that despite his regular criticism of Mr. Ryan over the years, he believed that President Bush should commute Mr. Ryan's 6 ½-year sentence even though he had served less than 13 months. It would be a "fine decision," Mr. Blagojevich said.

On Monday, Mr. Blagojevich, who was visiting a factory sit-in here in Chicago, said he was unconcerned about reports of the corruption investigations that have swirled around his administration since at least 2005 and have swept up 14 other people.

"I don't believe there's any cloud that hangs over me," he told reporters at the factory. "I think there's nothing but sunshine hanging over me."

Mr. Blagojevich seemed not to mind earlier news reports that his conversations had been recorded. "I should say if anybody wants to tape my conversations, go right ahead, feel free to do it," he said, though he added that those who carried out such recordings sneakily, "I would remind them that it kind of smells like Nixon and Watergate."

Steven Greenhouse, Susan Saulny, Jeff Zeleny and Carl Hulse contributed reporting.

Chinese Baby Formula kills Babies! (2)

2008-12-02T08:07:00.003-06:00

So, the FDA says it's alright to have some PLASTIC added to the baby formula, now. This is the same PLASTIC filler stuff that killed all the dogs and cats a year ago because it was in the Dog Food and Cat Food! Now the FDA will allow it in Baby Food!

FDA sets melamine standard for baby formula

By JOAN LOWY and JUSTIN PRITCHARD, Associated Press Writers Joan Lowy And Justin Pritchard, Associated Press Writers Sat Nov 29, 11:40 am ET

WASHINGTON – Two months ago, federal food regulators said they were unable to set a safety threshold for the industrial chemical melamine in baby formula. Now, however, they found a way to settle on a standard that allows for higher levels than those found in U.S.-made batches of the product.

Food and Drug Administration officials on Friday set a threshold of 1 part per million of melamine in formula, provided a related chemical is not present. They insisted the formulas are safe.

The development comes days after The Associated Press reported that FDA tests found traces of melamine in the infant formula of one major U.S. manufacturer and cyanuric acid, a chemical relative, in the formula of a second major maker. The contaminated samples, which both measured at levels below the new standard, were analyzed several weeks ago.

The FDA had said in early October it was unable to set a safety contamination level for melamine in infant formula.

Dr. Stephen Sundlof, the FDA's director of food safety, said Friday the agency was confident in the 1 part per million level for either of the chemicals alone, even though there have been no new scientific studies since October that would give regulators more safety data. He had no ready explanation for why the level was not set earlier.

The standard is the same as the one public health officials have set in Canada and China, but is 20 times higher than the most stringent level in Taiwan.

The problem of melamine in infant formula first surfaced in China in September.
Sundlof said the lack of dual contamination was key because studies so far show dangerous health effects only when both chemicals are present. He emphasized that neither of the two tainted samples had both contaminants.

The agency still will not set a safety level for melamine if cyanuric acid is also present, he said.
Both the new safety level and the amount of the chemical found in U.S.-made infant formula are far below the amounts of melamine added to infant formula in China that have been blamed for killing at least three babies and making thousands ill.

"The levels were so low ... that they do not cause a health risk to infants," Sundlof said. "Parents using infant formula should continue using U.S.-manufactured infant formula. Switching away from one of these infant formulas to alternate diets or homemade formulas could result in infants not receiving the complete nutrition required for proper growth and development."

A scientist for a national consumer group said it was irresponsible of FDA to assure the public that infant formula is safe based on tests of only 74 samples, especially since cyanuric acid is a byproduct of melamine, making it likely that they will be found together.

"This is a slippery slope of rationalization by FDA," said Urvashi Rangan, a senior scientist with the Consumers Union in New York. "FDA needs to get a handle on how widespread the problem is and, most important, if both these chemicals are occurring in any products. They just haven't tested enough to know that yet."

Earlier this week, members of Congress and the Illinois attorney general demanded a national recall, something FDA said made no sense because it had no evidence suggesting that the formula would be dangerous for babies at the levels of contamination found.

After saying it made an error in its data, the FDA on Wednesday produced these results: Mead Johnson's Infant Formula Powder, Enfamil LIPIL with Iron found melamine at levels of 0.137 and 0.14 parts per million. Three tests of Nestle's Good Start Supreme Infant Formula with Iron detected an average of 0.247 parts per million of cyanuric acid.

Separately, a third major formula maker — Abbott Laboratories, whose brands include Similac — told AP that in-house tests had detected trace levels of melamine in its infant formula. Those levels were below what FDA found in the other formulas, an Abbott spokesman said, and below any national safety guidelines.

Abbott Laboratories, Nestle and Mead Johnson make more than 90 percent of all infant formula produced in the United States.

The agency had left the impression of a zero tolerance on Oct. 3 when it stated: "FDA is currently unable to establish any level of melamine and melamine-related compounds in infant formula that does not raise public health concerns."

The FDA and other experts said they believe the melamine contamination in U.S.-made formula had occurred during the manufacturing process, rather than intentionally. The U.S. government quietly began testing domestically produced infant formula in September, soon after problems with melamine-spiked formula surfaced in China.

Melamine can legally be used in some food packaging, and can rub off into food from there. It's also part of a cleaning solution used on some food processing equipment.
___
Pritchard reported from Los Angeles.
___
On the Net:
FDA: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/storytext/infant_formula/30064323/SIG=11m4l7ah9;_ylt=AiN7WLMP7YEO2a7FJwOcAJyWwvIE/*http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/melamine.html

Chinese Baby Formula Kills Babies! (1)

2008-12-02T08:02:00.002-06:00

China says 300,000 babies sickened by tainted milk

By GILLIAN WONG, Associated Press Writer Gillian Wong, Associated Press Writer 5 mins ago

BEIJING – China has dramatically raised the toll from its tainted milk powder scandal, saying six babies likely died and 300,000 were sickened, figures that back up months of complaints from parents and show the government is beginning to acknowledge the scale of the crisis.
The scandal has been met with public dismay and anger, particularly among parents who feel the government breached their trust after their children were sickened or died from drinking infant formula authorities had certified as safe.

The Health Ministry's revised death toll is twice the previous figure, while the new count of 294,000 babies who suffered urinary problems from drinking contaminated infant formula is a six-fold increase from the last tally in September.

"Most of the sickened children received outpatient treatment for only small amounts of sand-like kidney stones found in their urinary systems, while some patients had to be hospitalized for the illness," the ministry said in a statement late Monday.

The latest statistics show that China's communist leaders are slowly acknowledging the scale of China's worst food safety scare in years. During such crises, the government often deliberately releases information piecemeal in part to keep from feeding public anger.

Thousands of parents have been clamoring for compensation for their sickened and dead children. The release of the figures raises the question of whether the Health Ministry is getting closer to finalizing a compensation scheme.

"The new figures are more realistic and objective than previous figures. We knew the previous ones could not have been accurate," said Chang Boyang, a Beijing lawyer who has provided legal assistance to families of children who became ill.

Four of the six deaths were recorded in the provinces of Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Guizhou and Shaanxi, and the other two were in Gansu province in the northwest, the ministry said.

The ministry said it investigated 11 possible deaths related to melamine-tainted milk and ruled five of them out. Melamine poisoning could not be ruled out in the remaining six cases, it said but gave no further details or explanation. It also did not make clear whether three earlier reported deaths were included in the new total.

The ministry said it checked into babies who died before Sept. 10, and that between then and last Thursday, no new deaths were reported.

Do you trust Tobacco Companies?

2008-11-25T09:50:00.003-06:00

This is a list of ingredients that is ADDED to tobacco to make you smoke cigarettes:

Acetanisole, Acetic Acid, Acetoin, Acetophenone, 6-Acetoxydihydrotheaspirane, 2-Acetyl-3- Ethylpyrazine, 2-Acetyl-5-Methylfuran, Acetylpyrazine, 2-Acetylpyridine, 3-Acetylpyridine, 2-Acetylthiazole, Aconitic Acid, dl-Alanine, Alfalfa Extract, Allspice Extract, Oleoresin, And Oil, Allyl Hexanoate, Allyl Ionone, Almond Bitter Oil, Ambergris Tincture, Ammonia, Ammonium Bicarbonate, Ammonium Hydroxide, Ammonium Phosphate Dibasic, Ammonium Sulfide, Amyl Alcohol, Amyl Butyrate, Amyl Formate, Amyl Octanoate, alpha-Amylcinnamaldehyde, Amyris Oil, trans-Anethole, Angelica Root Extract, Oil and Seed Oil, Anise, Anise Star, Extract and Oils, Anisyl Acetate, Anisyl Alcohol, Anisyl Formate, Anisyl Phenylacetate, Apple Juice Concentrate, Extract, and Skins, Apricot Extract and Juice Concentrate, 1-Arginine, Asafetida Fluid Extract And Oil, Ascorbic Acid, 1-Asparagine Monohydrate, 1-Aspartic Acid, Balsam Peru and Oil, Basil Oil, Bay Leaf, Oil and Sweet Oil, Beeswax White, Beet Juice Concentrate, Benzaldehyde, Benzaldehyde Glyceryl Acetal, Benzoic Acid, Benzoin, Benzoin Resin, Benzophenone, Benzyl Alcohol, Benzyl Benzoate, Benzyl Butyrate, Benzyl Cinnamate, Benzyl Propionate, Benzyl Salicylate, Bergamot Oil, Bisabolene, Black Currant Buds Absolute, Borneol, Bornyl Acetate, Buchu Leaf Oil, 1,3-Butanediol, 2,3-Butanedione, 1-Butanol, 2-Butanone, 4(2-Butenylidene)-3,5,5-Trimethyl-2-Cyclohexen-1-One, Butter, Butter Esters, and Butter Oil, Butyl Acetate, Butyl Butyrate, Butyl Butyryl Lactate, Butyl Isovalerate, Butyl Phenylacetate, Butyl Undecylenate, 3-Butylidenephthalide, Butyric Acid, Cadinene, Caffeine, Calcium Carbonate, Camphene, Cananga Oil, Capsicum Oleoresin, Caramel Color, Caraway Oil, Carbon Dioxide, Cardamom Oleoresin, Extract, Seed Oil, and Powder, Carob Bean and Extract, beta-Carotene, Carrot Oil, Carvacrol, 4-Carvomenthenol, 1-Carvone, beta-Caryophyllene, beta-Caryophyllene Oxide, Cascarilla Oil and Bark Extract, Cassia Bark Oil, Cassie Absolute and Oil, Castoreum Extract, Tincture and Absolute, Cedar Leaf Oil, Cedarwood Oil Terpenes and Virginiana, Cedrol, Celery Seed Extract, Solid, Oil, And Oleoresin, Cellulose Fiber, Chamomile Flower Oil And Extract, Chicory Extract, Chocolate, Cinnamaldehyde, Cinnamic Acid, Cinnamon Leaf Oil, Bark Oil, and Extract, Cinnamyl Acetate, Cinnamyl Alcohol, Cinnamyl Cinnamate, Cinnamyl Isovalerate, Cinnamyl Propionate, Citral, Citric Acid, Citronella Oil, dl-Citronellol, Citronellyl Butyrate, Citronellyl Isobutyrate, Civet Absolute, Clary Oil, Clover Tops, Red Solid Extract, Cocoa, Cocoa Shells, Extract, Distillate And Powder, Coconut Oil, Coffee, Cognac White and Green Oil, Copaiba Oil, Coriander Extract and Oil, Corn Oil, Corn Silk, Costus Root Oil, Cubeb Oil, Cuminaldehyde, para-Cymene, 1-Cysteine, Dandelion Root Solid Extract, Davana Oil, 2-trans, 4-trans-Decadienal, delta-Decalactone, gamma-Decalactone, Decanal, Decanoic Acid, 1-Decanol, 2-Decenal, Dehydromenthofurolactone, Diethyl Malonate, Diethyl Sebacate, 2,3-Diethylpyrazine, Dihydro Anethole, 5,7-Dihydro-2-Methylthieno(3,4-D) Pyrimidine, Dill Seed Oil and Extract, meta-Dimethoxybenzene, para-Dimethoxybenzene, 2,6-Dimethoxyphenol, Dimethyl Succinate, 3,4-Dimethyl-1,2-Cyclopentanedione, 3,5- Dimethyl-1,2-Cyclopentanedione, 3,7-Dimethyl-1,3,6-Octatriene, 4,5-Dimethyl-3-Hydroxy-2,5-Dihydrofuran-2-One, 6,10-Dimethyl-5,9-Undecadien-2-One, 3,7-Dimethyl-6-Octenoic Acid, 2,4-Dimethylacetophenone, alpha,para-Dimethylbenzyl Alcohol, alpha,alpha-Dimethylphenethyl Acetate, alpha,alpha Dimethylphenethyl Butyrate, 2,3-Dimethylpyrazine, 2,5-Dimethylpyrazine, 2,6-Dimethylpyrazine, Dimethyltetrahydrobenzofuranone, delta-Dodecalactone, gamma-Dodecalactone, para-Ethoxybenzaldehyde, Ethyl 10-Undecenoate, Ethyl 2-Methylbutyrate, Ethyl Acetate, Ethyl Acetoacetate, Ethyl Alcohol, Ethyl Benzoate, Ethyl Butyrate, Ethyl Cinnamate, Ethyl Decanoate, Ethyl Fenchol, Ethyl Furoate, Ethyl Heptanoate, Ethyl Hexanoate, Ethyl Isovalerate, Ethyl Lactate, Ethyl Laurate, Ethyl Levulinate, Ethyl Maltol, Ethyl Methyl Phenylglycidate, Ethyl Myristate, Ethyl Nonanoate, Ethyl Octadecanoate, Ethyl Octanoate, Ethyl Oleate, Ethyl Palmitate, Ethyl Phenylacetate, Ethyl Propionate, Ethyl Salicylate, Ethyl trans-2-Butenoate, Ethyl Valerate, Ethyl Vanillin, 2-Ethyl (or Methyl)-(3,5 and 6)-Methoxypyrazine, 2-Ethyl-1-Hexanol, 3-Ethyl -2 -Hydroxy-2-Cyclopenten-1-One, 2-Ethyl-3, (5 or 6)-Dimethylpyrazine, 5-Ethyl-3-Hydroxy-4-Methyl-2(5H)-Furanone, 2-Ethyl-3-Methylpyrazine, 4-Ethylbenzaldehyde, 4-Ethylguaiacol, para-Ethylphenol, 3-Ethylpyridine, Eucalyptol, Farnesol, D-Fenchone, Fennel Sweet Oil, Fenugreek, Extract, Resin, and Absolute, Fig Juice Concentrate, Food Starch Modified, Furfuryl Mercaptan, 4-(2-Furyl)-3-Buten-2-One, Galbanum Oil, Genet Absolute, Gentian Root Extract, Geraniol, Geranium Rose Oil, Geranyl Acetate, Geranyl Butyrate, Geranyl Formate, Geranyl Isovalerate, Geranyl Phenylacetate, Ginger Oil and Oleoresin, 1-Glutamic Acid, 1-Glutamine, Glycerol, Glycyrrhizin Ammoniated, Grape Juice Concentrate, Guaiac Wood Oil, Guaiacol, Guar Gum, 2,4-Heptadienal, gamma-Heptalactone, Heptanoic Acid, 2-Heptanone, 3-Hepten-2-One, 2-Hepten-4-One, 4-Heptenal, trans -2-Heptenal, Heptyl Acetate, omega-6-Hexadecenlactone, gamma-Hexalactone, Hexanal, Hexanoic Acid, 2-Hexen-1-Ol, 3-Hexen-1-Ol, cis-3-Hexen-1-Yl Acetate, 2-Hexenal, 3-Hexenoic Acid, trans-2-Hexenoic Acid, cis-3-Hexenyl Formate, Hexyl 2-Methylbutyrate, Hexyl Acetate, Hexyl Alcohol, Hexyl Phenylacetate, 1-Histidine, Honey, Hops Oil, Hydrolyzed Milk Solids, Hydrolyzed Plant Proteins, 5-Hydroxy-2,4-Decadienoic Acid delta- Lactone, 4-Hydroxy-2,5-Dimethyl-3(2H)-Furanone, 2-Hydroxy-3,5,5-Trimethyl-2-Cyclohexen-1-One, 4-Hydroxy -3-Pentenoic Acid Lactone, 2-Hydroxy-4-Methylbenzaldehyde, 4-Hydroxybutanoic Acid Lactone, Hydroxycitronellal, 6-Hydroxydihydrotheaspirane, 4-(para-Hydroxyphenyl)-2-Butanone, Hyssop Oil, Immortelle Absolute and Extract, alpha-Ionone, beta-Ionone, alpha-Irone, Isoamyl Acetate, Isoamyl Benzoate, Isoamyl Butyrate, Isoamyl Cinnamate, Isoamyl Formate, Isoamyl Hexanoate, Isoamyl Isovalerate, Isoamyl Octanoate, Isoamyl Phenylacetate, Isobornyl Acetate, Isobutyl Acetate, Isobutyl Alcohol, Isobutyl Cinnamate, Isobutyl Phenylacetate, Isobutyl Salicylate, 2-Isobutyl-3-Methoxypyrazine, alpha-Isobutylphenethyl Alcohol, Isobutyraldehyde, Isobutyric Acid, d,l-Isoleucine, alpha-Isomethylionone, 2-Isopropylphenol, Isovaleric Acid, Jasmine Absolute, Concrete and Oil, Kola Nut Extract, Labdanum Absolute and Oleoresin, Lactic Acid, Lauric Acid, Lauric Aldehyde, Lavandin Oil, Lavender Oil, Lemon Oil and Extract, Lemongrass Oil, 1-Leucine, Levulinic Acid, Licorice Root, Fluid, Extract and Powder, Lime Oil , Linalool, Linalool Oxide, Linalyl Acetate, Linden Flowers, Lovage Oil And Extract, 1-Lysine, Mace Powder, Extract and Oil , Magnesium Carbonate, Malic Acid, Malt and Malt Extract, Maltodextrin, Maltol, Maltyl Isobutyrate, Mandarin Oil, Maple Syrup and Concentrate, Mate Leaf, Absolute and Oil, para-Mentha-8-Thiol-3-One, Menthol, Menthone, Menthyl Acetate, dl-Methionine, Methoprene, 2-Methoxy-4-Methylphenol, 2-Methoxy-4-Vinylphenol, para-Methoxybenzaldehyde, 1-(para-Methoxyphenyl)-1-Penten-3-One, 4-(para-Methoxyphenyl)-2-Butanone, 1-(para-Methoxyphenyl)-2-Propanone, Methoxypyrazine, Methyl 2-Furoate, Methyl 2-Octynoate, Methyl 2-Pyrrolyl Ketone, Methyl Anisate, Methyl Anthranilate, Methyl Benzoate, Methyl Cinnamate, Methyl Dihydrojasmonate, Methyl Ester of Rosin, Partially Hydrogenated, Methyl Isovalerate, Methyl Linoleate (48%), Methyl Linolenate (52%) Mixture, Methyl Naphthyl Ketone, Methyl Nicotinate, Methyl Phenylacetate, Methyl Salicylate, Methyl Sulfide, 3-Methyl-1-Cyclopentadecanone, 4-Methyl-1-Phenyl-2-Pentanone, 5-Methyl-2-Phenyl-2-Hexenal, 5-Methyl-2-Thiophenecarboxaldehyde, 6-Methyl-3,-5-Heptadien-2-One, 2-Methyl-3-(para-Isopropylphenyl) Propionaldehyde, 5-Methyl-3-Hexen-2-One, 1-Methyl-3Methoxy-4-Isopropylbenzene, 4-Methyl-3-Pentene-2-One, 2-Methyl-4-Phenylbutyraldehyde, 6-Methyl-5-Hepten-2-One, 4-Methyl-5-Thiazoleethanol, 4-Methyl-5-Vinylthiazole, Methyl-alpha-Ionone, Methyl-trans-2-Butenoic Acid, 4-Methylacetophenone, para-Methylanisole, alpha-Methylbenzyl Acetate, alpha-Methylbenzyl Alcohol, 2-Methylbutyraldehyde, 3-Methylbutyraldehyde, 2-Methylbutyric Acid, alpha-Methylcinnamaldehyde, Methylcyclopentenolone, 2-Methylheptanoic Acid, 2-Methylhexanoic Acid, 3-Methylpentanoic Acid, 4-Methylpentanoic Acid, 2-Methylpyrazine, 5-Methylquinoxaline, 2-Methyltetrahydrofuran-3-One, (Methylthio)Methylpyrazine (Mixture Of Isomers), 3-Methylthiopropionaldehyde, Methyl 3-Methylthiopropionate, 2-Methylvaleric Acid, Mimosa Absolute and Extract, Molasses Extract and Tincture, Mountain Maple Solid Extract, Mullein Flowers, Myristaldehyde, Myristic Acid, Myrrh Oil, beta-Napthyl Ethyl Ether, Nerol, Neroli Bigarde Oil, Nerolidol, Nona-2-trans,6-cis-Dienal, 2,6-Nonadien-1-Ol, gamma-Nonalactone, Nonanal, Nonanoic Acid, Nonanone, trans-2-Nonen-1-Ol, 2-Nonenal, Nonyl Acetate, Nutmeg Powder and Oil, Oak Chips Extract and Oil, Oak Moss Absolute, 9,12-Octadecadienoic Acid (48%) And 9,12,15-Octadecatrienoic Acid (52%), delta-Octalactone, gamma-Octalactone, Octanal, Octanoic Acid, 1-Octanol, 2-Octanone, 3-Octen-2-One, 1-Octen-3-Ol, 1-Octen-3-Yl Acetate, 2-Octenal, Octyl Isobutyrate, Oleic Acid , Olibanum Oil, Opoponax Oil And Gum, Orange Blossoms Water, Absolute, and Leaf Absolute, Orange Oil and Extract, Origanum Oil, Orris Concrete Oil and Root Extract, Palmarosa Oil, Palmitic Acid, Parsley Seed Oil, Patchouli Oil, omega-Pentadecalactone, 2,3-Pentanedione, 2-Pentanone, 4-Pentenoic Acid, 2-Pentylpyridine, Pepper Oil, Black And White, Peppermint Oil, Peruvian (Bois De Rose) Oil, Petitgrain Absolute, Mandarin Oil and Terpeneless Oil, alpha-Phellandrene, 2-Phenenthyl Acetate, Phenenthyl Alcohol, Phenethyl Butyrate, Phenethyl Cinnamate, Phenethyl Isobutyrate, Phenethyl Isovalerate, Phenethyl Phenylacetate, Phenethyl Salicylate, 1-Phenyl-1-Propanol, 3-Phenyl-1-Propanol, 2-Phenyl-2-Butenal, 4-Phenyl-3-Buten-2-Ol, 4-Phenyl-3-Buten-2-One, Phenylacetaldehyde, Phenylacetic Acid, 1-Phenylalanine, 3-Phenylpropionaldehyde, 3-Phenylpropionic Acid, 3-Phenylpropyl Acetate, 3-Phenylpropyl Cinnamate, 2-(3-Phenylpropyl)Tetrahydrofuran, Phosphoric Acid, Pimenta Leaf Oil, Pine Needle Oil, Pine Oil, Scotch, Pineapple Juice Concentrate, alpha-Pinene, beta-Pinene, D-Piperitone, Piperonal, Pipsissewa Leaf Extract, Plum Juice, Potassium Sorbate, 1-Proline, Propenylguaethol, Propionic Acid, Propyl Acetate, Propyl para-Hydroxybenzoate, Propylene Glycol, 3-Propylidenephthalide, Prune Juice and Concentrate, Pyridine, Pyroligneous Acid And Extract, Pyrrole, Pyruvic Acid, Raisin Juice Concentrate, Rhodinol, Rose Absolute and Oil, Rosemary Oil, Rum, Rum Ether, Rye Extract, Sage, Sage Oil, and Sage Oleoresin, Salicylaldehyde, Sandalwood Oil, Yellow, Sclareolide, Skatole, Smoke Flavor, Snakeroot Oil, Sodium Acetate, Sodium Benzoate, Sodium Bicarbonate, Sodium Carbonate, Sodium Chloride, Sodium Citrate, Sodium Hydroxide, Solanone, Spearmint Oil, Styrax Extract, Gum and Oil, Sucrose Octaacetate, Sugar Alcohols, Sugars, Tagetes Oil, Tannic Acid, Tartaric Acid, Tea Leaf and Absolute, alpha-Terpineol, Terpinolene, Terpinyl Acetate, 5,6,7,8-Tetrahydroquinoxaline, 1,5,5,9-Tetramethyl-13-Oxatricyclo(8.3.0.0(4,9))Tridecane, 2,3,4,5, and 3,4,5,6-Tetramethylethyl-Cyclohexanone, 2,3,5,6-Tetramethylpyrazine, Thiamine Hydrochloride, Thiazole, 1-Threonine, Thyme Oil, White and Red, Thymol, Tobacco Extracts, Tochopherols (mixed), Tolu Balsam Gum and Extract, Tolualdehydes, para-Tolyl 3-Methylbutyrate, para-Tolyl Acetaldehyde, para-Tolyl Acetate, para-Tolyl Isobutyrate, para-Tolyl Phenylacetate, Triacetin, 2-Tridecanone, 2-Tridecenal, Triethyl Citrate, 3,5,5-Trimethyl -1-Hexanol, para,alpha,alpha-Trimethylbenzyl Alcohol, 4-(2,6,6-Trimethylcyclohex-1-Enyl)But-2-En-4-One, 2,6,6-Trimethylcyclohex-2-Ene-1,4-Dione, 2,6,6-Trimethylcyclohexa-1,3-Dienyl Methan, 4-(2,6,6-Trimethylcyclohexa-1,3-Dienyl)But-2-En-4-One, 2,2,6-Trimethylcyclohexanone, 2,3,5-Trimethylpyrazine, 1-Tyrosine, delta-Undercalactone, gamma-Undecalactone, Undecanal, 2-Undecanone, 1 0-Undecenal, Urea, Valencene, Valeraldehyde, Valerian Root Extract, Oil and Powder, Valeric Acid, gamma-Valerolactone, Valine, Vanilla Extract And Oleoresin, Vanillin, Veratraldehyde, Vetiver Oil, Vinegar, Violet Leaf Absolute, Walnut Hull Extract, Water, Wheat Extract And Flour, Wild Cherry Bark Extract, Wine and Wine Sherry, Xanthan Gum, 3,4-Xylenol, Yeast

More Money for the BANKS

2008-11-25T08:57:00.001-06:00

They don't even try to hide the fact that a TRILLION Dollars is going to the Bankers to prop up the Bankers greed and averice...Whew!

Fed Commits $800 Billion More to Unfreeze Lending (Update2)

By Scott Lanman and Dawn Kopecki

Nov. 25 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve took two new steps to unfreeze credit for homebuyers, consumers and small businesses, committing up to $800 billion.

The central bank will purchase as much as $600 billion in debt issued or backed by government-chartered housing-finance companies. It will also set up a $200 billion program to support consumer and small-business loans, the Fed said in statements today in Washington.

With today's announcement, the central bank is starting to use some of the unorthodox policy tools that Chairman Ben S. Bernanke outlined as a Fed governor six years ago. Policy makers are aiming to prevent a financial collapse and stamp out the threat of deflation.

"They're trying to put funds into the system, trying to unfreeze these markets," said William Poole, the former St. Louis Fed president, in an interview with Bloomberg Television. "Clearly, the Fed and the Treasury are beginning to take a large amount of credit risk."

The Fed will purchase up to $100 billion in direct debt of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks and up to $500 billion of mortgage-backed securities backed by Fannie, Freddie and Ginnie Mae, the statement said.

Help for Housing

"This action is being taken to reduce the cost and increase the availability of credit for the purchase of houses, which in turn should support housing markets and foster improved conditions in financial markets more generally," the Fed said.

Fannie and Freddie bonds rallied. The yield premium on Fannie Mae's five-year debt over similar-maturity Treasuries tumbled 21.5 basis points to 114.7 basis points as of 8:35 a.m. in New York, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. A basis point is 0.01 percentage point.

"The cheaper that they could issue their debt, the more aggressively they should be able to buy mortgages in the secondary market," said Alan Bosworth, director of agency trading at Vining Sparks in Memphis, Tennessee.

Separately, under the new Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, the Fed will lend up to $200 billion on a non-recourse basis to holders of AAA rated asset-backed securities backed by "newly and recently originated" loans, such as for education, automobiles, credit cards and loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration, the Fed said.

Commercial Paper

The ABS program is similar to the Fed's effort to bring down the cost of financing for commercial paper, the short-term debt companies issue to finance payrolls and other expenses, because it goes beyond banks.

"What the Fed has been trying to do is get a sense of what works and what doesn't work," said Derrick Wulf, who helps manage $70 billion in mostly fixed-income assets at Dwight Asset Management Co. in Burlington, Vermont. "One of the things that has worked is the commercial paper facility."

Wulf added that "it can certainly improve credit conditions for consumers."

The Treasury will provide $20 billion of "credit protection" to the Fed in the lending program, using funds from the $700 billion financial-rescue package. The Treasury said in a statement that the facility may expand over time and cover other assets, such as commercial and private residential mortgage- backed debt.

'Continued Disruption'

On the ABS facility, the Fed is trying to avoid having "continued disruption of these markets" that would limit lending and "thereby contribute to further weakening of U.S. economic activity," the central bank said.

Under the new lending program, known as the TALF, the New York Fed will auction a fixed amount of loans each month for a one-year term. Assets will be held in a special-purpose vehicle to be created by the Fed. The program will stop making new loans on Dec. 31, 2009, unless the Fed Board of Governors extends it.

Lenders providing credit under the TALF "must have agreed to comply with, or already be subject to," executive- compensation restrictions in the October bailout law, the statement said.

The Fed will start buying the direct debt of government- sponsored enterprises -- Fannie, Freddie and a dozen federal home loan banks -- through primary dealers in government debt from next week. The purchases of mortgage-backed securities will be done through asset managers, and officials aim to begin the effort by year-end.

Purchases of both types of debt "are expected to take place over several quarters," the Fed said.

Fox in the Henhouse!

2008-11-20T14:18:00.003-06:00

Arizona is well known as the Superhiway for Illegal Aliens to enter the U.S. The laws of Arizona are very lenient in this regard; Napolitano is the Governor of Arizona

See the Wikipedia entry on aliens in Arizona:
Click

Dems: Napolitano emerges for Homeland Security job
By KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press Writer Kevin Freking, Associated Press Writer Thu Nov 20, 9:45 am ET

WASHINGTON – Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, an early Barack Obama supporter from the southwestern part of the country, is the likely choice for the job of secretary of homeland security, a top Obama adviser said Thursday.

These adviser cautioned that no final decision has been made on the position, which involves directing the massive department created by Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

The adviser agreed to discuss the situation only on grounds of anonymity because of the private nature of the screening process for Obama's Cabinet. Napolitano, who once was Arizona's attorney general, was among the first of the Democratic governors to commit to him.

Several news organizations reported Thursday that Chicago businesswoman Penny Pritzker, who was Obama's national campaign finance chairman, is his leading choice to become secretary of commerce. But the Obama adviser disputed the reports.

Among the names being bandied about as the Obama transition team sets up the new government are several people with long careers as Washington insiders, notwithstanding Obama's clarion call in his campaign for change in the nation's capital.

Obama, for example, is enlisting former Senate leader Tom Daschle as his health secretary. Hillary Rodham Clinton seems more likely than ever to be his secretary of state. Clinton is deciding whether to take that post as America's top diplomat, her associates said Wednesday.

And Obama is ready to announce that his attorney general will be Eric Holder, the Justice Department's No. 2 when Clinton's husband was president. Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, is another veteran of the Clinton White House.

As a border governor, Napolitano has fought to curb illegal immigration, but has been skeptical that building a fence along the border will solve the problem. She once said, "You build a 50-foot wall, somebody will find a 51-foot ladder."

Last year, her state passed a law that requires all Arizona businesses to use the federal online database, E-Verify, to confirm that new hires have valid Social Security numbers and are eligible for employment. This has been a cornerstone of the Bush administration's immigration policy.

As governor she has also overseen wildfires and severe flooding and worked with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is now part of the Homeland Security Department.

Daschle's selection to head the Health and Human Services Department — confirmed Wednesday but not yet announced — isn't at the same level of Cabinet prestige as the top spots at the State and Justice departments. But the health post could be more important in an Obama administration than in some others, making Daschle a key player in helping steer the president-elect's promised health care reforms.

Daschle could push Obama for quick action on health care reform next year, if he follows his own advice.

The former South Dakota senator said efforts during the Clinton administration, led by Mrs. Clinton, took too long and went into too much detail, giving every interest group an opportunity to find something they didn't like about the plan.

"The next president should act immediately to capitalize on the goodwill that greets any incoming administration. If that means attaching a health care plan to the federal budget, so be it," Daschle wrote in a book he released this year, "Critical: What We Can Do About the Health care Crisis." "This issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol."

Daschle's return to the government will be a vindication of sorts. He was the Senate Democratic leader when he was defeated in 2004 by Republican John Thune, who convinced voters back home that Daschle was more concerned with Washington than with them.

In fact, Daschle stayed in the capital city after his defeat, becoming a public policy adviser and member of the legislative and public policy group at the law and lobbying firm Alston & Bird. Daschle isn't registered as a lobbyist. He advises clients on issues including health care, financial services, taxes and trade, according to the firm's Web site.

Health care interests, including CVS Caremark, the National Association for Home Care and Hospice, Abbott Laboratories and HealthSouth, are among the firm's lobbying clients.

Daschle's appointment was not formally announced, but Democratic officials said the job was his barring an unforeseen problem as Obama's team reviews his background. One area of review will include the lobbying connections of his wife, Linda Hall Daschle, who has worked mostly on behalf of airline-related companies over the years. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Republicans sniped at what they saw as an unwelcome trend. Alex Conant, spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said, "Barack Obama is filling his administration with longtime Washington insiders."
___
Associated Press reporter Eileen Sullivan in Washington contributed to this story.

Can you trust the Federal Prosecuter?

2008-11-19T10:10:00.003-06:00

The Federal Prosecutor and the police refused to follow up on a very simple piece of evidence, preferring instead to railroad a man whom they had in custody. So evidently, a prosecutor just jams someone through the system, even if he, the prosecutor, is not 100% sure he has the right guy. Hmmmm...

November 19, 2008

Murder Suspect Has Witness: A MetroCard

By BENJAMIN WEISER

When Jason Jones was arrested in a fatal shooting in the Bronx in May, he told the police that he had been nowhere near the scene. He said he had left work, ridden the bus with some co-workers and cashed his paycheck, and later had taken a subway to see his girlfriend.

Federal prosecutors charged Mr. Jones and his older brother, Corey, in the shooting, saying they had killed the victim because he had been a government witness in drug and gun cases. Both men could face the death penalty if the government decides to seek it.
But in recent weeks, the case has taken an extraordinary turn — because of Jason Jones's MetroCard.

Months after the arrests, a retired detective working for Mr. Jones's lawyers drove to a city jail located on a barge moored in the East River in the South Bronx, where Mr. Jones had been held after his arrest, and retrieved his wallet. The MetroCard was still inside.

Mr. Jones's lawyers then asked New York City Transit to use the card to trace his movements the night of the shooting. The results supported his account, showing that the card had been used on a bus, and later on a subway roughly five miles from the shooting, just as he had described.

With that, and a photograph snapped of Mr. Jones, 26, as he cashed his paycheck, his lawyers argued that it was impossible for him to have committed the crime. Both brothers have been released on bond for now, an unusual step in a federal murder case, while prosecutors say they are continuing to investigate.

Mr. Jones's turn of fortune might not have been possible before the modern era, where the plastic MetroCards, along with E-ZPass and surveillance cameras, have become ubiquitous.

Critics have said that the devices, for all their convenience, have ushered in an era of Big Brother, but they have nonetheless become useful in legal proceedings, whether to prove or undermine an alibi, find a missing person or even track a cheating spouse.

The MetroCard, used when boarding New York City buses and entering subway stations, has a magnetic strip that records the amount of money or time left on the card. Centralized computers also store data on where and when the cards are used, retrieving the information from buses and subway turnstiles.

The transit agency said that it receives requests from time to time to trace card information from the police, prosecutors and defense lawyers, but that it does not follow up on how those cases turn out.

In at least one instance, a MetroCard helped lead to a conviction. In 2002, on Staten Island, a man was found guilty of murdering his ex-girlfriend after the police used his MetroCard to prove that he was not on a bus when the killing occurred, as he claimed, but had in fact boarded it shortly afterward.

"Electronic evidence has become almost as important as DNA evidence," said James B. Dowd, the retired detective who recovered the MetroCard from jailhouse storage.

The Jones brothers were arrested after a witness identified them as being involved in the murder of a man shortly after midnight on May 24, at Ogden Avenue and West 165th Street in the High Bridge section of the Bronx.

The witness, who has not been identified, said Corey Jones was arguing with the man and accused him of being a "snitch." A short time later, the witness said, Corey handed Jason a gun, and Jason fired shots, killing the man. A call to 911 was made at 12:21 a.m., records show.

The Jones brothers already had a spotted past. Corey had convictions in two drug cases, Jason in a drug case and for stealing a car.

But both brothers have denied any involvement in the shooting, and Jason Jones said in an interview that when he was taken for questioning, he made it clear to the police that he could not have been involved.

"I told them they had the wrong person," he said. "I was not there."
During the interrogation, he said, it occurred to him that he had used his MetroCard on the bus and the subway, and he asked the police to check it. A detective took the card briefly, and then gave it back to him, and there was no further discussion about the card, he said.

The MetroCard came up again when Mr. Jones's own lawyers debriefed him.
"Jason, from the outset, had a very good memory of where he had been," George R. Goltzer, one of his lawyers, recalled.

The lawyers asked Mr. Dowd, the private investigator, to check out Jason Jones's story.
Mr. Dowd drove to a manufacturing plant in Yonkers, where Mr. Jones had a temporary job as a forklift operator. A printout of his hours showed that on May 23, the night of the killing, he had punched out at 11:01 p.m.

Mr. Jones had said that he and several co-workers then boarded a No. 20 Bee-Line bus near Central Park Avenue and Tuckahoe Road and rode into the Bronx, where they stopped at a check-cashing outlet, Pay-O-Matic, near Montefiore Medical Center.
When Mr. Dowd visited Pay-O-Matic, he learned not only that it had a copy of Mr. Jones's check, but that it took photographs of customers.

"Everything was time stamped," Mr. Dowd recalled. A photograph shows Mr. Jones cashing his check at 11:39 p.m.

Mr. Dowd said Pay-O-Matic also had a photo of one of Mr. Jones's co-workers cashing a check, in which Mr. Jones was visible in the background. That further corroborated his story that he had had been with his co-workers that night.

But Mr. Dowd still needed one more piece of evidence — the MetroCard.
Mr. Jones said that after cashing the check, he and his co-workers had walked to a friend's apartment for a drink, and that he had then entered the 205th Street station on the D Line, less than a mile from the check-cashing outlet and about five miles from the shooting scene. He rode the train to 182nd Street to visit his girlfriend, he said, stayed with her until about 2 a.m., and then took a subway home.

After the investigator retrieved the MetroCard from the jail, Frederick H. Cohn, Mr. Jones's other lawyer, called New York City Transit and asked to have the card's history traced. "I said, 'Well, how long is this going to take?' " Mr. Cohn recalled.

He said the employee said it would take three months. "She said, 'We're very busy. We've got all these requests.' "

Mr. Cohn said he pleaded: "We've got a guy who's sitting in jail, and this is critical evidence."

The request came back within days. Using the serial number of Mr. Jones's seven-day unlimited MetroCard, the transit agency was able to report that Mr. Jones's card had been used three times that night — on the No. 20 bus (the Bee-Line, the Westchester County bus system, accepts MetroCards) at 11:12 p.m.; at the 205th Street station at 12:30 a.m.; and at the 182nd-183rd Street station at 2 a.m. — all as he had said.

Mr. Jones's lawyers say it would have physically impossible for him to commit the crime and be where his MetroCard was used. They say the card was in his possession the whole time.

Once presented with the new information, prosecutors agreed that Mr. Jones could be released on bond.

But they objected strenuously when lawyers for his brother made a similar request. The prosecutors said that their witness might have been wrong about Jason, but had correctly identified Corey.

The judge, Victor Marrero of Federal District Court in Manhattan, earlier had refused to grant bail to Corey Jones, even after several witnesses said he had been with them at the time of the shooting. But, in a hearing last month, Judge Marrero suggested the new information could not be ignored.

"It seems somewhat implausible," he said, that the government's witness saw the event and was "right about one and mistaken about the other."

The judge granted Corey Jones bail. Prosecutors have not dropped the charges, and said in court last month that their investigation was continuing. They declined to comment about the case outside court.

In his ruling, Judge Marrero paraphrased a saying about change by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. The judge wrote: "The river now flowing by is not the same river that passed by yesterday."

Follow the Money...

2008-11-19T08:35:00.001-06:00

Where have I heard that before, "Follow the money"? Oh, yes, it was Deepthroat guiding the reporters that exposed the WaterGate Scandal that brought down the President of the United States. Follow the Money.

OK. Move up to the present day. Follow the money. Follow the money from the drug laws that put scads of people into the prisons and some of the prisons are owned by Cheney who makes direct profits from prisons in which he is an owner! Follow the Money!

Texas grand jury indicts Cheney, Gonzales of crime

Wed Nov 19, 2008 2:49am EST

[-] Text [+]

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A grand jury in South Texas indicted U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and former attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Tuesday for "organized criminal activity" related to alleged abuse of inmates in private prisons.

The indictment has not been seen by a judge, who could dismiss it.

The grand jury in Willacy County, in the Rio Grande Valley near the U.S.-Mexico border, said Cheney is "profiteering from depriving human beings of their liberty," according to a copy of the indictment obtained by Reuters.

The indictment cites a "money trail" of Cheney's ownership in prison-related enterprises including the Vanguard Group, which owns an interest in private prisons in south Texas.

Former attorney general Gonzales used his position to "stop the investigations as to the wrong doings" into assaults in county prisons, the indictment said.

Cheney's office declined comment. "We have not received any indictments. I can't comment on something we have not received," said Cheney's spokeswoman Megan Mitchell.

The indictment, overseen by county District Attorney Juan Guerra, cites the case of Gregorio De La Rosa, who died on April 26, 2001, inside a private prison in Willacy County.

The grand jury wrote it made its decision "with great sadness," but said they had no other choice but to indict Cheney and Gonzales "because we love our country."

Texas is the home state of U.S. President George W. Bush.

Bush and his Republican administration, which first took office in January 2001, leave the White House on January 20 after the November presidential elections won by Democrat Barack Obama. Gonzales was attorney general from 2005 to 2007.

(Reporting by Chris Baltimore and JoAnne Allen, Editing by Frances Kerry)

A "Mother" wouldn't do that?!

2008-11-18T09:23:00.001-06:00

Mother charged with criminal neglect

Paramedics find paralyzed son in need of care

By Matthew Walberg | Tribune reporter

November 18, 2008

When paramedics entered the third-floor South Side apartment, what they found shocked even a veteran of the Chicago Fire Department.

In the bedroom, a 29-year-old man, paralyzed from a gunshot wound, was essentially rotting to death in his bed.

"There were maggots and flies all over his body," Assistant State's Atty. Scaduto said Monday in criminal court. "Some of the bedsores were so deep that his bone was exposed. A Chicago Fire Department captain who responded [to the apartment] said it was the worst case of neglect he'd seen in 25 years."

His mother, Jameszenia Balentine, 49, was arrested over the weekend at her home on criminal neglect charges. In court Monday, Cook County Circuit Judge Laura Sullivan ordered her held in lieu of $150,000 bail.

Her son was lying in his own filth and "his legs were fused together and his feet were fused to the bed because he had not been moved in so long," Scaduto said. He also suffered from bedsores and skin ulcers and was dehydrated and undernourished, the prosecutor said.

According to authorities and sources familiar with the case, Balentine was responsible for caring for her son and collected his Social Security disability payments.

It is unclear why paramedics went to the apartment on Oct. 24, but a copy of the arrest report noted that they noticed a foul odor coming from the apartment.

On Monday, neighbors in the run-down brick three-flat where the victim and his mother lived were reluctant to talk. One woman said she recalled a foul odor in the building on only one occasion.

The victim was taken to St. Bernard Hospital in serious condition and was released to a long-term facility five days later, said hospital spokesman Darryl Nash.

Authorities did not describe why Balentine was charged nearly four weeks after her son was discovered.

Tribune reporter Steve Schmadeke contributed to this report.

You can't trust the Postmaster

2008-11-18T09:17:00.001-06:00

Ex-postmaster gets prison time for $53,000 theft

The Associated Press

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. | A former postmaster in southwest Missouri is sentenced to five months in federal prison for stealing nearly $53,000 in postal funds during 2006.

Federal Judge Richard Dorr on Monday handed the sentence to Wayne Misner on a single charge of misappropriating funds. The money had been collected for stamps and other mailing products while Misner was postmaster at Everton.

Misner pleaded guilty to the charge in April, but said he didn't steal the money. He said burglars used an unsecured door to get into the post office. Misner said he would have been fired if he'd reported the burglary, and that he tried to make up the loss with his own money.

He was also ordered to spend five months on house arrest, serve three years' probation and pay almost $43,000 in restitution.

Price Fixing

2008-11-13T15:04:00.001-06:00

November 13, 2008

3 Flat-Screen Makers Plead Guilty to Trying to Keep Prices High

By STEVE LOHR

Prices for the flat screens in televisions, personal computers and cellphones have plummeted in recent years — but the decline would have been even faster if it hadn't been for an international price-fixing cartel, the Justice Department said on Wednesday.

Three leading flat-screen producers — LG Display of South Korea, Sharp of Japan and Chunghwa Picture Tubes of Taiwan — pleaded guilty and agreed to pay a total of $585 million in criminal fines for their role in fixing the price of liquid-crystal display panels.

LG is paying the most: a $400 million fine, the second-highest criminal fine ever imposed by the Justice Department's antitrust division. The largest was the $500 million paid in 1999 by F. Hoffmann-La Roche, a Swiss pharmaceutical giant, for leading a price-fixing cartel in vitamin supplements.

The settlement, legal experts say, is unlikely to be the end of the flat-panel case. Under the settlement, the three companies have agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department's continuing investigation. Thomas O. Barnett, assistant attorney general in charge of the department's antitrust division, pointed out at a news conference on Wednesday that the American investigation involved the coordinated efforts of enforcement officials in Europe and Asia, as well as the United States.

Government investigations, legal specialists said, are under way in Europe, Japan and South Korea. In the United States, private class-action suits have already been filed seeking damages for companies that purchased flat-panel screens, and for consumers who bought flat-panel-equipped products. Some of the private suits, if successful, could provide a way for consumers to benefit, though the compensation for any individual would probably be slight.

The Justice Department, in a statement, noted that the price-fixing conspiracy affected screens sold to American companies, and cited three by name: Dell, Apple and Motorola. Those companies, and others, could have the basis for private suits.

The LCD business is a $100-billion-a-year market and growing, but prices are falling relentlessly. Recently, panel prices have often been cut in half each year, a downward trajectory even steeper than in other technology markets known for steady price pressure, like those for computer chips and hard drives.

In the last six months alone, the price of a 15.4-inch panel for a notebook PC has dropped to $63, from $97, and a 32-inch LCD for a television has gone to $223, from $321, according to iSuppli, a market research firm.

The price-fixing conspiracy, industry analysts said, was an effort to slow the speed of price declines. "These companies were trying to get a toehold to protect profits in a very difficult market," said Richard Doherty, director of research at Envisioneering, a technology consulting firm.

Without the price-fixing scheme, liquid-crystal panels would have been even cheaper, and they are important parts in a wide range of products. For example, the screen represents 10 to 20 percent of the total cost of a notebook PC, said Rob Enderle, an independent analyst in San Jose, Calif.

The effect was somewhat higher prices. "These price-fixing conspiracies affected millions of American consumers who use computers, cellphones and numerous other household electronics every day," Mr. Barnett said in a statement.

The settlement, legal specialists say, does not precisely indicate the extent of the consumer harm. Under antitrust law, a company can be fined up to twice the gain it derived from its misconduct.

But in a settlement, the fine amounts could represent negotiated levels, or less than the total harm to consumers, said C. Scott Hemphill, an antitrust expert at the Columbia University law school.

"And this settlement only deals with the harm in the United States," he said. "The global totals may be many times larger."

During the Bush administration, antitrust enforcement has been selective and often guided by a hands-off, pro-business philosophy, legal experts say. But price-fixing cartels are an area of antitrust in which there is no debate about enforcement. In a 2004 Supreme Court decision, which was unanimous, cartels were called "the supreme evil of antitrust."

"Cartels are regarded as the most dangerous form of anticompetitive conduct," said Andrew I. Gavil, a law professor at Howard University. "The reason is that the potential impact on consumers is so great, and there is no plausible justification for it."

With the settlement, Mr. Barnett, who will leave the Justice Department next week, has provided "an answer to critics who doubted he would take on big cases of this kind," Mr. Gavil said.

Uh, You Can Trust Congress, Can't You?

2008-11-13T14:59:00.001-06:00

Dems Target Private Retirement Accounts

Democratic leaders in the U.S. House discuss confiscating 401(k)s, IRAs

By Karen McMahan

November 04, 2008

RALEIGH — Democrats in the U.S. House have been conducting hearings on proposals to confiscate workers' personal retirement accounts — including 401(k)s and IRAs — and convert them to accounts managed by the Social Security Administration.

Triggered by the financial crisis the past two months, the hearings reportedly were meant to stem losses incurred by many workers and retirees whose 401(k) and IRA balances have been shrinking rapidly.

The testimony of Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York, in hearings Oct. 7 drew the most attention and criticism. Testifying for the House Committee on Education and Labor, Ghilarducci proposed that the government eliminate tax breaks for 401(k) and similar retirement accounts, such as IRAs, and confiscate workers' retirement plan accounts and convert them to universal Guaranteed Retirement Accounts (GRAs) managed by the Social Security Administration.

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, in prepared remarks for the hearing on "The Impact of the Financial Crisis on Workers' Retirement Security," blamed Wall Street for the financial crisis and said his committee will "strengthen and protect Americans' 401(k)s, pensions, and other retirement plans" and the "Democratic Congress will continue to conduct this much-needed oversight on behalf of the American people."

Currently, 401(k) plans allow Americans to invest pretax money and their employers match up to a defined percentage, which not only increases workers' retirement savings but also reduces their annual income tax. The balances are fully inheritable, subject to income tax, meaning workers pass on their wealth to their heirs, unlike Social Security. Even when they leave an employer and go to one that doesn't offer a 401(k) or pension, workers can transfer their balances to a qualified IRA.

Mandating Equality

Ghilarducci's plan first appeared in a paper for the Economic Policy Institute: Agenda for Shared Prosperity on Nov. 20, 2007, in which she said GRAs will rescue the flawed American retirement income system (www.sharedprosperity.org/bp204/bp204.pdf).

The current retirement system, Ghilarducci said, "exacerbates income and wealth inequalities" because tax breaks for voluntary retirement accounts are "skewed to the wealthy because it is easier for them to save, and because they receive bigger tax breaks when they do."

Lauding GRAs as a way to effectively increase retirement savings, Ghilarducci wrote that savings incentives are unequal for rich and poor families because tax deferrals "provide a much larger 'carrot' to wealthy families than to middle-class families — and none whatsoever for families too poor to owe taxes."

GRAs would guarantee a fixed 3 percent annual rate of return, although later in her article Ghilarducci explained that participants would not "earn a 3% real return in perpetuity." In place of tax breaks workers now receive for contributions and thus a lower tax rate, workers would receive $600 annually from the government, inflation-adjusted. For low-income workers whose annual contributions are less than $600, the government would deposit whatever amount it would take to equal the minimum $600 for all participants.

In a radio interview with Kirby Wilbur in Seattle on Oct. 27, 2008, Ghilarducci explained that her proposal doesn't eliminate the tax breaks, rather, "I'm just rearranging the tax breaks that are available now for 401(k)s and spreading — spreading the wealth."

All workers would have 5 percent of their annual pay deducted from their paychecks and deposited to the GRA. They would still be paying Social Security and Medicare taxes, as would the employers. The GRA contribution would be shared equally by the worker and the employee. Employers no longer would be able to write off their contributions. Any capital gains would be taxable year-on-year.

Analysts point to another disturbing part of the plan. With a GRA, workers could bequeath only half of their account balances to their heirs, unlike full balances from existing 401(k) and IRA accounts. For workers who die after retiring, they could bequeath just their own contributions plus the interest but minus any benefits received and minus the employer contributions.

Another justification for Ghilarducci's plan is to eliminate investment risk. In her testimony, Ghilarducci said, "humans often lack the foresight, discipline, and investing skills required to sustain a savings plan." She cited the 2004 HSBC global survey on the Future of Retirement, in which she claimed that "a third of Americans wanted the government to force them to save more for retirement."

What the survey actually reported was that 33 percent of Americans wanted the government to "enforce additional private savings," a vastly different meaning than mandatory government-run savings. Of the four potential sources of retirement support, which were government, employer, family, and self, the majority of Americans said "self" was the most important contributor, followed by "government." When broken out by family income, low-income U.S. households said the "government" was the most important retirement support, whereas high-income families ranked "government" last and "self" first (www.hsbc.com/retirement).

On Oct. 22, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Argentinean government had seized all private pension and retirement accounts to fund government programs and to address a ballooning deficit. Fearing an economic collapse, foreign investors quickly pulled out, forcing the Argentinean stock market to shut down several times. More than 10 years ago, nationalization of private savings sent Argentina's economy into a long-term downward spiral.

Income and Wealth Redistribution

The majority of witness testimony during recent hearings before the House Committee on Education and Labor showed that congressional Democrats intend to address income and wealth inequality through redistribution.

On July 31, 2008, Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, testified before the subcommittee on workforce protections that "from the standpoint of equal treatment of people with different incomes, there is a fundamental flaw" in tax code incentives because they are "provided in the form of deductions, exemptions, and exclusions rather than in the form of refundable tax credits."

Even people who don't pay taxes should get money from the government, paid for by higher-income Americans, he said. "There is no obvious reason why lower-income taxpayers or people who do not file income taxes should get smaller incentives (or no tax incentives at all)," Greenstein said.

"Moving to refundable tax credits for promoting socially worthwhile activities would be an important step toward enhancing progressivity in the tax code in a way that would improve economic efficiency and performance at the same time," Greenstein said, and "reducing barriers to labor organizing, preserving the real value of the minimum wage, and the other workforce security concerns . . . would contribute to an economy with less glaring and sharply widening inequality."

When asked whether committee members seriously were considering Ghilarducci's proposal for GSAs, Aaron Albright, press secretary for the Committee on Education and Labor, said Miller and other members were listening to all ideas.

Miller's biggest priority has been on legislation aimed at greater transparency in 401(k)s and other retirement plan administration, specifically regarding fees, Albright said, and he sent a link to a Fox News interview of Miller on Oct. 24, 2008, to show that the congressman had not made a decision.

After repeated questions asked by Neil Cavuto of Fox News, Miller said he would not be in favor of "killing the 401(k)" or of "killing the tax advantages for 401(k)s."

Arguing against liberal prescriptions, William Beach, director of the Center for Data Analysis at the Heritage Foundation, testified on Oct. 24 that the "roots of the current crisis are firmly planted in public policy mistakes" by the Federal Reserve and Congress. He cautioned Congress against raising taxes, increasing burdensome regulations, or withdrawing from international product or capital markets. "Congress can ill afford to repeat the awesome errors of its predecessor in the early days of the Great Depression," Beach said.

Instead, Beach said, Congress could best address the financial crisis by making the tax reductions of 2001 and 2003 permanent, stopping dependence on demand-side stimulus, lowering the corporate profits tax, and reducing or eliminating taxes on capital gains and dividends.

Testifying before the same committee in early October, Jerry Bramlett, president and CEO of BenefitStreet, Inc., an independent 401(k) plan administrator, said one of the best ways to ensure retirement security would be to have the U.S. Department of Labor develop educational materials for workers so they could make better investment decisions, not exchange equity investments in retirement accounts for Treasury bills, as proposed in the GSAs.

Should Sen. Barack Obama win the presidency, congressional Democrats might have stronger support for their "spreading the wealth" agenda. On Oct. 27, the American Thinker posted a video of an interview with Obama on public radio station WBEZ-FM from 2001.

In the interview, Obama said, "The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society." The Constitution says only what "the states can't do to you. Says what the Federal government can't do to you," and Obama added that the Warren Court wasn't that radical.

Although in 2001 Obama said he was not "optimistic about bringing major redistributive change through the courts," as president, he would likely have the opportunity to appoint one or more Supreme Court justices.

"The real tragedy of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused that I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change," Obama said.

Karen McMahan is a contributing editor of Carolina Journal

You Can Trust Insurance Executives, Right?

2008-11-10T11:50:00.001-06:00

AIG gets $150 billion government bailout; posts huge loss

By Mark Felsenthal and Lilla Zuill Mark Felsenthal And Lilla Zuill 23 mins ago

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – The government restructured its bailout of American International Group Inc, raising the package to a record $150 billion with easier terms, after a smaller rescue plan failed to stabilize the ailing insurance giant.

The U.S. Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department announced the new plan on Monday as AIG reported a record $24.47 billion third-quarter loss, largely from writedowns of investments.

AIG, once the world's largest insurer by market value, nearly collapsed after being forced to post large amounts of collateral related to exposure to complex derivatives known as credit default swaps. Many of these securities were linked to the performance of residential mortgages, and lost value as the U.S. housing downturn mushroomed into a global credit crisis.

"We cannot continue to hemorrhage cash in the two areas of securities lending and credit default swaps," Chief Executive Edward Liddy said on a conference call. "We need to stop that and we need to stop it now."

Under the new rescue plan, the government will get a $40 billion equity stake in AIG, spend as much as $30 billion on securities underlying the insurer's credit default swaps, and spend up to $22.5 billion to buy residential mortgage securities.

It will also reduce a previously announced credit line to $60 billion from $85 billion, and lower interest rates on borrowings. AIG will also accept curbs on executive pay, including a freeze of bonuses for its top 70 executives.

"The restructured bailout should give AIG the flexibility to sell assets in an orderly manner for closer to their intrinsic values rather than fire-sale prices," CreditSights Inc analyst Rob Haines wrote. "Moreover, we believe that it will help to restore confidence in AIG's global franchise."

In morning trading, AIG shares were up 37 cents, or 17.5 percent, at $2.48 on the New York Stock Exchange. The cost of protecting AIG debt against default declined, indicating that investors see less risk.

ONE-TIME EVENT

The $40 billion equity infusion comes from the $700 billion financial industry bailout package adopted by the government last month.

That package, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Plan, was originally intended for banks. AIG is the first company other than a bank to get money from it. TARP was created after the government on September 16 announced the original $85 billion bailout package for AIG.

"Today's action was a one-off event," Neel Kashkari, the Treasury Department's interim assistant secretary for financial stability, said at a conference in New York. "It is not the start of a new program."

AIG will issue to the government preferred shares carrying a 10 percent dividend. The government said its equity stake in the insurer would still be about 80 percent, making it the biggest beneficiary of the revised bailout.

The $60 billion credit line will mature in five years, and replace an $85 billion line scheduled to mature in two years. This could reduce the potential that AIG would have to quickly sell assets at depressed prices to help repay the government.

In addition, the Fed also slashed the interest rate on the credit line by 5.5 percentage points, to 3 percentage points above three-month Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate).

Liddy said the new terms "create a durable capital structure" that will allow AIG to sell assets and assure that taxpayers are repaid in full with interest.

The revised plan depends on the government being able to convince holders of securities underlying AIG credit default swaps to sell them to the government, likely at a discount.

"The biggest questions attached to these new vehicles are who is going to take how big of a haircut, and when," said Donald Light, an analyst at Celent LLC in San Francisco.

Struggling automakers General Motors Corp, Ford Motor Co and Chrysler LLC have also requested tens of billions of dollars in Treasury aid.

BIG QUARTERLY LOSS

AIG's $24.47 billion quarterly loss equated to $9.05 per share, compared with a profit of $3.09 billion, or $1.19 a share, a year earlier.

Revenue fell to $898 million from $29.8 billion, reflecting the writedowns. AIG also had $1.39 billion of catastrophe losses, primarily from Hurricanes Gustav and Ike.

Credit default swaps had led AIG to $18 billion of losses in the nine months ended June 30.

The cost of protecting $10 million of AIG debt against default for five years fell on Monday to $1.9 million up front plus $500,000 annually, according to Markit Intraday. The upfront payment was $4.9 million on Friday.

(Additional reporting by Pedro Nicolaci da Costa in New York and David Lawder in Washington; Writing by Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and John Wallace)

Bailout the Rich Again!

2008-11-10T08:48:00.001-06:00

AIG: Uncle Sam's do-over

Fed restructures loan and creates 2 programs to rescue insurance giant from bad bets. Treasury buys $40 billion in shares. AIG quarterly loss: $25 billion.

By David Goldman, CNNMoney.com staff writer

Last Updated: November 10, 2008: 9:36 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Troubled insurer American International Group got a reworked $152.5 billion deal from the federal government Monday, as the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department made significant changes to the terms of the company's original bailout.

The Fed announced that it will reduce AIG's original $85 billion bridge loan to $60 billion, and it will cut the interest rate by 5.5 percentage points.

In addition, the Treasury will use its special authority under last month's $700 billion bailout law - the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program - to purchase $40 billion in preferred stock.

The new bailout was worked out between government officials and AIG executives over the weekend. AIG was having difficulty paying back its original bridge loan, which it intended to use to sell off many of its subsidiaries to restore the company to a stable condition. But the credit crisis has proven to be a difficult environment to spin off assets.

"The original bailout was just too onerous for the timing and the cycle," said Andrew Barile, an insurance consultant at Andrew Barile Consulting Corporation. "People also underestimate the time it takes to selloff assets of an insurance company, which takes months and months."

Furthermore, the company's investors continued to demand that the insurer post collateral to back its credit default swap agreements - essentially insurance contracts that AIG had sold to customers worldwide - forcing AIG to borrow more and more from the government. As the company drew down billions, the high interest rate on the original loan became too punitive.

"The Treasury determined AIG was a systemically significant institution," a Treasury official said. "Bringing more equity to the company puts AIG in a better position to dispose of its assets, and it was done to protect the taxpayer."

To keep the company operational, and to ensure that the government gets repaid and can eventually divest from the company, the Fed will also create a new program that will purchase up to $22.5 billion of AIG's troubled mortgage-backed securities. It will also post $30 billion to backstop its credit default swap agreements, taking place of a $37.8 billion lending facility it previously offered the company.

Like many other financial institutions, AIG's mortgage-backed securities have turned into "toxic" balance sheet assets. The government, by purchasing the troubled assets and backstopping its credit default swap agreements, hopes investors will stop requesting collateral increases so the company can focus on spinning off its other companies.

"We cannot continue to hemorrhage cash in posting collateral for credit default swaps," said AIG Chief Executive Edward Liddy on a conference call with analysts. "We need to stop that, and we need to stop that now."

Barile said the bailout will help ease AIG's need to continue to post more collateral, but he said the company will continue to have trouble selling off its subsidiaries. In the current environment, other smaller companies may rather pluck talent away from AIG than assume its unwanted companies.

Financial results: Huge loss

Also on Monday, AIG reported that it lost $24.5 billion, or $9.05 per share, in the third quarter. Excluding one-time charges, AIG lost $9.2 billion, or $3.42 per share, in the three months ended Sept. 8. That compares to a gain of $1.35 per share during the same period a year earlier.

Liddy attributed the poor results to "extreme dislocations and volatility in the capital markets" during the quarter.Insurance on properties destroyed by Hurricanes Gustav and Ike also contributed to $1.4 billion of losses for the company.

The giant insurer, which has more than 100,000 employees worldwide, reported revenue of $11.7 billion, down 0.8% from the $11.8 billion the company reported in the third quarter of 2007.

The new bailout marks a stunning turn in the Bush administration's efforts to address the escalating financial crisis. It is likely to stoke calls from those advocating federal rescue plans for other troubled companies such as automaker General Motors (GM, Fortune 500), which said Friday it was running dangerously low on cash.

"Clearly there are other industries interested in accessing TARP funds, and the Treasury will continue to work on a strategy that will most effectively deploy the remaining funds," Treasury officials said.

A win-win deal

Many taxpayers have expressed anger at the government's bailout, saying it rewards risky and unscrupulous behavior of corporations. But Liddy said taxpayers have much to benefit from an equity stake in AIG.

"It is not exactly a bailout, because the American taxpayer will and has been offered considerable returns due to their equity stake in AIG," Liddy said. "This plan is a win-win: When things get better, the government will do well, and AIG will do well."

To protect taxpayers, the Treasury said its $40 billion capital injection into AIG is not part of the $250 billion that was set aside for equity purchase of banks. Rather, the funds came from an additional $100 billion that President Bush requested. As a result, the transaction's "one-off" status allowed the government to impose more stringent criteria on executive compensation than on banks receiving Treasury assistance.

As part of the new deal announced Monday, Treasury will limit "golden parachutes" and freeze the size of the annual bonus pool for the top 70 company execs. Most banks participating in the Treasury program face compensation curbs on only their top five executives.

AIG has come under fire from lawmakers and state officials for seeking to make big payouts to former executives and planning pricey corporate events after receiving the federal loans.

In mid-September, AIG (AIG, Fortune 500) teetered on collapse, pressured by the effects of the credit crisis. Worried that the company's failure would domino through the rest of the financial system, the government provided AIG with an $85 billion bridge loan. Later, the Fed gave the insurer $37.8 billion line of credit, and made available $20.9 billion in a debt purchasing facility.

Under the new plan, AIG has borrowed the full $40 billion from the Treasury to pay off the $37.8 billion from the Fed. It has drawn down $21 billion of its reduced $60 billion bridge loan, and it has borrowed $15.3 billion of the $20.9 billion it can borrow from the Fed's Commercial Paper Funding Facility.

Liddy, who was installed as CEO after the government's September rescue, said in a statement that the new deal establishes "a durable capital structure" for the company.

"Today's actions send a strong signal to our policyholders, business partners and counterparties that AIG is on the road to recovery," Liddy said.

First Published: November 10, 2008: 6:33 AM ET

You Trust the Doctor, Right?

2008-11-09T19:54:00.001-06:00

First Trial against an US Surgeon for Killing a Patient to Harvest Organs Begins

By Jonquil Frankham

CALIFORNIA, November 6, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A San Francisco surgeon is undergoing trial for allegedly hastening the death of a terminally ill patient to harvest his vital organs.

The case against Hootan Roozrokh is believed to be the first of its kind brought against an American transplant surgeon.

Rosa Navarro, the patient's mother, successfully filed suit against the hospital where the patient died and received $250,000 in compensation. Now the District Attorney's office is pressing charges against the 34-year-old surgeon for "dependent adult abuse, administering a harmful substance and prescribing controlled substances without a legitimate medical purpose."

Roozrokh is also being charged with giving the 25-year old Ruben Navarro an antiseptic called Betadine, normally administered to an organ donor after death, via feeding tube to the stomach. Some commentators suggest the antiseptic was ultimately responsible for the patient's death.

Roozrokh attempted to induce what is known as "cardiac death," a new criteria for determining "death," by delivering abnormally high doses of painkillers in order to retrieve vital organs from Ruben Navarro. "Cardiac death" is distinct from "brain death," an older criterion for determining death that requires a cessation of all brain function prior to harvesting vital organs.

Toronto physician and LifeSiteNews medical adviser Dr. John Shea, MD, FRCP (C), says that in order to determine if a patient meets the "cardiac death" criteria the patient's respirator is removed while the heart is still beating.

"If the heart stopped beating within an hour, the surgeon waited two to five minutes before taking out the organs. If the heart had not stopped beating within an hour, the patient would be returned to a hospital bed to die without any further treatment," writes Dr. Shea.

On January 29, 2006, Ruben Navarro stopped breathing on his own, and was put on a respirator. On February 3 he still had not recovered consciousness, though his mother claimed she saw "signs of recovery."

Medical staff then removed Navarro to the operating room and withdrew his respirator, claiming that hospital policy required them to "pull the plug" after five days on life support without patient recovery. Navarro continued to live, however, and Dr. Roozrokh, is reported to have then told nurses, "Let's just give him some more candy." The patient was given high doses of morphine and Ativan to hasten death.

Navarro's heart continued to beat, and after one hour his organs were no longer considered useable. He was removed from the operating room and died several hours later.

Besides the ambiguity surrounding the actual moment of death, Dr. Shea writes that harvesting organs at either the point of brain death or cardiac death creates a conflict of interest on the part of the attending physician and fosters a "utilitarian" approach to life and death.

According to California state law, in order to avoid potential conflicts of interest, transplant surgeons cannot direct the care of potential donors while the patient is still in treatment. In this case, however, sources have reported to police that, contrary to that requirement, Dr. Roozrokh was directing the administration of drugs to Mr. Navarro while in the operating room.

Writing about the "utilitarian rationale" behind the invention of the "brain death" criterion, Shea says that "it was no longer the interest of the dying to avoid being declared 'dead' prematurely, but the community's interest in declaring a dying person dead as soon as possible." Shea's criticisms would also apply to the "cardiac death" criterion.

The utilitarian approach to life and death that is increasingly pervading the organ donation industry is obvious from an article published this October by two Oxford scholars, which suggests that, rather than ensuring that brain death and cardiac death are indeed true death, "we could abandon the dead donor rule," as LifeSiteNews reported.

"We could for example, allow organs to be taken from people who are not brain dead, but who have suffered such severe injury that they would be permanently unconscious, like Terry Schiavo, who would be allowed to die anyway by removal of their medical treatment," wrote Julian Savulescu, the Uehiro Chair of Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, and neonatologist and Oxford graduate student Dominic Wilkinson

Bioethics International writes that the Roozrokh case "is likely to raise uneasiness among potential organ donors and could prompt doctors to shy away from a somewhat controversial practice of retrieving organs before a patient is brain dead."

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Shock: Oxford Neonatologist Says Time Has Come to Consider "Mandatory Organ Donation"
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/oct/08102413.html

Organ Transplant Doctor Investigated in Non-Heart Beating Donation Case
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/mar/07030903.html

Mother Alleges Doctor Murdered Her Handicapped Son to Harvest His Organs
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jul/07070603.html

Charges Brought against Transplant Doctor Accused of "Hastening" Patient's Death
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/aug/07080103.html

Yet another Government Database Tracking YOU

2008-11-07T11:05:00.001-06:00

Citizens' U.S. Border Crossings Tracked
Data From Checkpoints To Be Kept for 15 Years

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 20, 2008; A01

The federal government has been using its system of border checkpoints to greatly expand a database on travelers entering the country by collecting information on all U.S. citizens crossing by land, compiling data that will be stored for 15 years and may be used in criminal and intelligence investigations.

Officials say the Border Crossing Information system, disclosed last month by the Department of Homeland Security in a Federal Register notice, is part of a broader effort to guard against terrorist threats. It also reflects the growing number of government systems containing personal information on Americans that can be shared for a broad range of law enforcement and intelligence purposes, some of which are exempt from some Privacy Act protections.

While international air passenger data has long been captured this way, Customs and Border Protection agents only this year began to log the arrivals of all U.S. citizens across land borders, through which about three-quarters of border entries occur.

The volume of people entering the country by land prevented compiling such a database until recently. But the advent of machine-readable identification documents, which the government mandates eventually for everyone crossing the border, has made gathering the information more feasible. By June, all travelers crossing land borders will need to present a machine-readable document, such as a passport or a driver's license with a radio frequency identification chip.

In January, border agents began manually entering into the database the personal information of travelers who did not have such documents.

The disclosure of the database is among a series of notices, officials say, to make DHS's data gathering more transparent. Critics say the moves exemplify efforts by the Bush administration in its final months to cement an unprecedented expansion of data gathering for national security and intelligence purposes.

The data could be used beyond determining whether a person may enter the United States. For instance, information may be shared with foreign agencies when relevant to their hiring or contracting decisions.

Public comments are being taken until Monday, when the "new system of records will be effective," the notice states.

"People expect to be checked when they enter the country and for the government to determine if they're admissible or not," said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology. "What they don't expect is for the government to keep a record for 15 years of their comings into the country."

But DHS spokesman Russ Knocke said the retention period is justified.

"History has shown, whether you are talking about criminal or terrorist activity, that plotting, planning or even relationships among conspirators can go on for years," he said. "Basic travel records can, quite literally, help frontline officers to connect the dots."

The government states in its notice that the system was authorized by post-Sept. 11 laws, including the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Reform Act of 2002, the Aviation and Transportation Security Act of 2001, and the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.

Nojeim said that though the statutes authorize the government to issue travel documents and check immigration status, he does not believe they explicitly authorize creation of the database.

"This database is, in a sense, worse than a watch list," he said. "At least in the watch-list scenario, there's some reason why the name got on the list. Here, the only thing a person does to come to the attention of DHS is to lawfully cross the border. The theory of this data collection is: Track everyone -- just in case."

Under the system, officials record name, birth date, gender, date and time of crossing, and a photo, where available, for U.S. travelers returning to the country by land, sea or air. The same information is gathered about foreign travelers, but it is held for 75 years.

DHS and other agencies are amassing more and more data that they subject to sophisticated analysis. A customs document issued last month stated that the agency does not perform data mining on border crossings to glean relationships and patterns that could signify a terrorist or law enforcement threat. But the Federal Register notice states that information may be shared with federal, state and local governments to test "new technology and systems designed to enhance border security or identify other violations of law." And the Homeland Security Act establishing the department calls for the development of data-mining tools to further the department's objectives.

That raises concerns, privacy advocates say, that analyses can be undertaken that could implicate innocent people if appropriate safeguards are not used.

The border information system will link to a new database, the Non-Federal Entity Data System, which is being set up to hold personal information about all drivers in a state's database. States that do not agree to allow customs to have such large amounts of information may allow the agency to query their databases in real time for information on a traveler.

Because of privacy concerns, Washington state earlier this year opted for the queries-only approach. The Canadian government made the same decision. "There was absolutely no way they should have the entire database," said Ann Cavoukian, Ontario's privacy commissioner, who learned about the Canadian government's decision in April.

"Once you have data in a database you don't need, it lends itself to unauthorized use," she said. "You have no idea of the data creep."

Vermont opted to allow access to its driver's licenses because the state could not guarantee the "nanoseconds" response time DHS required, said Bonnie L. Rutledge, the state's commissioner of motor vehicles. She said drivers are informed up front of the data sharing.

"A person opts to go over the border, their information is going to be collected and held anyway," she said. "If you don't want to go over the border, you don't have to."

The notice states that the government may share border records with federal, state, local, tribal or foreign government agencies in cases where customs believes the information would assist enforcement of civil or criminal laws or regulations, or if the information is relevant to a hiring decision.

They may be shared with a court or attorney in civil litigation, which could include divorce cases; with federal contractors or consultants "to accomplish an agency function related to this system of records"; with federal and foreign intelligence or counterterrorism agencies if there is a threat to national or international security or to assist in anti-terrorism efforts; or with the news media and the public "when there exists a legitimate public interest in the disclosure of the information."

Homeland Security is proposing to exempt the database from some provisions of the 1974 Privacy Act, including the right of a citizen to know whether a law enforcement or intelligence agency has requested his or her records and the right to sue for access and correction in those disclosures.

A traveler may, however, request access to records based on documents he or she presented at the border.

The notice is posted at the Government Printing Office's Web site.

View all comments that have been posted about this article.

Emanuel - Whitehouse Chief of Staff

2008-11-07T07:32:00.001-06:00

Emanuel Was Director Of Freddie Mac During Scandal

New Obama Chief of Staff, Others on Board, Missed "Red Flags" of Alleged Fraud Scheme

By BRIAN ROSS and RHONDA SCHWARTZ

November 7, 2008—

President-elect Barack Obama's newly appointed chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, served on the board of directors of the federal mortgage firm Freddie Mac at a time when scandal was brewing at the troubled agency and the board failed to spot "red flags," according to government reports reviewed by ABCNews.com.

According to a complaint later filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Freddie Mac, known formally as the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, misreported profits by billions of dollars in order to deceive investors between the years 2000 and 2002.

Emanuel was not named in the SEC complaint (click here to read) but the entire board was later accused by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) (click here to read) of having "failed in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention."

In a statement to ABCNews.com, a spokesperson said Emanuel served on the board for "13 months-a relatively short period of time."

The spokesperson said that while on the board, Emanuel "believed that Freddie Mac needed to address concerns raised by Congressional critics."

Freddie Mac agreed to pay a $50 million penalty in 2007 to settle the SEC complaint and four top executives of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation were charged with negligent conduct and, like the company, agreed to settle the case without admitting or denying the allegations.

The actions by Freddie Mac are cited by some economists as the beginning of the country's economic meltdown.

The federal government this year was forced to take over Freddie Mac and a sister federal mortgage agency, Fannie Mae, pledging at least $200 billion in public funds.

Freddie Mac records have been subpoenaed by the Justice Department as part of its investigation of the suspect accounting procedures.

Emanuel was named to the Freddie Mac board by President Bill Clinton in 2000 and resigned his position when he ran for Congress in May, 2001.

Freddie Mac Misrepresented Income, Says SEC

During the years 2000, 2001 and 2002, according to the SEC, Freddie Mac substantially misrepresented its income to "present investors with the image of a company that would continue to generate predictable and growing earnings."

The role of the 18-member board of directors, including Emanuel, was not addressed in the SEC's public action but was heavily criticized by the oversight group (OFHEO) in 2003.

The oversight report said the board had been apprised of the suspect accounting tactics but "failed to make reasonable inquiries of management."

The report also said board members appointed by the President, such as Emanuel, serve terms that are far too short "for them to play a meaningful role on the Board."

As a Congressman, Emanuel recused himself from any votes dealing with Freddie Mac until just this year.

In dealing with the nation's economic crisis, the new White House chief of staff will almost certainly be involved in discussions about the house and mortgage markets.

Emanuel's spokesperson said, "As White House chief of staff he will work with President-elect Obama and his economic advisers to help ensure we protect taxpayers and homeowners."

Click Here for the Investigative Homepage.

The Grace Commission

2008-11-05T10:48:00.005-06:00

Remember the Grace Commission? Ronald Reagan had the head of W.R. Grace write a report on what is going on in the government and the country. Among many topics covered, Mr. Grace said that the state of education in the United States was in such tatters that if this degradation in the educational system had been done by a foreign country, it would be an "act of war!"

Here is a link to the cover letter to that Grace Commission Report: Cover Letter

Here is a link to the "List": List Note that the fist link on the list speaks to where income tax is spent.

Bankers use Bailout for Bonuses

2008-10-31T13:38:00.000-05:00

Waxman tells banks to justify bonuses

By Globe Wire Services | October 29, 2008

Congressional investigators demanded State Street Corp., Citigroup Inc., and seven other banks justify billions of dollars in pay and bonuses after they accepted $125 billion as part of a taxpayer-funded bailout.

In letters to the nine firms yesterday, Representative Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said they collectively will pay $108 billion in employee compensation and bonuses in the first nine months of 2008, almost the same amount as last year.

"I question the appropriateness of depleting the capital that taxpayers just injected into the banks through the payment of billions of dollars in bonuses, especially after one of the financial industry's worst years on record," Waxman wrote.

The letter was also sent to Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Merrill Lynch & Co., Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group, and Wells Fargo & Co. Waxman asked the firms to supply the information by Nov. 10.

"We look forward to cooperating with chairman Waxman's request," said Michael DuVally, a spokesman for Goldman Sachs. Spokesmen for the other firms declined to comment or didn't immediately reply to requests for comment.

Waxman, a California Democrat, asked the nine banks to divulge total company compensation, average compensation for each employee, and the reasons for any year-to-year changes in the amounts for 2006, 2007 and 2008.

Waxman also asked for the number of employees paid or projected to be paid more than $500,000, and the total and projected compensation for the banks' 10 highest-paid employees.

Also yesterday, an impatient White House served notice on banks receiving billions of dollars in federal help to start making more loans. "What we're trying to do is get banks to do what they are supposed to do, which is support the system that we have in America. And banks exist to lend money," White House press secretary Dana Perino said.

Big Oil, Uh...

2008-10-31T08:32:00.001-05:00

[They raise prices because they can. Then they stick it to you]

Chevron's 3Q profit soars on oil prices

By JOHN PORRETTO

AP Energy Writer

Chevron Corp. says its third-quarter profit more than doubled on the back of record crude prices this summer.

The San Ramon, Calif.-based company, the second-largest U.S. oil company, said Friday it made $7.89 billion, or $3.85 a share, in the three months ended Sept. 30, versus $3.72 billion, or $1.75 per share, at the same time last year.

Analysts were expecting average earnings of $3.25 per share based on a survey by Thomson Reuters.

Revenue shot up 43 percent to $78.87 billion from $55.2 billion.

Shares in premarket trading fell 14 cents to $74.04.

Another "Community Leader"

2008-10-31T08:26:00.001-05:00

Missouri budget director arrested on drug charges

JEFFERSON CITY | The budget staff director for the Missouri House of Representatives has been arrested on drug charges.

The Jefferson City News-Tribune reported that Joseph Roberts, 46, was cited Tuesday for possessing drug paraphernalia. He has not yet been charged.

Police spokesman Capt. Doug Shoemaker told the newspaper that officers went to Roberts' home on a "check well being" call. Shoemaker said Roberts posted bond and was released.

A staff member for the House Appropriations Committee said Thursday that Roberts is out of the office until next week.

Community Leaders! Realtors, Bankers!

2008-10-30T15:01:00.001-05:00

Posted on Wed, Oct. 29, 2008

17 indicted in upscale mortgage fraud case

By MARK MORRIS
The Kansas City Star

A federal grand jury on Wednesday indicted 17 people in an alleged $12.6 million mortgage-fraud scheme that targeted upscale neighborhoods in Raymore and Lee's Summit.

The scheme purportedly paid $2.3 million in kickbacks to home buyers through shell companies the defendants established. The real estate agent and the builder also allegedly profited from the scheme, authorities said. The big losers were the mortgage companies that provided the loans and the neighboring property owners.

"This is one of the largest mortgage-fraud cases ever prosecuted in our district and illustrates that this is a problem that affects not only low-income neighborhoods, but also more affluent suburbs," said U.S. Attorney John Wood.

The indictments are the latest in a series of mortgage-fraud prosecutions aimed at restoring the integrity of the Kansas City housing market, Wood said. The case also reflects a sour national housing picture that has dealt a body blow to the U.S. financial system.

"Combating significant fraud in this area is a priority because mortgage lending and the housing market have a significant overall effect on the nation's economy," said FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Daniel D. Jones.

Although the indictment did not identify a ringleader, real estate agent Angela R. Clark, 40, figures prominently in the case, as do former mortgage loan officers Cynthia D. Jordan, 41, and Stefan M. Guerra, 30. All are from Lee's Summit.

Prosecutors alleged that Clark, Jordan and Guerra conspired with 14 property buyers from Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and California to defraud mortgage lenders from June 2005 to May 2007.

The buyers purportedly obtained loans by providing false information to lenders and then bought 25 homes at inflated prices in the Raintree and Belmont Farms subdivisions in Lee's Summit and the Eagle Glen subdivision in Raymore.

Clark and Jerome Shade Howard, 39, of Anaheim, Calif., purportedly sought potential buyers. Howard also supplied false Social Security numbers that some buyers used to obtain loans, the indictment alleged.

Raymore builder Jerry Emerick, who did business as Ty Construction and Residential Contracting LLC, allegedly paid kickbacks to the purchasers, but he was not charged Wednesday.

Wood said Emerick would be charged later.

The homeowners received kickbacks of $60,000 to $125,000 on each house, the indictments alleged.

According to the indictment, Clark received $381,495 in real estate fees while the mortgage lenders also received commissions.

Wood said he could not comment specifically on how the scheme distorted home values in the affected subdivisions. However, a look at Jackson County property tax records suggests it was substantial.

According to the indictment, defendants secured a $603,000 mortgage in July 2006 for the purchase of a home in Belmont Farms at 509 Southeast Snaffle Bit Court. After subtracting his building costs and profits from the mortgage payout, Emerick allegedly paid a $114,000 kickback to a shell company controlled by Howard, the purchaser, and $30,000 in real estate fees.

But while the home's 2008 market value is listed at $625,000, according to county tax records, it sold in August for $290,000.

Another nearby home identified in the indictment — 520 Southeast Snaffle Bit Court — had the same issue. Its 2008 market value is listed on county records at $520,000, but it sold in February for $248,000.

Although the scheme may have artificially inflated area property values at first, Wood noted that many of the 25 houses now are vacant and in foreclosure, thus depressing values.

"Mortgage fraud has significant impact on communities," Wood said. "A lot of these homes are in disrepair and are affecting the values of other homes."

The others indicted Wednesday were: James F. Simpson, 39, of Lee's Summit; Ronald E. Brown Jr., 39, of Gladstone; Enrico J. McClain, 36, of Kansas City; Daryle A. Edwards, 37, and Leon T. Jones. 42, of Olathe; Willie Charles Cadenhead Jr., 38, of Grandview; Gerald D. Williams, 47, and his wife, Judith E. Williams, 47, of Omaha, Neb.; Michael Conrad Smith, 47, of Lancaster, Calif.; Cheryl Ann Romero, 50, of Santa Fe Springs, Calif., Anahit Nshanian, 29, of Long Beach, Calif.; Mark Whitney Jackson, 48, of Woodland Hills, Calif.; and Steven M. Salas, 35, of Hacienda Heights, Calif.

None of the local defendants could be reached for comment. They all had unlisted numbers, disconnected service, full voice-mail accounts or, in one case, did not answer when a reporter called.

Authorities said Wednesday that all the defendants had known for some time they were under investigation.

Dwight D. Eisenhower and The Military-Industrial Complex

2008-10-24T14:24:00.004-05:00

John F. Kennedy on Secret Societies

2008-10-24T14:04:00.004-05:00

Greenspan ["TheBrain"] "shocked" at credit system breakdown

2008-10-23T11:18:00.003-05:00

Thu Oct 23, 2008 11:53am EDT

By Mark Felsenthal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress on Thursday he is "shocked" at the breakdown in U.S. credit markets and said he was "partially" wrong to resist regulation of some securities.

Despite concerns he had in 2005 that risks were being underestimated by investors, "this crisis, however, has turned out to be much broader than anything I could have imagined," Greenspan said in remarks prepared for delivery to the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

"Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity (myself especially) are in a state of shocked disbelief," said Greenspan, who stepped down from the Fed in 2006.

Banks and other financial institutions need public support, such as the recently approved $700 billion bailout package, to avoid a serious reduction in credit, he said.

While Greenspan was once hailed as one of the most accomplished central bankers in U.S. history, the low interest rates during his final Fed years have been blamed for fueling the housing bubble and eventual crash that touched off the current financial crisis. The former Fed chair said stabilization of U.S. housing markets -- a necessary precondition for the economy to heal -- is "many months in the future." He said he expected the unemployment rate to jump.

At the heart of the breakdown of credit markets was the securitization system that stimulated appetite for loans made to borrowers with spotty credit histories, Greenspan said.

"Without the excess demand from securitizers, subprime mortgage originations (undeniably the original source of crisis) would have been far smaller and defaults accordingly far fewer," he said.

"The consequent surge in global demand for U.S. subprime securities by banks, hedge and pension funds supported by unrealistically positive rating designations by credit agencies was, in my judgment, the core of the problem," he added.

Former Treasury Secretary John Snow agreed that risk had been under-priced on a global basis. He said risks in mortgage markets were masked in part by accounting irregularities at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

"A critical lack of transparency in secondary markets left policy-makers and regulators unable to discern the true nature and extent of the systemic risk that continued to build," he told the panel.

Greenspan urged that securitizers be required to retain "a meaningful part" of securities they issued. He said that regulatory reform will be necessary in the areas of fraud, settlement, and securitization to reestablish financial stability.

He also conceded he was "partially wrong" about his belief that certain derivatives, such as credit default swaps, did not need to be regulated.

Lawmakers, with one eye on a general election November 4, lined up on both ideological sides of the debate. Democrats assailed gaps in rules and oversight while Republicans faulted government-sponsored mortgage finance enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for contributing to credit market strains.

"For too long, the prevailing attitude in Washington has been that the market always knows best," Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, a California Democrat said. "The Federal Reserve had the authority to stop the irresponsible lending practices ... But its long-time chairman, Alan Greenspan, rejected pleas that he intervene."

Republicans countered that regulators were unable to avert disaster because of the extended network of financial oversight agencies and lawmakers' failure to rein in the powerful mortgage agencies, which are congressionally chartered.

"It wasn't deregulation that allowed this crisis," Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican said. "It was the mish-mash of regulations and regulators, each with too narrow a view of increasingly integrated national and global markets."

Republicans circulated an October 20 letter asking for a government investigation of alleged fraud and mismanagement at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the government took over in September to restore to financial health.

(Reporting by Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Tom Hals)
© Thomson Reuters 2008. All rights reserved. Users may download and print extracts of content from this website for their own personal and non-commercial use only. Republication or redistribution of Thomson Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters and its logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Thomson Reuters group of companies around the world.
Thomson Reuters journalists are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.

U.S. policymakers mull creation of domestic intelligence agency

2008-10-23T09:47:00.001-05:00

WASHINGTON (CNN) - The United Kingdom has MI-5, which roots out spies and terrorists in the British Isles.

Canada has CSIS-the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

Now Congress is asking: Should the U.S. have its own domestic intelligence agency?

On Monday, at the request of Congress, the RAND Corporation outlined the pros and cons of establishing a domestic intelligence agency. It also discussed different ways to organize a new entity, either as part of an existing department or as a new agency.

But there's one thing you won't find in the report -- a recommendation on what to do.

"We were not asked to make a recommendation, and this assessment does not do so," the report says.

Instead, says RAND's Gregory Treverton, the report provides a "framework" for policymakers to use when deciding whether and how to reorganize counter-intelligence efforts at home.

RAND is a nonprofit think tank seeking to help improve policy and decision making through objective research and analysis.

Collecting intelligence domestically always has been a sensitive issue, at least partially because of episodic abuses by the government, notably against civil rights leaders, unions, antiwar organizations or even communists and hate groups.

But the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks renewed calls for increased domestic intelligence to prevent future attacks. Critics said that in the lead-up to the attacks, the FBI devalued counterterrorism agents and failed to heed signs that an attack was imminent.

"If you didn't carry a gun, you didn't count so much," Treverton said.

After the attacks, the FBI moved to transform its primary mission from law enforcement to counterterrorism intelligence and prevention. It now focuses on terrorism through its National Security Branch and the National Counterterrorism Center.

The RAND report focuses on two options to the current system.

In one, a new agency would be created using intelligence agencies from the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and intelligence community. A second option is to create an "agency within an agency" in the FBI or DHS.

The first option would result in an organization with a clear, unambiguous mission, and might be able to draw on a more diverse recruitment pool, such as linguists and historians who are not normally attracted to law enforcement. On the flip side, such massive reorganizations typically involve political compromises that could affect its performance.

The second option -- an "agency within an agency" -- could involve less short-term disruption, but could be hindered by a "lack of clarity of a single mission," the report says.

RAND also suggests a range of actions short of reorganization that could improve domestic intelligence gathering, such as increasing resources, improving leadership and changing bureaucratic cultures.

The report does not assess the FBI's performance since 9/11, Treverton said, but he believes Congress should seek an independent assessment.

A panel of experts that RAND convened guessed that the probability of a terrorist attack had decreased about one-third since the September 11, 2001. But "they were not enthusiastic about alternatives" to current counterterrorism organizations.

In a cautionary note, the report says that while public acceptance of domestic intelligence activities is imperative, public attitudes about what is considered acceptable "can both be fragile and shift significantly over time."

"Public demand for domestic intelligence is driven by the perceived threat, and those perceptions can change much more rapidly than the threat itself," the report says. For instance, immediately after the 9/11 attacks, 49 percent of people surveyed were worried "a great deal" about more attacks. Two years later, that had dropped to 25 percent.

Posse Comitatus Act - Google it!

2008-10-23T08:09:00.001-05:00

Posse Camitatus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/10/12/18544204.php

Militarizing the "Homeland": NORTHCOM's Joint Task Force-Civil Support

by Aunty Fascista
Sunday Oct 12th, 2008 11:41 AM

more documentation of the coming martial law

Militarizing the "Homeland": NORTHCOM's Joint Task Force-Civil Support
Published on 12-10-2008

By Tom Burghardt

Antifascist Calling reported October 6 that nine months prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Donald Rumsfeld signed off on revisions for the Pentagon's secretive Continuity of Operations Program (COOP).

Based on a document (AR 500-3) published by the whistleblowing website Wikileaks, it described "all hazards COOP planning" as the mechanism by which "the Army remains capable of continuing mission-essential operations during any situation, including military attack, terrorist activities, and natural or man-made disasters."

The Wikileaks document is all the more relevant since a September report in Army Times described how the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team (BCT) would be deployed October 1 "under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North," the "service component" of NORTHCOM.

Since that article appeared September 8, Army Times has done a partial climb-down and now claims that the "non-lethal crowd control package" described earlier for operations in the heimat, "is intended for use on deployments to the war zone, not in the U.S., as previously stated."

But this mendacious claim by Army Times is belied by current political trends in the U.S. Under cover of the "war on terror," driftnet surveillance and moves toward suppressing dissent, most recently on display when protests during the Democratic and Republican National Conventions were criminalized and organizers were charged with "domestic terrorism" under the Patriot Act, are but the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Wholesale spying on activists by the Pentagon's now defunct Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), as well as revelations that State police agencies in Maryland routinely spied on antiwar organizers, shared this information with the National Security Agency and classified them as "terrorists" in government-run databases, are viewed as exemplary means to "keep the rabble in line"--and under wraps, if necessary.

A highly-disturbing report by Christopher Ketchum in the May/June 2008 issue of Radar Magazine, outlined how the top secret Main Core database linked to Continuity of Government contingency planning, "includes dissidents and activists of various stripes, political and tax protesters, lawyers and professors, publishers and journalists, gun owners, illegal aliens, foreign nationals, and a great many other harmless, average people."

Reporting in July for Salon, investigative journalist Tim Shorrock was told by a source that Main Core is "'an emergency internal security database system' designed for use by the military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or the imposition of martial law. Its name ... is derived from the fact that it contains 'copies of the 'main core' or essence of each item of intelligence information on Americans produced by the FBI and the other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community'."

As the historic economic and political crisis gripping capitalism deepens and intensifies, and as stop-gap measures deployed by the U.S. Treasury Department intended to shore-up the crumbling financial sector crash, one by one, "forward thinking" ruling class factions are openly preparing a "Pinochet option" for the American people.

In this context, the militarization of domestic law enforcement is now coupled with the military's own rapid development and deployment of "non-lethal weapons" systems which inevitably, will be "shared" with civilian police for "crowd control." As with data mining, DHS spy-satellite surveillance, blanket CCTV coverage of American cities, illegal FBI deployment of infiltrators and provocateurs, "mission creep" by the Pentagon into civil affairs are signs that stronger measures to blunt the crisis may be in the offing. (For more on the Pentagon's development of NLW's, see: Antifascist Calling, "'Non-Lethal' Weapons: Where Science and Technology Service Repression," July 8, 2008; and, Antifascist Calling, "The Calmative Before the Storm," July 12, 2008)

During the recent Vibrant Response exercise at Fort Stewart, Georgia, three units of NORTHCOM's Consequence Management Response Force (CCMRF, pronounced "sea-smurfs"), including two combat units from the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Army Division and the elite 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade participated in mock drills designed to "coordinate with local governments and interagency organizations such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Emergency Management Agency," according to a report on U.S. Northern Command News.

Interestingly enough, Fort Stewart is also the site of a top secret NSA listening post that routinely "intercepted and transcribed satellite phone calls of American civilians in the Middle East for the NSA," according to a whistleblower and former Arab linguist attached to the illegal NSA project, Wired reports.

Code-named "Operation Highlander," the top secret program was initiated in the wake of the September 11 attacks on orders from the Bush administration. According to Wired,

If the allegations are true, it would seem to indicate that warrantless spying of Americans approved by President Bush following 9/11 expanded rapidly beyond U.S. borders to citizens overseas, notwithstanding United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18, or USSID 18--an NSA rule that bars overseas surveillance of Americans without authorization and probable cause. (Kim Zetter, "Inside Operation Highlander," Wired, October 10, 2008)

While the ostensible purpose of Vibrant Response was to wargame scenarios where chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or high-yield explosive incidents (CBRNE) were launched "in the nation's heartland," what other events could trigger the declaration of a "national security emergency," or even martial law in the U.S.?

As Amy Goodman reported in a column for Democracy Now!

Military participation in domestic operations was originally outlawed with the Posse Comitatus Act in 1878. The John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007, however, included a section that allowed the president to deploy the armed forces to "restore public order" or to suppress "any insurrection." While a later bill repealed this, President Bush attached a signing statement that he did not feel bound by the repeal. ("Invasion of the Sea-Smurfs," Democracy Now!, October 2, 2008)

As I pointed out in my October 6 article, current Army doctrine is heavily-weighted towards contingency planning for "civil disturbances." While these programs are not new and in fact, plans such as Garden Plot and Cable Splicer have been integral to military doctrine since the late 1960s, what is new--and highly disturbing--is the launch of NORTHCOM's Joint Task Force Civil Support (JTF-CS).

Located at Ft. Monroe in Hampton, Virginia, JTF-CS is described on NORTHCOM's website as "a subordinate command of U.S. Northern Command, a unified combatant command formed in October 2002 to plan, organize and execute both homeland defense and civil support missions."

While NORTHCOM claims that JTF-CS would be deployed "only after a Governor requests federal assistance from the President, and after the President issues a Presidential Disaster Declaration," the Bush signing statement as well as secret annexes in updated Continuity of Government planning documents, National Security Presidential Directive 51/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20 (NSPD 51/HSPD 20) means, as Commander-in-Chief,

The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government. In order to advise and assist the President in that function, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism (APHS/CT) is hereby designated as the National Continuity Coordinator. ...

Federal Government COOP, COG, and ECG plans and operations shall be appropriately integrated with the emergency plans and capabilities of State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure, as appropriate, in order to promote interoperability and to prevent redundancies and conflicting lines of authority. The Secretary of Homeland Security shall coordinate the integration of Federal continuity plans and operations with State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure, as appropriate, in order to provide for the delivery of essential services during an emergency. (The White House, President George W. Bush, NSPD 51/HSPD 20, May 7, 2007)

It should be kept in mind that top secret annexes of this document have been withheld from Congress, despite repeated requests--and legal oversight requirements--by the House Homeland Security Committee, as Peter Dale Scott reported in March for CounterPunch.

NORTHCOM avers that,

The Primary Federal Agency [PFA] is the federal civilian agency designated to coordinate and direct the government's response to a disaster or emergency situation. Presidential Decision Directive 39 designated the Federal Emergency Management Agency as the PFA for managing the consequences of CBRNE events. In most instances, FEMA will be the PFA, however, the Federal Bureau of Investigation serves as the PFA for crisis management in events designated as an act of terrorism. Although the JTF-CS supports the PFA throughout a CBRNE consequence management operation, the unit operates within a clear Department of Defense chain of command. (U.S. Northern Command, Joint Task Force Civil Support, FAQ, no date)

In other words, although civilian agencies are the nominal PFA's during a "disaster or emergency situation," JTF-CS "operates within a clear Department of Defense chain of command" that begins and ends with the Executive Branch, that is, the President in his role as the leader of the "unitary executive branch" and Commander-in-Chief. Were a "national emergency" of any kind declared by the President, rules governing Continuity of Government operations would place civilian agencies, including "State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure," under the effective control of the military.

This is clearly delineated in Department of Defense Directive 3025.12 (DoD 3025.12), "Military Assistance for Civil Disturbances (MACDIS)":

Ensure continuous planning by the DoD Components, both in the Department of Defense and in cooperation with civil government agencies for MACDIS operations that may be required during any time or condition of peace, war, or transition to war, including any national security emergency. ...

The President is authorized by the Constitution and laws of the United States to employ the Armed Forces of the United States to suppress insurrections, rebellions, and domestic violence under various conditions and circumstances. Planning and preparedness by the Federal Government and the Department of Defense for civil disturbances are important due to the potential severity of the consequences of such events for the Nation and the population.

Military resources may be employed in support of civilian law enforcement operations in the 50 States, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the U.S. territories and possessions only in the parameters of the Constitution and laws of the United States and the authority of the President and the Secretary of Defense, including delegations of that authority through this Directive or other means.

The primary responsibility for protecting life and property and maintaining law and order in the civilian community is vested in the State and local governments. Supplementary responsibility is vested by statute in specific Agencies of the Federal Government other than the Department of Defense. The President has additional powers and responsibilities under the Constitution of the United States to ensure that law and order are maintained. ("Military Assistance for Civil Disturbances [MACDIS]," Department of Defense Directive, No. 3025.12, February 4, 1994, pp. 1, 3) [emphasis added]

The Executive Branch's leading role in MACDIS operations are underscored by the following:

Delegations of Authority. The Secretary of Defense shall be assisted in executing his responsibility for MACDIS by the following:

The Secretary of the Army shall be the DoD Executive Agent and shall act for the Secretary of Defense in accordance with this Directive and any supplemental direction or guidance received from the Secretary of Defense. In that capacity, the DoD Executive Agent shall develop planning guidance, plans, and procedures for MACDIS, in accordance with this Directive. The DoD Executive Agent has the authority of the Secretary of Defense to task the DoD Components to plan for and to commit DoD resources, in response to requests from civil authorities under MACDIS. The DoD Executive Agent shall coordinate with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff any commitment of Military Forces assigned to the Combatant Commands.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shall communicate to the Commanders of the Combatant Commands appropriate guidance issued by the DoD Executive Agent for their compliance with this Directive, and also shall assist the DoD Executive Agent in developing MACDIS planning guidance for all conditions of war or attacks on the United States or its territories. ...

For response to domestic terrorist incidents and other purposes, the DoD Executive Agent shall obtain authority from the Secretary of Defense for any employment of U.S. counterterrorism forces. The DoD Executive Agent shall coordinate with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff any request, contingency plan, directive, or order affecting the employment of such forces and, simultaneously, shall provide all applicable information to the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict), who provides policy oversight for the Secretary of Defense, in accordance with DoD Directive 5138.3 (reference (h)).

The Secretary of Defense reserves the authority to modify or terminate the Executive Agency established by this Directive if operational needs so require in a particular situation. (MACDIS, op. cit., pp. 5-6)

What those "operational needs" are that might require the Secretary of Defense to "modify or terminate" the "Executive Agency" are not specified in the MACDIS Directive. However, in this regard, it is clear that a leading role of U.S. military "civil disturbance" operations will be assumed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and not a "Prime Federal Authority," that is a civilian agency. The JCS will,

In coordination with the DoD Executive Agent, facilitate communications by the DoD Executive Agent with Commanders of Combatant Commands, as appropriate.

Ensure the compatibility of MACDIS plans with other military plans.

Assist in the DoD Executive Agent's determination of military units and capabilities sufficient for all contingencies of the GARDEN PLOT plan.

Support training for and coordinated evaluation of MACDIS plans and capabilities by the Commanders of the Combatant Commands through exercises or other means, as appropriate. (MACDIS, op. cit., pp. 10-11)

Clearly, NORTHCOM's Vibrant Response exercise, initiated by the Joint Task Force-Civil Support falls under the broad purview of Garden Plot and other planning "contingencies." In terms of dealing with a "national security emergency" declared by the Executive Branch under rules governing Continuity of Government operations, DoD 3025.12 describes "civil disturbances" as,

Group acts of violence and disorders prejudicial to public law and order in the 50 States, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the U.S. possessions and territories, or any political subdivision thereof. The term "civil disturbance" includes all domestic conditions requiring the use of Federal Armed Forces under this Directive. (MACDIS, op. cit., p. 17)

Would, let's say, the eruption of mass protests as a result of a stolen presidential election or mass actions as a legitimate and exemplary civilian response to limiting bank withdrawals, a freeze on Social Security payments, a prohibition on strikes or the declaration of a "national security emergency" as a result of prerevolutionary challenges to the legitimacy of federal authority (as took place in Argentina in 2000 during that nation's economic meltdown) trigger MACDIS and other Continuity of Government operations?

DoD 3025.12 states, "Under reference (r), the terms "major disaster" and "emergency" are defined substantially by action of the President in declaring that extant circumstances and risks justify Presidential implementation of the legal powers in those statutes." In other words, "extant circumstances" are "defined substantially" by the President. Once triggered by Executive Order, the scope of operations undertaken by the military acting as the enforcement arm of the "unitary executive branch" are virtually unlimited.

Under these rules, martial law, suspension of habeas corpus, indefinite detention would render lawful rules guiding a constitutional republic moot; mere footnotes written on the "blank page" of America's "new normal," what Naomi Klein has termed "disaster capitalism." Klein writes,

A more accurate term for the system that erases the boundaries between Big Government and Big Business is not liberal, conservative or capitalist, but corporatist. Its main characteristics are huge transfers of public wealth to private hands, often accompanied by exploding debt, an ever-widening chasm between the dazzling rich and the disposable poor and an aggressive nationalism that justifies unlimited spending on security. For those inside the bubble of extreme wealth created by such an arrangement, there can be no more profitable way to organize a society. But because of the obvious drawbacks for the vast majority of the population left outside the bubble, other features of the corporatist state tend to include aggressive surveillance (once again, with government and large corporations trading favors and contracts), mass incarceration, shrinking civil liberties and often, though not always, torture. (The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007, p. 15)

Now that the economic bubble for the vast majority of Americans has burst, "shrinking civil liberties" are rushing headlong towards the vanishing point.

While DoD 3025.12 states that "any employment of Military Forces in support of law enforcement operations shall maintain the primacy of civilian authorities," as noted above JTF-CS "operates within a clear Department of Defense chain of command," answerable to the President, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Army as the "DoD Executive Agent for MACDIS."

Clearly, a "terrorist attack" or "any national security emergency" so designated by the President would trigger MACDIS guidance for "civilian law enforcement operations" and fall under the purview of NORTHCOM and JTF-CS as "a subordinate command" and would play a leading role in responding to "any national security emergency" declared by the President.

Despite the repeal of the "Insurrection Act Rider" to the 2007 Defense Appropriations bill that gave the President sweeping emergency power to deploy the military for any "condition" he might cite, not merely a terrorist atrocity or CBRNE "event," the Bush "signing statement" reported by Amy Goodman above, effectively nullified Congress' intent not to give the president carte blanche to station U.S. troops on American streets.

While NORTHCOM insists that JTF-CS, "will not be called upon to help with law enforcement, civil disturbance or crowd control, but will be used to support lead agencies involved in saving lives," as I have outlined above, citing the DoD's own documents and Executive Branch National Security Presidential Directives, contingency plans for suppressing "civil disturbance" such as the Garden Plot scenario are, like an iron fist inside a velvet glove, already in place and capable at a moment's notice of striking the American people.

During these dark times, it is well-worth recalling the sage advice of the great American revolutionary Thomas Jefferson: The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/2008/10/militarizing-homeland-northcoms-joint.html

Uh, responsible and mature Police? Uh,...

2008-10-21T10:02:00.000-05:00

Officer Fired After Tasering Teen for Fun at a Birthday Party
Officer and Partyers Had Been Drinking When Taser Was Fired

By SARAH NETTER
Oct. 20, 2008 —
A rookie police officer in central Florida has been fired after Tasering a teenager at his request during a birthday party where police say adults and teens mingled over alcohol.
And all of it was caught on tape.

Dan NeSmith, 22, lost his job with the Eustis Police Department in Florida, but won't face charges for Tasering 15-year-old Taylor Davis in the back last month. Prosecutors say NeSmith could be charged for hosting a party for minors where alcohol was served, a second-degree misdemeanor in Florida.

Eustis Police Chief Fred Cobb told ABCNews.com, of the 40 to 50 people at NeSmith's home in the town of Leesburg, about 20 of them were younger than 21. The birthday boy was 19.

"At some point during the party, the topic of the Taser came up and the 15-year-old expressed his desire to be [Tasered]," Cobb said. "Officer NeSmith opted to show him what it was like."

Neither Davis nor his mother could be reached for comment today. But Cobb said Davis was seen on a television report laughing about it, saying that Eustis police had overreacted and that it was a lifelong goal to be Tasered.

The video shows NeSmith putting the weapon to Davis' back and firing. After visible electrical currents shoot into the teen, he falls forward; NeSmith still holds the Taser to his back. Police later observed the tell-tale three-pronged mark of a Taser on Davis' back, along his spine.

"It's almost like they got caught up in the moment," Cobb said.

The police report identified Bryan Snell as the person who shot the video of the incident. A message left at the Snell residence in Tavares, a few houses away from the Davis house, was not immediately returned.

NeSmith did not immediately respond to a request for comment, made through the Eustis Police Department.

Firing a Taser inappropriately is not illegal, the chief said, but it violated department policy.
Several Eustis police officials heard rumors about the incident and when NeSmith was called in for questioning, he didn't deny it, Cobb said. He was suspended with pay for a little less than a month while the department's Officer of Professional Standards investigated. He was officially fired Oct. 8.

The Lake County Sheriff's Office, which has jurisdiction in Leesburg, located about 45 miles northwest of Orlando, is contacting the parents of the underage party attendees and will "look into the incident," Sgt. John Herrell told ABCNews.com.

Cobb said senior department officials had, more than once, spoken to him about NeSmith's professionalism and maturity before the Taser incident. Officers in Eustis are encouraged to experience a Taser shock before carrying the weapon and NeSmith had gone through that training, Cobb said.

The police chief said NeSmith, a former sheriff's explorer, was an "outstanding young officer in so many respects. That's what kind of upset me about it."

Cobb said NeSmith, who was earning about $35,000 a year, had been on the job for 13 months. He reportedly told Cobb that he'd had one or two beers before the incident. He can be seen on the video, lucidly explaining to Davis what he would experience once the weapon is fired.

Cobb said NeSmith "offered no excuses" for the incident and acknowledged that it embarrassed the department.

A police report on the internal investigation said that NeSmith knew there were underage partyers at his house and that he tried to take alcohol away from those he saw drinking, but that he couldn't watch everyone.

Davis told police that several underage people had been playing beer pong at the party and that he and up to 15 others slept over at NeSmith's house that night.

NeSmith told police, according to the report, that he had not met Davis before the party. Davis' mother told police that she was initially mad about the incident, but later calmed down.

"She did not want the officer to lose his job," the report read, "and knew he would receive punishment."

While most police departments defend the use of Tasers and say they are used safely and appropriately all the time, their use has sparked controversy for years.

A Chicago man died Saturday after being Tasered by police. Officials said it appeared the man had been drinking and may have ingested narcotics an autopsy to determine exactly how the man died is pending. Last month, a New York Police Department officer used a Taser to subdue a naked man perched on a building ledge. The man fell headfirst to his death . The police lieutenant who ordered the Tasering shot and killed himself days later.
The Associated Press reports contributed to this story.

Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures

Dog

2008-10-20T11:22:00.001-05:00

Well, yesterday I saw a one-armed dog, or a three-legged dog, depending on the extent of your antrhopomorphisistic tendencies.

So, It's about Powell "looking good", Not Integrity

2008-10-20T09:08:00.002-05:00

October 20, 2008

Powell's Endorsement Puts Spotlight on His Legacy

By ELISABETH BUMILLER New York Times

WASHINGTON — Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's endorsement of Senator Barack Obama on Sunday represented his own transformative moment in a lifelong journey through war and politics.

It was not only an embrace of a presidential candidate from the other party, but also an effort to reshape a legacy that he himself considers tainted by his service under President Bush.

The endorsement, which came after months of conversations between Mr. Powell and Mr. Obama on a wide range of foreign and domestic policy issues, made clear Mr. Powell's dismay at the Republican Party. He said he felt that the party had become too conservative under Mr. Bush, and that Senator John McCain's campaign was not good for the country or its reputation around the world.

In that sense, his remarks further stirred the brewing debate about the nature of the post-Bush Republican Party.

"I have some concerns about the direction that the party has taken in recent years," Mr. Powell told Tom Brokaw on "Meet the Press" on NBC as he made his endorsement of Mr. Obama. "It has moved more to the right than I would like to see it." In recent weeks, Mr. Powell added, "the approach of the Republican Party and Mr. McCain has become narrower and narrower."