Judge Strikes Down Bush on Terror Groups


By Linda Deutsch
,AP Special Correspondent
Nov 29, 6:46 AM ET


A federal judge struck down President Bush's authority to designate groups as terrorists, saying his post-Sept. 11 executive order was unconstitutional and vague.

Some parts of the Sept. 24, 2001 order tagging 27 groups and individuals as "specially designated global terrorists" were too vague and could impinge on First Amendment rights of free association, U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins said.

The order gave the president "unfettered discretion" to label groups without giving them a way to challenge the designations, she said in a Nov. 21 ruling that was made public Tuesday.

The judge, who two years ago invalidated portions of the U.S. Patriot Act, rejected several sections of Bush's Executive Order 13224 and enjoined the government from blocking the assets of two foreign groups.

However, she let stand sections that would penalize those who provide "services" to designated terrorist groups.

She said such services would include the humanitarian aid and rights training proposed by the plaintiffs.

The ruling was praised by David Cole, a lawyer for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Constitutional Rights, who represented the plaintiff Humanitarian Law Project.

It "says that even in fighting terrorism the president cannot be given a blank check to blacklist anyone he considers a bad guy or a bad group and you can't imply guilt by association," Cole said.

He said the Humanitarian Law Project will appeal those portions of the executive order which were allowed to stand.

A U.S. Department of Justice spokesman had a mixed reaction to the judge's ruling.

"We are pleased the court rejected many of the constitutional arguments raised by the plaintiffs, including their challenge to the government's ban on providing services to terrorist organizations," Justice spokesman Charles Miller said Tuesday. "However, we believe the court erred in finding that certain other aspects of the executive order were unconstitutional."

The judge's ruling was a reversal of her own tentative findings last July in which she indicated she would uphold wide powers asserted by Bush under an anti-terror financing law. She delayed her ruling then to allow more legal briefs to be filed.

The long-running litigation has centered on two groups, the Liberation Tigers, which seeks a separate homeland for the Tamil people in Sri Lanka, and Partiya Karkeran Kurdistan, a political organization representing the interests of Kurds in Turkey.

Both groups have been designated by the United States as foreign terrorist organizations.

The judge's 45-page ruling granted in part and denied in part a legal challenge brought by the Humanitarian Law Project, which seeks to provide training to the groups in human rights advocacy and provide them with humanitarian aid.

Source:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061129/ap_on_re_us/terrorist_designation
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AD BUSTERS

First World Fascismo




After seventy years of being bandied about willy-nilly, fascism – the epithet – doesn’t seem to have quite the punch that it used to. We’ve heard it hurled countless times, from every political sector, toward virtually any target, and we’ve seen it remixed and repurposed into neo-fascism, Christofascism, liberal fascism, crypto-fascism and, most recently, Islamofascism. So we’d be forgiven for concluding that the word had become nothing but a feeble smear, cleaned out through all of this wilful misuse.

Yet fascism may still have a surprise or two in store for us. Here we could talk about increased surveillance. We could talk about the building of walls to keep certain folk out and certain folk in. We could talk about extra-judicial imprisonment, about torture and abuse, about the veneration of an ever-burgeoning military, about shades of compulsory patriotism. We could say that all of these things are forewarnings, inauspicious omens of the return of true state-sanctioned fascism, albeit under a new name and in some superficially altered form.

But we won’t easily be convinced. We will ask, “Where are the heroic mass rallies? Where are the exaltations of racial superiority? The larger-than-life portraits, the cults of personality? Where are the monuments, the fantastic, improbable, inspiring constructs embodying the word and deed and soul of the people, the testaments to the greatness of the past, the present, and the future, forever, into eternity?”

For the most part, we won’t find any of these things. Sure, we have our own monumental constructs – our Freedom Towers and our gleaming, titanium-sheathed wonders – all tributes to the people’s unrivalled ingenuity and steely resolve. But these are almost too conventional, too obvious for our cleverness.

No, we’ve done away with such overt idols. Ingeniously, we’ve fashioned our most potent monuments at a human scale. We’ve taken the otherwise mundane – trade goods, knick-knacks, gadgets – and we’ve imbued them with a throbbing life, making them spectacular, mysterious, holy. And we’ve internalized these fetishes, taking them into our flesh where they have transformed us, pulling our feet from the clay. Now, we are taut, muscular, immaculate bodies, flawlessly accessorised with the studied chiaroscuro precision of triumphant product shots – all of it glistening with a sheen so luxuriant, so enviable, that in the confusion of ecstatic wanting there is scarcely a divide between ourselves and that which we desire.

This is fascination fascism, the fascism of the mirror. Quite apart from the historical regimes whose trappings we also freely borrow, this is a novel fascism of the First World’s own making. We stare. We study. We obsess. We are transfixed by this idealized image, gazing into the brilliant depths of the healthiest, wealthiest, most energetic, most handsome, most fulfilled, most entertained, most charismatic, most esteemed, yet ultimately most depraved image of ourselves.

In the meantime, ten of thousands of Indian cotton farmers commit suicide in the massive wake of Western farm subsidies. In the meantime, our obsolete cruiseships – spent of their pleasures but burdened with toxic waste – set sail for poorer shores to be scrapped. In the meantime, the ice shelves break free under the weight of our appetites.

And still, we cling – often violently – to the privilege of being not quite of this earth. And we swoon at the sight of our own spectacular loveliness.

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_______________

Elder Bush Takes on Son's Arab Critics


By Jim Krane
Associated Press Writer
November 21, 2006


ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) --Former President George H.W. Bush took on Arab critics of his son Tuesday during a testy exchange at a leadership conference in the capital of this U.S. ally.

"My son is an honest man," Bush told members of the audience harshly criticized the current U.S. leader's foreign policy.

The oil-rich Persian Gulf used to be safe territory for former President Bush, who brought Arab leaders together in a coalition that drove Saddam Hussein's troops from Kuwait in 1991. But gratitude for the elder Bush, who served as president from 1989-93, was overshadowed at the conference by hostility toward his son, whose invasion of Iraq and support for Israel are deeply unpopular in the region.

"We do not respect your son. We do not respect what he's doing all over the world," a woman in the audience bluntly told Bush after his speech. Bush, 82, appeared stunned as others in the audience whooped and whistled in approval.

A college student told Bush his belief that U.S. wars were aimed at opening markets for American companies and said globalization was contrived for America's benefit at the expense of the rest of the world. Bush was having none of it.

"I think that's weird and it's nuts," Bush said. "To suggest that everything we do is because we're hungry for money, I think that's crazy. I think you need to go back to school."

The hostile comments came during a quesion-and-answer session after Bush finished a folksy address on leadership by telling the audience how deeply hurt he feels when his presidential son is criticized.

"This son is not going to back away," Bush said, his voice quivering. "He's not going to change his view because some poll says this or some poll says that, or some heartfelt comments from the lady who feels deeply in her heart about something. You can't be president of the United States and conduct yourself if you're going to cut and run. This is going to work out in Iraq. I understand the anxiety. It's not easy."

Bush also told the audience its derisive hoots were mild compared to the reaction he got in Germany in the 1980s, after persuading the country to deploy U.S. nuclear missiles.

He told the audience — including dozens of women in black robes and head scarves — he was extremely proud of his sons, President George W. Bush and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

He said the happiest day of his life was election day in 1998 when George and Jeb were elected to the governorships of Texas and Florida, but he also described the pain he feels when his sons are attacked.

"I can't begin to tell you the pride I feel in my two sons," Bush said. "When your son's under attack, it hurts. You're determined to be at his side and help him any way you possibly can."

One audience member asked the former president what advice he gives his son on Iraq.

Bush said the presence of reporters in the audience prevented him from revealing his advice. He also declined to comment on his expectations for the findings of the Iraq Study Group, an advisory commission led by Bush family friend and his former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Rep. Lee Hamilton. The group is expected to issue its report soon.

"I have strong opinions on a lot of these things. But the reason I can't voice them is, if I did what you ask me to do — tell you what advice I give my son — that would then be flashed all over the world," Bush said.

"If it happened to deviate one iota, one little inch, from what the president's doing or thinks he ought to be doing, it would be terrible. It'd bring great anxiety not only to him but to his supporters," he added.

Bush said he'd spoken with Baker recently — the two are neighbors in Houston — but preferred to reminisce about old times than discuss what America ought to do in Iraq.

"In the early 1960s, Jim Baker and I were the men's doubles champions in tennis in the city of Houston," Bush said with a grin. "If I were to suggest what they ought to do, it just would not be constructive and certainly would not be helpful to the president. It would cause grief to him."

Bush said he was surprised by the audience's criticism of his son.

"He is working hard for peace. It takes a lot of guts to get up and tell a father about his son in those terms when I just told you the thing that matters in my heart is my family," he said. "How come everybody wants to come to the United States if the United States is so bad?"

Source:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/11/21/national/w112354S18.DTL
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A Fresh Look at the Draft


By George Friedman
Stratfor: Geopolitical Intelligence Report
November 21, 2006


New York Democrat Charles Rangel, the new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has called for the reinstatement of the draft.

This is not new for him; he has argued for it for several years. Nor does Rangel -- or anyone else -- expect a proposal for conscription to pass. However, whether this is political posturing or a sincere attempt to start a conversation about America's military, Rangel is making an important point that should be considered. This is doubly true at a time when future strategies are being considered in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the available force is being strained to its limits.

The United States has practiced conscription in all major wars since the Civil War. During the Cold War, the United States practiced conscription continually, using it to fight both the Korean and Vietnam wars, but also to maintain the peacetime army. Conscription ended in 1973 as the U.S. role in Vietnam declined and as political opposition to the draft surged. From that point on, the United States shifted to a volunteer force.

Rangel's core criticism of the volunteer force is social. He argues that the burden of manning the military and fighting the war has fallen, both during Vietnam War conscription and in the volunteer army, for different reasons, on the lower and middle-lower classes. Apart from other arguments -- such as the view that if the rich were being drafted, the Vietnam and Iraq wars would have ended sooner -- Rangel's essential point is that the way the United States has manned the military since World War II is inherently unjust. It puts the lower classes at risk in fighting wars, leaving the upper classes free to pursue their lives and careers.

The problem with this argument is not the moral point, which is that the burden of national defense should be borne by all classes, but rather the argument that a draft would be more equitable. Rangel's view of the military and the draft was shaped by Vietnam -- and during Vietnam, there was conscription. But it was an inherently inequitable conscription, in the sense that during most of the war, deferments were given for students.

That deferment, earlier in the war, extended to graduate school. As a result, by definition, the less-educated were more vulnerable to conscription than the more-educated. There were a host of deferments, including medical deferments, and the sophisticated could game the system easily. A draft, by itself, does not in any way guarantee equity.

During the final years of the Vietnam-era draft, the deferment system was replaced by a lottery. This was intended to (and, to some extent, did) reduce the inequities of the system, although sophisticated college students with low numbers continued to find ways to avoid conscription using the complex rules of the Selective Service system -- ways that the less-educated still couldn't use. The lottery system was an improvement, but in the end, it still meant that some would go into harm's way while others would stay home and carry on their lives. Basing the draft on a lottery might have mitigated social injustice, but basing life-and-death matters such as going to war on the luck of the draw still strikes us as inappropriate.

The switch from deferments to the lottery points out one of the key problems of conscription.

The United States does not need, and cannot afford, a military that would consist of all of the men (and now, we assume, women) aged 19-21. That would create a force far too large and far too inexperienced. The lottery was designed to deal with a reality in which the United States needed conscription, but could not cope with universal conscription. Some method had to be found to determine who would and would not serve -- and any such method would be either unfair or arbitrary.

Americans remember World War II as, in many ways, the morally perfect war: the right enemy, the right spirit and the right military. But World War II was unique in that the United States had to field an enormous military. While some had to man truly essential industries, and some were medically disqualified, World War II was a case in which universal conscription was absolutely needed because the size of the force had to be equal to the size of the total pool of available and qualified manpower, minus essential workers.

Unless it suited the needs of the military, no one was deferred. Married men with children, brilliant graduate students, the children of the rich and famous -- all went. There were still inequities in the kinds of assignments people got and the pull that was sometimes used. But what made the World War II conscription system work well was that everyone was needed and everyone was called.

Not everyone is needed in today's military.

You might make the case for universal service -- people helping teachers and cleaning playgrounds. But there is a fundamental difference between these jobs and, at least in principle, the military. In the military, you might be called on to risk your life and die. For the most part, that isn't expected from teacher's aides. Thus, even if there were universal service, you would still be left with the dilemma of who gets to teach arts and crafts and who goes on patrol in Baghdad. Universal conscription does not solve the problem inherent in military conscription.

And there is an even more fundamental issue. During World War II, conscription, for just about everyone, meant service until the end of the war. During the Cold War, there was no clear end in sight. Since not everyone was conscripted, having conscripts serve until the end of the war could mean a lifetime of service. The decision was made that draftees would serve for two years and remain part of the reserve for a period of time thereafter.

Training during World War II took weeks for most combat specialties, with further training undertaken with soldiers' units or through combat. In World War II, the United States had a mass-produced army with plenty of time to mature after training. During Vietnam, conscripts went through basic training and advanced training, leaving a year for deployment in Vietnam and some months left over after the tour of duty.

Jobs that required more complex training, from Special Forces to pilots to computer programmers, were handled by volunteers who served at least three years and, in many cases, longer. The draftee was used to provide the mass. The complexities of the war were still handled by a volunteer force.

The Battle of the Bulge took place 62 years ago.

The Tet Offensive was nearly 39 years ago.

The 90-day-wonder officers served well in World War II, and the draftee riflemen were valiant in Vietnam, but military requirements have changed dramatically. Now the military depends on highly trained specialists and groups of specialists, whose specialties -- from rifleman to warehouse worker -- have become more and more complex and sophisticated. On the whole, the contemporary Army, which historically has absorbed most draftees, needs more than two years in order to train draftees in their specialties, integrate them with their units and deploy them to combat.

Today, a two-year draft would be impractical because, on the whole, it would result in spending huge amounts of money on training, with very little time in actual service to show for it. Conscription could, of course, be extended to a three- or even four-year term, but with only selective service -- meaning that only a fraction of those eligible would be called -- that extension would only intensify the unfairness. Some would spend three or four years in the military, while others would be moving ahead with schools and careers. In effect, it would be a huge tax on the draftees for years of earnings lost.

A new U.S. draft might force the children of the wealthy into the military, but only at the price of creating other inequities and a highly inefficient Army. The training cycle and retention rate of a two-year draft would swamp the Army. In Iraq, the Army needs Special Forces, Civil Affairs specialists, linguists, intelligence analysts, unmanned aerial vehicle operators and so on. You can draft for that, we suppose, but it is hard to imagine building a force that way.

A volunteer force is a much more efficient way to field an Army. There is more time for training, there is a higher probability of retention and there are far fewer morale problems. Rangel is wrong in comparing the social base of this Army with that of Vietnam. But the basic point he is trying to make is true: The makeup of the U.S. Army is skewed toward the middle and lower-middle class. But then, so are many professions. Few children of the wealthy get jobs in the Social Security Administration or become professional boxers. The fact that the Army does not reflect the full social spectrum of the country doesn't mean very much. Hardly anything reflects that well.

Still, Rangel is making an important point, even if his argument for the draft does not work. War is a special activity of society. It is one of the few in which the citizen is expected -- at least in principle -- to fight and, if necessary, die for his country. It is more than a career. It is an existential commitment, a willingness to place oneself at risk for one's country. The fact that children of the upper classes, on the whole, do not make that existential commitment represents a tremendous weakness in American society. When those who benefit most from a society feel no obligation to defend it, there is a deep and significant malaise in that society.

However, we have been speaking consistently here about the children of the rich, and not of the rich themselves. Combat used to be for the young. It required stamina and strength. That is still needed. However, there are two points to be made. First, many -- perhaps most -- jobs in today's military that do not require the stamina of youth, as proven by all the contractors doing essentially military work in Iraq. Second, 18- to 22-year-olds are far from the most physically robust age group. Given modern diet and health regimens, there are people who are substantially older who have the stamina and strength for combat duty. If you can play tennis as well as you claim to for as long as you say, you can patrol a village in the Sunni Triangle.

We do not expect to be taken seriously on this proposal, but we will make it anyway: There is no inherent reason why enlistment -- or conscription -- should be targeted toward those in late adolescence. And there is no reason why the rich themselves, rather than the children of the rich, should not go to war. Or, for that matter, why older people with established skills should not be drawn into the military.

That happened in World War II, and it could happen now. The military's stove-pipe approach to military careers, and the fact that it allows almost no lateral movement into service for 40- to 60-year-olds, is irrational. Even if we exclude combat arms, other specialties could be well- served by such a method -- which also would reduce the need for viciously expensive contractors.

Traditionally, the draft has fallen on those who were barely adults, who had not yet had a chance to live, who were the least equipped to fight a complex war. Other age groups were safe. Rangel is talking about drafting the children of the rich. It would be much more interesting, if the United States were to introduce the draft, to impose it in a different way, on entirely different age groups. Let the young get on with starting their lives. Let those who have really benefited from society, who have already lived, ante up.

Modern war does not require the service of 19-year-olds.

In the field, you need the strong, agile and smart, but we know several graying types who still could hack that. And in the offices that proliferate in the military, experienced businesspeople would do even better at modernizing the system. If they were drafted, and went into harm's way, they would know exactly what they were fighting for and why -- something we hardly think most 19-year-olds really know yet.

Obviously, no one is going to adopt this crackpot proposal, even though we are quite serious about it. But we ask that you take seriously two points. Rangel is correct in saying that the upper classes in American society are not pulling their weight. But if the parents haven't served, we cannot reasonably expect the children to do so.

If Americans are serious about dealing with the crisis of lack of service among the wealthiest, then they should look to the wealthiest first, rather than their children.

Source:
http://www.stratfor.com/
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YOU MAY NEED PERMISSION TO LEAVE THE UNITED STATES BEGINNING JAN 14, 2007 !!!


By MARK NESTMANN
November 2, 2006


Forget no-fly lists. If Uncle Sam gets its way, beginning on Jan. 14, 2007, we'll all be on no-fly lists, unless the government gives us permission to leave-or re-enter-the United States.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (HSA) has proposed that all airlines, cruise lines-even fishing boats-be required to obtain clearance for each passenger they propose taking into or out of the United States.

It doesn't matter if you have a U.S. passport-a "travel document" that now, absent a court order to the contrary, gives you a virtually unqualified right to enter or leave the United States, any time you want. When the DHS system comes into effect next January, if the agency says "no" to a clearance request, or doesn't answer the request at all, you won't be permitted to enter-or leave-the United States.

Consider what might happen if you're a U.S. passport holder on assignment in a country like Saudi Arabia. Your visa is about to expire, so you board your flight back to the United States. But wait! You can't get on, because you don't have permission from the HSA. Saudi immigration officials are on hand to escort you to a squalid detention center, where you and others who are now effectively "stateless persons" are detained, potentially indefinitely, until their immigration status is sorted out.

Why might the HSA deny you permission to leave-or enter-the United States? No one knows, because the entire clearance procedure would be an administrative determination made secretly, with no right of appeal. Naturally, the decision would be made without a warrant, without probable cause and without even any particular degree of suspicion. Basically, if the HSA decides it doesn't like you, you're a prisoner-either outside, or inside, the United States, whether or not you hold a U.S. passport.

The U.S. Supreme Court has long recognized there is a constitutional right to travel internationally. Indeed, it has declared that the right to travel is "a virtually unconditional personal right."

The United States has also signed treaties guaranteeing "freedom of travel." So if these regulations do go into effect, you can expect a lengthy court battle, both nationally and internationally.

Think this can't happen?

Think again! it's ALREADY happening. Earlier this year, HSA forbade airlines from transporting an 18-year-old native-born U.S. citizen, back to the United States. The prohibition lasted nearly six months until it was finally lifted a few weeks ago.

Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union are two countries in recent history that didn't allow their citizens to travel abroad without permission. If these regulations go into effect, you can add the United States to this list.

Read The Practical Nomad & Edward Hasbrouck's blog http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/cat_in_the_news.html

For more information on this proposed regulation, see Identity Project Comments:
http://hasbrouck.org/IDP/IDP-APIS-comments.pdf

Also see "Time to Renew Your Passport"
http://nestmannblog.sovereignsociety.com/2006/10/time_to_renew_y.html

MARK NESTMANN
Wealth Preservation &
Tax Consultant on behalf of
The Sovereign Society
assetpro@nestmann.com
http://www.nestmann.com/
__________________________________

CIA Analysis Finds Iran Not Developing Nuclear Weapons


By Seymore Hersh
Agence France-Presse
November 19, 2006


A classifed draft CIA assessment has found no firm evidence of a secret drive by Iran to develop nuclear weapons, as alleged by the White House, a top US investigative reporter has said.

Seymour Hersh, writing in an article for the November 27 issue of the magazine The New Yorker released in advance, reported on whether the administration of Republican President George W. Bush was more, or less, inclined to attack Iran after Democrats won control of Congress last week.

A month before the November 7 legislative elections, Hersh wrote, Vice President Dick Cheney attended a national-security discussion that touched on the impact of Democratic victory in both chambers on Iran policy.

"If the Democrats won on November 7th, the vice president said, that victory would not stop the administration from pursuing a military option with Iran," Hersh wrote, citing a source familiar with the discussion.

Cheney said the White House would circumvent any legislative restrictions "and thus stop Congress from getting in its way," he said.

The Democratic victory unleashed a surge of calls for the Bush administration to begin direct talks with Iran.

But the administration's planning of a military option was made "far more complicated" in recent months by a highly classified draft assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency "challenging the White House's assumptions about how close Iran might be to building a nuclear bomb," he wrote.

"The CIA found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program running paallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency," Hersh wrote, adding the CIA had declined to comment on that story.

A current senior intelligence official confirmed the existence of the CIA analysis and said the White House had been hostile to it, he wrote.

Cheney and his aides had discounted the assessment, the official said.

"They're not looking for a smoking gun," the official was quoted as saying, referring to specific intelligence about Iranian nuclear planning.

"They're looking for the degree of comfort level they think they need to accomplish the mission."

The United States and other major powers believe Iran's uranium enrichment program is ultimately aimed at producing fissile material for nuclear weapons.

Iran insists it will use the enriched uranium only to fuel nuclear power stations, something it is permitted to do as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The major powers have been debating a draft United Nations resolution drawn up by Britain, France and Germany that would impose limited sanctions on Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile sectors for Tehran's failure to comply with an earlier UN resolution on halting enrichment.

On Wednesday, Israel's outgoing US ambassador Danny Ayalon said in an interview that Bush would not hesitate to use force against Iran to halt its nuclear program if other options failed.

"US President George W. Bush will not hesitate to use force against Iran in order to halt its nuclear program," Ayalon told the Maariv daily.

Israel, widely considered the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear power, views Iran as its arch-foe, pointing to repeated calls by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to wipe the Jewish state off the map.

Source:
http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/061119034024.d010tlyg.html
_________________

Impeachment and the Table


t r u t h o u t
Editorial
November 13, 2006


A compelling argument can certainly be made that, given all that the country now faces, an impeachment of George W. Bush by the new Democratic Congress would do more to further divide the nation than heal it. Ironically, many of Mr. Bush's critics have dubbed Mr. Bush himself "the great divider." Whether you blame Mr. Bush for the social divisions in America or not, deep and abiding social divisions, particularly over the morass in Iraq, are undeniable, and healing those divisions should be of paramount importance to the new Congress. Equally undeniable are the political risks for a new Democratic Congress that would pursue impeachment shortly after taking back the gavel for the first time in over a decade.

However, in stating flatly that "impeachment is off the table," incoming Speaker Pelosi and incoming Chairman Conyers appear to have erred rather substantially. Impeachment, of course, is a matter of Constitutional law, not personal discretion on the part of individual lawmakers. The pre-emptive nature of the decision by Pelosi and Conyers stands in sharp contrast to every principle of law enforcement. Congress - whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans - has a solemn duty to uphold and when necessary enforce the law.

If there is some reason that impeachment is not warranted in a given circumstance, it should be stated in that context. But for an individual lawmaker, any individual lawmaker, to presume to preclude impeachment regardless of the circumstances scoffs at the Constitution. The great danger is that individuals in official positions might choose to assume unto themselves the power of the law at their personal discretion. If the last six years have taught us anything, it is that such hubris leads to ruin.

White House attorneys have even gone so far as to argue that Mr. Bush is a "unitary executive," and thus entitled to assume omnipotent legal power in all matters. Not at some point in the past, but this day. At the risk of seeing the day that such largess is the presumed entitlement of all elected officials, it is best that as a nation we chart a course back to the comparatively safe harbor of due process.

The Constitution provides impeachment as a remedy for "high crimes and misdemeanors." It is important to note that the category at issue is high crimes. We are mired in a military operation, with no end in sight and a human toll approaching catastrophic in proportion. Impeachment raises its head in this dialog because evidence exists that Mr. Bush and other White House officials may have deliberately misled the nation on the road to Baghdad. Deliberately. If true, the law itself mandates action under due process. Such action is expressly non-discretionary.

During the Iraq Resolution debate, a white-haired Robert Byrd of West Virginia stood on the floor of the Senate and argued with a haunting passion that the Congress did not, under Constitutional law, have the right to reassign war-making power to the president. It was, he implored, an abandonment of Congressional duty. Maybe that old man knew what he was talking about after all.

Source:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111306Z.shtml
___________________

War on Iran

Unleashing Armageddon in the Middle East


By Dr. Elias Akleh
11/10/06
Information Clearing House


In mid 1970s the American Power Elite drew a “Grand Plan” to control and to monopolize global oil and nuclear energy resources, for he who controls energy resources determines the fate of nations. The base of this “Grand Plan” is the invasion of energy rich countries to directly control their resources, and to create subservient governments that would exploit their own people as cheap labor to harvest energy for the United States.

The collapse of the Soviet Union had created a window of opportunity for the United States to ensure and to affirm its global superiority through expansion and controlling energy resources without any real opposition. The attacks of 911 were necessary requirements for the Bush administration to wage a “global war against terror” that would serve as a cover up for American hegemony. President Bush borrowed Mussolini’s fascist motto of “If you are not with me, you are against me” and turned it into “You are either with us or with the terrorist” to terrorize weaker nations into accepting American expansions.

Part of the “Grand Plan”, which deals with the Arab World (Middle East) and South East Asia, was handed down to the Bush/Cheney administration for execution. The invasions and destructions of Afghanistan and Iraq are just the beginning. Iran, Syria, and Lebanon are next. Controlling Iran is very important to the American administration. Iran sits on a lake of oil and has large deposits of uranium that, when mined and refined, could make Iran a super global power. Controlling Iran leads to the containment of China (America’s greatest competitor), who depends heavily on Iranian oil to satisfy its growing hunger for energy. Geographically Iran makes the shortest and the most economical route for Kazakhstan’s oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea ,north, to the Persian Gulf south with all the oil-tankers traffic. Iran also fits perfectly within the line of American hegemony in South East Asia. Listening to Bush’s speeches – especially his speech to the United Nation last September 2006- one can detect his “enthusiasm” for “spreading democracy and freedom” into the “despotic Middle East” with Iraq as an example.

The Bush/Cheney administration started its overt aggression against Iran immediately after 911 attacks. Bush described Iran as one of the “axis of evil” sponsoring “terrorist” groups such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas, who are in reality defending themselves against Israeli aggression. After the American invasion of Iraq the American administration accused Iran of instigating a civil war in Iraq by supporting Shiites against Sunnis, and of opening its borders wide for terrorists to enter Iraq. The administration is accusing Iran of building a nuclear bomb, and is continuously threatening its government to abandon its nuclear “ambitions” or else face dire consequences including nuclear strikes (a paradox of using nuclear weapon to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons). Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State described Iran as a “central bank for world terrorism” that is threatening the stability of the Middle East.

American media had joined the administration into demonizing Iran and its government. Iran is described as a fundamentalist theocracy, who seeks to revive the glory of ancient Persian Empire by establishing an Islamic “Caliphate” in the Middle East. Iran’s leaders are portrayed as extremists, who hate Americans for their freedom, and want to build nuclear bomb to attack the US. Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is described as an irrational, violent, mad Hitler-like anti-Semite, who hates Jews, denies the Holocaust, and wants to wipe Israel off the map. Ahmadinejad’s visit to the US last September (2006) to give a speech at the UN was received with a cold shoulder by the US. American officials in the UN and the American media boycotted his speech, while NBC’s Brian Williams and Newsweek’s Lally Weymouth interviewed him only to corner him about the Holocaust and wiping Israel off the map.

Bush/Cheney administration had rebuffed all Iranian attempts to negotiate, and refused to give Iran any guarantees that the US will not attack Iran if it stops its uranium enrichment. President Bush totally ignored President Ahmadinejad’s personal letter, and his call for a debate. The Washington Post, in June 18th 2006, reported Richard Hass, head of policy planning at the State Department at the time, as saying that at the wake of the US invasion of Iraq Iranian leaders offered the administration a proposal for a broad dialogue that included full cooperation on its nuclear programs, acceptance of the state of Israel, and halting support to Palestinian militants. The administration rejected this proposal since they already have plans for a regime change in Iran.

The administration’s attack plan started immediately after the invasion of Iraq. Spy stations were erected at the Iraqi/Iranian borders. The Congress had authorized the expenditure of $75 million to support Iranian opposition and to finance an anti-Iranian political campaign. Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector, reported in June 2005 and in his book “Target Iran” that the US has been using terrorist organizations (Mujahedeen el-Khalq, MEK), under the supervision of the CIA, to conduct covert terrorist operations in Iran. MEK has been officially designated as a terrorist organization by the US. Yet in 2004 Bush/Cheney administration pardoned the MEK making it the first terrorist organization to receive a “protected” status. The MEK terrorists were trained by the CIA in an American compound northeast of Baghdad, and then moved to Basra and established their base in Camp Habib, from which they launch their terrorists raids against the southern region of Iran.

Israel, on the other hand, criticized Iran’s nuclear program refusing to “live under the threat” of nuclear Iran. Israeli officials point to Ahmadinejad’s alleged threat to wipe Israel off the map as threat to their own existence, and a possible justification for a pre-emptive strike as a measure of self-defense. They continually threaten to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities the same way Israel did to Iraq’s nuclear reactor. Israel warned that Iran’s uranium enrichment is the red line that Israel will react to. Israel had sent its military operatives into the Kurdish region north of Iraq to establish training camps for the Kurds. The Kurds want to establish their free Kurdistan that extends from north Iran to east Turkey. Considering it their patriotic duty, and encouraged, financed and armed by the Israelis, the Kurds send their militants to conduct military operations into northern Iran.

Bush/Cheney administration is adamant on invading Iran. Invasion was originally planned to take place sometime during the end of April 2006 immediately after the end of the grace period UN gave to Iran to stop its nuclear program. The plan consisted of 5 days continuous aerial bombardment by joint air planes of Israel, UK, and US that might include tactical nuclear bunker buster bombs. Land invasion would follow from west (Iraq), from east (Afghanistan) and from sea (Persian Gulf from west and Gulf of Oman from south). The plan was to heavily bombard the Iranians into overthrowing their government.

In an attempt to stop this attack Iran flexed its military muscles in war games conducted in April 2006. Iran effectively demonstrated its capability of waging war on land, sea, and air with sophisticated weapons. Iran also conducted other war games in August 2006 in coordination with China and Russia on all of Iran’s geo-strategic borders giving a warning signal that any possible invasion of its territory would be very costly. The American administration discovered that it had underestimated Iran’s military power, and that Iran is a larger and a stronger country than the embargo-weakened Iraq. Therefore the administration decided to adjust its war plans and to bring in more allies such as EU and some Arab states.

Contrary to the misleading American propaganda about the threat of irrational extremist Iranian government Iranian leaders have been very pragmatic politicians, who seek peace, stability, and nuclear-free Middle East. There is no doubt that Iran has supported Palestinian families (victims of Israeli terror), Shiite Lebanese south of Lebanon, and Shiite Iraqis in an attempt to protect its own interests and to counter balance warring Israel, UK, and US. Israel had invaded all its neighboring countries while the UK and US had sent their troops across the globe to invade Afghanistan and Iraq to protect its own interests in the region. For many generations Iran was never involved in a colonial war and had never threatened other countries.

Iran was defending itself during the eight years Iraq/Iran war of attrition that had been instigated by the US. Unlike the Israeli and American military threatening rhetoric Iranian leaders had always declared that they do not pose any threat to any other country, and that Iran is only seeking peace and prosperity for its own citizens. Iranian officials recognized that war is knocking on their doors when American troops invaded Iraq. They attempted to approach Bush/Cheney administration with dialogue and cooperation, but they were rebuffed violently.

The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not conform “..to the picture of a madman” the American administration and media portray him to be, wrote Fareed Zakaria in his Newsweek (10/2/2006) article “What Iranians Least Expect”. “He was smug, even arrogant, sometimes offensive, but always calm and intelligent” continued Zakaria. Ahmadinejad is not the Jew-hater, Holocaust denier, intent on wiping Israel off the map as Bush keeps describing him. Ahmadinejad pointed to the Iranian Jewish community, who are living peacefully within Iran as any other Iranian citizens. Iran is the home for the largest Jewish community (25 thousands) in the Middle East outside Israel, who lived there for the last 3 thousand years since the rule of Cyrus the Great. Iranian government recognizes the Jews as a religious minority to be protected and represented by a PM, Maurice Mohtamed, in Iranian parliament. Iranians make a distinction between Jews and Zionists.

When Newsweek’s Lally Weymouth (October 2nd 2006) asked Ahmadinejad about the Holocaust he acknowledged it as a historical event by stating “We know this was a historical event that happened. But why is it that people who question it are persecuted and attacked?”

He also questions the reasons why the Palestinians have to pay their country and their lives for what the Europeans had done. He questions the exploitation of the Holocaust to justify the usurpation of Palestinian land, their evacuation from their homeland and the destruction of their civilian homes, the targeted assassination of their freedom fighters, and the abduction and jailing of their democratically elected officials. “The Palestinian people, their lives are being destroyed today under the pretext of the Holocaust. Their lands have been occupied, usurped. What is their fault? What are they to be blamed for? Are they not human beings? Do they have no rights? What role did they play in the Holocaust?” Ahmadinejad answered NBC’s Brian Williams, who asked him about the Holocaust during an interview in September 20th, 2006. His acceptance of the Holocaust as a reality could not be any clearer than in his statement reported by the Washington Post December 9th 2005 “Is the killing of innocent Jewish people by Hitler, the reason for their (the Europeans’) support to the occupiers of Jerusalem?”

Ahmadinejad’s plans to build a nuclear bomb and use it to incinerate and “to wipe Israel off the map” as Tzipi Linvi – the Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister and Vice Prime Minister- likes to keep reminding the world of, is totally baseless. It is an intentional misinterpretation and distortion of Ahmadinejad’s speech. In the New York Times of June 11th, 2006 Juan Cole, a Middle East specialist at the University of Michigan, stated that “Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to wipe Israel off the map, because no such idiom exists in Persian. He did say he hoped its regime i.e. a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse.” Ahmadinejad was not threatening Israel; rather he was calling for the end of Zionist occupation of the city of Jerusalem. He – and the Iranian government- are intelligent politicians, who understand that striking Israel with one atomic bomb would lead Israel to shower Iran with its 200, or more, nuclear bombs, some of which are ready to be launched from submarines.


To avoid the seemingly inevitable war Iran had followed the diplomatic path with no avail. It opened all its nuclear facilities to the strictest and most detailed inspections by the IAEA, who stated that there was no evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon. Iran proposed to halt its nuclear program if the US halts its threatening postures and gives guarantees that it would not attack Iran. The Bush/Cheney administration refused to give Iran any guarantees insisting that all options, including nuclear, are on the table. Ahmadinejad also called for peaceful negotiations and a nuclear-free Middle East in his speech to the UN in his September visit. Yet his speech was boycotted by the American officials and ignored by the American media. Lately Iran proposed to have an international consortium to supervise uranium enrichment in Iran to guarantee that its nuclear program is really for peaceful purposes only. This proposal was rejected by the EU for they all are aware of the American plans to invade Iran.

Iran had also turned to the international community – mainly anti-American countries- for political support through economical trade and common political interests. In 2004 Iran struck an oil deal with China Petrochemical Corp. (SINOPEC Group) to sell it 51% stake in Iran’s Yadavaran oil field near the border of Iraq. Iran also became Russia’s most important weapons customer. Iran had also gained the political support of at least 118 countries during the summit of the Nonaligned Movement (NAM) in Cuba in mid September 2006.

Iranian government, like any other prudent government in its place, has no alternative but to seriously consider the Israeli and American continuous military threats to its security and to prepare for the inevitable coming war. In a deterrent attempt Iran had conducted war games in April and August 2006 hoping that the American administration would reconsider its plans. It also positioned its weapons strategically on its borders and sea. Iranian arsenals include Iranian and Russian made submarines carrying their own mini submarines and submarine-to-ship missiles. Iranian naval forces had been updated with the latest military equipment and weaponry with its naval airborne forces including helicopters, minesweepers and the sophisticated fast Chinese “Silkworm” and “Sunburn” anti-ship missiles with the speed of 225 miles per hour. Iranian Patrol Torpedo Boats (PT) – such as the “Jashan PT”- are small boats designed to attack larger warships and are equipped with latest electronic systems and missiles with a range of 100km. Iran’s navy also has the largest hovercraft fleet in the world. On the land Iran has long range missiles (Shehab) and land-to-sea missiles (Kowsar) that can evade electronic jamming systems. Some of Iranian missiles are reported to be invisible to radar and can have multiple warheads with multiple payloads to hit multiple targets simultaneously.

Iran has also recently modified its air defense shield in order to shoot down incoming missiles and invading warplanes. Iran has about 20 Russian “Tor” and “S300” antiaircraft systems.

Besides Russian warplanes Iran has manufactured its own warplanes with laser-guided missiles and whose capabilities are still unknown and could surprise any invading enemy. Iran also has its own fleet of unmanned militarized drones.

The eight-year Iraq/Iran desert war had given Iranian army the longest experience in ground and desert warfare far exceeding any other army. The Iranians learned to manufacture their own weapons such as tanks, missiles, torpedoes, helicopters, submarines and warplanes. This gave them independence and strength.

Attacking Iran will disrupt oil traffic in the Persian Gulf. In an obvious and expected move Iran will close the Straits of Hermuz blocking all military and supply in-traffic and all oil out-traffic.

American military bases in the Gulf States will be targeted, and there is the possibility of also targeting oil wells. To exacerbate the ensuing oil crises Syria and Iran may also target the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline carrying oil from the Caspian Sea to Europe through Turkey.

Venezuela, an Iranian ally, would stop the flow of its oil to the US. The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, has warned that Venezuela would not sit idle if Iran and Syria were attacked. An energy crisis might devastate Western countries. China might also enter the conflict to protect its own oil assets in Khuzestan province that the Iranian had armed heavily to protect its oil resources and to assure the supply of crude oil to its own allies.

Recognizing that Iran, unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, is a big country with a military power including strong aerial defense that is well ready for the anticipated heavy Western aerial strike, and that it has a military outreach towards the whole region that might disrupt the flow of oil, the American administration decided to postpone its attacks until it creates a “war oil reserve”, forms a large alliance of “willing countries”, and sends a military armada to the region to guarantee victory.

The American administration influence on the UN and NATO can be seen clearly by the types of resolutions the UN adopts, and by the NATO troops becoming an American proxy occupier of Afghanistan. To avoid internal political crisis the administration needs to spare the lives of the American troops as much as possible by convincing more countries that it is in their own economic interest to send their own troops to the Middle East to “keep” the oil flow to their countries. UN resolution 1701 was the best cover to send military personnel and equipment to the region. 15 thousand armed UNIFEL troops are stationed on the Lebanese southern borders to protect Israel from any Hezbollah’s attacks. An armada of NATO battleships is crowding the eastern shores of the Mediterranean allegedly to stop arm shipments to Hezbollah. The real purpose of this armada is to protect the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Oil Terminal during the war against Iran and Syrian, and to guarantee the flow of oil to Europe.

The cooperation of Gulf Arabian States was also needed. Condoleezza Rice traveled to Egypt early October and met with foreign ministers from the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Rice followed the usual American tactics of dangling the resolution of the Palestinian/Israeli issue in order to gain cooperation from these Arab leaders. To put more pressure on these leaders President Bush divided them into “moderate vs extremists”. Israel had also courted these “moderate” Arab leaders during September United Nations meeting in New York, where Israeli officials held some private meetings with officials from Persian Gulf Countries (The Wall Street Journal, October 3rd). There was also a rumor about an Israeli/Saudi secret private meeting in Jordan’s King Abdullah’s palace at the end of September. The talks aimed to form some kind of secret intelligence and military alliance between Israel and the US on one side and the “moderate” Arabic regimes on the other hand against the Iranian nuclear threat and the so called “Shiite Crescent” –Iran, Syria and Lebanon- in the north. After all, these Sunni Gulf rulers had supported and financed Iraqi Saddam Hussein during his eight years war against Iran. They had sent Moslem fighters as an American proxy army to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. They had, for fifty eight years, stood silent about the Israeli terror against Palestinians, and finally had criticized Hamas and Hezbollah resistance as foolish and uncalculated useless adventures. Some of these Gulf States had joined actively into the American war games off the Iranian coastline in October 31st while others joined as observers only.

The US and NATO countries had amassed the largest military armada in the Middle East. The US armada consists of Carrier Strike Group 12 led by nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, Eisenhower Strike Group – another nuclear powered aircraft carrier with accompanied military vessels and submarines, Expeditionary Strike Group 5 with multiple attack vessels led by aircraft carrier USS Boxer, the Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group, and the US Coast Guard. Canada has sent its anti-submarine HMCS Ottawa frigate to join the American Armada in the Persian Gulf. On October 1st the USS Enterprise Strike Group had crossed the Suez Canal to join the NATO armada at the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

The NATO force is composed of troops and naval vessels from several countries and is lead by Germany. It includes German command naval forces, Italian navy, 2 Spanish warships, 3 Danish warships, 10 Greek Warships, 2 Netherlands warships, and French, Belgium, Turkish and Bulgarian troops in South Lebanon.

This is the largest amass ever of military power in the region, and it is gathering for a reason.

The US had started its military provocation on October 30th with its “Leading Edge” war game across the Iranian shores. Iran responded with a 10 days military maneuvers “Great Prophet” taking place in Gulf, Sea of Oman, and several provinces of the country test-firing dozens of its long-range missiles capable of reaching Israel and American military bases in Gulf States.

The powder keg is ready and all it needs is a match to ignite it. This could come in the form of an “arranged” terrorist act in Lebanon – e.g. another political assassination or toppling of government- to be blamed against Syria and Iran. American warnings of such an act are already in the media.

The present American administration is an extremist theocratic apocalyptic neoconservative Christian-Zionist war mongering law-breaking power hungry administration with a bragging “war president” adopting the doctrines of “pre-emptive” strikes and perpetual war against “global terror”.

This war will take place far away from the American home-land, and will generate large profits for the American military corporations. The war against Iran will engulf the whole Middle East and may overflow to its neighboring countries. Controlling Iran is a very important strategic move to assure American global hegemony.

This war is scheduled to start between February and April of 2007, and it seems that there is nothing to stop it.

Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer of Palestinian descent, born in the town of Beit-Jala. Currently he lives in the US.

Source:
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15564.htm
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Candidate:
Zero Vote Tally Off - by 1


Arkansas Mayoral Candidate Disputes Tally of Zero Votes, Says He Voted for Himself


The Associated Press
WALDENBURG, Ark


Randy Wooten figured he'd get at least one vote in his bid for mayor of this town of 80 people even if it was just his own.

He didn't. Now he has to decide whether to file a formal protest.

Wooten got the news from his wife, Roxanne, who went to City Hall on Wednesday to see the election results.

"She saw my name with zero votes by it. She came home and asked me if I had voted for myself or not. I told her I did," said Wooten, owner of a local bar.

However, Poinsett County results reported Wednesday showed incumbent William H. Wood with 18 votes, challenger Ronnie Chatman with 18 votes and Wooten with zero.

"I had at least eight or nine people who said they voted for me, so something is wrong with this picture," Wooten said.

Poinsett County Election Commissioner Junaway Payne said the issue had been discussed but no action taken yet.

"It's our understanding from talking with the secretary of state's office that a court order would have to be obtained in order to open the machine and check the totals," Payne said. "The votes were cast on an electronic voting machine, but paper ballots were available."

A Nov. 28 runoff is scheduled to decide the mayor's race.

"It's just very hard to understand," Wooten said.

[Now you know this shows something is very wrong!! Zero votes talliedwhen you know you voted for yourself.]

Source:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2646802&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312
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Black Box Voting to help citizens audit VIRGINIA


November 8, 2006
Black Box Voting


Due to concerns about the legality of a voting system used in 32 Virginia counties, reports of procedural problems, and the inability of Virginia citizens to authenticate the accuracy of the vote count, Black Box Voting will be stepping up scrutiny of elections in all Virginia jurisdictions.

Allegations that the WinVote system manufactured by Advanced Voting Solutions is using uncertified software are being looked into, and Black Box Voting will be working with local citizens on hundreds of public records requests to obtain critical voting system computer logs and other records, both in WinVote counties and in areas using other systems.

Mail-in votes

Black Box Voting is also focusing on increased citizen oversight and examination of the absentee and mail-in votes in the California counties of Los Angeles, San Diego, Riverside, San Joaquin, Marin, Santa Clara, and Marin. The absentee votes, particularly with the Diebold system, are at high risk for inside tampering due to the disabling of a key security feature, and Black Box Voting urges California citizens to be on the alert for any discrepancies in absentee trends when compared with the polling place results.

Citizen concerns and complaints

Black Box Voting has received hundreds of individual reports from all over the U.S., and is proceeding with public records requests, phone calls, and further investigation into these to get more information for local citizens. Using the "consumer protection" model, Black Box Voting assists citizens when they are concerned about election problems in their jurisdictions.

We are examining reports that continue to pour in, and will post updates on specific actions in the "Reports from the Front Lines" section of our forums in the days that follow.

Nothing has changed

On Fox & Friends this morning, the hosts had assumed that -- apparently because Democrats won control of the house -- that voting machine and election procedure concerns had become moot. Not so -- absolutely nothing has changed between yesterday and today with regard to either the accuracy or the security of these systems, and that is the core issue for Black Box Voting.

Until we have the right to authenticate our elections, we will have a lot of work to do.

Source:
http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/45144.html
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MoveOn.org Offers $250,000
Reward for Evidence Leading to
Voter Fraud Conviction


11/7/2006
WASHINGTON
http://MoveOn.org


MoveOn.org Political Action is offering a $250,000 reward for new material evidence leading to a felony conviction for an organized effort of partisan voter suppression or electronic voting fraud.

Throughout the day accusations of election fraud and voter suppression incidents have been flooding into state and federal authorities throughout the country. In Virginia, the FBI has launched a criminal investigation into charges of voter suppression. In 20 Congressional districts, NRCC robocalls appearing to come from Democrats harassed voters with repeated calls in an apparently coordinated campaign to suppress the vote.

Complementing an earlier reward for whistleblowers, MoveOn's reward is being offered to anyone who provides this information.

Send tips to: votingfraud@moveon.org
Contact: Trevor Fitzgibbon, Laura Gross, Alex Howe, 202-822-520

Source:
http://www.protectourvotes.org/
______________________

No Vote of Confidence for E-Voting


By Matt Hines and Wayne Rash
November 5, 2006
PC Magazine


Imagine an upgrade that calls for untrained people with inadequate leadership to roll out a critical new technology under crushing deadlines.

Then they must perform the upgrade under intense public scrutiny and cut the already-short timeline for completion in half while fostering ever-growing expectations for the project's impact.

The truth is, you don't even need to imagine it: This is the actual scenario that has led to one of the most criticized IT projects in recent history—the adoption of electronic voting systems in the United States.

As voters head to the polls on Nov. 7—one-third of them voting on new e-voting machines for the first time—the story of the U.S. e-voting upgrade is long and littered with stories of failed careers, wasted money and abandoned equipment.

The biggest wasted asset has been time, as many e-voting projects that were supposed to have been completed by now remain unfinished.

The U.S. Congress decided to embrace e-voting after the 2000 election, when presidential recounts kept the election in doubt for weeks before eventually being decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The controversy over the 2000 vote led politicians and pundits to question the efficacy of mechanical lever-action voting machines in use since the mid-1920s, card-punch machines from the early 1950s and newer optical scan machines from the 1970s.

Only a few jurisdictions in the United States were using some type of e-voting machines in 2000, yet, somehow, the largely untested systems were widely embraced by legislators as the answer to the embarrassment of pregnant and dimpled chads.

In the rush to adopt e-voting technologies, the country now finds itself grappling with one of the most troubling IT upgrades in its history, one that already has some critics calling for voters to abandon the system altogether.

In that sense, experts contend, the adoption of e-voting technologies in the United States could be used as a blueprint for a failed enterprise IT rollout.

The Fallout

At the core of the controversy over the e-voting technologies adopted by several states are issues related to the security of the hardware and software systems used to facilitate electronic ballots. Concerns over the technologies range from the inability of some e-voting systems to have their ballot input audited to debate over the foreign ownership of one company making some of the equipment.

In Maryland, questions over the security of e-voting machines made by Diebold Election Systems, a subsidiary of Diebold Inc., of North Canton, Ohio, one of the leading vendors in the space, led some legislators to recommend a move back to paper ballots this year.

After years of reports of potential vulnerabilities in the machines, e-voting opponents were shocked in late October when an anonymous source mailed three disks containing software code used on the Diebold machines to Cheryl Kagan, a former Maryland delegate.

E-voting: Will your vote count?

The availability of the code indicated the lack of trust voters should have in the devices, said experts, including Kagan, since the code on the disks potentially could be used to launch attacks on the state's e-voting machines.

In Illinois, an estimated 1.3 million voters in Chicago learned in late October that their personal information, including names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and addresses, may have been exposed when a computer used to store electronic voter registration records was allegedly hacked by a political group opposed to e-voting.

And in the latest twist in the e-voting controversy, some legislators have begun to question the use of machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems, of Oakland, Calif., whose parent company, Smartmatic, is owned by Venezuelan nationals believed to have political ties to Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's firebrand president who recently labeled President Bush "the devil" in a speech before the United Nations.

Edward Felten, director of Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy, co-authored a September report that claimed vote-stealing programs could be installed easily on most voting machines in mere seconds.

About as secure as a hotel minibar.

Felten also contends that the physical locks used to prevent people from accessing the insides of Diebold's machines can be opened with common keys such as those used to secure hotel minibars.

Those issues, as well as the problem of having no method to audit votes on some e-voting devices, could paint a grim picture of the project.

"The states and counties that have bought this equipment know very little about how it works and don't have much evidence that it will meet requirements from a security perspective," said Felten in Princeton, N.J. "These devices will boot up and take votes, but, in terms of accuracy, there are not a lot of good reasons to trust them; a well-run enterprise procurement would allow for a lot more due diligence before buying."

Another high-profile e-voting critic, Avi Rubin, a professor of computer science at The Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, and author of the e-voting critique "Brave New Ballot," agreed that such shortcomings would never be tolerated in a private-sector IT rollout.

"Election officials were so sure these systems would make elections easier they didn't even consider huge issues such as a lack of audit capabilities. These were people untrained as IT professionals who didn't even consider the security implications," Rubin said.

"The result was the adoption of a bunch of half-baked solutions that by no means can be considered a reasonable way to conduct trustworthy elections; if you were in charge of a private-sector project like this, you'd get fired; it's that simple."

A Blueprint for Failure

While even the most jaded critics concede that it's too soon to know for sure whether the current e-voting upgrade will indeed be considered a significant failure, experts say there are many lessons already learned that enterprises should consider when planning their own IT rollouts.

"The biggest lesson [evident] right now is don't try to rush something of this scale," said Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services, a political consulting company in Washington. "It's a hard lesson, and it was foisted upon us by the deadlines that the federal government and Congress pulled out of a hat," Brace said.

The primary reason the e-voting project has stumbled so badly is that those in charge of the effort failed to view the move as an IT upgrade and had little appreciation for the size of the undertaking, Brace said.

"They thought it could be done in this amount of time, and, despite the fact that election administrators said they needed more time, [Congress] didn't listen," he said.

Brace pointed to a last-minute compromise passed just before the 2002 congressional elections known as the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, as emblematic of the misguided rush to adopt e-voting tools. The policy was incomplete and set impossible deadlines, he said.

Among other things, HAVA provided for a new agency, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which would foster changes in election laws to help election administrators grapple with e-voting.

It took more than a year after the measure was passed, until December 2003, for the commissioners of the group to be appointed. When those commissioners had been named, experts said, they had no offices, no staff and no operating budget, and their work had to be completed in two years.

Running out of time.

"I would say that the EAC encountered significant challenges from Day One," said Ray Martinez, a former commissioner of the EAC. "The process took longer than anyone expected, and we were never able to catch up."

Martinez, now an attorney in private practice in Austin, Texas, was the commission's first vice chairman. He now works as a policy adviser on election issues to the Pew Center on the States, part of the Pew Charitable Trusts.

The machines were only part of the problem, as a statewide voter registration database was required by HAVA in every state in the nation.

In many states, this meant at the very least converting voter records to a database that met federal requirements. In some states, it meant moving from locally held manual systems to a statewide database almost overnight.

As it takes hold, e-voting faces big risks.

"When you combine the implementation of a statewide database and implementation of electronic voting systems, we had to build in time for state and local administrators around the country to be able to gain some level of comfort," Martinez said.

"There was no time for any of this. There was not enough time built in for our decentralized election system to absorb the changes. There were a series of breakdowns."

Martinez said that the EAC wasn't able to get its first set of voluntary standards published until 2005, with states' election administrators required to be ready for the 2006 election or violate the HAVA law as applied by the Department of Justice. Most of those groups had been holding off on their upgrades, waiting for help and funding from the EAC, Martinez said.

"I don't think anyone anticipated that HAVA would have become such a massive IT project," he said.

Adequate training for workers is also an issue. In nearly every jurisdiction in the United States, voting is handled by volunteers. Poll-worker training is a perennial problem in the United States, said Wendy Weiser, deputy director of the Democracy Program at New York University School of Law's Brennan Center for Justice.

Other experts agreed that the staffing demands of the rollout were unrealistic. "We have 182,000 polling places in America that are manned by about 1.5 million poll workers," said Paul DeGregorio, chairman of the Washington-based EAC, who oversees the training of U.S. poll workers.

"They have to be trained to deal with this new equipment, [and] they have to understand provisional voting, the machines, everything," DeGregorio said.

NIST to certify voting machine security, standards.

The lack of federal guidance, coupled with the relatively nascent state of e-voting technology, meant that a lot of voting administrators decided to simply wait to see what was going to happen, a strategy that would never be tolerated in profit-driven businesses, experts said.

"There were many delays. They had to wait for the state legislatures to empower them before they could implement," said Weiser in New York.

"There were political delays in the state governments. There were delays in the EAC, which wasn't even constituted until a year after it was supposed to have been; it wasn't given funds when it was supposed to have them."

In a nod to the lack of planning by legislators buying the technologies, vendors of e-voting devices admit that some of the concerns being leveled at their companies today are leftovers from the punch-card era and could have been considered more closely upfront.

"Some of the allegations are almost word for word what the allegations were with the old lever machines," said Mark Radke, director of marketing for Diebold Election Systems, in Allen, Texas.

Security glitches were not the biggest issue in recent voting machine use. Several states held primary elections in 2006, and in some cases, the problem boiled down to training—ranging from poll workers forgetting to insert memory cards to not knowing how to turn the machines on, Radke said.

"Training is critically important to a smooth implementation," Radke said.

Source:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2051188,00.asp
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VICKI ALMAY NEVER WAS A NARCOTICS OFFICER, BUT AN INFORMANT HAVING "FAMILIARITY WITH THE DRUG TRADE"

by MLM Liberal
11/05/2006
Buckeye State Blog
US Senate Race

Vicki Almay was NEVER a State of Ohio employee eligible for retirement benefits from Ohio's Public Employees Retirement System, according to an e-mail MLM Liberal received tonight from Common Sense:

People please do some research into the history of Vicki Almay. She was never a certified police officer in any state in the country. She was used as a BCI undercover agent because of her familiarity with the drug trade, a connection which she developed in her life prior to becoming an honest citizen. This is common practice in law enforcement, the use of people currently or formerly a part of the drug culture. Although she was theoretically an agent, she does not recieve a state retirement pension as she is basically considered an informant not a regular officer. She still cannot tell the difference between reality and fiction as the case she refers to was never prosecuted and neither were any of Mr. Brown's staff supposedly related to this case. Another last ditch effort by Mr. Dewine to smear his opponnent. He should have used a person with "Clean Hands" when he made the TV spot.

As a former journalist and now an Ohio Department of Public Safety employee, I have always known an informant in drug cases to mean either a drug dealer or a drug user. MLM Liberal can only wonder which applied to Vicki Almay in her past life.

As was posted here yesterday:

From Jonathan Riskin of the Columbus Dispatch October 28:

(Sherrod) Brown himself in 1985 asked for a State Highway Patrol investigation into whether employees in his office were selling illegal drugs, though no one was charged. At best, the ad overstates the level of scandal and at worst is misleading about Brown's culpability.

The Akron Beacon Journal would report the following on September 9, 1990:

"No Proof of Impropriety Found in Drug Inquiry in Brown's Office."

"The patrol has accepted fault for not telling prosecutors about a mid-August 1985 drug buy."

To the readers of this blog: The Bureau of Criminal Identification & Investigation is a division of the Ohio Attorney General's Office, not the Ohio Department of Public Safety.

A Google advanced search using "Vicki Almay" came up dry. However...

Yet another SOB Alliance member, Matt Hurley of Weapons of Mass Discussion, has become the latest member of that Alliance to not only slam my co-workers but also to accuse them of wrongdoing:

When this failure to take action on the drug buys surfaced in 1990, an investigation was launched by Franklin County Prosecutor Michael Miller into whether a cover-up had been conducted. While Miller could find no direct evidence of cover-up, he did find that Highway Patrol officers failed to turn over their findings to prosecutors, and that a felony case existed that was not prosecuted.

Inquiries made by newspapers at the time also uncovered the fact that reports filed by Joseph Hopkins, the lead Highway Patrol investigator, were altered after he filed them to lessen the severity of the drug crimes committed. Further newspaper reports indicate that the actions taken by (State Highway Patrol) investigators left lingering questions of whether politics played a role in the probe’s conclusion.

It is absolutely unbelievable how members of the State of Ohio Blog (SOB) Alliance have been brazen in their smear campaign against the employees of the Ohio Department of Public Safety on behalf of Ken Blackwell and now Mike DeWine.

It is one thing to smear me. I was prepared for that. But when there appears to be a coordinated effort by SOB Alliance members to smear my co-workers (including at least 1,600 State Highway Patrol troopers), these bloggers will be revealed for who they are.

The politically correct term would be Karl Rove wannabees. My co-workers would use a more direct term: bullies.

Chris Matthews of MSNBC may not be even that kind, as readers can see from his interview with DeWine yesterday.

See Chris Matthews' interview with DeWine here.

Response to last night's posting on drug informant Vicki Almay, her experience with the drug trade, and her use by Mike DeWine's campaign has come in record numbers.

Vicki A. Almay doesn't even live in Ohio anymore. She and her husband Ted moved to Texas. So why is she lying for DeWine? He must have paid her some money.

Almay, a former special agent (informant?) with the bureau (BCI) from 1984 to 1994, when she was known as Vicki Castelluccio, lives in Texas with her husband, Ted Almay, former superintendent of the bureau under Attorney General Betty D. Montgomery. Ted Almay is assistant vice president of corporate security at the United Services Automobile Association, and former AEP FERC Security Task Force Member and former AEP Director of Physical Security and Homeland Security, has given $8,000 to DeWine’s campaign over the years. DeWine’s campaign asked Vicki Almay to do the ad. (See Google Links below for more)

By the way, where has DeWine's campaign money come from:

$4,000 from BWX Technologies, a company that describes itself as the "premier manager of complex, high-consequence nuclear and national security operations" (national security)

$1,000 from DTE Energy, major national energy company (energy resources)

$2,000 from ExxonMobil (energy)$5,000 from Friends of Israel (Middle East policy)

$2,000 from Halliburton (Foreign policy/war/Iraq reconstruction – Dick Cheney would be proud.)

$2,000 from the Institute of Makers of Explosives PAC eWine likes explosives?)

$5,000 from the National Association of Health Underwriters PAC (better known as HUPAC), a group that donates to Congressional candidates who "support private-sector health insurance," which, they say, is needed in response to "heavy regulation" of the health industry (health care – no socialized medicine, hippies)

$5,000 from U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC- wants democracy in Cuba (foreign policy with Cuba – Is Castro still alive? He's got to be closing in on 100.)

$5,009 from National Right to Life and $522 from Ohio Right to Life (abortion – No surprise here)

$6,000 from Wal-Mart (labor – Unions are evil, and don't even think about raising the minimum wage.)

$2,500 from Walt Disney (Mickey's a Republican?)

Vicki Almay related links:
http://www.dispatch.com/news/news.php?story=dispatch/2006/11/05/20061105-A10-02.html

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2006-25,GGLG:en&q=Vicki+Castelluccio

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2006-25,GGLG:en&q=AEP+Ted+Almay

Article Source:
http://mlmliberal.blogspot.com/2006/11/exclusive-vicki-almay-never-was.html
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Where is Nancy Pelosi?
A 'How To' Guide for Advancing
Conservative Misinformation


Summary:
How a Bogus Claim from a GOP Organization Ended Up on MSNBC


Media Matters
Nov. 3, 2006
Washington, DC


The Republican noise machine is at it again. In a last-ditch effort to distract voters, Republicans are playing pickup game of "Where is Nancy Pelosi?" It began with a widely distributed email, obtained by Media Matters for America (see below), claiming that House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (CA) is almost entirely absent from the campaign trail. The email landed on the Internet gossip site Drudge Report, and the story reached a peak today when MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell asked NBC correspondent Mike Viqueira where Pelosi has "been in the last week."

In fact as the blog ThinkProgress.org noted, on November 1, "Pelosi appeared at a sold-out rally at the Warfield Theater with former President Clinton. Portions of the rally were broadcast on television." On the same day CNN aired a feature interview with Pelosi.

Jamison Foser, Managing Director of Media Matters for America, called the media out for participating in the GOP's election-year stunt.

"This is a textbook example of a journalist mindlessly repeating false Republican spin designed to muddy the waters and distract the public. The media have a responsibility to check the facts instead of simply parroting GOP operatives," Foser said. "Better yet, they should focus on substantive issues that matter to real people instead of these increasingly absurd efforts to change the subject."

The Freedom Project sent out the email, titled "Where is Nancy Pelosi?" on October 31, claiming that Pelosi has been absent from the campaign trail and posing possible reasons why. It wasn't long before the claim was picked up and mentioned in the mainstream media. Internet gossip Matt Drudge posted a report on November 2 repeating the Freedom Project's false claims. Drudge wrote: "The woman who would be speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has oddly stayed out of the national spotlight in the week leading up to the big vote." The following morning, on the November 3rd edition of MSNBC News Live, O'Donnell brought up the issue with Viqueira.

Three Easy Steps to Advancing Conservative Misinformation

1. Write a scathing email or press release. Resist the use of facts. Rely heavily on buzzwords and spin.

2. Distribute the email or press release far and wide. Pray that someone in the mainstream media picks up the story. If that doesn't work, make sure you get a copy of your hit piece to the Drudge Report.

3. Watch and smile as the mainstream media report on Drudge Report items as legitimate news.

4. Complain about a liberal bias in the press.

Thankfully, Viqueira shot down O'Donnell's question by refuting the blatantly false idea, forwarded by "Republican operatives," that Pelosi is "trying to run out the clock instead of engaging in the issues that matter to the American people." Viqueira went on to note that Pelosi has continued to do fundraising and media interviews.

Full text of the Freedom Project's Email:

From: Majority Project [majorityproject@freedomproject.org]
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 3:39 PM
To: Majority Project
Subject: Where is Nancy Pelosi?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

WHERE IS NANCY PELOSI?
October 31, 2006

Where is Democrat Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)? As CongressDaily reported yesterday, "House Minority Leader Pelosi's schedule for the week remained uncertain today with nothing confirmed." Almost entirely absent from the campaign trail, many are left wondering why ...

* Could it be because Pelosi didn't want to have to defend Senator John Kerry's (D-MA) insults directed at our men and women bravely defending our country in Iraq?

* Could it be because Pelosi didn't want to have to answer questions about Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) coming unglued with a profanity-laced tirade after the Democrats' scheme to raise taxes on working families was exposed further?

* Could it be because Pelosi is embarrassed about the Democrats' shameful record national security, including voting AGAINST the Patriot Act, AGAINST bringing terrorists to justice, and AGAINST the terrorist surveillance program?

* Could it be because Pelosi would prefer not to discuss the Democrats' abysmal record on border security?

While Pelosi is trying to run out the clock instead of engaging in the issues that matter to the American people, Republican candidates are focused on their individual races, fine-tuning their get-out-to-vote operation, and making their case about Republicans' efforts to keep taxes low, strengthen border security, and keep America safe.

From the November 3 edition of MSNBC News Live:

O'DONNELL: What about Nancy Pelosi? We were just showing pictures. She would be the speaker -- likely be the speaker of the House if Democrats win control. Where's she been the last week?

VIQUEIRA: Uh, she's been around. She had a big fundraiser with Bill Clinton in San Francisco. She's been conducting interviews with media. There have been Republicans -- operatives have been sending out emails over the past week saying "Where's Pelosi? Where's Pelosi? Where's Pelosi?" She has been conducting some interviews, a fundraiser, she's been still flying around the country doing some fundraising events, but largely stuck to San Francisco. Her daughter is expected to deliver, incidentally, Nancy Pelosi's sixth grandchild just about -- right about now, and if that happens on Election Day, Nancy Pelosi's surely going to be nowhere to be found, Norah.

O'DONNELL: Oh, I find that hard to believe, Mike.

VIQUEIRA: No, that's what they're saying. She --

O'DONNELL: Really?

VIQUEIRA: She will be AWOL on Election Day if Alexandra, her daughter, delivers what would be Nancy Pelosi's sixth grandchild.


Source:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200611030009
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