An Interesting Idea... Three Pillars For The Democrats

Three Pillars, Draft 2: Paramendra Bhagat

I occasionally receive e-mail from the author noted above. His recent post offers three pillars for bringing the Democrats into the 21st century. While I think he got sidetracked in the process of writing about this concept, I think the original idea has something useful and interesting:

The Democratic Party needs a new vision, a winning vision, a vision for the 21st century, a vision to take back the Congress, and then the White House. A vision to make it the natural party in power.

You have to be able to say it in one word, in one phrase, in one sentence. There has to be this core vision. Companies call it the mission statement. A political party also needs it, as does the Democratic Party. Democrats have to present themselves as progressives. I would like to propose there are these three broad pillars to progressive thinking. One, democracy. Two, the market. And three, social progress. Together we call them the three pillars.

Again, I think he lost his original focus on the Democrats and began to apply these concepts in a global sense, but he did hit upon something with the three pillars. I especially like the last of the three pillars: social progress.

If we have the ideal of democracy, described as one person: one vote, then we have accomplished much. But we leave room for the tyranny of the majority, which is why our forefathers left us with a foundational political philosophy of "reason" (some might say "enlightenment") and inalienable rights. Democracy based on the one person: one vote ideal does not work without constitutional protections against the tyranny of the majority, which would allow the controlling majority to dictate to minorities madates about religion, family values and personal values, etc.

Then there is the marketplace. Business, or the free exchange of capital, is the basis of empowering people from all classes, races, religions, and creeds. Money is the great equalizer in many respects. It empowers ideas, ideals, philanthropy and innovation. Unfortunately, it also breeds greed, contempt for humanity and disregard of others if it is allowed to become the sole purpose of an endeavor. We have seen greed in our business arena as of late, including the activities of Enron, Tyco, Adelphia, WorldCom, etc. We have seen CEOs and board members making huge profits on the backs of the working stiffs, bilking life savings from the investors coming out of the middle classes and exploiting the poorest among us through a wide variety of money-making schemas.

Which brings us to Bhagat's third pillar: social progress. This is an American tradition that has often gone awry in the eyes of many neo- and ultra-conservatives. Many of the Christian Right condemn it as "social welfare" that breeds laziness and a "welfare mentality" where people do not work or strive toward chainging their circumstances. But I argue that these conservatives are errant in their analysis. While it is certainly true that some people engage in a bilking of the system out of monies and work harder at working the system than finding work, the vast majority of people receiving assistance are indeed very much in need of social and financial assistance. In fact, most research on the matter of welfare fraud (in whatever form) is committed by 1 to 3 percent of the recipients, and it costs more to identify, investigate and prosecute those perpetrators than it does to write off the loss. In comparison, the various forms of corporate welfare and corporate fraud, most of which is committed by the defense industry, but is also committed by numerous industries that lobby congress on a daily basis, shadow the losses we suffer from helping people conquer their circumstances and poverty, build useful infrastructure, develop well-structured schools or most of the "progressive" ideas.

It is indeed the ideal of social progress that our forefathers built into the Preamble of the Constitution that keeps the marketplace and the majority in check. It is the ideal of social progress that offers the ethics of democracy, the rules by which we operate and assess our democracy, and the raison d'etre of American democracy. If we bother to read the Preamble, we find that one of the stated overall purposes of our government, as formed by the Constitution, is to promote the general welfare. Given the history and class structures of the time that these American framers lived through, that in and of itself is socially progressive.

There are several socially progressive ideals outlined as the foundation for our society... I have identified them in bold print for consideration:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Perhaps more of our politicians, especially those claiming a Christian belief system, should read these words every day until they realize that these ideals are based on Judeo-Christian-Muslim ideals as well.

Talk About A Waste Of Time... AND MONEY!

F.B.I. Calls Off Its Latest Search for Hoffa

Hoffa's been missing for 30 years... and he is probably dead... or should be dead by now. It is an utter waste of taxpayer dollars to look for his body in the manner chosen by the FBI and DOJ... not only did it prove to be a wild goose chase, but it cost a hell of a lot to do it... and it will cost even more to undo it.

The F.B.I. called off its search on Tuesday for the remains of James R. Hoffa, the former Teamsters leader, saying it had found no trace of him on a horse farm.

The search began nearly two weeks ago on the Hidden Dreams Farm in Milford, northwest of Detroit and 17 miles from the restaurant where Mr. Hoffa had been scheduled to meet two organized crime figures when he disappeared on July 30, 1975.

"After a thorough and comprehensive search, no remains of Mr. Hoffa have been located," Judith M. Chilen, an assistant special agent, said at a news briefing at the farm entrance.

Ms. Chilen added that she was convinced that his body had been buried on the farm and that there was "no indication that it has been moved."

Investigators said that they could return to the farm and that the investigation would remain open.

"There are still prosecutable defendants, and they know who they are," Ms. Chilen said.

More than 35 agents, geologists, archaeologists and other experts spent 12 days digging and demolishing a 100-foot barn to examine the ground beneath the foundation.

They found a trench beneath the barn, along with water pipes and debris.

The search, which involved agents from Federal Bureau of Investigation offices in Chicago, Detroit and Washington, as well as the local police, was the most extensive for Mr. Hoffa in recent years. It was set off by what the bureau called a "fairly credible" tip from an informant who is in prison, who said he had seen Mr. Hoffa, rolled in a rug, dropped into a grave.

The search captivated Milford, where merchants rolled out specials for the excavation. The Milford Baking Company sold 3,500 Hoffa cupcakes at 95 cents each, with green plastic hands sticking up through icing and sprinkles meant to resemble dirt.

Signs popped up outside businesses with slogans like "Forget Waldo: Where's Hoffa?"

But the search was no laughing matter to Representative Joe Knollenberg, Republican of Bloomfield Hills. Mr. Knollenberg questioned the expense of the search, which local news reports said could be $500,000. Agents said Tuesday that it was less than $250,000, with some of the total going to tear down the barn.

On Friday, the bureau issued a statement saying the search was justified.

"The expenditure of funds has always been necessary in each and every case the F.B.I. works, and this one is no exception," said Daniel D. Roberts, the special agent in charge of the Detroit office. "We will not abandon our responsibility to investigate a pending organized crime case because it might be termed 'too old.' "

The bureau has abundant experience searching for Mr. Hoffa. Theories have placed his body in spots like the New Jersey Meadowlands and a house in Detroit.

The first tip that he was buried arrived 17 days after his disappearance, prompting the bureau to search a construction site in northern Michigan.

The latest search was the third in the last two years here and was not without its light moments. Over the weekend, agents put down their shovels and posed for a team photograph.

Following Up On That Last Post... DHS Issues Debated In Congress

House Debates Funding for Port Security, Border Crossings and Chemical Plants

As if I needed more fuel for my fires, it appears that the congress critters cannot seem to set their priorities straight and the issues are still up for debate.

The House of Representatives has been struggling over efforts to pump billions of extra dollars into homeland security, namely at seaports, border crossings and chemical plants, even as critics are saying the government isn’t doing enough to protect us from terrorists.

Fox News is reporting the House moved toward passing the spending bill last week, which would give the Homeland Security Department $32 billion in 2007, $1.8 billion more than this year.

“We don’t have the bucks in here to get enough of a bang to really protect the country,” Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin told Fox. He was pushing a long-shot plan to spend an additional $3.5 billion to secure borders and ports, and to give more money to states for emergency first responders, by rolling back tax cuts on Americans who earn more than $1 million next year.

For the second straight year, the report says the House bill eliminates a $1.3 billion administration plan to raise fees for airline passengers. Other highlights include:

$20 billion to protect borders and deter illegal immigration
$4.2 billion for port security
$6.5 billion to bolster disaster preparedness and FEMA
$3.2 billion in state and local grants for emergency first responders

To read the full article, click here.

So Much For Security - DHS Budget Takes Another Hit

DHS Personnel System Funding Takes Another Hit

In a time when we need more people in our ports, securing our airports, and gurading our borders, DHS has taken another budget hit... But that may be why the National Guard is being tasked with Border Patrol reinforcement duties. We have overtaxed our National Guard and Reserve Units, our Border Patrol, Customs, INS and now we are cutting funds to those vital resources... In this case the program cut would base DHS employee pay on merit and performance rather than time spent on the roster and seniority by means of attrition. Perhaps the $15 million needed to be cut for this purpose, but it did not need to be re-directed away from DHS resources. But we should be cutting funds to the NSA domestic spying program... and then we could put that money to good (double meaning for the word "good") use.

Funding for the Homeland Security Department office responsible for implementing a controversial personnel system took a hit Thursday, when the House voted to direct $15 million away from it and toward firefighters.

An amendment to the fiscal 2007 DHS appropriations bill, offered by Rep. Martin Olav Sabo, D-Minn., pulled a total of $125 million from three offices, including $15 million sought by the White House for the Office of the Undersecretary for Management. The House approved the language by a voice vote.

Of the $125 million, $111 million went to firefighters' grants and the remaining $14 million went to the Federal Emergency Management Agency Disaster Relief Fund, said Travis Talvitie, a spokesman for Sabo.

The National Treasury Employees Union, which has long opposed the new personnel system, lauded the House action.

"DHS's continuing efforts to move forward with [the personnel system's] implementation, despite NTEU victories in court declaring large portions of the system illegal, are threatening our national security and causing dangerously low morale among front-line employees," said Colleen Kelley, the union's president.

The system features a market- and performance-based pay approach to replace the decades-old General Schedule under which most civil servants work.

Thursday afternoon's passage of the amendment constitutes the second time in recent weeks that the personnel system has taken a hit in funding.

The House Appropriation Committee's Subcommittee on Homeland Security voted early this month to provide $29.7 million for the system, the same amount it got for 2006 but far short of President Bush's request for nearly $42 million.

In a statement released Thursday, the White House said it "is opposed to any effort to reduce or eliminate funding" for the personnel system.

A final vote on the $32.1 billion DHS appropriations bill (H.R. 5441) has been delayed until the House returns from Memorial Day recess.

Gonzalez's Double Standard: We Want Info, But You Cannot Have Any

It seems that the flow of information for invading the privacy and violating the rights of innocent citizens, tapping phones, cell phones, faxes, computers, e-mail, blogs, etc., are all within the purview of the federal government in the eyes of AG Alberto "Nut Case" Gonzalez... but he also hides behind a wall of supposed secrecy to avoid full invetigation into the legitimacy of his claims that all of these actions are legitimate, legal and necessary to prevent terrorism. Topping it all off is the fact that the government cannot point to one single case where these efforts have produced the desired effect that could not have been similarly produced by good old fashioned police work... without the warrantless wire taps, invasion of customer records and online data, etc.

But Gonzalez, under the flag of the Bush gang, continues to assert the absolute necessity of doing all of these invasive activities without ever fully justifying why, how civil liberties are being protected, or why traditional, more reasonable law enforcement procedures will not work in an equally effective manner.
Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller privately met with representatives of AOL, Comcast, Google, Microsoft and Verizon last week and said that Internet providers--and perhaps search engines--must retain data for two years to aid in anti-terrorism prosecutions, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussion who spoke on condition of anonymity on Tuesday.

"We want this for terrorism," Gonzales said, according to one person familiar with the discussion.

Gonzales' earlier position had only emphasized how mandatory data retention would help thwart child exploitation.

In a speech last month at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Gonzales said that Internet providers must retain records to aid investigations of criminals "abusing kids and sending images of the abuse around the world through the Internet."

If data retention becomes viewed primarily as an anti-terrorism measure, recent legal and political spats could complicate the Justice Department's efforts to make it standard practice.

Especially after recent reports that AT&T has opened its databases to the National Security Agency, Internet and telecommunications executives have become skittish about appearing to be cooperating too closely with the federal government's surveillance efforts.

In addition, the positive publicity that Google received during its legal dispute with the Justice Department over search terms has demonstrated to Internet companies the benefits of objecting to government requests on privacy grounds.

"A monumental data trove is a crazy thing from a privacy perspective," said one person familiar with Friday's discussions. "It's crazy that the U.S. government is going to retain more data than the Chinese government does."

Comcast said in a statement that "we fully share the attorney general's concern with the need to combat illegal use of the Internet for child pornography, terrorism and other illegal activities. We applaud the attorney general's initiative in convening an internal task force on this issue and look forward to continuing to cooperate with him and the FBI."

"The reasons for skepticism are growing," said Jim Harper, an analyst at the free-market Cato Institute and member of the Department of Homeland Security's Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. He predicted the reaction among Internet and telecom companies will be "mildly unfavorable but people are not yet to the point where they'll say the emperor has no clothes."

Details of the Justice Department's proposal remain murky. One possibility is requiring Internet providers to record the Internet addresses that their customers are temporarily assigned. A more extensive mandate would require them to keep track of the identities of Americans' e-mail and instant messaging correspondents and save the logs of Internet phone calls.

A Justice Department representative said Tuesday that the proposal would not require Internet providers to retain records of the actual contents of conversations and other Internet traffic.

Until Gonzales' public remarks last month, the Bush administration had generally opposed laws requiring data retention, saying it had "serious reservations" (click for PDF) about them. But after the European Parliament last December approved such a requirement for Internet, telephone and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers, top administration officials began talking about it more favorably.

Two proposals to mandate data retention have surfaced in the U.S. Congress. One, backed by Rep. Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, says that any Internet service that "enables users to access content" must permanently retain records that would permit police to identify each user. The records could be discarded only at least one year after the user's account was closed.

The other was drafted by aides to Wisconsin Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a close ally of President Bush. Sensenbrenner said through a spokesman earlier this month, though, that his proposal is on hold because "our committee's agenda is tremendously overcrowded already."

'Preservation' vs. 'retention'
At the moment, Internet service providers typically discard any log file that's no longer required for business reasons such as network monitoring, fraud prevention or billing disputes. Companies do, however, alter that general rule when contacted by police agencies performing an investigation--a practice called data preservation.

A 1996 federal law called the Electronic Communication Transactional Records Act regulates data preservation. It requires Internet providers to retain any "record" in their possession for 90 days "upon the request of a governmental entity."

Because Internet addresses remain a relatively scarce commodity, ISPs tend to allocate them to customers from a pool based on if a computer is in use at the time. (Two standard techniques used are the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol and Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet.)

In addition, Internet providers are required by another federal law to report child pornography sightings to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is in turn charged with forwarding that report to the appropriate police agency.

The Europe-wide requirement applies to a wide variety of "traffic" and "location" data, including the identities of the customers' correspondents; the date, time, and duration of phone calls, VoIP calls, or e-mail messages; and the location of the device used for the communications. But the "content" of the communications is not supposed to be retained. The rules are expected to take effect in 2008.

CNET also offers a basic timeline for Gonzalez's spying efforts:

ISP Snooping Time Line

In events first reported by CNET News.com, Bush administration officials have said Internet providers must keep track of what Americans are doing online. Here's the time line:

June 2005: Justice Department officials quietly propose data retention rules.

December 2005: European Parliament votes for data retention of up to two years.

April 14, 2006: Data retention proposals surface in Colorado and the U.S. Congress.

April 20, 2006: Attorney General Gonzales says data retention "must be addressed."

April 28, 2006: Rep. DeGette proposes data retention amendment.

May 16, 2006: Rep. Sensenbrenner drafts data retention legislation, but backs away from it two days later.

May 26, 2006: Gonzales and FBI Director Mueller meet with Internet and telecommunications companies.

The Best Way To Prevent A Full Investigation: Deny Security Clearances

Investigators Denied Clearances for Probe of Eavesdropping Program

A security clearance is supposed to be a process whereby the subject of the clearance process is investigated to assure that 1) they are trustworthy for the level of information that they will be exposed to; 2) they have no issues or problems in their past or present behaviors that could be exploited as a security leak; and 3) they have the academic and experiential background to deal with the information aprropriately. In the military security clearances are designated as "confidential," "secret," and "top secret," with each of these designations having levels of access. The fundamental principles of any security are the concepts of "need to know" and "eyes only." But the security clearance was never intended to thwart legitimate investigation into wrong-doing in the various departments and branches of government.

So, when AG Alberto "Nut Case" Gonzalez uses the argument that an investigation would undo the effectiveness of the NSA spying program, we have to ask a few questions....

The first question is about the effectiveness. Gonzalez and the rest of the Bush gang stand behind the approach, but the FBI and the Intelligence Committees of both houses have statistics--provided by the DOJ, CIA, NSA--that clearly indicates that this approach has been an utter failure, has not led to one single arrest, has used up the limited manpower of the FBI and other invetigatory bodies on wild goose chases, and clearly violates the Constitution and the guarantees of due process, warrants for surveillance and seizure, and is just plain wrong.

The second question then focuses in on what it is that Gonzalez and the Bush gang are hiding... and the only logical answer one can conclude is that Gonzalez and the Bush gang are deeply involved in a cover up of more wrong doing, deeper levels of illegal surveillance and bigger failures.

Given that we have a proven track record of the Bush gang hiding matters of wrong-doing, covering up matters of scandal and consistently claiming the right of privilege or national security, it gets more and more difficult to take them at their word on anything. The problems of "special rendition," Abu Ghraib and the efforts to dismiss the events (or at least pass the buck), the recent cover up in Afghanistan involving Marines kiling innocents, the long-term imprisonment of captives without due process or adherence to international law, the parameters of the NSA warrantless domestic spying, the coerced surrender of phone records, etc., etc.... all point to a problem of trust with these folks...

So obviously there is yet another cover up and Gonzalez is using unethical legal maneuvers to facilitate that cover up.

An internal Justice Department inquiry into whether department officials -- including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft -- acted properly in approving and overseeing the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program was stymied because investigators were denied security clearances to do their work.

The investigators, however, were only seeking information and documents relating to the National Security Agency's surveillance program that were already in the Justice Department's possession, two senior government officials said in interviews.

The investigation was launched in January by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility -- a small ethics watchdog set up in 1975 after department officials were implicated in the Watergate scandal. The OPR investigates allegations of official misconduct by department attorneys, not crimes per se, but it does issue reports and recommend disciplinary action. The current Justice Department inspector general has determined that OPR is the office responsible for investigating the professional actions of the attorney general involving the NSA program.

The only classified information that OPR investigators were seeking about the NSA's eavesdropping program was what had already been given to Ashcroft, Gonzales and other department attorneys in their original approval and advice on the program, the two senior government officials said. And, by nature, OPR's request was limited to documents such as internal Justice Department communications and legal opinions, and didn't extend to secrets that are the sole domain of other agencies, the two officials said.

It is not clear who denied the OPR investigators the necessary security clearances, but Gonzales has reiterated in recent days that sharing too many details about the surveillance program could diminish its usefulness in locating terrorists, and he indicated that giving OPR investigators access to the program could jeopardize it.

Gonzales said that Justice attorneys examined and approved the surveillance, and that decisions on whether to share information about it are weighed in light of national security needs. "We don't want to be talking so much about the program that we compromise [its] effectiveness," the attorney general said at a public appearance last week.

Gonzales asserted to other senior officials that only people who have been "read into the [NSA] program," meaning they know its details and have pledged not to divulge them, should be allowed access, one of the two senior officials said in an interview. Traditionally, the decision on whether to grant access to a highly classified program is made by the agency that runs it, in this case the NSA.

Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., and three other Democrats -- John Lewis of Georgia, Henry Waxman of California, and Lynn Woolsey of California -- requested the OPR investigation after the surveillance program was revealed in late 2005, and asked the agency to determine whether it complied with existing law. OPR investigates "allegations of misconduct involving department attorneys that relate to the exercise of their authority to investigate, litigate, or provide legal advice," according to the office's policies and procedures.

Justice attorneys approved the NSA's warrantless eavesdropping in 2001, and Gonzales has vehemently defended President Bush's powers to order it ever since.

OPR's lead counsel, H. Marshall Jarrett, wrote to Hinchey in early February saying he had launched the investigation. "I am writing to acknowledge receipt of your January 9, 2006, letter, in which you asked this office to investigate the Department of Justice's role in authorizing, approving, and auditing certain surveillance activities of the National Security Agency, and whether such activities are permissible under existing law. For your information, we have initiated an investigation. Thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention."

But earlier this month, Jarrett again wrote to Hinchey: "We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program. Beginning in January 2006, this office made a series of requests for the necessary clearances. On May 9, 2006, we were informed that our requests had been denied. Without these clearances, we cannot investigate this matter and therefore have closed our investigation."

Jarrett didn't say which official or agency denied the requests for clearances. Asked whether the NSA had done so, agency spokesman Donny Weber pointed to Gonzales's public comments last week. Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, when asked which agency or person denied the security clearances to OPR investigators, also said Gonzales's comments of last week addressed that question.

After the clearances were denied, a reporter asked Gonzales, "Did Mr. Jarrett come to you and ask you to assist him in getting those clearances?" Gonzales replied, "It would not be appropriate, and I would not get into internal discussions or the give and take that happened between the attorney general and other folks within the Department of Justice."

"You were aware of this personally?" the reporter asked.

"Again, I'm not going to comment on anything," Gonzales replied.

Asked which agency or official decided not to grant the OPR investigators security clearances, Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said, "We aren't commenting on internal decisions." He noted that the attorney general had addressed the topic in his public comments. If the decision to deny the clearances was in fact an "internal decision" of the Justice Department, that raises the prospect that Gonzales himself or another senior Justice official denied the clearances, and hence quashed the OPR investigation.

Michael Shaheen, who headed the OPR from its inception until 1997, said that his staff "never, ever was denied a clearance," and that OPR had conducted numerous investigations involving the activities of attorneys general. "No attorney general has ever said no to me," Shaheen said. He added that, over the past several years, the OPR's muscle has degraded, in part because it was stripped of its authority to pursue criminal investigations.

But under the Bush administration, the weakening has been especially pronounced, Shaheen said. "I just think that the White House has so frightened everybody.... If I were still at OPR and was told I couldn't have security clearances, the first word out of my mouth ... would have been, 'Balderdash!' "

In an interview, Hinchey argued that Gonzales and other Bush administration officials have an obligation to cooperate in every manner possible with any OPR investigation: "The Justice Department has an Office of Professional Responsibility to assure that the highest ethical standards are met by those who enforce our laws. That's why we have Jarrett.... The idea that they are not going to give him the necessary security clearances to do his job and the proper oversight is absurd."

Regarding Gonzales, Hinchey said: "The attorney general has said that he does not have to allow an investigation to go forward because he has talked about the legal underpinnings of the NSA program. He has not done that because it does not have any. It is devoid of any legal underpinnings."

Hinchey has drafted a resolution of inquiry requesting that Bush, Gonzales, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld turn over documents relating to the OPR investigation's closure and the denial of security clearances. The resolution asks for "telephone and electronic-mail records, logs and calendars, personnel records, and records of internal discussions." Hinchey said he planned to get other members of Congress to sign on to the resolution this week.

The OPR investigation also set out to determine whether the NSA's surveillance activities were legal and complied with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the sole law on intelligence-gathering inside the United States. Gonzales has averred that the legal underpinnings have already been laid out in public testimony and in detailed department analyses of the president's authority to order warrantless eavesdropping. He has also asserted that Justice's inspector general, not the OPR, has the authority to investigate whether department officials' conduct is lawful.

But in January, the Justice Department's inspector general deferred to the OPR on questions about authorization of the NSA program. In declining a request by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., to investigate Gonzales's role, Inspector General Glenn Fine wrote, "The actions of the attorney general or other department attorneys in providing legal advice regarding the legality of warrantless surveillance by NSA ... falls within the jurisdiction of the [OPR]." Fine then sent Lofgren's request to that office.

A New Breed Of Conservativism In The Wings - Post-Bush Conservativism

Nighthawks by Peter Beinart

Peter Beinhart is an author, analyst and editor-at-large that occasionally posts on The New Republic (Online) and is recently known for his book, The Good Fight: Why Liberals---and Only Liberals---Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again. He will be speaking at a Barnes & Noble in Georgetown (DC) on May 31st.

The New Republic is a magazine that criticizes both liberal and conservative thought, sometimes leans conservative and sometimes leans liberal (if we can rely on such labels), but does force the reader to think beyond well-established rhetoric.

In the following article, Beinhart offers a brief history of conservativism and some analysis--perhaps predictions--of where conservativism (especially ultra-conservativism) will be directed in the post-Bush era. It has some interesting ideas.

Do you detect a difference among conservatives these days? The talk about exporting American values to the Middle East is waning--eclipsed by worries about whether such values can survive unregulated immigration at home. One hears less about the wonders of tax cuts and more about the perils of government spending. Instead of attacking the left for denigrating American culture, the right is increasingly doing so itself. A switch has been flipped--one side of the right's brain is shutting down, and another is turning on. We are moving, once again, from the conservatism of day to the conservatism of night.

Night conservatism is the older creed. The men (yes, men) who created the modern conservative movement in the decade after World War II were generally pessimists. All around them, they saw statism--whether in its Stalinist or New Deal incarnations--on the march. Mass society seemed to be erasing the economic and cultural distinctions that conservatives considered essential to liberty. The American people, insisted conservative forefather Albert Jay Nock, were irredeemable; conservatism was the refuge of the beleaguered, superior few. In his 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk declared that American conservatives had been "routed" ever since 1789. Another key thinker, Richard Weaver, argued that civilization had been going downhill since the fourteenth century.

For day conservatism to be born, the right had to gain faith in America. The reconciliation began with Joseph McCarthy's crusade to exclude alleged communists from the institutions of American life. Most conservative intellectuals embraced McCarthy and, to their delight, found the American public on their side. By 1968, when Richard Nixon and George Wallace rallied the white working class against the pointy-headed left, conservatives had realized that populism could be their friend.

But day conservatism only truly emerged with the election of Ronald Reagan. The McCarthy and Nixon insurrections had been populist but dark--bitter insurgencies against a still-hegemonic liberal elite. Reagan's message, by contrast, was relentlessly optimistic. American culture--which conservatives had feared was irredeemable--would be rapidly remoralized. Communism--which conservatives had long considered ascendant--was destined for the "ash-heap of history." And tax cuts would unleash unimaginable prosperity.

The third element was particularly important. Earlier conservative leaders like Barry Goldwater had insisted that cutting government should precede cutting taxes, so as not to unleash the menace of budget deficits and inflation. But, under Reagan, conservatives switched from peddling broccoli to peddling ice cream. Reagan cut taxes without cutting government, on the theory that lower taxes would produce such epic economic growth that tax revenue would actually rise. The right--which had once prided itself on telling harsh truths--was suddenly telling Americans they could have it all.

In 1994, the conservative writer David Frum wrote a manifesto, Dead Right, which attacked the Reaganites for playing to the crowd and thus selling conservatism's soul. But, unbeknownst to him, night conservatism was on the verge of a comeback. The Republican revolutionaries who stormed Congress that fall represented the partial return of the pre-Reagan right. In contrast to Reagan's foreign policy adventurism, they were generally cynical about the world beyond America's shores--and they urged the United States to pull up its drawbridge, reducing immigration, retreating from international institutions, and slashing foreign aid. They demanded a balanced budget, even trying to cut the popular middle-class spending that Reagan had spared. And, by the late '90s, when the American people refused to impeach Bill Clinton, they had grown pessimistic again about American culture. In 1999, Paul Weyrich famously urged conservatives to do just what Nock had envisioned: retreat from American society and live as a beleaguered, superior counterculture.

When George W. Bush ran for president in 2000, he pointedly disassociated himself from the Republican Congress. Instead, he returned to Reagan's model--abandoning the assault on middle-class spending and promising tax cuts instead. He avoided harsh culture war rhetoric and advertised his comfort with blacks and immigrants. And, after September 11, he pushed Reagan's optimistic internationalism to its limits--declaring that the United States would not only defeat its terrorist enemies, but also extinguish tyranny from the earth.

Now, as the Bush era comes to a close, dusk is setting in again. Conservatives are in another frenzy over immigration, insisting that the United States is surrendering its sovereignty and its way of life. Day conservatives say America lifts immigrants up. But night conservatives are increasingly saying that immigrants bring America down.

After insisting, as Dick Cheney famously did in 2003, that deficits don't matter, conservatives are finding them intolerable again--and denouncing Bush as a heretic for expanding government. The movement toward gay equality is again turning conservatives sour on the culture, with fundamentalist leaders Jerry Falwell and Tim LaHaye recently predicting America's decline into paganism. Once-proud neoconservatives like Francis Fukuyama are calling the Bush administration's faith that military conquest will organically breed democracy a perversion of their creed.

Memorial Day Revolution... Of Sorts

Moday was Memorial Day, or at least the observance of Memorial Day. I was obligated to spend part of the day with my in-laws down at what our family lovingly calls the "Love Shack," which is really their fifth-wheel RV located at a year-round campsite.

It was hotter than hell, and the electricity went out for the RV, which meant that the air conditioning was off. There were a ton of tiny gnats flying about because the weather was undergoing a rapid change from hot, to hot and stormy. But we managed to get the burgers cooked, the sausages and brats grilled, and the table set for about a dozen family members and friends.

In order to really understand the context of this experience one must get to know the characters. My mother-in-law, "Wheezy," is the retired secretary for an ultra-conservative Petecostal Protestant church, and an active tax expert working for the H&R Block folks. She is about as honest as the day is long during the summer at the North Pole. She also works as the director of a church-sponsored food pantry serving the poor and needy in Hammond, Indiana, a community of about 70 or more thousand people just southeast of Chicago proper.

Lyndall is my father-in-law. He is a loving man and a lay preacher for the same church. He is a little more relaxed about his Christianity than his loving wife, but ultra-conservative none-the-less. He has retired from the steel mills, and despite the severe cuts to his pension due to the failure of these mills to protect the pension funds, he is not bitter about the way he has been mistreated and cheated by big business and corporate America.

Ken and Pat are friends of my in-laws, also members of the same church and denomination, also retired, and have an RV next door to Lyndall and Wheezy. They have a son that served faithfully as an aircraft mechanic with the Marines for 21 years. There son and daughter-in-law were ultimately the hosts for this shindig as they still had their electricity working and we could fire up the grill at their site. They, too, are members of the church, conservative and believe in a holiness. The other participants were of a similar nature and character.

During the festivities we began some discourse on the government and the Bush gang. Surprisingly, all but one of the group expressed utter contempt for our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, disbelief in the way that the Bush gang misled us to get us into the war, astonishment at the way we continue to be lied to about events over there, disgust at the wiretapping fiascos, and a lack of support for anything our government seems to be doing at the moment. While my mother-in-law still had some support for our government's response to Katrina (and I was disappointed by her entrenchment in this arena), the sentiments expressed by this group was decidely anti-Bush, anti-Republican leadership, anti-Democrat (as to be expected) and outrage at the lack of morality and adherence to our basic American values. The pattern of abuses conducted by our government and our troops have hit home with them.

I offer this description of this Memorial Day observance as evidence that it is not just us Yankee, Catholic and notoriously rabble-rousing Bay Staters raising the issues, questions, eyebrows and doubts any longer. There is a quiet reveloution occuring and the steam is building... but there seems to be a lack of outrage, shock and willingness to call for action... and that is ultimately disturbing, still.

But these folks were staunch Bush supporters not three years ago. My in-laws were almost asked to leave my home because they were advocating the view that Bush and his gang were honorable and decent human beings doing a good job... and now they see room for criticism, chastisement and rebuke... but no outrage and no call for impeachment.

There is a current of discontent... and the pumps are primed... and we will see an explosion soon if the right spark is struck... and we may yet see the outrage and the call for not only impeachment, but criminal charges and imprisonment... I cannot wait for the revolution!

AT&T's Secret NSA Room - Details Revealed

I love the work that the Electronic Freedom Foundation does. Mitch Kapor, co-founder of Lotus Corpration and giant in the software industry, did something that a lot more millionaires and billionaires should do... Invest in the furtherance of basic freedoms.

But this is an especially important revelation coming out of their work and the work of others in opposition to the NSA domestic spying programs and the hand-over of customer records without due process, just cause or rational thought.

Key Portions of Critical Documents Unsealed in AT&T Surveillance Case:Technician Describes Secret NSA Room at AT&T Facility

May 25, 2006

San Francisco - AT&T has set up a secret, secure room for the NSA in at least one of the company's facilities -- a room into which AT&T has been diverting its customers' emails and other Internet communications in bulk -- according to evidence in key documents partially unsealed today in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF's) class-action lawsuit against the telecom giant.

"Now the public can see firsthand the testimony of Mark Klein, a former AT&T employee who was brave enough to step forward and provide evidence of the company's illegal collaboration with the NSA," said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "Today we have released some of the evidence supporting our allegation that AT&T has given the NSA direct access to its fiber-optic network, such that the NSA can read the email of anyone and everyone it chooses -- all without a warrant or any court supervision, and in clear violation of the law."

The Klein declaration and EFF's motion for a preliminary injunction against AT&T's ongoing illegal surveillance were filed under seal last month. But last week, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker instructed AT&T to work with EFF to narrowly redact the documents and make them available to the public.

"We strongly believe in transparency and openness in judicial proceedings and that there is no proper basis for permanently sealing any of the information supporting our preliminary injunction papers," said EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. "In the interim, we are glad that as much as possible is released while the motions to unseal filed by media entities are pending."

EFF filed the class-action suit against AT&T in January, alleging that the telecommunications company has given the National Security Agency (NSA) secret, direct access to the phone calls and emails going over its network and has been handing over communications logs detailing the activities of millions of ordinary Americans. The next hearing in this case is set for June 23, when the judge will consider the motions to dismiss EFF's suit made by both the U.S. government and AT&T.

For the public version of Klein's declaration:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/KleinDecl-Redact.pdf

For the public version of EFF's preliminary injunction motion:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/PI-Redact.pdf

For more on EFF's lawsuit:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/

Contact:

Rebecca Jeschke
Media Coordinator
Electronic Frontier Foundation
press@eff.org

Katrina - Infrastructure Failures Made It Like Four Storms

An Autopsy of Katrina: Four Storms, Not Just One

Some time after Katrina hit and the response of our various levels of government failed, I wrote about how the infrastructure of levees, roads, flood control projects and various other infrastructure had long been ignored and caused the problem of Katrina to hit even harder than it should have... and now we see that scientists and civil engineers have arrived at similar conclusions.

Most people believe that a single Category 3 hurricane, Katrina, devastated New Orleans on Aug. 29 of last year. The flood protection system for the New Orleans area was designed to protect the city from a direct hit by a fast-moving Category 3 storm.

Yet Hurricane Katrina, a Category 4 storm that did not strike the city directly, overwhelmed systems in dozens of places and cost more than 1,500 lives and billions in property damage.

Why? In part, say experts who studied the disaster, because the hurricane was more like four storms — at least — that battered the area in different ways. They say the system in New Orleans was flawed from the start because the model storm it was designed to stop was simplistic, and led to an inadequate network of levees, flood walls, storm gates and pumps.

The 2006 hurricane season begins Thursday, with four to six major storms predicted for this year by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And experts say that understanding the failings is essential in planning the next generation of flood protection for a rebuilt New Orleans, and for systems nationwide.

"This is a national issue," said Raymond Seed, a professor of engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and an author of a stinging report released last week. That report has identified flaws in design, construction and maintenance of the levees that contributed to the failures. But underlying it all, the report stated, were the problems with the initial model used to determine how strong the system should be.

With the right hurricane protection, he said, the result of Hurricane Katrina would have been different: "we call it 'wet ankles.' "

The flood protection system was first authorized by Congress after Hurricane Betsy flooded the city in 1965, and it was supposed to protect the area from the kind of storm that would come only once in two centuries. It was expected to take about 13 years to complete and cost about $85 million, according to a history by the Government Accountability Office.

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans 40 years later, the system was still not finished, and it had already cost $738 million. In the eight months since the storm, the Corps of Engineers has spent some $800 million in direct costs to repair the system — $62 million more than it had cost in the first place.

The main tool used to design the system was a fiction — a hypothetical storm called the "standard project hurricane." The corps began developing the model with the Weather Bureau in 1959. The idea, as the corps has put it , was that the model would represent "the most severe storm that is considered reasonably characteristic of a region."

The corps based its model on data from previous storms, with some relatively straightforward calculations to estimate the surge and waves at various points. Maj. Gen. Don T. Riley, the director of civil works for the corps, said in an interview that the levee system "was built at the standard of the time."

In hindsight, however, it was a rough and inadequate tool. This month, Dr. David Daniel, the chairman of a panel reviewing the corps' investigation, said in an interview, "It was not a terribly sophisticated or detailed analysis by today's standards."

The report by Professor Seed's group found that the creators of the standard project hurricane, in an attempt to find a representative storm, actually excluded the fiercest storms from the database.

Storms like Hurricane Camille in 1969 were taken out of the data set as lying too far out of the norm; the Berkeley researchers noted that "excluding outlier data is not appropriate in the context of dealing with extreme hazards." Also, the calculations of the cost-benefit ratio did not take into account the costs of failure, both economic and social, far greater in an urban area like New Orleans than a rural one.

Once the standard project hurricane was completed, characterizing it was difficult. The standard was developed before the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale came into use, and the features of the storm fit poorly with the scale. The wind speed for the project hurricane was just 100 miles per hour, which falls into Category 2; other features more closely resemble a much more severe Category 4. The corps generally calls it the equivalent of a fast-moving Category 3.

The standard project hurricane became enshrined within the corps, wrote the Berkeley group, and the corps saw little need to go back and reanalyze "the true risks of catastrophic flooding" in New Orleans. Even when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the successor agency to the Weather Bureau, recommended increasing the strength of the model, the corps did not change its construction plans.

A report released this month by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs said that calling the standard hurricane project storm a Category 3 was "at best a rough estimate, and at worst, simply inaccurate," and gave New Orleanians a false sense of security. In the report, Al Naomi, the senior project manager for the corps on the system, admitted to a simplification borne of convenience — or, as he put it to the Senate investigators, "What am I going to tell the Rotary Club?"

What the Rotary Club experienced last August was not what New Orleans was prepared for. The first stage of Hurricane Katrina touched Louisiana as it passed south of the city in the Plaquemines Parish town of Buras with winds of more than 125 miles per hour pushing a storm surge. The wind and water overwhelmed the local hurricane defenses: levees built to withstand 13 feet of water were overwhelmed by more than 17 feet of surge, damaging levees and scattering homes and boats across the thinly populated parish like toys.

As the hurricane moved across Lake Borgne to the east, the effect was quite different: the second storm sent strong waves and a surge estimated at 18 feet or more back across the lake to the levees bordering St. Bernard Parish. The long levees there had been designed to handle 13 feet of water. The assault washed over Chalmette and other communities with floodwaters exceeding 14 feet in some areas. A similar pounding took out the southeastern levee of the development known as New Orleans East.

In its third incarnation, the storm sent the water up a funnel formed at the northwest corner of Lake Borgne and into the city's Inner Harbor Navigation Canal, where the water rose and churned with exceptional force, said Hassan Mashriqui, a researcher with the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center. Those waters shattered flood walls in several places and destroyed the city's Lower Ninth Ward.

As the storm pushed into Mississippi, it sent a final surge toward New Orleans across Lake Pontchartrain, north of the city. As the water stacked up against the south shore of the lake, it rose against the walls of the three main drainage canals that run from the center of the city. Though the surge was weaker than the others and the water did not reach the tops of the flood walls, the 17th Street Canal and the London Avenue Canal suffered breaches that caused the lake's waters to spill into the center of the city.

Other parts of the area, like the West Bank communities, fared comparatively well. "If you were sitting over on the West Bank, you didn't think it was such a big deal," said Edward Link, an engineering professor at the University of Maryland, who is a leader of the corps investigation of the disaster.

Had the storm taken a westerly course instead, the effect would have been radically different, he said, and even a weak storm can, if it sits in one spot, cause profound flood damage. The lesson is that "a single storm cannot be equated to a single set of forces, or a single wave or surge environment," he said.

Dr. Daniel, who is reviewing the corps inquiry, said that today's engineers based their designs for buildings in areas prone to hazards like floods and earthquakes on statistical analyses that run through all probable conditions and produce estimates that more closely characterize the risks.

The Netherlands has built flood protection to withstand surges that might be expected every 10,000 years. Jurjen Battjes, a flood expert there who is working with Dr. Daniel's group, said his nation began embracing the statistical approach in the 1930's and got a wake-up call with floods in the 1950's. The Dutch planners extrapolated conditions far greater than anything seen in history but still possible, he said, and estimated the costs of protection, including the economic and social costs of failure, and boiled it down to a cost-benefit curve. The ultimate decision, he said, is less technical than political: "How much money do we want to spend now for protection in the future?"

In New Orleans, the hurricane protection system has now been restored to the strength it was intended to have before the storm, and it will be further improved. Congress has told the corps to study ways to improve protection for southern Louisiana. And this time, said Daniel Hitchings, director of the corps task force in charge of overall hurricane recovery for the Gulf Coast, it will be done right, with the probabilistic approach that experts have called for and a greater willingness to take new data into account.

"If we don't get the wake-up call now," he said, "we never will."

Discouraging The Vote: Not Just A Perception, But A Reality

Editorial: Block the Vote

I've been writing about it, and stating that we need to encourage the full turnout of voters, and caliming that there are politicians that promote their control and stay in office by discouraging the vote, but now comes the NYT folks to say....

In a country that spends so much time extolling the glories of democracy, it's amazing how many elected officials go out of their way to discourage voting. States are adopting rules that make it hard, and financially perilous, for nonpartisan groups to register new voters. They have adopted new rules for maintaining voter rolls that are likely to throw off many eligible voters, and they are imposing unnecessarily tough ID requirements.

Florida recently reached a new low when it actually bullied the League of Women Voters into stopping its voter registration efforts in the state. The Legislature did this by adopting a law that seems intended to scare away anyone who wants to run a voter registration drive. Since registration drives are particularly important for bringing poor people, minority groups and less educated voters into the process, the law appears to be designed to keep such people from voting.

It imposes fines of $250 for every voter registration form that a group files more than 10 days after it is collected, and $5,000 for every form that is not submitted — even if it is because of events beyond anyone's control, like a hurricane. The Florida League of Women Voters, which is suing to block the new rules, has decided it cannot afford to keep registering new voters in the state as it has done for 67 years. If a volunteer lost just 16 forms in a flood, or handed in a stack of forms a day late, the group's entire annual budget could be put at risk.

In Washington, a new law prevents people from voting if the secretary of state fails to match the information on their registration form with government databases. There are many reasons that names, Social Security numbers and other data may not match, including typing mistakes. The state is supposed to contact people whose data does not match, but the process is too tilted against voters.

Congress is considering a terrible voter ID requirement as part of the immigration reform bill. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, introduced an amendment to require all voters to present a federally mandated photo ID. Even people who have been voting for years would need to get a new ID to vote in 2008. Millions of people without drivers' licenses, including many elderly people and city residents, might fail to do so, and be ineligible to vote. The amendment has been blocked so far, but voting-rights advocates worry that it could reappear.

These three techniques — discouraging registration drives, purging eligible voters and imposing unreasonable ID requirements — keep showing up. Colorado recently imposed criminal penalties on volunteers who slip up in registration drives. Georgia, one of several states to adopt harsh new voter ID laws, had its law struck down by a federal court.

Protecting the integrity of voting is important, but many of these rules seem motivated by a partisan desire to suppress the vote, and particular kinds of voters, rather than to make sure that those who are entitled to vote — and only those who are entitled — do so. The right to vote is fundamental, and Congress and state legislatures should not pass laws that put an unnecessary burden on it. If they do, courts should strike them down.

Can You Trust Your Doctor... And The Pharma Company Sponoring His Conclusions?

Editorial: Industry's Role in Hypertension

It would appear that the greed of the Pharmaceutical industry has the same ethical code as the oil companies or even the members of the Bush administration.

If the American Society for Hypertension hoped to devise an expanded definition of the condition that would be scientifically and ethically defensible, it sure picked the wrong way to do it. Virtually every key step in its efforts to redefine hypertension from mere high blood pressure to a broader syndrome has been financed by pharmaceutical companies that would gain by selling drugs to more people.

As described by Stephanie Saul in The Times on May 20, Merck, Novartis and Sankyo gave the small medical society $75,000 in unrestricted grants that were used to develop a new definition, and $700,000 more in unrestricted grants that financed dinner lectures to promote the new definition. The drug companies have too much self-interest to be allowed even a peripheral role in defining illness.

Hypertension, which is a risk factor for developing cardiovascular disease, is currently defined as a blood pressure reading of 140/90 and above. Some 65 million Americans have high blood pressure by that definition. But 59 million more are considered pre-hypertensive, which means they have blood pressure readings of at least 120/80. The new concept being debated within the society would move about half of these into the hypertension category based on other risk factors.

The rationale is that simple blood pressure measurements fail to identify all the people who may need to be treated to prevent heart attacks and strokes. So the expanded definition would throw in various cardiovascular risk factors, biochemical markers and signs of organ damage that could, collectively, justify a diagnosis of hypertension even if blood pressure was too low to meet the current definition. The proposed definition does not recommend any specific treatment, but it would seem likely to expand the use of medications.

While this approach has merit in principle, some prominent members of the society complain that the new definition is not grounded on solid scientific evidence and inevitably bears the taint of financial ties with the industry. No guidelines produced this way will have much credibility.

Reward For VA Data... And A Failure On The Part Of VA Practices

Worker Often Took Data Home
VA Tracks Practice to 2003; $50,000 Reward Set for Computer

It would appear that while everyone else in the government were taking steps to protect data held in computers, the VA was opening the doors to potential dangers... and it is the veterans being serviced by the VA that will suffer the potential risks of identity theft and the fallout of poor IT security.

The Department of Veterans Affairs data analyst who lost 26.5 million veterans' personal information when his home was burglarized had routinely taken such data home since 2003, VA Inspector General George J. Opfer said yesterday.

"It wasn't like all of a sudden one night he took home all this data," Opfer said during a break in House and Senate hearings on the massive information security breach.

Authorities announced a $50,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of the laptop computer and external hard drive stolen May 3 from the employee's Aspen Hill home. The VA inspector general and the FBI are offering the reward. Montgomery County police asked anyone with information to call 866-411-8477.

Federal investigators have removed other sensitive VA data the worker was not authorized to have at home, Opfer testified. He said his staff will identify all the data the employee had at home and determine which supervisors knew about it.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson said the stolen information was not encrypted or "scrambled." He reiterated that there has been no indication that thieves are using the data to open credit card accounts, take out bank loans or engage in other forms of identity theft.

The electronic file contained names and dates of birth for as many as 26.5 million veterans who have been discharged since 1975, or who were discharged in any year and are collecting disability compensation from the department, Nicholson said. The file also included the Social Security numbers of 19.6 million of those veterans, he said. He said fewer than 100 spouses are believed to be included in the file.

Opfer said his office did not learn of the lost data until May 10, and then only through an offhand remark by a VA employee at a routine meeting. Nicholson was even further out of the loop; he testified yesterday that his subordinates failed to inform him until May 16 -- nearly two weeks after the theft put millions of veterans at risk of identity theft. The FBI was not told until May 17, and Nicholson did not make a public announcement until Monday.

"I'm so damn mad at the loss of veterans' data and the fact that one person can put all of us at risk," said Nicholson, an Army veteran who served in Vietnam. "I can't explain these lapses in judgment on the part of my people. . . . After the inspector general finishes his investigation and finds exactly what happened, I plan to take decisive actions. "

Nicholson said several VA officials have offered their resignations but he will not decide whether to accept them until the investigation is complete. "I am the person ultimately responsible to our veterans, and therefore I am the person responsible for this situation," the secretary said.

He repeated his plan to have all VA employees take a cybersecurity training course by June 30 and to increase background checks of employees with access to sensitive information. He said the employee who took the data home last had a background check 32 years ago.

Lawmakers, besieged by calls from outraged veterans, lambasted Nicholson both for the security breakdown and for the department's sluggish response.

Sen. Susan M. Collins (R-Maine), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, called the entire episode "absolutely baffling."

"If the employee had chosen not to report the theft immediately, VA and the public could possibly still be in the dark," said Hawaii Sen. Daniel K. Akaka, the top Democrat on the Veterans Affairs Committee.

"Something like this should never go unknown by the boss," said Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.).

Several lawmakers noted that the department's information security measures have repeatedly been identified as vulnerable in recent years.

"The system is so poorly designed that one employee can compromise the whole thing," said Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho), chairman of the veterans panel, said he believes that the VA data analyst was "a dedicated federal employee who took work home with the hope of improving VA operations."

He said the department, and not veterans themselves, should cover the cost of the increased credit monitoring made necessary by the loss of the personal data. "There were many lapses in judgment for which many people are going to have to answer," Craig said. "This was not an error that a veteran made. This was an error that the system that provides services to them made."

Peter Norton Sold The Biz... And Symantec Has Given US The Business Run-Around

Researchers: Anti-Virus Software Has Flaw

Peter Norton was a minor god in the field of hard drive technology and protecting computers from invasion from outside. A leader in the development of anti-virus protection, Norton sold his anti-virus concerns to Symantec... and now we learn that Symantec has not done due diligence to assure that the anti-virus software remains secure and effective... and our government computers are full up with Symantec's work.

Alas, McAfee and the makers of other anti-virus software are dancing in the streets now!

Symantec's leading anti-virus software, which protects some of the world's largest corporations and U.S. government agencies, suffers from a flaw that lets hackers seize control of computers to steal sensitive data, delete files or implant malicious programs, researchers said Thursday.
Symantec said it was investigating the issue but could not immediately corroborate the vulnerability. If confirmed, the threat to computer users would be severe because the security software is so widely used, and because no action is required by victims using the latest versions of Norton Anti-virus to suffer a crippling attack over the Internet.

Symantec has boasted its anti-virus products are installed on more than 200 million computers. A spokesman, Mike Bradshaw, said the company was examining the reported flaw but described it as "so new that we don't have any details."

Researchers from eEye Digital Security of Aliso Viejo, Calif., discovered the vulnerability and provided evidence to Symantec engineers this week, said eEye's chief hacking officer, Marc Maiffret. He demonstrated the attack for The Associated Press.

Maiffret's company — which has discovered hundreds of similar flaws in other software products — also produces intrusion-protection software, called "Blink," that he said already blocks such attacks and can operate alongside Symantec's anti-virus products.

Maiffret published a note about the company's discovery on its website but pledged not to reveal details publicly that would help hackers attack Internet users until after Symantec repairs its anti-virus software. eEye said it intends to describe the problem in detail privately for some of its largest customers.

"People shouldn't panic," Maiffret said. "There shouldn't be any exploits until a patch is produced."

The reported flaw comes at an awkward time for Symantec. Its chief executive, John Thompson, has campaigned in recent months to convince consumers they should trust Symantec — not Microsoft — to protect their personal information.

Maiffret said eEye's testing showed the problem affects Norton Anti-virus Version 10, including its corporate editions. He said Symantec's current security suite — which includes both anti-virus and firewall features — did not appear to be vulnerable.

A Failure To Act According To Principled Reason... An American Tradition

Letter on Korean War Massacre Reveals Plan to Shoot Refugees

Apparently the failure of the US government to adhere to principles and ideals of fair action, reasonable use of force and basic tenets of human decency is--and perhaps always will be--a tradition. New evidence shows that US forces were directed to shoot refugees coming out of North Korea... and that fact was covered up for a long time... and the denials at the highest ranks of government were in full bloom.

We have to get everyone to vote so that we are not at the whim of those with control over the limited number of voters willing to show up and turn out... Maybe then we will get leaders that follow our ideals, our principles and our basic values.

More than a half-century after hostilities ended in Korea, a document from the war's chaotic early days has come to light -- a letter from the U.S. ambassador to Seoul, informing the State Department that U.S. soldiers would shoot refugees approaching their lines.

The letter -- dated the day of the Army's mass killing of South Korean refugees at No Gun Ri in 1950 -- is the strongest indication yet that such a policy existed for all U.S. forces in Korea, and the first evidence that that policy was known to upper ranks of the U.S. government.

"If refugees do appear from north of US lines they will receive warning shots, and if they then persist in advancing they will be shot," wrote Ambassador John J. Muccio, in his message to Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

The letter reported on decisions made at a high-level meeting in South Korea on July 25, 1950, the night before the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment shot the refugees at No Gun Ri.

Estimates vary on the number of dead at No Gun Ri. U.S. soldiers' estimates ranged from fewer than 100 to "hundreds" dead; Korean survivors say about 400, mostly women and children, were killed at the village 100 miles southeast of Seoul, the South Korean capital. Hundreds more refugees were killed in later, similar episodes, survivors say.

The No Gun Ri killings were documented in a Pulitzer Prize-winning story by the Associated Press in 1999, which prompted a 16-month Pentagon inquiry.

The Pentagon concluded that the No Gun Ri shootings, which lasted three days, were "an unfortunate tragedy" -- "not a deliberate killing." It suggested panicky soldiers, acting without orders, opened fire because they feared that an approaching line of families, baggage and farm animals concealed enemy troops.

But Muccio's letter indicates the actions of the 7th Cavalry were consistent with policy, adopted because of concern that North Koreans would infiltrate via refugee columns. And in subsequent months, U.S. commanders repeatedly ordered refugees shot, documents show.

The Muccio letter, declassified in 1982, is discussed in a new book by American historian Sahr Conway-Lanz, who discovered the document at the National Archives, where the AP also has obtained a copy.

Conway-Lanz, a former Harvard historian and now an archivist of the National Archives' Nixon collection, was awarded the Stuart L. Bernath Award of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations for the article on which the book is based.

"With this additional piece of evidence, the Pentagon report's interpretation [of No Gun Ri] becomes difficult to sustain," Conway-Lanz argues in his book, "Collateral Damage," published this spring by Routledge.

The Army report's own list of sources for the 1999-2001 investigation shows its researchers reviewed the microfilm containing the Muccio letter. But the 300-page report did not mention it.

Asked about this, Pentagon spokeswoman Betsy Weiner would say only that the Army inspector general's report was "an accurate and objective portrayal of the available facts based on 13 months of work."

Said Louis Caldera, who was Army secretary in 2001 and is now University of New Mexico president, "Millions of pages of files were reviewed, and it is certainly possible they may have simply missed it."

Former Washington Post diplomatic correspondent Don Oberdorfer, a historian of Korea who served on a team of outside experts who reviewed the investigation, said he did not recall seeing the Muccio message. "I don't know why, since the military claimed to have combed all records from any source."

Muccio noted in his 1950 letter that U.S. commanders feared disguised North Korean soldiers were infiltrating American lines via refugee columns.

As a result, those meeting on the night of July 25, 1950 -- top staff officers of the U.S. 8th Army, Muccio's representative Harold J. Noble and South Korean officials -- decided on a policy of air-dropping leaflets telling South Korean civilians not to head south toward U.S. defense lines and of shooting them if they did approach U.S. lines despite warning shots, the ambassador wrote to Rusk.

Rusk, Muccio and Noble, who was embassy first secretary, are all dead. It is not known what action, if any, Rusk and others in Washington may have taken as a result of the letter.

Muccio told Rusk, who was secretary of state during the Vietnam War, that he was writing him "in view of the possibility of repercussions in the United States" from such deadly U.S. tactics.

But the No Gun Ri killings -- as well as others in the ensuing months -- remained hidden from history until the AP report of 1999, in which soldiers who were at No Gun Ri corroborated the Korean survivors' accounts.

Survivors said U.S. soldiers first forced them from nearby villages on July 25, 1950, and then stopped them in front of U.S. lines the next day, when they were attacked without warning by aircraft as hundreds sat atop a railroad embankment. Troops of the 7th Cavalry followed with ground fire as survivors took shelter under a railroad bridge.

The late Army Col. Robert M. Carroll, a lieutenant at No Gun Ri, said in a 1998 interview that he remembered the order radioed across the warfront on the morning of July 26 to stop refugees from crossing battle lines. "What do you do when you're told nobody comes through? . . . We had to shoot them to hold them back."

Other soldier witnesses attested to radioed orders to open fire at No Gun Ri.

Since that episode was confirmed in 1999, South Koreans have lodged complaints with the Seoul government about more than 60 other alleged large-scale killings of refugees by the U.S. military in the 1950-53 war.

The Army report of 2001 acknowledged that investigators learned of other, unspecified civilian killings, but said these would not be investigated.

AP research uncovered at least 19 declassified U.S. military documents showing commanders ordered or authorized such killings in 1950-51.

In a statement issued Monday in Seoul, a No Gun Ri survivors group called that episode "a clear war crime," demanded an apology and compensation from the U.S. government, and said Congress and the United Nations should conduct investigations. The survivors also said they would file a lawsuit against the Pentagon for alleged manipulation of the earlier probe.

Gary Solis, a West Point expert on war crimes, said the policy described by Muccio clearly "deviates from typical wartime procedures. It's an obvious violation of the bedrock core principle of the law of armed conflict -- distinction."

Solis said soldiers always have the right to defend themselves. But "noncombatants are not to be purposely targeted."

But William Eckhardt, lead Army prosecutor in the My Lai atrocities case in Vietnam, sensed "angst, great angst" in the letter because officials worried about what might happen. "If a mob doesn't stop when they're coming at you, you fire over their heads. And if they still don't stop, you fire at them. Standard procedure," he said.

Amnesty International Taking Net Liberty To Task

Amnesty to Target Net Repression

One has to see that the Internet is a medium that allows dissident voices to rise out of the depths of repression, provided some access to the net is allowed. While our attention is often brought to China in these matters, there are literally hundreds of nations where some form of government repression on civil liberties is actively underway, including the United States of America. Additionally, there are places where dissidents are not given a voice merely because the governments of these places restrict net access by not allowing development of network infrastructure in all areas of those nations.

Internet users are being urged to stand up for online freedoms by backing a new campaign launched by human rights group Amnesty International.
Amnesty is celebrating 45 years of activism by highlighting governments using the net to suppress dissent.

The campaign will highlight abuses of rights the net is used for, and push for the release of those jailed for speaking out online.

It will also name hi-tech firms aiding governments that limit online protests.

Pledge bank

Called Irrepressible.info, the campaign will revolve around a website with the same name. While the human rights group has run separate campaigns about web repression and the jailing of net dissidents before now, Irrepressible.info will bring them all together.

It aims to throw light on the many different ways that the freedom to use the net is limited by governments.

For instance, said a spokesman for Amnesty, around the globe net cafes are being closed down, home PCs are being confiscated, chat in discussion forums is being watched and blogs are being censored or removed.

AMNESTY INTERNET PLEDGE
I believe the internet should be a force for political freedom, not repression. People have the right to seek and receive information and to express their peaceful beliefs online without fear or interference. I call on governments to stop the unwarranted restriction of freedom of expression on the internet and on companies to stop helping them do it

"The internet has become a new frontier in the struggle for human rights," said Kate Allen, UK director of Amnesty International.
"Its potential to empower and educate, to allow people to share and mobilise opinion has led to government crackdowns."

Ms Allen added that there were growing numbers of cases in which those who have turned to the net to discuss change or protest about government policies have been jailed for what they said.

For instance, she said, Chinese journalist Shi Tao is serving a 10-year jail sentence for sending an e-mail overseas which detailed the restrictions the Chinese government wanted to impose on papers writing about the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

HAVE YOUR SAY
The internet is an international tool for free thought - Elliot, Exmouth, Devon

Hi-tech firm Yahoo helped identify the journalist via his e-mail account. Amnesty is calling for the jailed journalist to be released immediately.
However Mary Osako, a spokeswoman for Yahoo, said the case was "distressing" to the firm.

"We condemn punishment of any activity internationally recognised as free expression, whether that punishment takes place in China or anywhere else in the world," she said.

She added the company had received "a valid and legal demand" for information and responded to it as required by the law.

She went on: "The choice in China or other countries is not whether to comply with law enforcement demands for information. Rather, the choice is whether or not to remain in a country.

"We balance the requirement to comply with laws that are not necessarily consistent with our own values against our strong belief that active involvement in China contributes to the continued modernization of the country - as well as a benefit to Chinese citizens - through the advancement of communications, commerce and access to information."

Profit and Principles

The Amnesty campaign will seek to get net users to sign a pledge that opposes repressive use of the net. The pledges will be collated and presented to a meeting of the UN's Internet Governance Forum that is due to meet in Athens in November 2006.

Amnesty wants to get people using an icon in e-mail signatures or on websites that contains text from censored sites.

The group also wants to run an e-mail campaign to target companies to stop putting "profit before principles" and respect human rights everywhere they operate.

Reports will be prepared on those countries that place restrictions on what can be said online or use it to keep an eye on those expressing discontent.

"Irrepressible.info will harness the power of the internet and of individuals to oppose repression and stand up for free speech," said Ms Allen.

Study Shows Gun Safety IS Over-Estimated By Parents

In Harm's Way: Guns and Kids
Study Suggests Many Parents Fool Themselves About Firearm Safety

Not being a big fan of gun control efforts, nor being a Second Amendment fanatic, I think there is ground for requiring proper safety and handling education for all gun owners, especially when most of the assaults and murders committed with handguns are done by people that are friends or relatives of the victims... and then there are the kids that are killed by improperly stored weapons.

I believe in the right to keep and bear arms. But, as I read the Second Amendment, that right is reserved for subsistence, self-defense, and organized militia. An ordinary citizen could hunt and defend his home and property with a rifle or shotgun. However, a member of an organized militia ought to be able to have any weapon supplied to the military, providing it is stored in a militia-regulated manner, and is only used for purposes of the militia. Handguns are not ordinarily used for hunting, seldom offer the best form of self-defense, and are rarely effective as a weapon for military purposes... and are the number one concern of those concerned with gun safety. I do not believe the government should have carte balnche in regulating hand guns, but it certainly makes sense--both common sense and constitutional sense--that some form of training be required for gun ownership, that some people (i.e. convicted felons involved in violent crimes, children, those with diminished reasoning abilities) should not be allowed to own weapons, and that the government has some right to assure that weapons are stored in such a manner as to provide for safety of children and others.

Gun-owning parents who think their children don't know where firearms are kept or haven't handled the weapons without permission may be in for a disturbing surprise.

A new study involving 201 parents and an equal number of their children has found that 39 percent of kids knew the location of their parents' firearms, while 22 percent said they had handled the weapons, despite their parents' assertions to the contrary. Parents who had talked to their children about gun safety were just as likely to be misinformed about their children's actions as those who said they never had discussed the matter.

"Children are really curious and have lots of things in their home that parents have no intention of letting them find -- but they do," said Matthew Miller, associate director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and co-author of the study in Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. The gun safety study is the first to compare the responses of parents and their children, ages 5 to 14, who were interviewed separately.

Age was not a factor in whether children had handled weapons, Miller added. Five-year-olds were just as likely to report doing so as 14-year-olds.

The issue of access to guns in the home has assumed greater urgency since May 8, when two Fairfax County police officers were shot to death by Matthew Kennedy, a delusional 18-year-old armed with seven guns, among them an AK-47-style assault rifle.

Kennedy, who was killed in a shootout with police, lived with his parents and 9-year-old sister in a Centreville townhouse from which authorities said they seized 15 other guns; some were found propped against walls and two were loaded. Federal officials said last week they are investigating whether Kennedy's parents committed any weapons violations before his rampage.

While Miller's study focused on parents who brought their children to a family practice clinic in rural Alabama, experts say the Fairfax murders underscore the risks of guns in the hands of youths, especially those who, like Kennedy, are mentally ill.

"Adolescents act impulsively, whether or not they have psychiatric problems," Miller said, noting that studies have found that a gun in the home increases the risk of suicide and homicide, as well as accidental shootings. "It's up to parents -- not children -- to provide a safe environment."

He advises parents who don't want to part with their guns to lock unloaded weapons in a place separate from ammunition, which should also be locked. Guns should be accessible only by a key the parent carries at all times. If guns are stored in a safe with a combination, only parents should know the combination.

"You want to make it as hard as possible for your kid to get that gun," Miller said.

Relying solely on strategies that seek to dampen the natural curiosity of a child, such as telling children guns are dangerous, or assuming that a child will be unfailingly obedient and never touch a weapon if he finds one, is ineffective at best, Miller said.

Those are the operating principles behind many gun safety programs aimed at children, including the Eddie Eagle classes sponsored by the National Rifle Association (NRA), health experts say. Children are told not to touch a gun if they find one, to leave the area and tell an adult immediately.

"Teaching kids to be safe around guns doesn't work" in preventing accidents, said Jon Vernick, co-director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Studies have found that children exposed to Eddie Eagle programs are no less likely to play with guns than children who don't take the class, he added.

NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam disputed that.

"This is probably the first time I've heard that education is a bad thing and not effective," he said. The Eddie Eagle program was developed about 10 years ago by a psychologist and has been endorsed by the Justice Department, he said. Its adoption by school districts around the country, Arulanandam said, "is a testament to its effectiveness."

Legal Maneuvering Or Legitimate Concern?

NSA Cases May Hinge on Issue of Standing

This story is interesting. The claim is being made that the mere presence of warrantless wiretapping is creating a chilling effect on the creative process of a novelist. While I think there are more mainstream civil liberty issues to consider, like the chilling effect on political speech, it does seem to have risen to the level of placing a chilling effect on the arts and humanities. But now comes the US Government, under the leadership of an anti-constitutionalist attorney general, challenging the legal standing of this plaintiff.

Carolyn Jewel says the federal government's warrantless wiretapping program is giving her writer's block.

"I have recently begun to write in a new genre (action and futuristic romance)," the Petaluma, Calif., database-administrator-cum-novelist -- and named plaintiff in a class action against AT&T for cooperating with secret government eavesdropping -- wrote in court papers earlier this year.

"I feel that certain plots or subplots that would otherwise be of significant interest to me may be unwise since they would require research into weapons, arms and military and paramilitary operations. As a result, I do not plan to use my Worldnet service to do this research," continued Jewel, the only AT&T named plaintiff to specifically state how she was affected by the wiretaps.

"I suppose that's a claim," said Rory Little, a professor at Hastings College of the Law. "It's not as strong as saying they were definitely wiretapped."

A lawyer for the plaintiffs said Jewel and other AT&T customers suffered real harm.

"She actually chose not to pursue certain areas of writing," said Lee Tien, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Lawyers for AT&T and the government are trying to convince U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker that chilling effects on customers -- such as Jewel's reticence to research upcoming books (one of which, "Rake," promises: "Romantic sensualist meets widowed novelist. Hot. Hot. Hot. Proposal is done and with my agent," according to her Web site, carolynjewel.com) -- don't amount to enough harm to give them standing.

While Walker mulls over the standing question, a similar case in Oregon federal court probably won't have that problem.

The suit, which has received less recent publicity than the AT&T class action, has a more direct complaint -- and fewer standing issues.

In late February, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation says it was directly harmed through illegal wiretaps -- and it has proof, according to court filings.

"This case is unique among the various pending lawsuits challenging the president's warrantless electronic surveillance program in that only these plaintiffs possess incontrovertible proof -- the document filed under seal -- that they were victims of the president's program, and thus have standing to sue," wrote Thomas Nelson, a lawyer for Al-Haramain, in papers filed Monday.

Jon Eisenberg, an Oakland, Calif., lawyer and Nelson's co-counsel, said he was "immediately excited to see this case because there's standing." Eisenberg said he expects core issues in the case to be litigated faster than in the AT&T suit.

"They have a standing issue to overcome that we don't have," he said. "They're seeking to say the administration violated the law without having a specific instance of violation, which spills over into policy. That's problematic."

Tien said he expects Walker to rule that the class plaintiff have standing nonetheless. But in the meantime, he and the Oregon lawyers are facing a similar set of problems posed by government lawyers.

In both cases, the government has insisted that documents at the core of the case, as well as government pleadings, should remain confidential. Anthony Coppolino, the lead Department of Justice attorney in both cases, could not be reached by press time.

In the AT&T suit, the key evidence is documents provided by a former AT&T engineer that, plaintiffs lawyers say, show communications were routed through government computers. The documents are filed under seal, and Walker has agreed to keep them in a secure case as the litigation continues.

The most important piece of evidence in the Oregon suit is a secret document accidentally disclosed by the FBI in 2004 through discovery in another lawsuit. It's currently being held in a secure location in Seattle, despite efforts by the federal government to take it back.

The judges in both suits are now trying to decide whether that information should remain secret -- and whether to consider government motions kept concealed from plaintiffs lawyers. The secret papers, government lawyers said, argue that the suits should be thrown out because they jeopardize state secrets.

In a hearing in the AT&T suit last week, Walker seemed disturbed by the notion that plaintiffs would be unable to see their opponents' arguments, and asked for briefing on the issue. Similar briefs have been submitted in the Oregon case, too.

In both suits, defense lawyers say the Justice Department has a longstanding right to submit ex parte, in camera documents in sensitive cases.

"Contrary to plaintiffs' arguments, AT&T does not believe that an assertion of state secrets may blithely be dismissed without even considering the basis for it," wrote lawyers for AT&T.

Such arguments don't sit well for the plaintiffs in either case. As lawyers for the Oregon plaintiffs wrote, "Secret court filings are repugnant to a free society."

As the issues continue to be litigated, the judges in both suits will have to decide whether to open the heretofore secret documents, whether plaintiffs have standing, and if the suits would indeed unearth secrets vital to national security.

In the AT&T case, plaintiffs are hoping that Walker's decision on these issues will ultimately lead him to consider their motion for an injunction that would keep the government out of AT&T's network.

Until that decision is made this summer, Jewel -- judging by her Web site -- seems to have plenty to work on that won't bring government suspicion upon her.

One title in development is called "The Barbarian."

In that book, her Web site says, "a Highlander ends up married to the daughter of an English lord. He speaks only Gaelic and she doesn't. She thinks he's the muscle, not the bridegroom." That book, she wrote, will only require her to study Gaelic.

Gonzalez Attempts To Circumvent The Law... Again

Gonzales Pressures ISPs On Data Retention

In what amounts to yet another attempt to end-run the contitutional requirement to have probable cause and seek a supportable warrant from a court of competent jurisdiction, AG Alberto "Nut Case" Gonzalez met with telecommunications industry leaders to pressure them into becoming de facto law enforcement agents of the US Government... by holding onto data and being ready to surrender that data without delay or dur process (as in the ability of the target of such an investigation to get a hearing in court).

While it is important to fight child pornography, child exploitation and terrorism, it is even more important to retain our basic civil liberties, due process and basic freedoms... and remember that the US Constitution sees these things "unalienable."

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller on Friday urged telecommunications officials to record their customers' Internet activities, CNET News.com has learned.
In a private meeting with industry representatives, Gonzales, Mueller and other senior members of the Justice Department said Internet service providers should retain subscriber information and network data for two years, according to two sources familiar with the discussion who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The closed-door meeting at the Justice Department, which Gonzales had requested, according to the sources, comes as the idea of legally mandated data retention has become popular on Capitol Hill and inside the Bush administration. Supporters of the idea say it will help prosecutions of child pornography because in many cases, logs are deleted during the routine course of business.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales In a speech last month at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Gonzales said that Internet providers must retain records for a "reasonable amount of time."

"I will reach out personally to the CEOs of the leading service providers and to other industry leaders," Gonzales said. "Record retention by Internet service providers consistent with the legitimate privacy rights of Americans is an issue that must be addressed."

The article cites European precedent for doing similar data retention... But my answer to that is that we are not Europeans that are accustomed to surrendering their liberties to the state without question. We are Americans where the founding principles and philosophy of our nation is that certain rights are inalienable and need a compeling interest and a standard of probable cause to allow the government to act with authority or force. There is a DOJ paper that discusses the hazards concerning civil liberties on these issues for those that are interested.

In the meantime, some of the financial entities in the world of business are willing to start adhering to some standards of decency... but one wonders how these financial entities will behave to protect civil liberties, as well as how they will react when they realize that a lot of big business has their hands in the porn industry and may pressure them to lessen their zeal in these matters.

The nation's leading banks and credit card companies will soon team with law enforcement in a groundbreaking coalition to catch people who sell child pornography online.

The financial institutions will report child porn sites they discover on the Web to a central tip line, slated to expand next month to receive the information. The companies will block transactions for online child porn or, if law enforcement opens an investigation, help track sellers and buyers.

The Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography represents a new phase in the war against what has become a multibillion-dollar, international business. Internet service providers, including AOL, already report child porn sites they find.

"The scope of the problem is much greater than we ever thought. It's mind-boggling," says Ernie Allen of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, a private group that runs the tip line. Allen says one website can attract tens of thousands of customers, mostly men, who use credit cards to buy $29 monthly subscriptions. "People are getting into this because they see children as a commodity. There's no question organized crime is involved."

Eager to take profitability out of online child porn, Allen and Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., brought together the companies.

"This is the broadest, most comprehensive coalition we've been involved in," says Joshua Peirez, a MasterCard executive. "This is not a competitiveness issue. This is about protecting children," he says.

"I haven't seen anything like it," adds Drew Oosterbaan, chief of the Justice Department's child exploitation section. "We're here to support the effort."

Participants include Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover, which cover most of the U.S. credit card market. Also involved are Bank of America, Chase, Citigroup and PayPal. Visa, MasterCard and American Express say they will identify sites accepting their cards to sell child porn but won't reveal customers unless subpoenaed.