Open thread

Watching the original (well, the new original) Battlestar Galactica mini-series with Stoller. Chat amongst yourselves. Read More......

Howard Dean reminds CNN that not a single Democrat took money from Jack Abramoff

Dean really did kick butt in this interview with Wolf Blitzer. I do think the man could smile a bit more, he looked downright scary to me. But he did rock in his answer to Blitzer saying Democrats had taken money from Abramoff, when they haven't.

Video c/o C&L;. Read More......

NASA Brings Comet Particles Back to Earth

From AP:

Six months after NASA scientists first peeked inside one comet from afar, they're bringing pieces of another to Earth for study under the microscope.

This weekend, the Stardust spacecraft will jettison a 100-pound capsule holding comet dust. It will nosedive through the Earth's atmosphere and - if all goes well - make a soft landing in the Utah desert.
...
For Stardust, helicopters will fly to the landing site only after the capsule has touched down. Crews will recover the capsule and bring it to a temporary clean room on the base before transferring it to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Andromeda Strain anyone...? Read More......

Democrats.com offering to help people buy Republicans' private phone records

Well, it was only a matter of time before the cat was out of the bag. And actually, it already was even before my post about this a few days ago.

The Sun-Times had reported on this story on Thursday (the Washington Post reported on it over six months ago), a number of smaller blogs had picked up on it in the past few days, and folks were already posting links to the Sun-Times story in the comments to my blog. After all that, it made sense for me to finally comment on it so that at least I could try to frame how serious this situation really is, not just to personal privacy but to public safety and national security.

Anyway, Congress and the White House have known about this problem for over 6 months, and possibly years. They did nothing. So, now it's become a free for all since neither branch of government thought this was an important enough risk to our privacy. And now, as a result, it's a risk to theirs.

More from Democrats.com. Read More......

Religious right puts holy oil on seats in Alito hearing room

Good, that means we'll win. Everyone knows the religious right doesn't speak for God, that God is fine with gay people, and he isn't a big fan of people who spread hate in his name. That means if the holy oil works, it'll be a slam dunk for the anti-Alito forces.

God hates hypocrites. Read More......

Open thread

Man, if you have every tried to use the Web for tourism, good luck. At least small town tourism. It sucks. I'm trying to find cute, typical, old towns near DC (well, within a few hours) that are worth visiting when a friend from France comes to visit next month. He wants to see "typical" America, and would love to see an old town. So, I'm looking online at the cute towns I know near DC: Harper's Ferry, Leesburg, Fredericksburg - and not a one has pictures up of the town. Now, call me crazy, but wouldn't you think a tourist town that has lots of tourist info on its Web site might just consider putting actual pictures of the town on the site? As it is, I've heard Fredericksburg is great, but judging by the Web site, I won't be going there because I have no idea what it looks like.

Just a personal gripe. If you work for a tourist location, please think and put some photos, a lot of photos, of your location on your Web site. Grrrrrrrrrrrr....

Having said that, anyone got suggestions for cute, typical American towns and things to do in the greater DC area for a foreigner who wants to understand America? Read More......

Cingular Wireless says 3rd parties buying your phone records is "an infinitesimally small problem"

"Mark Siegel, a spokesman for Cingular Wireless, said his company constantly is on guard against people trying to get at customer information. But he called the acquisition of call records 'an infinitesimally small problem' at his firm." - Washington Post, July 8, 2005

Really? Cingular thinks the fact that I was able to go online and with $110 and a click of a button get every single phone call made by my cell phone in the month of November in just a few hours "'an infinitesimally small problem' at his firm."

Well Cingular, your problem just got bigger.

It was cake for me to get Cingular phone records, as I reported yesterday. Took no effort whatsoever. So what part of the fact that anybody anywhere can get Cingular phone records with no effort whatsoever is "an infinitesimally small problem"?

And as for Cingular being "constantly on guard," well, I clicked my mouse and got the private phone records of one of your customers within hours, and with no effort. Also, the Washington Post article alerted Cingular last July to the company from which I got my records, and they're still up and running. So I'm not sure who at Cingular is "constantly only guard," but they need to be fired.

According to the Washington Post article, the phone companies claim they have no part in your information being shared. Experts say these resellers are probably use one of three methods to get your phone records:

They might have someone on the inside at the carrier who sells the data. Spokesmen for the telephone companies said strict rules prohibiting such activity make this unlikely. But Joel Winston, associate director of the Federal Trade Commission's Financial Practices Division, said other types of data-theft investigations have shown that "finding someone on the inside to bribe is not that difficult."

Another method is "pretexting," in which the data broker or investigator pretends to be the cell phone account holder and persuades the carrier's employees to release the information. The availability of Social Security numbers makes it easier to convince a customer service agent that the caller is the account holder.

Finally, someone seeking call data can try to get access to consumer accounts online.

Telephone companies, like other service firms, are encouraging their customers to manage their accounts over the Internet. Typically, the online capability is set up in advance, waiting to be activated by the customer. But many customers never do.

If the person seeking the records can figure out how to activate online account management in the name of a real customer before that customer does, the call records are there for the taking.

The article goes on to note that "phone companies view all these tactics as illegal." See, now that's funny. Because Cingular didn't have any interest in me passing along my evidence of the crime. They didn't want a copy of my records I'd received, nothing. If they really thought this was a crime, and actually cared, don't you think they'd want the proof?

Then again, perhaps Cingular considered my phone call "an infinitesimally small problem." Read More......

Deadly weekend in Iraq for US personnel - 17 more dead

The way things are going, we'll probably be getting another victory speech soon:

A Black Hawk helicopter believed to be carrying 12 people crashed in northern Iraq and killed everyone aboard, while five U.S. Marines were slain in separate weekend attacks, the military said Sunday.

That's on top of the carnage that killed hundreds of Iraqis and 11 US soldiers late last week:

A spree of bloodshed that killed nearly 200 people in two days, including 11 U.S. troops, threatened to provoke a backlash from Shiite militias. Iraq's largest religious group rallied thousands Friday against what it claimed was American backing for some Sunni Arab politicians they say have supported insurgents.

Military officials announced the deaths of six more U.S. troops in the recent violence that has swept Iraq, bringing to 11 the number of Americans killed on the same day.

Read More......

Frank Rich dissects the Bush domestic spying scandal

In today's NY Times, Frank Rich explores the possible motives behind the Bush domestic spying operation. Like so many, he wonders why they have been so incredibly defensive about the operation. It's hard to believe that the Bush operatives -- whose main mission is politics not policy -- would not abuse their power. Rich also understands that they can't be trusted. Just because the Bush people say something, doesn't make it true. They lie. Yet, somehow, many reporters, who have been told blatant falsehoods over and over and over by Bush staffers, still regurgitate their propoganda.

Because of the NY Times "Times Select" policy, Rich's piece is not directly linkable, but here's the link for those who have access. It is worth a read.

As usual, Rich nails the essence of what the Bush Administration is all about. And, he grasps the implications of the Amanpour angle (with a big hat tip to John as you'll see):

Given that the reporters on the Times story, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, wrote that nearly a dozen current and former officials had served as their sources, there may be more leaks to come, and not just to The Times. Sooner or later we'll find out what the White House is really so defensive about.

Perhaps it's the obvious: the errant spying ensnared Americans talking to Americans, not just Americans talking to jihadists in Afghanistan. In a raw interview transcript posted on MSNBC's Web site last week - and quickly seized on by John Aravosis of AmericaBlog - the NBC News foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell asked Mr. Risen if he knew whether the CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour might have been wiretapped. (Mr. Risen said, "I hadn't heard that.") Surely a pro like Ms. Mitchell wasn't speculating idly. NBC News, which did not broadcast this exchange and later edited it out of the Web transcript, said Friday it was still pursuing the story.

If the Bush administration did indeed eavesdrop on American journalists and political opponents (Ms. Amanpour's husband, Jamie Rubin, was a foreign policy adviser to the Kerry campaign), it's déjà Watergate all over again. But even now we can see that there's another, simpler - and distinctly Bushian - motive at play here, hiding in plain sight.

That motive is not, as many liberals would have it, a simple ideological crusade to gut the Bill of Rights. Real conservatives, after all, are opposed to Big Brother; even the staunch Bush ally Grover Norquist has criticized the N.S.A.'s overreaching. The highest priority for the Karl Rove-driven presidency is instead to preserve its own power at all costs. With this gang, political victory and the propaganda needed to secure it always trump principles, even conservative principles, let alone the truth. Whenever the White House most vociferously attacks the press, you can be sure its No. 1 motive is to deflect attention from embarrassing revelations about its incompetence and failures.

That is exactly right. They attack to deflect. They challenge the patriotism of their opponents when they are wrong. They use national security as a political weapon. And, they want us to believe that they didn't abuse their power. Read More......

Sunday AM Open Thread

Just getting into my Sunday AM RSS feeds... what's news today? Read More......

Bush appoints another Brownie

Qualifications? Screw it. Experience? Who needs it, especially when your daddy was a strong Bush supporter and Kool Aid drinker? When has the US ever had any problems with appointing a political partisan in a large government organization with a massive ($4B) budget? With the GOP winding up American on the immigration "crisis" which is in fact no crisis, giving former General Myers daughter a political patronage job of such importance is yet another example of what a banana republic/dictatorship the US is becoming. If she was so qualified to lead why not follow the democratic route and let the Senate decided? If the GOP couldn't even muster support from the DINO Leiberman, she obviously had problems. It's not like the GOP doesn't control all branches of government. Read More......

The Cheney's continue to make friends on the Eastern Shore

And quite frankly, who doesn't enjoy a Chinook helicopter flying over tree tops in the middle of the night? Who needs sleep anyway in a quiet little town? What's not to like about the Cheneys and their efforts to blend in and be discrete? I'm still waiting for boating season to kick off next spring when the Cheneys can start building a security ring that reaches out into the Miles River. How long before they start asking the locals to bow down and remove their hats like good little people when they pass through? Read More......