Theft of Veterans Affairs data could pose national security threat?

Any enterprising reporters out there? This one's a freebie.

Someone just posted this in the comments. While I don't like to post something that isn't confirmed, this person sounds awfully authoritative. Considering the seriousness of what they're alleging, and the fact that the seem to have some pretty detailed information, I'm going to post this in the hopes that someone can do some sleuthing and find out if this is true.

Retiree's of the armed forces carry military "identification and privilege" cards (so they can get through military base security and shop at the post exchange, etc.). This ID card is known as a Department of Defense Form 2765 (yeah, it's a card but it called a "form"). Anyone could use the Soc. Sec. #, Date of Birth, etc. to fraudulently obtain a military identification card (one issed to retirees) and then gain access to any military installation (and, if som desired, commit espionage or sabotage).

I am intrigued that the mainstream media hasn't caught on that the loss of this veteran data isn't just a risk to a veteran's credit rating and personal privacy. This is also a national security risk because it makes it possible for a person to fraudulently obtain a military ID card and gain inappropriate access to any military installation.

If you go for replacement card and you give the information that matches what is in the DEERS data system (e.g., name, rank, social sec number, date of birth) they will reissue a military ID card (some of the installations that issue ID cards (like the Naval Reserve detachment in Nashville which I found to be very lax) are somewhat loose about ID verification as long as you give them the correct information that matches what is in the DEERS personnel computer files.

There is a reason that most military installations have fences and armed military police guarding the base gates.

This loss of veteran data really compromises the security of all military installations (including U.S. military installations overseas (for example, a veteran can go shopping at a U.S. military base in Italy as long as they have the military ID card).

Also, I don't like the idea that someone could use my personal information in my military records and commit credit fraud and identity theft (e.g., using my identity if they get arrested resulting in me getting a criminal record). Also, many veterans had security clearances. I think the VA Sec. Nichols should resign. I can not emphasize how serious a threat it is to our national security that this personnel data was stolen.

Read the rest of this post...

I really hate it when Newt Gingrich is right

But then again, my friend Paul once told me "even a broken clock is right twice a day" (or maybe I told him).

This is Gingrich's take on where things staff after Bush's Justice Dept. raided the Congress:

"The House is now faced with a reality of power," says former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a possible candidate for president in 2008 now working at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank. "Either they do things that involve appropriations or oversight that are real, or they earn the contempt with which they are being treated."

Read the rest of this post...

Experts say Cheney couldn't avoid testifying in Libby trial

Cool. Read the rest of this post...

Veterans Affairs privacy scandal grows - it's bad

1. Private records on 26 million Americans are stolen on May 3 - the employee who brought the data home, where it was stolen, tells his supervisors, but they don't pass this info up the chain at the agency.

2. The Deputy Secretary of the entire agency, and the chief of staff to the secretary, find out about the massive privacy violation - remember, 26 million people's privacy was violated - on May 10. Neither of them told the Inspector General of the agency, or the Secretary of Veterans Affairs himself.

3. The Secretary, supposedly, finds out about the theft on May 16. He waits a full day before informing the FBI on May 17.

4. The agency had been warned for years about their dismal approach to information privacy, yet the Secretary did nothing about it.

5. The only employee disciplined so far is, reportedly, the person who took the data home where it was stolen.

6. George Bush yesterday tells the country that he stands 100% behind his secretary of Veterans Affairs (I'm not making this up).

The privacy of nearly 10% of the country was violated, and George Bush thinks the folks involved are doing a heck of a job. Read the rest of this post...

The Bush administration is waging a war on birth control, too

Make no mistake: The theocrats aren't just about bashing gays and ending a woman's right to choose. They want to end sex. And, birth control is one of their targets:

The last two appointees to head the FDA were closely involved in decisions to overrule the agency's medical reviewers and block the "morning-after" birth control pill from being sold without a prescription, according to court transcripts to be released today.

Last year, Lester M. Crawford personally took the decision away from his top subordinates, according to depositions of two senior Food and Drug Administration officials. And at an earlier stage in the process, his immediate predecessor as FDA commissioner, Mark B. McClellan, raised objections that formed the basis for overruling medical reviewers.

The transcripts provide the most detailed look yet at an internal review that some critics say has been tainted by politics. The dispute over the drug, marketed as Plan B, has pitted Christian conservatives against liberal women's groups and raised concerns in academic circles that the FDA had compromised its scientific principles.

The Bush war on privacy has no bounds. For them, everything is on the table. Read the rest of this post...

CNN VIDEO: Gay playwright takes on Jay Leno's anti-gay jokes

You may recall a few weeks ago I wrote about Jeff Whitty, a gay playwright (the author of Tony award winning "Avenue Q") who wrote a letter to Jay Leno complaining about Leno's penchant for making swishy jokes about gays. Jeff bcc'd the letter to literally 3 friends, and those friends forwarded it on, and the letter literally made its way around the world (I got another copy emailed to me yesterday).

The controversy created by Jeff's letter got him a spot on CNN discussing the episode, and it even prompted a 30 minute phone call to Jeff from Jay Leno (which was very cool of Leno to do).

Anyway, there's finally some video of Jeff's interview on CNN and I think folks ought to see it. Jeff did an amazing job, even before you take into account that he doesn't do a lot of TV (and he does an even better job once you realize that his cab was late to the studio and he got in there with seconds to spare (thus the lack of make-up)).

Anyway, it's a good interview, he handled it really well. Especially since Soledad was being a bit tough on him - then again, she was doing her job, which most journalists nowadays don't do - she was playing devil's advocate to force her interviewee to explain his case. That's a good thing, and the media needs to do more of it, especially to the Bush administration.

And yes, Jeff's even cuter in person (I met him in NY).

You can watch the video here. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

News? Read the rest of this post...

Steve Gilliard speaks truth to (black) power

Blogger Steve Gilliard is black. And a Democrat. And he even defended Cynthia McKinney when that nutjob went, well, nuts last month. And that's why Steve's post about the entire sordid Congressman William Jefferson affair (dude with $90k in his freezer, caught on tape taking a $100k bribe - hello?) is so powerful. Unlike George Bush, Steve cares about black people.

What motivated Steve's post, I beleve, is today's The Hill story about how the Congressional Black Caucus beat the crap out of House Democratic Leader Nancy Peolosi for (rightly) calling on Jefferson to resign his committee seat yesterday.

Furious black lawmakers, rallying behind Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.), were pulled back from the brink of open revolt against House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in an emergency meeting with her Wednesday evening.

The meeting with a handful of CBC members was called after Pelosi wrote the embattled lawmaker, who is at the center of a massive bribery scandal, a curt note requesting his immediate resignation from the powerful Ways and Means Committee.

Outraged that one of its members was being picked on even though he has not been charged with a crime, the Congressional Black Caucus had intended to issue a defiant statement against their leader but agreed after the meeting to pause, at least briefly, for reflection.

Apparently the CBC thinks Pelosi is a racist because the criminal she wants out of her party happens to be black (no word on whether the CBC is therefore misogynist and racist since the Democrat they're picking on is a woman and white).

In any case, it's rather interesting that I wrote last night about how the talk in town was that the CBC was corrupt as hell. And now this happens. Things that make you go hmmmm... But rather than listen to me, silly white boy, let's let Steve call the shots.

Steve speaks truth to (black) power.

Jefferson took two National Guard trucks which could have been saving New Orleanians to save his "luggage". God know what he had inside. If the CBC [Congressional Black Caucus] thinks people outside of the Hill gives a shit about Jefferson, they're insane. Black America has been plagued with corrupt leaders and they belong under the jail. When people lack resources and means, the last thing they need is someone sticking their hand out for payoffs.

They need to stop protecting their buddy and stop handing talk radio the next Willie Horton. Many of these same people were quick to leave Cynthia McKinney to her own devices with no evidence, yet, here the man is caught with $90K in his fucking freezer and now they want to hold a temper tantrum. I'm sure black voters will suborn their interests to save William Jefferson. That kind of insane threat could only fool white people who think blacks don't vote for their own self-interest...

People's kids are dying in Iraq and you want to defend a man caught with $90K in his freezer because Nancy Pelosi did the right thing?

First of all, he won't cooperate with the FBI, forcing their hand. Now, he wants to drag the CBC into this. When will you folks realize you're being played. When he was sucking up to the DLC [very conservative Democratic Leadership Council] he wasn't so concerned about black people, now that he's facing years in jail, unless he's got a receipt for that $90K in his freezer, he's H.Rap Jefferson. Now he wants to drag down the whole party to save his own ass.

That alone should cost him his Ways and Means seat. And part of the reason they're in this mess is because of Harold Ford and Albert Wynn playing cute with conservatives. It's clear that not everyone believes in unity, so Pelosi can do this. They created this situation on their own.Now they want to whine a black man was chosen first? Uh, Tom DeLay is resigning after being defended by the GOP caucus for months. Pelosi has a great issue in that, hell, Hastert is now being investigated by the FBI for his own Abramoff issues. Jefferson's color is green, not black....

It's really simple: I hate crooked pols.Now, I don't know if Jefferson is a crook, but he doesn't look innocent and because of that, he needs to defend himself and stop hiding behind the CBC like a little bitch.

Amen. Read the rest of this post...

GUILTY: Enron Verdicts are in

Kenny Boy is guilty on all charges.

Jeff Skilling is guilty of conspiracy and fraud charges. Not guilty on an insider trading charges.

These guys are going to jail.

UPDATE: AP has their article up:

Former Enron Corp. chiefs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were convicted Thursday of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud in a case born from one of the biggest business scandals in U.S. history.

The verdict put the blame for the demise of what was once the nation's seventh-largest company squarely on its top two executives. It came in the sixth day of deliberations following a trial that lasted nearly four months.

Lay was also convicted of bank fraud and making false statements to banks in a separate trial related to his personal banking.

Lay was convicted on all six counts against him in the trial with Skilling. Skilling was convicted on 19 of the 28 counts against and acquitted on the remaining nine.

Read the rest of this post...

White House staffer using "we were just friends" defense with Abramoff

It's probably comforting for Abramoff to know he has a friend:

"The government is stretching the facts to put David Safavian into the web of corruption," defense attorney Barbara Van Gelder told a jury of 10 women and two men. "David Safavian was not in Jack Abramoff's pocket, but he was his friend," she said.

Obviously, they were very good friends. According to the prosecutors, Safavian was just trying to help Abramoff get access to government property and Abramoff was just flying him to Scotland:

The day after a meeting on the school project at GSA that Safavian arranged and which Costa attended, Safavian went on an Abramoff-organized weeklong golf excursion to Scotland and London.

Costa said he knew Safavian would be vacationing in Scotland, but that Safavian didn't say who he would be traveling with. Nor did Safavian say there was any connection between the people he would be golfing with in Scotland and the private school that had been the subject of the meeting, Costa testified.

Such good friends. Read the rest of this post...

Check out this bull from GOP House Speaker Denny Hastert

Funny, Hastert didn't care so much about people being above the law and protecting the American people from abuses of power when his president was wiretapping our phones. But now that Hastert's head is on the block, and he's being investigated by the FBI, suddenly he's all for calling off the feds.

'These constitutional principles were not designed by the Founding Fathers to place anyone above the law,' said the statement [signed by Hastert and Pelosi]. 'Rather, they were designed to protect the Congress and the American people from abuses of power, and those principles deserve to be vigorously defended.'

Yeah. Denny Hastert. Defender of the Constitution... when he's the one they're getting ready to send to jail. Would have been nice if Hastert had been there for the rest of us when it was our turn. Somehow, I'm not feeling that sorry for him anymore.

Maybe a little excessive executive branch police power would be a good thing for Republicans and Democrats on the Hill alike to experience. Then come back and tell us how if we have nothing to hide we ought to sit back, shut up, and let our phones be tapped. Read the rest of this post...

Senate to pass Immigration bill today

But the battle is really just beginning. The immigrant bashers in the House aren't backing down:

Anticipating the clash with the House, White House political adviser Karl Rove met privately with House Republicans yesterday, urging them to move closer to the Senate position, which President Bush embraces. He got a cold reception, according to people who attended. In particular, they said, Rep. John Carter (R-Tex.) testily told Rove that he was underestimating Americans' hostility to the notion of "amnesty" for illegal immigrants, especially if there is not proof that tougher border measures are taking effect. Rep. Sue W. Kelly (R-N.Y.) also told Rove that the president's position was a tough sell in her district, the sources said.

Okay, these right wing House members are despicable. It is, however, kind of fun to know they were kicking Rove around yesterday. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Read the rest of this post...

Thursday Morning Open Thread

We're stuck with Tony Blair all day. The chimp and the poodle are doing a press conference tonight to tell us all how much "progress" we're making in Iraq. And, they'll probably get all macho on Iran, too. They are a dangerous duo.

Okay, that's off my chest. What else? Read the rest of this post...

Yes, but medical scientists say it's good for me

Chocolate is good for your brain and it's now backed by science. No need to feel guilty any more. Read the rest of this post...

Somebody doesn't look very happy

Then again, it's not easy to tell when he is happy. Sheesh, lots of bottom teeth showing...why all the anger? Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Your wish... Read the rest of this post...

Libby told grand jury that Cheney spoke of Plame

And that's why Mr. Fitz is interested in Dick. Read the rest of this post...

ABC News Update: Hastert story is correct

From ABC News:

Despite a flat denial from the Department of Justice, federal law enforcement sources tonight said ABC News accurately reported that Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert is "in the mix" in the FBI investigation of corruption in Congress.

Speaker Hastert said tonight the story was "absolutely untrue" and has demanded ABC News retract its story.

Law enforcement sources told ABC News that convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff has provided information to the FBI about Hastert and a number of other members of Congress that have broadened the scope of the investigation. Sources would not divulge details of the Abramoff’s information.

"You guys wrote the story very carefully but they are not reading it very carefully," a senior official said....

ABC’s law enforcement sources said the Justice Department denial was meant only to deny that Hastert was a formal “target” or “subject” of the investigation.

"Whether they like it or not, members of Congress, including Hastert, are under investigation," one federal official said tonight....

Officials said the next logical investigative step would be for the FBI to seek a wide range of documents from the members of Congress named by Abramoff, including letters and business documents.

Okay, that last paragraph is rather troubling. Is this why Hastert was complaining so loudly about the FBI raid that sought documents from Cong. Jefferson? And is this why Hastert himself called today for the agents who conducted the raid to be taken off the case? Tell me that isn't obstruction off justice, trying to get the guys investigating YOU fired. Read the rest of this post...