I don't think you're being too cynical, but will we ever know the truth behind her silence? I doubt it, unless she writes a book, one day.

Ah, yes, the "book deal", don't leave home without one!

I'm with amy, Mr. A.B. in that I don't think that you are too cynical; to the contrary, maybe you're not cynical enough!

I know this whole BID-NESS stinks to high heaven, and I too have to wonder at the motivations of Judith Miller in keeping silent in this matter!

OMERTA?

I think it might be, myself, having had my own personal experience of life among the REPUBLICANS, at least up here in George Pataki's corrupt EMPIRE of New York, where the "little red book of CHAIRMAN BILL" is the "law", and he who speaks out of school, is either a "deadman", or woman, in terms of ever getting employment again, or they become "dangerous mental patients" who must be incarcerated in state-sponsored GULAGS for some mental re-adjustment that leaves you drooling a lot, but otherwise renders you safe to be around REPUBLICANS, after a dose or two of that treatment.

In fact, talking about REPUBLICANS up here is just about one of the most dangerous things a citizen, er, subject can do, and so, I can see that side entering in here with respect to this Judith Miller, where jail is the least uncomfortable option open to her, at this point in time, especially if she can finger Karl Rove, the "ARCHITECT", as the "mouth that roared", or leaked, in the Valerie Plame case!

"White House denials on Rove fall silent - Democrats call for Bush to fire adviser linked to CIA leak"

July 12: A criminal investigation continues into the disclosure of a CIA operative's identity while the White House attempts to answer questions about senior adviser Karl Rove's role in the affair.

Updated: 8:17 a.m. ET July 12, 2005

WASHINGTON - For the better part of two years, the word coming out of the Bush White House was that presidential adviser Karl Rove had nothing to do with the leak of a female CIA officer's identity and that whoever did would be fired.

But Bush spokesman Scott McClellan wouldn't repeat those claims Monday in the face of Rove's own lawyer, Robert Luskin, acknowledging the political operative spoke to Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, one of the reporters who disclosed Valerie Plame's name.

McLellan repeatedly said he couldn't comment because the matter is under investigation.

When it was pointed out he had commented previously even though the investigation was ongoing, he responded: "I've really said all I'm going to say on it."

Dear Livyjr,

Less than two weeks ago, you signed a petition joining members of the johnkerry.com community in calling for Karl Rove to be fired for his deliberate attempt to, once again, use the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to divide America.

Now Karl Rove is embroiled in another controversy concerning the leaked identity of a covert CIA agent, which Bush Administration senior officials said was done to punish her husband, a man who had the courage to tell the truth about manipulated intelligence in Iraq.

Karl Rove is the President's top advisor in the White House and what he has admitted doing has deep and troubling consequences for our national security.

Just today the President spoke at Quantico praising our soldiers and the employees of the FBI, CIA, and DEA for their work rooting out terrorism.

He told them, "Your work is difficult."

"It is dangerous."

"I want you to know how much your country appreciates you, and so do I."

But at the same time the President was saying these words, it was becoming clear that his top advisor was involved in exposing a CIA agent in the name of politics by telling reporters about her work - making her already dangerous job that much more dangerous.

In order to do what the President called on us to do today - "continue to take the fight to the enemy" - the White House and Karl Rove must stop taking it to their so-called political enemies here at home.

It's perfectly clear that Rove - the person at the center of the slash and burn, smear and divide tactics that have come to characterize the Bush Administration - has to go.

http://www.johnkerry.com/petition/rove.php

The problem is that, instead of protecting the American people from real threats to our security, this Administration spends its time protecting Karl Rove.

That's not leadership.

They're doing their best to brush off this new Rove controversy as just another political story, but this time they are having a harder time getting away with it.

That's why, if we raise our voices now, we can really make a difference.

Please ask all your friends to sign our "Fire Rove" petition today:

http://www.johnkerry.com/petition/rove.php

Despite carefully worded denials, it is now apparent that Karl Rove discussed the identity of an undercover CIA agent with a reporter.

His clear aim was to discredit that agent's husband who had dared to challenge the Administration in the buildup to the war.

There appears to be no limit to the lengths to which Rove - and this Administration - will go.

But, there is a limit to the patience of the American people - and we have reached it.

President Bush has a choice to make: Spend the months ahead focused on protecting Karl Rove's job security or spend them focused on protecting America's national security.

We are asking the President and the White House to do what they promised.

When the scandal first broke, here's what the President's spokesman, Scott McClellan, said:

"If anyone in this Administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this Administration." (9/29/03, White House press briefing).

Now we will find out if the Administration is good to its word.

Call on President Bush to keep his word and fire Rove now:

http://www.johnkerry.com/petition/rove.php

It's as simple as this: We need President Bush and his White House staff to focus on finally taking action necessary to avoid a quagmire in Iraq.

The American people can't afford to wait while the White House spends its time and energy defending a top presidential aide's dangerous political shenanigans.

What the President does in the days ahead will speak volumes.

He'll either make good on his promise to hold accountable those who shared the identity of a secret soldier in the war on terror - or he'll prove that promise hollow.

We now know that Karl Rove "was involved" in a breach of national security.

Decency - and the interests of the American people - demand an end to Karl Rove's days in the White House.

It's time for you to demand it as well.

http://www.johnkerry.com/petition/rove.php

I urge you to take action right now.

Sincerely,

John Kerry

MSNBC Live Vote @ 4:45 P.M. EST

Should Bush fire Karl Rove? * 12390 responses

Yes 87%

No 11%

Don't know 3%

"White House maintains confidence in Rove - Democrats call for Bush to fire adviser linked to CIA leak"

July 12: A criminal investigation continues into the disclosure of a CIA operative's identity while the White House attempts to answer questions about senior adviser Karl Rove's role in the affair.

Updated: 3:28 p.m. ET July 12, 2005

WASHINGTON - After two days of questions, the White House said Tuesday that President Bush continues to have confidence in Karl Rove, the presidential adviser at the center of the investigation into the leak identifying a female CIA officer.

Prominent Democrats are calling for Rove to be fired.

Bush did not respond to a reporter’s question Tuesday about whether he would fire Rove, in keeping with a June 2004 pledge to dismiss any leakers of Valerie Plame’s identity.

At a White House briefing later, spokesman Scott McClellan was pressed about Rove’s future.

“Any individual who works here at the White House has the confidence of the president."

"They wouldn’t be working here at the White House if they didn’t have the president’s confidence,” McClellan said.

The White House said two years ago that Rove wasn’t involved in the leak.

According to a July 2003 e-mail that surfaced over the weekend, Rove told Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper that the woman “apparently works” for the CIA.

It added that the woman had authorized a trip to Africa by her husband, U.S. Ambassador Joe Wilson, to check out allegations that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger for nuclear weapons.

At the time of Rove’s conversation with Cooper, Wilson had accused the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Cooper’s e-mail is now in the hands of federal prosecutors who are hunting down the leakers inside the Bush administration who revealed Plame’s name to the news media.

Democrats want Rove axed

The revelation about Rove prompted Democratic calls for Bush to follow through on his promise to fire leakers of Plame’s identity.

Former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts said Tuesday that “Karl Rove ought to be fired.”

With Kerry on Capitol Hill was Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., a possible 2008 presidential contender, who indicated her agreement with Kerry’s view.

“I’m nodding,” she told reporters.

The issue triggered 61 questions during two press briefings Monday by McClellan.

It was McClellan who had provided the previous assurances about no role for Rove, but he refused to repeat those assurances Monday.

“Did Karl Rove commit a crime?” a reporter asked McClellan.

“This is a question relating to an ongoing investigation,” McClellan replied.

Choosing words carefully

McClellan gave the same answer when asked whether President Bush has confidence in Rove, the architect of the president’s successful political campaigns.

The investigation was ongoing in 2003 when McClellan assured the public Rove wasn’t involved, a reporter pointed out, but the spokesman refused to elaborate.

In September and October 2003, McClellan said he had spoken directly with Rove about the matter and that “he was not involved” in leaking Plame’s identity to the news media.

McClellan said at the time: “The president knows that Karl Rove wasn’t involved,” “It was a ridiculous suggestion” and “It’s not true.”

Rove’s own public denials at the time and since have been more narrowly worded: “I didn’t know her name and didn’t leak her name,” Rove said last year.

Democrats pressed Bush to act.

“The White House promised if anyone was involved in the Valerie Plame affair, they would no longer be in this administration,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

“I trust they will follow through on this pledge."

"If these allegations are true, this rises above politics and is about our national security.”

Democratic consultant Paul Begala, appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Tuesday, said Rove has both a legal problem and a political problem.

Grand jury involvement

He said the legal issue should be resolved by the grand jury.

Begala also said the White House has a political problem because “people are going to look at this crowd and say, Gee, we can’t trust a thing they say after the WMD (weapons of mass destruction) controversy.’ “

New York Times reporter Judith Miller is in jail for refusing to reveal who in the administration talked to her about Plame.

Cooper had also planned to go to jail rather than talk, but at the last minute he agreed to cooperate with investigators when a source, Rove, gave him permission to do so.

Cooper’s employer, Time Inc., also turned over Cooper’s e-mail and notes.

One of the e-mails was a note from Cooper to his boss in which he said he had spoken to Rove, who described the wife of former U.S. Ambassador and Bush administration critic Joe Wilson as someone who “apparently works” at the CIA, Newsweek magazine reported.

It said “Wilson’s wife” — not CIA Director George Tenet or Vice President Dick Cheney — authorized a trip by Wilson to Africa.

The purpose was to check out reports that Iraq had tried to obtain yellowcake uranium for use in nuclear weapons.

Rove’s conversation with Cooper took place five days after Plame’s husband suggested in a New York Times op-ed piece that the Bush administration had manipulated intelligence on weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Wilson’s trip to Africa provided the basis for his criticism.

Robert Luskin, Rove’s lawyer, said his client did not disclose Plame’s name.

Luskin declined to say how Rove found out that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA and refused to say how Rove came across the information that it was Wilson’s wife who authorized his trip to Africa.

"Space Shuttle Damaged on the Launch Pad"

By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer

24 minutes ago

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - With the countdown for Discovery in its final hours, NASA was dealt a setback Tuesday when a window cover fell off the shuttle and damaged thermal tiles near the tail.

But the space agency said it probably could fix the problem in time for Wednesday's launch.

The mishap was an eerie reminder of the very thing that doomed Columbia — damage to the spaceship's fragile thermal shield.

The plastic-and-foam cover on one of Discovery's cockpit windows fell at the launch pad and struck a bulge in the fuselage that houses an orbital-maneuvering engine.

Stephanie Stilson, NASA manager in charge of Discovery's launch preparations, said that the tiles on an aluminum panel were damaged and that a spare panel would be installed in its place late Tuesday.

She said the work could be done in about an hour and should not delay the launch.

No workers were nearby when the window cover fell off and dropped about 60 feet, the space agency said.

It was not immediately clear why the cover — which was held by tape — came loose.

Word of the mishap came just two hours after NASA declared Discovery ready to return the nation to space, 2 1/2 years after the Columbia disaster.

Up until the window cover fell, NASA's only concern was the weather.

Because of thunderstorms in the forecast, the chances of acceptable weather at launch time were put at 60 percent.

Discovery and its crew of seven were set to blast off at 3:51 p.m. EDT.

The last few technical concerns were resolved Tuesday afternoon at one final launch review by NASA's managers.

"It is utterly crucial for NASA, for the nation, for our space program to fly a safe mission," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said on the eve of the launch.

"We have done everything that we know to do."

The families of the seven astronauts killed during Columbia's catastrophic re-entry praised the accident investigators, a NASA oversight group and the space agency itself for defining and reducing the dangers.

Like those who lost loved ones in the Apollo 1 spacecraft fire and the Challenger launch explosion, the Columbia families said they grieve deeply "but know the exploration of space must go on."

"We hope we have learned and will continue to learn from each of these accidents so that we will be as safe as we can be in this high-risk endeavor," they said in a statement.

"Godspeed, Discovery."

Discovery will be setting off on the 114th space shuttle flight in 24 years with a redesigned external fuel tank and nearly 50 other improvements made in the wake of the Columbia tragedy.

A chunk of foam insulation the size of a carry-on suitcase fell off Columbia's fuel tank at liftoff and slammed into a reinforced carbon panel on the shuttle's wing, creating a hole that brought the spacecraft crashing down in pieces during its return to Earth on Feb. 1, 2003.

Almost every day since then, engineers have struggled to keep foam, ice and other debris from popping off the tank.

They will not know whether they succeeded until Discovery flies.

During the 12-day flight, Discovery's astronauts will test various techniques for patching cracks and holes in the thermal shielding.

The crew members will also try out a new 50-foot boom designed to give them a three-dimensional laser view of the wings and nose cap and help them find any damage caused by liftoff debris.

That is on top of all the pictures of the spacecraft that will be taken by more than 100 cameras positioned around the launching site and aboard two planes and the shuttle itself.

"After this flight, we will have a much, much, much better idea of whether or not our measures we have taken ... have been effective — or not effective," Griffin said.

"Now our best engineers have put their best efforts on that, and we devoutly hope that they have been effective."

The board that investigated the Columbia accident put some of the blame on the space agency's safety culture, which collapsed during the doomed flight.

Shuttle managers dismissed the foam strike, and engineers did not speak up about their fears.

At Tuesday's meeting, Griffin said, there was full and frank discussion of the remaining technical concerns.

"I think we got everything that everybody knows about out on the table," he said.

"Can there be something that we don't know about that can bite us?"

"Yeah."

"This is a very tough business."

"It's a tough business."

"But everything we know about has been covered."

A safe and successful flight of Discovery will not vindicate the space agency, Griffin said.

"There is no recovery from mistakes we've made, whether it goes back to the Apollo fire, loss of Challenger or the loss of Columbia."

"Going back even further to 100 years of aviation, the safety systems that we who fly have learned and know are written in other people's blood," said Griffin, a pilot.

"The minute we say we're good enough, we start getting bad again and we need not to do that."
___

On the Net:

NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov

Before we put Judy Miller up on a pedestal, and at the risk of also being cynical, let us remember that it was Judy Miller who printed verbatim the BushCo lies about WMDs before the war began. And the NY Times excoriated her for it after they got egg on their journalistic faces because of her "reporting."

So maybe she's trying to regain her lost honor through this somewhat pointless (since Rove has been outed) silence.

Like I said, call me cynic, too.

Well, maybe, anyway .....

"Official: Risk to Guardsmen Exaggerated"

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer

1 hour, 37 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The risk to National Guard soldiers of getting killed or wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan has been exaggerated, making recruiting more difficult, the general in charge of all National Guard forces said Tuesday.

Lt. Gen. Steven Blum told a group of defense reporters that more than 250,000 National Guard soldiers and airmen have been mobilized for active duty since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and 262 of them have been killed.

"It is dangerous, but it is — I shouldn't say it to this group but I'm going to — it is misrepresented, how dangerous it really is," he said.

The casualty rate for Guardsmen is "remarkably low," compared with any previous armed conflict, Blum said, adding that he recognizes that every individual loss is a tragedy for that person's family.

"But I lose, unfortunately, more people through private automobile accidents and motorcycle accidents over the same period of time," he added.

In all, more than 1,750 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in March 2003 — the vast majority since President Bush declared the end of major combat operations in May 2003.

National Guard soldiers represent about 40 percent of the U.S. ground force in Iraq, although that is scheduled to decline substantially next year when the Army deploys two newly expanded active-duty divisions — the 101st Airborne and the 4th Infantry.

Blum also said he does not expect the National Guard to achieve its recruiting goal for the budget year ending Sept. 30.

It currently is running almost 25 percent behind so far this year.

Blum said it is unlikely he can close the gap.

"Is it likely?"

"No," he said.

But, at least, jeffmoskin, you are a cynic with a witty sense of humor, and that is something, isn't it?

"It's very important for folks to understand that when there's more trade, there's more commerce!"

- George W. Bush in the highly acclaimed, positively brilliant speech that knocked Adam Smith right clean out of the economics box and firmly established George W. Bush into the Pantheon of the world's greatest economic minds of any time, even if the speech is a little dense and hard to understand by the common person or layman without a Harvard BID-NESS education, Quebec City, Canada; April 21, 2001

"A new deal for teens at mall - Crossgates policy that limits access for youth raises economic, legal concerns"

By JORDAN CARLEO-EVANGELIST, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Monday, July 11, 2005

GUILDERLAND -- They ride the No. 12 bus from Albany on summer evenings.

Others pile into cars from Watervliet.

Some grab rides with older boys from Catskill.

They spend.

Hundreds of dollars at a time, several times a month, they claim.

They're teenagers, and starting this week, they'll be a little less welcome at the region's biggest mall on Friday and Saturday nights.

Crossgates Mall's "parental escort policy" -- officials balk at calling it a curfew -- starts Friday, marking the first time a local mall has limited the access of unescorted teenagers.

It's after 7 p.m. and Madison Spickler, 17, of Watervliet, has just spent $120 on clothes and items for her room.

But shopping at the mall is something she won't be able to do by herself, or with her friends, on the weekend for a while.

"They just assume that people who are a certain age act a certain way," she says.

The restrictions cover 11 of the busiest hours of the week when, officials say, teens are most likely to hang out but not buy much.

The goal, they say, is to improve the atmosphere by eliminating rowdy groups that intimidate customers.

Mall managers claim similar restrictions have actually helped sales elsewhere.

But some marketing experts warn the policies risk alienating a demographic with free time and disposable cash.

Still others maintain the rule is about perception -- not safety -- betting that enticing families back to the mall might be worth losing some teens who don't want to shop with an adult.

The rule requires anyone under 18 to be escorted by someone older than 21 on Friday and Saturday from 4 p.m. until closing.

It excludes the movie theaters and stores or restaurants with an outside entrance.

Whether sales will suffer is just one question raised since May when Crossgates announced the new rule.

Some wonder whether mall security can enforce it fairly, or at all.

Doomsayers predict the teens will take their dollars elsewhere, but teens themselves admit there are few other places to go.

Michael Wood, vice president of Teenage Research Unlimited, an Illinois-based marketing firm, has made a living studying what makes teens spend.

Policies like these, he said, "send a very clear message to young people that they're not welcome at the stores, and I think that's a very dangerous place to go."

Dangerous, Wood said, because teens spent $169 billion in the United States in 2004.

And they're perfectly willing to spend that money elsewhere, he said.

Rudy Smith, a 16-year-old from Troy who takes the No. 90 bus to and from Crossgates as many as four times a week, doesn't sound like someone about to abandon the mall, in part because he knows his options are limited.

"Maybe I'd go to Colonie, or Latham," Smith said of Colonie Center and the Latham Circle Mall as he walked through Crossgates last week eating candy with two friends.

"Not Latham," he quickly added.

"That's a dead mall."

"It's a ghost town."

Smith could come with an adult, but, he said, "This is what we do to get away from them."

More important, said 15-year-old Ayriayne McAvoy, of Clifton Park, is: "Do they want to go with us?"

McAvoy, like many others, cradled bags full of new purchases.

"We all just spent $50 in the same store," said 17-year-old Jessica Whited, of Watervliet, as she stood with three friends.

That might not be enough.

"The kids that were hanging around that were under 18 didn't have the money to buy a $150 Xbox," said Julie Hansen, spokeswoman for Minnesota's Mall of America, among the first to impose an escort policy almost nine years ago.

After the policy went into effect, security incidents dropped from 300 in a weekend to 2, and sales increased, she said.

The New York City-based International Council of Shopping Centers just started studying what effects these polices might have, so no data was available, said spokeswoman Patrice Duker.

At least one marketer questions their power.

"It's not going to make that much of a difference because people are going to go shopping when they have time, not around a curfew," said Gerald Celente, director of the Trends Research Institute in Rhinebeck.

Older Crossgates shoppers tell a different story, offering tales of teens blocking entrances to stores and being afraid to ask them to move.

They tell of avoiding Crossgates on weekend nights, or completely.

"For someone with kids my kids' age, I can see why it's a good idea," said Kristin Rosenstein, of Delmar, as she walked with her 10-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter.

"The atmosphere gets kind of rough."

Several well-publicized fights have fueled a perception of a lack of order at Crossgates.

Officials don't disclose specific security statistics, but General Manager Terri Walsh said incidents were actually declining.

The new policy, she said, wasn't a reaction but rather part of a plan to improve "the entire atmosphere" in the 20-year-old mall.

Some community members and security experts are wary of these policies, saying they can be difficult to enforce and selectively applied.

"It's code for they're trying to exclude a certain class of person," said Chris McGoey, a Los Angeles security consultant who says malls fear groups of loitering young men scare off business.

Enforcement falls to ill-equipped mall security, McGoey said.

"If you're going to have 30 or 40 different security officers, what are the odds of getting all of them using the same sort of common sense to enforce ... this evenly or fairly?"

"At 3:59 you're legitimate, you're welcome."

"At 4:00 you're not."

"The lawyers are licking their chops."

Alice Green, director of Albany's Center for Law and Justice, said there is also the potential for abuse by selectively enforcing the policy against a certain group.

"We've always been concerned about the treatment of kids of color," she said.

Sensitivity and fairness are the foundations of the training for the three dozen "greeters" and security guards Crossgates is hiring to enforce the policy, said Walsh.

"Every person that walks through the door is to be looked at solely with the question, 'Do they appear to be under 18 or not,' " she said.

Any time a place of "public accommodation" creates a category of people who are treated differently, "there are serious legal and constitutional concerns," said Albany lawyer Mark Mishler, who is representing a Selkirk man in an unrelated legal battle against the mall.

His client was arrested after he refused to remove a T-shirt that said "give peace a chance."

Michael Bovalino, CEO of the Pyramid Cos., which owns Crossgates, said "there are no legal issues" with the policy, though he declined to discuss specifics.

Walden Galleria in Buffalo and Carousel Center in Syracuse, both Pyramid properties, have had "parental escort" for several years.

At the CambridgeSide Galleria in Cambridge, Mass., officials have shunned a curfew and instead enlisted the help of school police officers and others who often know the youths who flock to the mall, said Vice President Issie Shait.

"There's no doubt it's going to affect sales," Shait said.

James Sherin, president of the Retail Council of New York State, said, "Anything in general that controls the non-shopping behavior of the mall is not a bad thing."

"But like anything, there is a fine balance," said Sherin.

"You have to make sure that mall does not cross the line."

The rules

Anyone younger than 18 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian, 21 or older.

Rule applies Fridays and Saturdays, 4 p.m. to closing.

One guardian is permitted to supervise up to five youths, who must stay with their guardian.

Young people must be prepared to show a driver's license, state identification card, military or college ID, passport or visa.

Exceptions include

Unaccompanied access is permitted to any store or restaurant with a door to the outside of the mall.

Unaccompanied access is permitted to movie theaters as long as youths use the nearest door and go directly to the theater.

Employees under 18 are also exempt while working.

Source: Crossgates Mall

I wonder why ......

"Calif. Guard Targeted Over Pig-Blood Flier"

2 hours, 46 minutes ago

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Islamic leaders and peace groups are criticizing the California National Guard for a flier posted in its headquarters suggesting the United States execute Islamic terrorists with bullets dipped in pig's blood to deny them entry to heaven.

The flier attributed the practice to World War I General John J. Pershing.

"Maybe it is time for this segment of history to repeat itself, maybe in Iraq?" the flier stated.

It was posted outside a cubicle in the Guard's Civil Support Division.

A second flier showed the wings and tail of a bomber forming a peace sign with the slogan, "Peace the old fashioned way."

Also posted was a cartoon from a Web site showing a Red Crescent ambulance stuffed with weapons and a caricature that looks like the late-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat unloading the weapons.

Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Doug Hart at first defended the postings to the San Jose Mercury News, which reported them Tuesday, but Hart later said they had been removed.

Peace activists spotted the fliers during a tour last week.

The tour came after peace groups and a state senator questioned whether a new Guard unit had been formed to spy on U.S. citizens and had monitored a Mother's Day anti-war rally.

A federal investigation of the allegations is underway.

"It's troubling to see a governmental organization dedicated to the security of our country promoting culturally and religiously insensitive ideas," said William Youmans, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Santa Clara.

"It's very possible to combat terrorism without offending the cultural values of a major world religion."

And here is another one of those "New York" stories that is directly relevant to me, since as a disabled veteran, I am without clout in a town that wants to convert where I happen to live into one of these places for big city trash, and since I am considered nothing but white trash in my town, anyway, the standing joke is to just put some more in on top of me, and kill two birds with one stone, which is to get rid of me, and make some money off of my land in the process, since white trash who don't work like everybody else just shouldn't have land, when their betters just don't have enough, and can't get more unless the white trash is gotten rid of, and thinks to the United States Supreme Court in a recent decision on the subject of getting white or black trash out of the way of the land developers, that should all be happening pretty soon now, and so ....

"Trash trend: Cities sell garbage to rural areas - Small towns get cash, but also smells and long-term waste issues"

Each day, trains and trucks like this one in Brooklyn carry 50,000 tons of trash from New York to landfills and incinerators up to 650 miles away in rural towns and poor cities in New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and South Carolina.

By David B. Caruso

Updated: 9:25 a.m. ET July 12, 2005

NEW YORK - The trains that rumble from the Harlem River rail yard in the South Bronx are sealed tight, but there is no mistaking what lies inside them.

The stench gives it away.

The trains, some a mile long, are filled with garbage.

The railcars are part of an armada that performs a nearly constant exodus of waste from the nation’s largest city.

Each day, trains and trucks carry 50,000 tons of trash from New York to huge landfills and incinerators in New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and South Carolina.

Waste management experts say these types of long hauls have become the norm for big cities as homegrown landfills fill up and close.

In 2003, nearly a quarter of all municipal trash in the United States crossed state lines for disposal, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Ten states imported at least 1 million tons of trash that year, up from only two states in 2001.

In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is now pushing a proposal to extend his city’s trash hauls even farther, putting garbage on barges that could be shipped up and down the East Coast.

The plan is still likely years away from fruition, but it is already fueling a fresh round of debate in places that could be potential destinations.

Paths of least resistance

At issue for many importing states is the smell and the threat to the environment if the garbage is handled improperly — reasons that more urban trash is winding up in rural communities where political resistance is likely to be minimal.

For instance, New York transports more than 1,300 tons of garbage each day to Fox Township, Pa., located in hilly hunting country 130 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.

Michael Keller, a township supervisor, said living near the landfill isn’t that bad because it’s hard to smell or see it from the street.

But he can’t shake the worries that the landfill’s protective liners won’t hold up forever.

“My concern is that 50, 60 or 70 years from now, they’ll be saying, ’What were those guys thinking, allowing something like this to be built in this community?”’ he said.

'Yankee trash' for cash

New York’s new disposal plan is also being closely watched in Virginia, which imported 7.8 million tons of garbage last year, up 67 percent from 1997, according to state figures.

The issue has been contentious since laws passed by legislators in the late 1990s seeking to slow the importation of trash were struck down by the courts.

“It’s easy to get Virginians to say, ’We don’t want Yankee trash,”’ said Michael Town, director of the Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club.

But officials in the Portsmouth area are considering a proposal by a company called American Ref-Fuel to build a port that could receive up to 2,500 tons of waste a day from New York.

A fee of between $1 and $1.25 would be paid for every ton brought in, generating $1 million per year, plus as much as $7 million more if enough of the garbage went to an existing incinerator.

“The way we figure it, waste is coming here anyway,” said John Hadfield, executive director of the Southeastern Public Service Authority.

“Maybe we can make a silk purse out of this sow’s ear.”

New police cars, fire trucks

A similar flow of cash has certainly helped places like Fox Township.

“We’re rich,” Keller said, noting the township has bought new police cars and fire trucks with trash tipping fees.

“We have less than 4,000 people living here, and we have millions of dollars in the bank.”

Despite the concerns of environmentalists, the risks for these communities are also few, said Mickey Flood, chief executive and founder of IESI Corp., a Fort Worth, Texas company that owns landfills throughout the eastern part of the country.

Standard landfills don’t accept hazardous materials, although keeping every hypodermic needle or can of oil out continues to be a challenge.

Waste is also transported in sealed containers that are designed to be leak-proof.

All water that touches garbage is required to be treated for pollutants, Flood said.

“Landfills in the United States are not environmental issues,” he said.

“They are strictly political.”

'Where is their incentive' to dump less?

Still, problems occasionally arise.

In December 2003, two schools near a landfill in northeastern Pennsylvania temporarily shut down when an overwhelming stink made it impossible for students to concentrate in class.

Investigators blamed the stench on decaying gypsum board and made adjustments to a system that extracts vapors from the trash and burns them off.

And the Sierra Club's Town raises this point: “Transporting all of this garbage so far away means that the people that generate it don’t have to deal with its consequences."

"And if that’s the case, where is their incentive to create less of it?”

end quotes

And that answer is patently obvious, here in America, where human life is worthless, and money is KING!

There is none!

I don't know, jeffmoskin, maybe we don't have Bernie Ebbers to kick around, anymore, or was that Millhouse Nixxon's line?

MSNBC Live Vote @ 5:15 P.M. EST

Does Bernie Ebbers' sentence fit his crimes? * 25022 responses

Yes 76%

No 24%

"Ebbers sentenced to 25 years in prison - Ex-WorldCom CEO guilty of directing biggest accounting fraud"

Former CEO of WorldCom Bernard Ebbers, center, leaves Manhattan federal court with his wife Kristie after being sentenced for his role in the collapse of WorldCom in an epic accounting fraud.

July 13: Former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

The Associated Press

Updated: 4:06 p.m. ET July 13, 2005

NEW YORK - Weeping in court as he learned his fate, former WorldCom boss Bernard Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years in prison Wednesday for leading the largest corporate fraud in U.S. history.

It was the toughest sentence imposed on an executive since the fall of Enron in 2001 touched off a record-breaking wave of business scandals.

Even with possible time off for good behavior, Ebbers, 63 and with what his lawyers describe as serious heart problems, would remain locked up until 2027, when he would be 85.

The sentence came four months after Ebbers was convicted of overseeing the $11 billion WorldCom fraud — much of it a pattern of chalking up expenses as long-term capital expenditures, which are classified as assets.

CNBC and other news organizations originally reported the sentence as between 30 years and life in prison.

However, Ebbers’ attorneys were allowed to speak before the final sentence was handed down and the judge ultimately decided to render a final, 25-year verdict.

Ebbers, an imposingly tall man with buzzed white hair, leaned forward in his chair and cried, sniffling audibly, after Judge Barbara Jones of U.S. District Court in Manhattan read his penalty.

“I find that a sentence of anything less would not reflect the seriousness of this crime,” the judge said.

As a packed courtroom emptied after the hearing, Ebbers’ wife, Kristie, who had cried quietly during the hearing, walked up to the defense table and embraced her husband tightly.

Ebbers did not speak to reporters.

It was just more than three years ago that the fraud at WorldCom began to come to light, reducing shares of stock once worth more than $60 to mere pennies.

Billions of dollars in market value vanished.

Mississippi-based WorldCom filed for bankruptcy — also the largest in U.S. history — in the summer of 2002.

It has since re-emerged under the name MCI Inc., with headquarters in Ashburn, Va.

Gino Cavallo, an MCI service consultant who also worked for years at WorldCom, lost tens of thousands of dollars in retirement money in the fraud.

He attended the sentencing and said he was pleased.

“The man’s 63,” Cavallo told reporters.

“He’s going to die in jail."

"How much sterner could you get?”

The sentence completed a staggering fall for Ebbers, whose homespun Mississippi manner and hard-charging business style earned him status as an admired chief executive — and the nickname Telecom Cowboy.

The former basketball coach helped start a small long distance reselling business in the early 1980s, then gradually built it into a business titan by swallowing ever-larger companies, eventually even MCI.

Jones ordered Ebbers to report to prison Oct. 12, and said she would recommend that federal prisons officials assign him to Yazoo City, Miss., so his family could see him easily.

But the judge said she would take written arguments over the next six weeks on whether she should allow Ebbers to remain out of prison while he appeals his conviction, a process likely to take at least a year.

She imposed the 25-year sentence after a two-hour hearing in which defense lawyers and federal prosecutors debated exactly how much money was lost because of the fraud, a key factor in determining the penalty.

The defense had argued it was impossible to find whether investors had sold WorldCom stock in 2002 directly because of the fraud, company personnel changes or the generally poor economy.

The judge was unmoved.

“This was not a minor fraud,” she said.

“Mr. Ebbers committed a fraud that caused numbers of investors to suffer losses."

"His statements deprived investors of the truth about WorldCom’s financial condition.”

Defense lawyer Reid Weingarten had asked for leniency, mentioning Ebbers’ heart condition and his considerable, often anonymous, charitable works, cited repeatedly in 169 letters sent to the judge.

“If you live 60-some-odd years, if you have an unblemished record, if you have endless numbers of people who attest to your goodness, doesn’t that count?"

"Doesn’t that count particularly on this day?” Weingarten said.

The judge could have imposed an even stricter sentence had she found that Ebbers committed perjury when he testified in his own defense.

On the stand, Ebbers told jurors he never knew of the fraud.

Asked about documents he reviewed that showed highly suspicious financial figures that tipped off the fraud, Ebbers said, “I just didn’t see it.”

Jones said it was not clear Ebbers had committed perjury, and said jurors could have believed his testimony and still convicted if they believed he intentionally looked the other way as the fraud took place.

The judge also heard briefly from Henry J. Bruen Jr., a former high-ranking sales executive at WorldCom who lost his job in 2003 and said he has been unable to find work since, putting him through “sheer hell.”

“Where do I get my life savings back from?” he demanded.

“Or my career reinvigorated?”

Jones did not impose a fine or seek restitution, partly because of an agreement late last month under which Ebbers will forfeit nearly all his personal assets to settle a civil suit filed by aggrieved investors.

Under that settlement, Ebbers’ wife will be left about $50,000 of Ebbers’ assets and a modest home in Jackson, Miss.

A far more lavish family home in Brookhaven, Miss., will be sold off as part of the settlement.

“Simply put, justice was served,” said New York state Comptroller Alan Hevesi, the lead plaintiff in the civil suit against WorldCom, which has racked up $6 billion in settlements.

The 25-year term is the harshest yet as corporate executives have been paraded through American courtrooms in a series of eye-popping business scandals that have cost investors untold billions.

A former finance executive of Dynegy Inc., Jamie Olis, is serving 24 years in prison for his role in a fraudulent accounting scheme at the Enron-linked energy company.

And last month, Adelphia Communications Corp. founder John Rigas was sentenced to 15 years in prison for his role in the looting and fraud at that company.

His son, former finance chief Timothy Rigas, got 20 years.

Two top executives at Tyco International Ltd. convicted of stealing from company coffers are awaiting sentencing in August, and three top Enron executives go on trial in Houston early next year.

Ebbers is the highest-ranking of six WorldCom executives and accountants who were charged by federal prosecutors in the fraud.

The other five face sentencing in late July and early August.

Among them will be Scott Sullivan, the former chief financial officer under Ebbers, who testified at Ebbers trial that he carried out the fraud but said he did so on Ebbers’ orders.

And what's this, now?

Another world war brewing, and this one not apparently attributable to the bellicosity and belligerence of HIS MOST CHRISTIAN MAJESTY, Mr. George W. Bush, or wait a minute, wasn't that Louis XVI!

"Tokyo Governor Sued for Insulting French"

1 hour, 30 minutes ago

TOKYO - A group of teachers and translators in Japan on Wednesday sued Tokyo's outspoken nationalist governor for allegedly calling French a "failed international language," a news report said.

Twenty-one people filed the lawsuit at the Tokyo District Court, demanding that Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara pay a total of 10.5 million yen ($94,600) compensation for insulting the French language in remarks last October, national broadcaster NHK said.

In their suit, the plaintiffs accused Ishihara of saying: "French is a failed international language because it cannot be used to count numbers."

"It's natural for different languages to have different names for numbers and different ways of counting them, so it's unacceptable for him to insult French in this way," Malik Berkane, who heads a French-language school in Tokyo, told reporters at a news conference.

The Tokyo metropolitan government refused to comment, saying it hadn't received word of the lawsuit.

French is the official language in about three dozen countries and territories worldwide and is one of the official working languages for international organizations such as the United Nations.

In French, some numbers can be unwieldy to say, such as 90, which translates as "four-twenty-ten."

Japan's counting system can also be tricky.

Adopted from Chinese, the Japanese numeric system ignores the western system of classifying large numbers every three digits.

Though one thousand is the same, 30,000 would translate as "three-10,000," 4 million would be "400-10,000" and 4 billion would be "40-100 million."

Counting one pencil or one bottle of beer ("ippon") in Japanese differs from counting one sheet of paper ("ichimai") or one book ("issatsu").

Ishihara, one of Japan's most popular politicians, is known for his blunt nationalist talk, criticism of illegal immigrants and unapologetic view of the Japanese wartime military's atrocities in Asia.

His remarks often rile Chinese and Korean residents in Japan.

Dear Livyjr,

I put it as plainly as possible: In the interests of national security, President Bush should fire Karl Rove.

And, with enormous energy and enthusiasm the johnkerry.com community responded in less than 24 hours to our "Fire Rove" petition.

But, still the President refuses to act.

We need to keep the pressure on the President and the Republicans in the House and Senate.

We need you to recruit your friends and neighbors to sign our Fire Rove petition today to show that Americans will not tolerate White House dirty tricks that compromise our national security.

http://www.johnkerry.com/firerove

It's time for the President to do what he said he'd do and remove from the White House someone who leaked the identity of a CIA agent and made her dangerous job even more dangerous.

And, if he's not willing to do that, George W. Bush should look the American people in the eye and admit that he didn't mean what he said when he promised to fire anyone responsible for the leak.

If you haven't already signed our Fire Rove petition, act now:

http://www.johnkerry.com/firerove

If you have signed it, help build momentum around the country by passing this along to five people on your email list.

It's remarkable that the presidential aide who should be packing his bags is instead sitting in White House meetings about stacking the Supreme Court with rigid ideologues.

The last thing America needs -- and the last thing we will tolerate -- is Rove-style tactics in the critical decisions our nation is about to make about the shape of the Supreme Court.

We'll fight tooth and nail to prevent those kinds of tactics from carrying the day.

I urge you to stay alert, pass this message on to friends, and keep moving forward.

John Kerry

P.S. Republicans in Washington want us to believe that no one "out there in America" cares about Karl Rove's dangerous actions.

Let's prove just how wrong they are.

The credibility of the White House and the President are on the line.

Urge everyone you know to stand up and express their outrage.

Pass along our petition today.

The question of the day - SHOULD KARL ROVE BE "EBBERIZED"?

"GOP on Offense in Defense of Rove"

By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 13, 2005; Page A01

Republicans mounted an aggressive and coordinated defense of Karl Rove yesterday, contending that the White House's top political adviser did nothing improper or illegal when he discussed a covert CIA official with a reporter.

With a growing number of Democrats calling for Rove's resignation, the Republican National Committee and congressional Republicans sought to discredit Democratic critics and knock down allegations of possible criminal activity.

"The angry left is trying to smear" Rove, RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman, a Rove protege, said in an interview.

A federal grand jury is investigating whether anyone in the Bush administration unlawfully leaked the name of a CIA official, Valerie Plame, to the news media.

Although the White House has previously said Rove was not involved in the episode, a recently disclosed internal Time magazine e-mail shows that Rove mentioned Plame, albeit not by name, to reporter Matthew Cooper before her name and affiliation became public in July 2003.

The grand jury is scheduled to hear from Cooper today.

The emerging GOP strategy -- devised by Mehlman and other Rove loyalists outside of the White House -- is to try to undermine those Democrats calling for Rove's ouster, play down Rove's role and wait for President Bush's forthcoming Supreme Court selection to drown out the controversy, according to several high-level Republicans.

The White House said Bush retains full confidence in Rove, but for a second day officials would not answer a barrage of questions about Rove's role in the leak scandal on the grounds that the investigation is not complete.

But the RNC -- effectively Bush's political arm -- weighed into the controversy in a major fashion.

Mehlman, who said he talked with Rove several times in recent days, instructed GOP legislators, lobbyists and state officials to accuse Democrats of dirty politics and argue Rove was guilty of nothing more than discouraging a reporter from writing an inaccurate story, according to RNC talking points circulated yesterday.

"Republicans should stop holding back and go on the offense: fire enough bullets the other way until the Supreme Court overtakes" events, said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.).

Rove has not been asked by senior White House officials whether he did anything illegal or potentially embarrassing to the president and he spent most of the day strategizing on Bush's Supreme Court nomination, aides said.

"No one has asked him what he told the grand jury."

"No one has deemed it appropriate," said a senior White House official, who would discuss the Rove case only on the condition of anonymity.

"What you all need to figure out is, does this amount to a crime?"

"That is a legitimate debate."

Still, some aides said they were concerned about the unknown.

"Is it a communications challenge?"

"Sure," the official said.

Privately, even Rove's staunchest supporters said the situation could explode if federal prosecutors accuse Rove or any other high-level official of committing a crime.

William Kristol, a conservative commentator with close White House ties, said it would be hard to imagine a prosecutor conducting an investigation that has landed one reporter in jail and challenged the constitutional rights of the journalism profession without indicting someone.

Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald "is the problem for the White House, and we have no idea what he knows," Kristol said.

Bush has said if any White House officials were involved, they would be fired.

The president yesterday twice refused to answer questions on whether Rove should be dismissed.

The controversy involves former U.S. diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had been sent by the CIA in February 2002 to Niger to investigate allegations that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was attempting to buy nuclear material.

Wilson subsequently became a critic of administration policy in Iraq and after the invasion in March 2003 questioned whether Bush had exaggerated the threat from Hussein.

After Wilson went public with his concerns, columnist Robert D. Novak reported that he had been told by two administration officials that the Niger trip had been suggested by Wilson's wife, Plame.

It is a federal felony to knowingly identify an active undercover CIA officer, but legal experts said such a crime is very difficult to prove.

Whatever the legal considerations in the case, the emerging record suggests that the administration was involved in an effort to discredit Wilson after he went public with his criticism.

According to the Time magazine e-mail, the conversation between Cooper and Rove took place a few days before Novak's column appeared in July 2003.

Cooper says Rove raised questions about Wilson's credibility, offering a "big warning" not to "get out too far on Wilson," Newsweek has reported.

The e-mail comports with a previously reported conversation between a Washington Post reporter and an administration official two days before the Novak column ran.

The administration official, who has not been identified, described the Wilson trip as a boondoggle that was set up by his wife and was not being taken seriously by the White House.

Rove has maintained he neither knew Plame's name nor leaked it to anyone.

In an interview yesterday, Wilson said his wife goes by Mrs. Wilson, so it would be clear who Rove was talking about, and noted how Rove attends the same church as the Wilson family.

Wilson said Rove was part of a "smear campaign" designed to discredit him and others who undercut Bush's justification for war.

Wilson was a chief target of the new GOP offensive designed to take some pressure off Rove.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said the White House did not have to discredit Wilson.

"Nobody had to do that," he said, adding that "he discredited his own report" by including unfounded allegations.

The RNC talking point memo included a list of anti-Wilson lines.

"In all honesty, the facts thus far -- and the e-mail involved -- indicate to me that there is not a problem here," said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah).

"I have always thought this is a tempest in a teapot."

"Legal Analysts Critical of N.Y. Times Reporter's Stance in Leak Probe"

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 13, 2005; Page A07

Tim Russert of NBC, Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post and Matthew Cooper of Time were all subpoenaed in the Valerie Plame leak investigation.

But only New York Times reporter Judith Miller is in jail today.

Although many media advocates hail Miller's sacrifice for what she and the Times see as a bedrock journalistic principle of protecting a promise to a source, some legal analysts say her imprisonment stems from a confrontational legal strategy adopted by the Times.

Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor, said journalists, like doctors and lawyers, are under no obligation to remain silent about a source who has waived confidentiality.

"It's the source's privilege, not the reporter's," he said.

"If the source doesn't want confidentiality, the reporter has no business insisting on it."

". . . If it's a matter of conscience instead of a matter of law, you can do whatever you want."

"As a legal matter, it's absurd."

U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan sent Miller to the Alexandria Detention Center last week after she refused to testify in the probe of whether Bush administration officials illegally disclosed that Plame was an undercover CIA operative.

Plame's identity was revealed in a column by Robert D. Novak eight days after her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, wrote an op-ed piece in the Times criticizing White House assertions about Iraq's nuclear program during the run-up to the U.S. invasion.

The White House directed high-level officials to sign general waivers releasing journalists from any pledge of confidentiality on the Plame matter, but Cooper said last week that such waivers "are not worth the paper they're written on" because they are inherently coercive.

Cooper agreed to testify after announcing that his source had personally released him from his promise of anonymity.

Miller has steadfastly refused to testify.

Earlier in the investigation, NBC and Post journalists who were subpoenaed worked out agreements with special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald to provide limited testimony in ways they said did not compromise their promises to sources.

Novak and his attorney have refused to say whether he cooperated with the prosecutor.

Floyd Abrams, the veteran First Amendment lawyer who represents Miller, said the situation faced by the other reporters may have been different.

But he added: "Their willingness to reach an accommodation with Mr. Fitzgerald may have been greater than Judy's.

"We pursued every angle on this case in terms of trying to avoid the current situation, while still preserving Judy's honor and her compliance with her promises to sources," he said.

Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said Miller is doing a "brave and honorable" thing.

"The simple fact is that Judy made a promise to a source that she would protect his anonymity."

"That source has not granted her any kind of a waiver from that promise, at least one that she finds persuasive or believes was freely given, and she feels bound by that pledge."

"And more than that, she feels that, if she breaks that pledge, she will compromise her ability to do her job in the future."

Post reporters who answered prosecutors' questions also declined to rely on the paper waivers.

Some analysts hailed the Times's stance, contrasting it with Time Inc. Editor in Chief Norman Pearlstine's decision to surrender Cooper's notes and e-mails after the Supreme Court refused to hear the magazine's appeal.

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said "the Times's legal strategy was to back up their reporter."

"This was Judy, and she said right up front, 'I'm not cooperating, period.' "

She said Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. "is willing to stand on this principle, and I don't think there's any way he would have tried to talk her into compromising."

Stone and other legal experts say they assume that Novak has testified under some sort of waiver or compromise.

Miller, by contrast, never wrote a story about the Plame matter.

Miller was not protecting a classic whistle-blower bent on exposing wrongdoing, Stone said, but rather officials who were seeking to discredit Wilson.

"In this context, you're talking about people who were violating the law and manipulating the press," he said.

Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, said that "with all the reporters who found ways around this, there was the impression that the New York Times was spoiling for a fight."

But he added that there is no way to know for sure.

Turley said he found it "strange" that Miller and her attorney have said nothing about seeking a personal waiver from her source or sources.

"That seemed to me a step they could have taken," he said.

Abrams declined to address that point.

"I can't go into whether she sought it, but I can tell you she doesn't have it," he said.

"Judy and Matt both felt very strongly that the waivers referred to in court by Judge Hogan -- preprinted forms from the Department of Justice that people were instructed to sign by their superiors -- do not constitute the sort of waivers a journalist ought to accept as truly freeing the journalist from the obligation of confidentiality," Abrams said.

"Both of them believed this was simply a form of coercion."

Abrams represented Time and Cooper before they hired separate lawyers.

In an internal Time e-mail, obtained by Newsweek magazine, Cooper reported to an editor that senior White House aide Karl Rove had told him "on double super secret background" that it was "Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip" that the former diplomat took to Niger.

Wilson investigated whether Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain uranium from that country.

Rove and his attorney have denied that Rove disclosed Plame's identity to reporters.

Cooper provided limited testimony last year after receiving a personal waiver from I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff.

Russert, Pincus and Kessler also provided limited depositions with the consent of their sources.

Abrams, who represented the Times in 1978 when reporter Myron Farber was jailed for 40 days in the case of a doctor accused of killing patients, also takes a dim view of waivers from sources.

In that case, he recalled, Farber refused to identify his sources even after some of the sources acknowledged their role in court.

Miller could be jailed for four months, the time remaining in the current grand jury's term.

During last week's hearing, however, Fitzgerald described her as "breaking the law" and having committed a "crime."

He could take the unusual step of trying to convert her civil contempt to a charge of criminal contempt, which, if she were convicted, would carry a longer jail term.

"That would overstep the legitimate bounds of simply trying to get Judy Miller to testify as to what her sources told her," Abrams said.

"It would constitute a sort of punitive overreach."

And while we are on the subject of which way the wind is blowing .....

"Grenada Braces for Tropical Storm Emily"

By MICHAEL BASCOMBE, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 22 minutes ago

St. GEORGE'S, Grenada - Grenadian police ordered people off the streets and businesses closed Wednesday as Tropical Storm Emily threatened an island still recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Ivan last year.

Prime Minister Keith Mitchell sought to reassure citizens the government would not be caught off-guard — as it was when Ivan killed 39 people and left a wasteland of ruined buildings in September.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami said the storm was not expected to become a hurricane before clearing the Windward Islands.

All hurricane warnings were downgraded to tropical storm warnings.

At 2 p.m. EDT, the center of Emily was about 130 miles south-southeast of Barbados and was heading west at nearly 20 mph with sustained winds of 60 mph, the hurricane center said.

Grenada's government prepared for the worst, opening 36 shelters and activating a new emergency plan that Mitchell said was "designed to provide maximum protection for all our citizens."

Islanders who had stocked up on canned food, water and batteries the day before, rushed home under heavy rain, causing traffic jams in the capital of St. George's.

The sense of urgency contrasted with the attitude before Ivan, when Grenadians took few precautions for a hurricane that tore the roofs off most homes and devastated the economy.

The struggle to recover from Ivan has prevented Grenada from thoroughly preparing for this year's hurricane season.

Amid a shortage of construction supplies, many islanders still have no roofs and some children are still taught under tarps.

Ivan's destruction left few buildings viable as shelters.

In St. Vincent, people boarded up windows and businesses were supposed to close at noon, although some stayed open amid a light drizzle and an increasingly dark sky.

"We've got to be prepared, and that's what we're doing," said Cordell Roberts, 39, a fisherman who was helping to pull boats from the water in the capital, Kingstown.

"People are very conscious about the weather."

"It's not like the old days when we took it for granted."

The government of Barbados ordered a nationwide business shutdown but downgraded its hurricane warning to a tropical storm watch as Emily appeared headed south of the Caribbean's easternmost island.

"We must remain on alert," Barbados Attorney General Mia Mottley said in a national address.

"The system has the potential to cause significant damage."

"... Stay calm and stay safe."

Emily trails Hurricane Dennis, which destroyed crops and killed at least 25 people in Haiti and 16 in Cuba and Haiti last week.
___

Associated Press reporters Philip Spooner in Bridgetown, Barbados, and Andres Leighton in Kingstown, St. Vincent, contributed to this report.

And then, of course, there is George W. Bush's on-going desire to be able to kill more people, and to be more fearsome, than any hurricane ever thought of being, because while hurricanes are only a force of nature, everybody knows George W. Bush is "God's Hammer", and "God's Lightning", down here on this earth of OURS, and so ....

"Military's Energy-Beam Weapons Delayed"

By BRIAN BERGSTEIN, AP Technology Writer

Wed Jul 13,11:56 AM ET

ARLINGTON, Va. - For years, the U.S. military has explored a new kind of firepower that is instantaneous, precise and virtually inexhaustible: beams of electromagnetic energy.

"Directed-energy" pulses can be throttled up or down depending on the situation, much like the phasers on "Star Trek" could be set to kill or merely stun.

Such weapons are now nearing fruition.

But logistical issues have delayed their battlefield debut — even as soldiers in Iraq encounter tense urban situations in which the nonlethal capabilities of directed energy could be put to the test.

"It's a great technology with enormous potential, but I think the environment's not strong for it," said James Jay Carafano, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation who blames the military and Congress for not spending enough on getting directed energy to the front.

"The tragedy is that I think it's exactly the right time for this."

The hallmark of all directed-energy weapons is that the target — whether a human or a mechanical object — has no chance to avoid the shot because it moves at the speed of light.

At some frequencies, it can penetrate walls.

Since the ammunition is merely light or radio waves, directed-energy weapons are limited only by the supply of electricity.

And they don't involve chemicals or projectiles that can be inaccurate, accidentally cause injury or violate international treaties.

"When you're dealing with people whose full intent is to die, you can't give people a choice of whether to comply," said George Gibbs, a systems engineer for the Marine Expeditionary Rifle Squad Program who oversees directed-energy projects.

"What I'm looking for is a way to shoot everybody, and they're all OK."

Almost as diverse as the electromagnetic spectrum itself, directed-energy weapons span a wide range of incarnations.

Among the simplest forms are inexpensive, handheld lasers that fill people's field of vision, inducing a temporary blindness to ensure they stop at a checkpoint, for example.

Some of these already are used in Iraq.

Other radio-frequency weapons in development can sabotage the electronics of land mines, shoulder-fired missiles or automobiles — a prospect that interests police departments in addition to the military.

A separate branch of directed-energy research involves bigger, badder beams: lasers that could obliterate targets tens of miles away from ships or planes.

Such a strike would be so surgical that, as some designers put it at a recent conference here, the military could plausibly deny responsibility.

The flexibility of directed-energy weapons could be vital as wide-scale, force-on-force conflict becomes increasingly rare, many experts say.

But the technology has been slowed by such practical concerns as how to shrink beam-firing antennas and power supplies.

Military officials also say more needs to be done to assure the international community that directed-energy weapons set to stun rather than kill will not harm noncombatants.

Such issues recently led the Pentagon to delay its Project Sheriff, a plan to outfit vehicles in Iraq with a combination of lethal and nonlethal weaponry — including a highly touted microwave-energy blaster that makes targets feel as if their skin is on fire.

Sheriff has been pushed at least to 2006.

"It was best to step back and make sure we understand where we can go with it," said David Law, science and technology chief for the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate.

The directed-energy component in the project is the Active Denial System, developed by Air Force researchers and built by Raytheon Co.

It produces a millimeter-wavelength burst of energy that penetrates 1/64 of an inch into a person's skin, agitating water molecules to produce heat.

The sensation is certain to get people to halt whatever they are doing.

Military investigators say decades of research have shown that the effect ends the moment a person is out of the beam, and no lasting damage is done as long as the stream does not exceed a certain duration.

How long?

That answer is classified, but it apparently is in the realm of seconds, not minutes.

The range of the beam also is secret, though it is said to be further than small arms fire, so an attacker could be repelled before he could pull a trigger.

Although Active Denial works — after a $51 million, 11-year investment — it has proven to be a "model for how hard it is to field a directed-energy nonlethal weapon," Law said.

For example, the prototype system can be mounted on a Humvee but the vehicle has to stop in order to fire the beam.

Using the vehicle's electrical power "is pushing its limits," he added.

Still, Raytheon is pressing ahead with smaller, portable, shorter-range spinoffs of Active Denial for embassies, ships or other sensitive spots.

One potential customer is the Department of Energy.

Researchers at its Sandia National Laboratories are testing Active Denial as a way to repel intruders from nuclear facilities.

But Sandia researchers say the beams won't be in place until 2008 at the earliest because so much testing remains.

In the meantime, Raytheon is trying to drum up business for an automated airport-defense project known as Vigilant Eagle that detects shoulder-fired missiles and fries their electronics with an electromagnetic wave.

The system, which would cost $25 million per airport, has proven effective against a "real threat," said Michael Booen, a former Air Force colonel who heads Raytheon's directed-energy work.

He refused to elaborate.

For Peter Bitar, the future of directed energy boils down to money.

Bitar heads Indiana-based Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems Ltd., which makes small blinding lasers used in Iraq.

But his real project is a nonlethal energy device called the StunStrike.

Basically, it fires a bolt of lightning.

It can be tuned to blow up explosives, possibly to stop vehicles and certainly to buzz people.

The strike can be made to feel as gentle as "broom bristles" or cranked up to deliver a paralyzing jolt that "takes a few minutes to wear off."

Bitar, who is of Arab descent, believes StunStrike would be particularly intimidating in the Middle East because, he contends, people there are especially afraid of lightning.

At present, StunStrike is a 20-foot tower that can zap things up to 28 feet away.

The next step is to shrink it so it could be wielded by troops and used in civilian locales like airplane cabins or building entrances.

Xtreme ADS also needs more tests to establish that StunStrike is safe to use on people.

But all that takes money — more than the $700,000 Bitar got from the Pentagon from 2003 until the contract recently ended.

Bitar is optimistic StunStrike will be perfected, either with revenue from the laser pointers or a partnership with a bigger defense contractor.

In the meantime, though, he wishes soldiers in Iraq already had his lightning device on difficult missions like door-to-door searches.

"It's very frustrating when you know you've got a solution that's being ignored," he said.

"The technology is the easy part."
___

On the Net:

Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate: https://www.jnlwd.usmc.mil

And here, I have to say that this general's claim above about only 262 National Guardsmen being killed in Iraq has set me to wondering, because we have had more than a few from right here killed, and so .....

"Amid tears, a smile is remembered - Corinth family, friends pay tribute to soldier's service at his funeral"

By TIM O'BRIEN, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Sunday, July 10, 2005

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported the tribute paid to Army Spc. Stephen Z. Madison at his funeral. Three volleys were fired by seven riflemen in Madison's honor.

SARATOGA -- Family and friends of Army Spc. Stephen Z. Madison paid tribute Saturday to the soldier who died 10 months after suffering severe burns while serving in Iraq.

They remembered his kindness, his smile and his service to his country at a time of war.

A steady drizzle fell as mourners gathered under a shelter at the Gerald B.H. Solomon Saratoga National Cemetery for the service.

Madison's cremated remains sat in a white wooden box at the front as prayers were said in his memory.

Madison, 23, died June 29 at Fort Riley, Kan., 10 months after he suffered severe burns when a shower malfunctioned in Iraq, scalding his left arm and torso.

His father, Stephen R. Madison, has said his death may have been caused by an allergic reaction to medication he was taking.

Stephen Z. Madison was a native of Corinth.

"Even in our greatest sorrow, we can have hope, eternal hope," Pastor Rick Cohen said at the memorial service.

"On behalf of the family, I can thank you for coming, for celebrating Stephen's life."

"We are going to discuss Steve and the blessing he was to us."

Cohen, of the Adirondack Christian Fellowship, had met both Stephen Z. Madison and his wife, Mary, who also was born in Corinth.

"We loved them both," he said.

"He was very kind and open and a very wonderful guy."

Madison's mother-in-law, Mary Lou Walsh, said she could not have asked for a better son-in-law.

"We will always remember that smile," she told the mourners.

U.S. Rep. John Sweeney, R-Clifton Park, said the nation will never forget Madison's service to his country.

"We are deeply grateful, deeply respectful for his service."

"We honor him for what he represents, the best of this nation," Sweeney said.

"He sacrificed himself for us, for our freedom, for our way of life."

Taps was played by Army soldiers from Fort Drum and three volleys were fired by seven riflemen in Madison's honor.

An honor guard from the Horace D. Washburn American Legion Post 533 of Corinth also saluted him, and his family was presented with an Army commendation medal by a captain from Fort Riley.

After the ceremony, Sweeney said he will continue pressing the Army for an explanation for both Madison's injury and the cause of his death.

"All the questions the family has about his death will be answered," he said.

"In the end, this family will at least have the peace of mind that they know all they need to know."

Sweeney said the terrorist attack in London was a reminder of the need for soldiers like Madison.

"Stephen Madison served his country honorably in volunteering and serving his nation at a time when our nation was at war."

"He will always be a hero," he said.

"We saw this week with events around the world why that service is so important."

Tim O'Brien can be reached at 454-5096 or by e-mail at tobrien@timesunion.com.

end quotes

John Sweeney, the Congressman from where I am, himself could have worn the uniform, and he too could have served his country, BUT ...

John Sweeney was just too important to do that!

Republican politics called him, instead, and that is a much higher calling than serving America could ever be!

But John is good at giving lip service, and so, he does!

And some interesting local trivia, which serves to demonstrate just how long OUR history here stretches back in time ....

"An 18th-century man of the people - Lord Howe, buried in Albany, is noted; reputed to be the only English lord buried in North America."

By PAUL GRONDAHL, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Friday, July 8, 2005

ALBANY -- Lord George Augustus Howe was a grandson of England's King George I, whose common touch made the military commander a beloved figure among farmers, merchants and ordinary colonists of 18th-century Albany.

"He was a helluva bloke," said Joe Meany, New York State Historian emeritus and a scholar of Howe and the French and Indian War.

Howe led an English attack on French-held Fort Ticonderoga and was killed at age 33 with a musket ball to the chest in a skirmish outside Ticonderoga on July 6, 1758.

The outpouring of grief over Howe's demise was not unlike the expressions of sorrow over the untimely death of Princess Diana centuries later, Meany said.

"Lord Howe was genuinely sympathetic to Americans and they revered him."

"Had he lived, it's likely he would have risen to a high level in the American government and there might not have been an American Revolution," Meany said.

On Saturday, French and Indian War re-enactors, bagpipers, members of St. Andrew's Society and historians will gather to remember Lord Howe, who is buried beneath St. Peter's Episcopal Church at 107 State St. in downtown Albany.

Howe is reputed to be the only English lord buried in North America.

"Actually, we've had to move poor Lord Howe twice," said Lee Stanton, historian and archivist of St. Peter's, which is now in its third structure.

Lord Howe's remains were moved each time the house of worship was rebuilt.

The first St. Peter's was built in 1715 in the middle of today's State Street, just south of the current site.

Philip Hooker designed the second church in 1802 and the third, a Richard Upjohn design, was built in 1859.

It's a classic example of Gothic architecture and is listed on the National Registry of Historic Landmarks.

A marble plaque commemorating Howe's burial beneath the church entrance describes him as "a distinguished man and soldier, a friend of the colonies."

"Howe was an excellent commander who understood that fighting in America wasn't the same as in Europe," Stanton said.

"A couple of Howe's brothers fought against America in the Revolutionary War."

"Luckily for us, they weren't as skilled as soldiers."

Saturday's memorial for Lord Howe coincides with a yearlong roster of events commemorating the 250th anniversary of the French and Indian War.

"Starting with the Albany Plan of Union in 1754, the Colonies actually began working together for the first time and it was a prelude to freedom and the Revolutionary War," said Robert Flack Sr., president of the Fort William Henry Corp. in Lake George.

"The French and Indian War was a military training ground for the Americans," Flack said.

"That's where all the leaders of the American Revolution became experienced in the tactics of warfare."

"There wouldn't have been a Revolution without that."

Howe -- the likable bloke who was equally at ease with blacksmiths as he was with British lords in powdered wigs -- was a central figure in that development of American soldiers.

In addressing his British officers, Howe said of the American recruits: "You will find gentlemen of equal competence in every regiment of Americans."

Said Meany: "He had an ability to look beyond the outward appearance and to see the value of Americans."

"They responded to him in kind."

Historians have suggested that Howe's desire to mix with commoners may have contributed to his death.

It was unusual that a commander of Howe's stature should have been at the front among an advance party making a risky scouting maneuver.

Howe was killed in a skirmish that was a brief, random clash between a small number of British and French troops during the run-up to the major Battle of Fort Ticonderoga.

For that battle, the British assembled near what is today Lake George's Million-Dollar Beach a fleet of nearly 1,000 bateaux, whaleboats and artillery barges and 15,000 troops.

As the British and French soldiers collided unexpectedly in a forest near today's Route 9N in Ticonderoga, Howe was shot at point-blank range.

A letter from Howe's adjutant read: "Never has ball had more devastating effect ... he was hit in the chest, fell backwards and only the tips of his fingers twitched for an instant."

Howe was buried at St. Peter's Church in part because of the practicalities of transporting a dead body in July's heat.

In 1758, St. Peter's was part of the Church of England, of which Howe was a prominent member.

Howe's cortege from Ticonderoga to St. Peter's was led by his friend from Albany, the American military leader Philip Schuyler, who would go on to become a general in the Revolutionary War.

"I think there will be a lot of interest in the Lord Howe memorial events," said Christine Miles, executive director of the Albany Institute of History & Art, which has artifacts from the French and Indian War era.

"People love seeing the kilts and bagpipes."

"There's a romanticism about it."

Q. What is the difference between an onion and a bagpipe?

A. Nobody ever cries when they chop up a bagpipe.






Q. Why do bagpipe players march as they play?

A. To get away from the sound.

Here, too, in Kah-lee-FAWN-yah.

As an aside, the son of a close friend signed up for the Nat'l Guard on Sept 12, 2001. We were all REAL patriots back then. He was in medical school and is now a doc. He thought he might be "of use" to our State in the event of another 9/11 catastrophe.


Well, the catastrophe finally happened - - he's getting shipped to...

IRAQ.

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

How many "bills of goods" are we being sold, here, jeffmoskin, is what I have to wonder?

I wouldn't have thought of any of this if this general hadn't made that statement about only 262 N.G's being killed, and while not every state might have N.G.'s serving in Iraq, the number seems quite low to me, unless those deaths are concentrated in just a few small areas of America, which does not seem likely somehow, given how big a geographic area the 42nd Division alone draws from.

I wonder at what kind of finagle is going on here, as some of the ones "drafted" from here that were killed, were actually assigned to the First Infantry Division when they were killed, as replacements, even though they were National Guardsmen.

I wonder, then, to what "unit" those deaths were attributed to?

Are they calling these deaths "active army" deaths because the First Infantry Division is an active Army unit, I wonder?

It is interesting that news coverage of this dam break by the Albany, New York Times Union has seemed to have ceased completely, and that is made more interesting by all that is coming out on the matter, such as the news on the radio this morning that no inspections were performed on the dam, as the law requires, before it broke, and destroyed the homes and property of quite a few people in that area, who are now basically destitute, and are looking for answers that are not forthcoming!

One man on the radio this morning had his whole house simply washed away and destroyed, and he is wondering where he and his family are to sleep, and he wants to know how and why this happened, as do I, a licensed engineer in this state!

Why and how was an engineering firm from New Hampshire, two states away, selected to be the site engineer, when New York State law, which is intended to protect and safeguard the life, health and property of common people in the State of New York, such as this man, and his family, requires that a New York State-licensed engineer be in charge of site inspections and engineering on a major project such as this one was, and WHERE WAS THE STATE OF NEW YORK, ITSELF, with respect to these necessary inspections?

SILENCE!

And who are these people right now relying upon for answers?

You guessed it!

The State of New York!

Like turning the investigation of a bank robbery over to the person who robbed the bank!

And why is the Albany, New York Tiimes Union gone silent on what is going on here, is another one of those lingering questions!

Maybe they're emulating Judith Miller and the New York Times!

KEEP THE COVER ON!

"If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is and if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of."

-- George W. Bush, Sept. 2003

MSNBC live vote as of 4:45 p.m. ET July 14, 2005

Should Bush fire Karl Rove? * 90785 responses

Yes 88%

No 9%

Don't know 3%

"Wilson says Bush should fire Rove - Ex-envoy tells NBC that top Bush aide engaged in 'abuse of power'"

July 14: President Bush says he will not comment on the role that senior aide Karl Rove may have played in revealing the identity of a CIA agent until a federal probe is completed.

Updated: 1:40 p.m. ET July 14, 2005

WASHINGTON - Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson called on President Bush on Thurday to fire deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, saying Bush’s top-level aide engaged in an “abuse of power” by discussing Wilson’s wife’s job with a reporter.

Wilson decried what he called a White House “stonewall” in the wake of revelations that Rove, a longtime Bush confidant, was involved in the leak to the news media that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA officer.

Bush said Wednesday that he would not comment on discussions that blew her cover because it is the subject of an ongoing investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said, however, the president still has confidence in Rove.

Meanwhile Thursday, Senate Democrats appeared to be suggesting that Rove can’t be trusted with the nation’s secrets.

They called for legislation to deny security clearances to officials who disclose the identity of an undercover agent.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid wanted to attach the proposal to a spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security -- and aides said he hoped for a vote Thursday.

Wilson, in an interview broadcast Thursday on NBC’s “Today” show, said he thinks the White House’s posture in this controvery represents a continuing “cover-up of the web of lies that underpin the justification for going to war in Iraq.”

Wilson was asked about statements by Rove’s defenders noting that an e-mail describing Rove’s conversation with Time reporter Matthew Cooper indicated that Rove did not specifically mention Valerie Plame by name.

Abuse of power?

“My wife’s name is Mrs. Joseph Wilson,” he replied.

“It is Mrs. Valerie Wilson."

"He named her."

"He identified her,” Wilson said.

“So that argument doesn’t stand the smell test ..."

"What I do know is that Mr. Rove is talking to the press and he is saying things like my wife is fair game."

"That’s an outrage."

"That’s an abuse of power.”

Asked how he and his wife were coping with the continuing controversy, Wilson said, “We have two 5-year-old twins and they occupy most of our free time."

"She’s obviously nonplussed at this unwanted attention brought to our family."

"But she’s tough.”

Wilson said that he and his wife “have great confidence in the institutions that have made our country great ..."

"Yes, we do have confidence that justice will be done.”

“I think the president should call in his senior advisers and say, ’Enough is enough, I want you to step forward and cooperate,’ “ he said.

“The president has said repeatedly, “I am a man of my word,’ “ Wilson added.

“He should stand up and prove that his word is his bond and fire Karl Rove.”

Wilson has said the leak of his wife’s name was an attempt by the administration to discredit him after he challenged its assertion that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was seeking to obtain from Niger material to make nuclear weapons.

From: Air America Radio <AirAmericaRadio@AirAmericaRadio-lists.com>

Reply-To: Air America Radio <my2cents@airamericaradio.com>

Subject: A Traitor in the White House

Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2005 01:42:17 -0700 (PDT)

Attention Air America Radio Listener,

Air America Radio needs your help to get a traitor out of the White House.

For two years, we've known that someone in the White House undermined America by maliciously leaking the identity of CIA covert operative Valerie Plame to punish her husband for criticizing the Bush Administration.

And now what many suspected has finally been revealed: the leaker is President Bush's closest advisor, the man they call "Bush's Brain", none other than Karl Rove.

A growing chorus of voices is calling on President Bush to fire Karl Rove, including Air America Radio hosts and listeners.

The White House will try to say that Americans don't care about this.

They'll try to pass it off as an "inside the Beltway" issue.

That's why today we're asking you to help our hosts by adding your name to our Air America Radio petition calling for Bush to fire Karl Rove.

Please help our hosts show that Air America Radio listeners are outraged about treason in the White House by signing right now:

http://www.airamericaradio.com/petition/

George Bush has never been in such a "bad spot," as one reporter put it at Monday's White House press briefing.

When this scandal first came up in 2003, the Bush White House said unambiguously: "If anyone in this Administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this Administration." (Scott McClellan, 9/29/03, White House press briefing)

The President must now make good on his word.

By signing our petition, you'll be helping Air America Radio do its job as the country's leading progressive media outlet to bring pressure to bear on the Bush White House that won't let up until Karl Rove has had his security clearance revoked and is barred from the White House.

Here are the facts about this case:

* Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA operative who worked in the field of WMD counter-proliferation.

* After her husband published an editorial in The New York Times critical of the Bush Administration, Valerie Plame's name and her CIA affiliation were leaked to a number of news sources.

* Right-wing hack Bob Novak published a column outing Valerie Plame and effectively ending her career.

* One of those who received the leak about Valerie Plame's identity was Matt Cooper. His source: Karl Rove.

* By exposing her identity, Rove destroyed a valuable asset in the war on terror.

But even worse than that, he potentially exposed and endangered a network of intelligence assets throughout the world that Plame had built painstakingly over an entire career.

* We will never know just how much damage Rove did, nor how many lives he ruined.

With 65 stations across the country, Air America is beginning to have the critical mass to make a real impact at crucial moments like these.

Show that Air America Radio has become a political force to be reckoned with.

Sign our petition and help Air America Radio send a message to the White House.

Thank you,

The Air America Radio Team

http://www.airamericaradio.com/petition/

For further reading:

The Michael Isikoff Newsweek piece that definitively revealed Rove as the source:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8525978/site/newsweek/

Yesterday's "ridiculous" press briefing:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...20050711-3.html

The first of no doubt a flood of newspaper editorials calling for Rove to be fired:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...EDG8HDLC431.DTL

And Howard Kurtz asks the inevitable: "Frog-Marching Time for Rove?"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...5071200330.html

And while this following is a story that I cannot personally vouch for, and do not, it is sent to me from Europe, "old" Europe, perhaps, but I am not sure, since I don't know where Dick Cheney has the "line of demarcation" right now, and upon reading it, and considering it in the light of past events over in that part of the world, that being Asia, and here, "Dugout Doug" MacArthur comes to mind, when he got too close to China and so, brought swarms of Chinese into the Korean War, up around the "frozen Chosin", I thought it should be posted in here, for whatever it is worth, with the disclaimer that this is how other people in the world are looking at us, and where that might be taking us to, which is further down the road to more war, as I see it, and one big mess for everyone, which was really kind of a done deal, when America lost its collective mind and put an incompetent like George W. Bush in the White House, here in OUR America:

http://www.rense.com/general67/RUSC.HTM

"Russian/China Activate 10 Divisions To Counter US"

By Sorcha Faal
7-13-5

Russian Intelligence Analysts are reporting today that both President Putin (Russia) and President Hu (China) have ordered the immediate activation of 10 Combat Ready Divisions to counter the increasingly aggressive moves being made by the United States in the Caspian Oil Regions of Central Asia.

Special Forces Army Units of both Russian Spetsnaz and Chinese Immediate Action Units were also ordered to be immediately deployed to both Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan to surround the large American Military bases in those regions, and that the governments of both of these countries have ordered the Americans to leave.

The government of Uzbekistan had called first for these actions, and as we can read as reported by the Indian National Newspaper Hindu News Service in its article titled

Uzbekistan Steps Up Pressure On US To Close Base

http://www.hindu.com/2005/07/09/stories/2005070900251500.htm

and which says -

"Uzbekistan is stepping up pressure on the United States to withdraw its air base set up in the Central Asian country for operations in neighbouring Afghanistan."

"Uzbekistan also said that the United States had not paid takeoff and landing fees, as well as compensation for security services, new infrastructure, ecological damage and inconvenience to the local population."

The statement was issued two days after the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation called for the United States and its coalition allies in Afghanistan to set a date for withdrawing their military bases from Central Asia.

Last month Uzbekistan introduced severe restrictions on American flights from the Khanabad base forcing the U.S. command to redeploy some aircraft to Afghanistan.

Kyrgyzstan has joined Uzbekistan in calling on Washington to shut down its air base near the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek.

The government of Kyrgyzstan has also called for the Americans to leave their country, and as we can read as reported by the RIA Novosti News Service in their article titled

Kyrgyz Ambassador: US Base Must Go - Russia's Should Stay

http://en.rian.ru/world/20050711/40886695.html

and which says,

"The United States' military base near the Manas Airport, in the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan, must go and Russia's, at Kant, should stay, the Kyrgyz Ambassador to Russia said Monday at a press conference here. Apas Jumagulov recalled the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit explaining the need for the Manas base's withdrawal by the fact that the situation in the neighboring Afghanistan was returning to normal."

The actions of the United States Military Leaders though to these demands to leave have been met instead with their increasing their combat capabilities in both Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and in total disregard to both Russian and Chinese warnings issued to them, and of which can read as reported by the USA Today News Service in their article titled

China, Russia-Led Alliance Wants Date For US Pullout

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-07...ia-summit_x.htm

and which says

"A regional alliance led by China and Russia called Tuesday for the U.S. and its coalition allies in Afghanistan to set a date for withdrawing from several states in Central Asia, reflecting growing unease at America's military presence in the region."

"The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which groups Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, urged a deadline be set for withdrawal of the foreign forces from its member states in light of what it said was a decline in active fighting in Afghanistan."

"The alliance's move appeared to be an attempt to push the United States out of a region that Moscow regards as historically part of its sphere of influence and in which China seeks a dominant role because of its extensive energy resources."

Angering President Putin also has been the United States pressuring the European Union to attempt to take away Russia's vast oil resources, and as we can read as reported by the Moscow Times News Service in their article titled

Putin's Aide Warns Of Finno-Ugric Conspiracy To Seize Russia's Oil Assets

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/07/12/surkovfinns.shtml

and which says

"The deputy head of Russia's presidential administration, Vladislav Surkov, has said that foreigners are accusing Russia of oppressing provinces that are home to Finno-Ugric nations and "strategic resources" of oil..Speaking at a meeting with Russian businessmen, Vladislav Surkov said, "Today, Finland, Estonia and the European Union have become markedly more intense on the topic of Finno-Ugric nations. It turns out that we oppress them somehow. They allegedly have no rights in our country. Regions where those nations are dominant have strategic resources of our oil. I am not a follower of a conspiracy theory. But this is evidently a planned action."

Moscow Officials further report that upon hearing of these latest moves by the United States against Russia President Putin remarked, "Then let's see how well they are prepared when the UN orders them (the Americans) to return California to Mexico."

To the Western peoples it still appears that they believe this American War upon the World is based on 'terrorism', but to the rest of the World it has long been known what the Military Leaders of the United States were planning, and even to as far back as 1998 were the warnings of these wars being reported, and as exampled by one such warning issued by the World Socialist Web Site News Service in their article titled

New Caspian Oil Interests Fuel US War Drive Against Iraq

http://www.wsws.org/news/1998/nov1998/casp-n16.shtml

and which had said

"Powerful geo-political interests are fueling the American war drive. In many respects US policy in the Persian Gulf is driven today by the same considerations that led it to invade Iraq nearly eight years ago. As a "senior American official"--most likely Secretary of State James Baker--told the New York Times within days of the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in August of 1990: "We are talking about oil. Got it? Oil, vital American interests."

http://www.wsws.org/news/1998/nov1998/casp-n16.shtml

This struggle recalls the protracted conflict between Britain and Russia at the end of the nineteenth century for hegemony in the Middle East and Central Asia that became known as the Great Game.

Germany made its own thrust into the region with its decision to build the Berlin to Baghdad railroad.

The resulting tensions played a major role in the growth of European militarism that erupted in World War I.

This time American imperialism is the major protagonist.

Over the past several years, the battle for dominance in the region has come to center on one question: where to build a pipeline to move oil from the Azeri capital of Baku to the West.

http://www.wsws.org/news/1998/nov1998/casp-n16.shtml

"The Caspian region has emerged as the world's newest stage for big power politics. It not only offers oil companies the prospect of great wealth, but provides a stage for high-stakes competition among world powers.... Much depends on the outcome, because these pipelines will not simply carry oil but will also define new corridors of trade and power. The nation or alliance that controls pipeline routes could hold sway over the Caspian region for decades to come."

What is perhaps most insane about these Western peoples reactions to these true things is their not caring to know that both Russia and China are not going to lose Central Asia, or the Middle East, by anything other than Military defeat. The suddenness of this Wars escalation will surprise these Westerners, even as their Military Forces had been the ones who started it, and as we can read as reported by the Washington Post News Service in their article titled

Undeclared Oil War

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2004Jun27.html

The and which says

"Asia's undeclared oil war is but the latest reminder that in a global economy dependent largely on a single fuel -- oil -- "energy security" means far more than hardening refineries and pipelines against terrorist attack. At its most basic level, energy security is the ability to keep the global machine humming -- that is, to produce enough fuels and electricity at affordable prices that every nation can keep its economy running, its people fed and its borders defended. A failure of energy security means that the momentum of industrialization and modernity grinds to a halt. And by that measure, we are failing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2004Jun27.html

In the United States and Europe, new demand for electricity is outpacing the new supply of power and natural gas and raising the specter of more rolling blackouts. In the "emerging" economies, such as Brazil, India and especially China, energy demand is rising so fast it may double by 2020. And this only hints at the energy crisis facing the developing world, where nearly 2 billion people -- a third of the world's population -- have almost no access to electricity or liquid fuels and are thus condemned to a medieval existence that breeds despair, resentment and, ultimately, conflict. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2004Jun27.html

In other words, we are on the cusp of a new kind of war -- between those who have enough energy and those who do not but are increasingly willing to go out and get it. While nations have always competed for oil, it seems more and more likely that the race for a piece of the last big reserves of oil and natural gas will be the dominant geopolitical theme of the 21st century."

To this 'New Kind Of War" the Washington Post speaks of we can already see by the actions of these Western Nations how it is to be waged, by the deliberate terrorizing of their own citizens through continued mass attacks designed to keep them in constant fear against enemies that do not exist for the purpose of creating a War Society built upon the model established by the Nazi Germany Regime of the 1930's, and which led to the last Global War.

For their continued refusal to see the whole truths of the very World they live in, and instead believing only in the repeated lies of propaganda told to them, these Western peoples have now been labeled as the most insane in the world, and as we can read as reported by the Australian News Service in their article titled

People In West Suffer More From Mental Illness

http://news.webindia123.com/news/showdetai...144&cat=Science

and which says

"People in the West suffer more from mental illness than those in poorer countries, with chances of recovery being higher in places like India than in say New York or London, says an Australian study. Their findings are expected to rewrite international textbooks on the devastating mental illness characterized by symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, disorganized communication, poor planning and reduced motivation, it reported."

To the shocking devastation of Total Global War these Westerners know only through their movies, soon they will know it by looking out their doorways.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4284299

And from the Veterans' for truth, justice and the American way hotline comes this:

John Youmans: "It's a Slam Dunk" Debunked

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About the Author

John F. Youmans is a retired USAF major and a well decorated disabled Vietnam Veteran who served at Bien Hoa AB from 1966-1967. Mr. Youmans served 30 years in the USAF. Since his military retirement in 1993, Mr. Youmans has become a well published journalist and a reporter for the Daily Record in Dunn, N.C. for several years when forced to resign due to his health and disability stemming from Hodgkin’s Disease and Agent Orange. Mr. Youmans continues, however, to write articles for newspapers across the nation from home. In addition, he is a featured columnist for Military.Com and staff writer for several other Internet web sites. Mr. Youmans has taken the task of advocating improvements for veterans’ benefits as a personal goal.

June 16, 2005

Former CIA Director George Tenet's promise of a "slam dunk" in providing the intelligence required to justify the war with Iraq was not only a pack of intentional lies and misrepresentations, it was also taken out of context.

So what did Tenet really mean when he told President Bush, "It's a slam dunk?"

We were misled to believe that Tenet was saying he could produce accurate, reliable, hard intelligence and that it would be a "slam dunk" to present and prove it.

The part we didn't hear, and it is important to understand, is what Bush said to Tenet prior to that statement.

Tenet had already briefed Bush on the intelligence he had.

It was weak, unreliable and frequently only substantiated by one source.

The president was "unimpressed" by the presentation and pressed Tenet saying his information would not "convince Joe Public" and then asked, "This is the best we've got?"

It was then that Tenet replied, "It's a slam dunk."

It was then that Tenet promised Bush he would bend the intelligence and provide what was needed to convince Joe Public.

He was telling Bush not to worry, he would take care of it.

And he did.

The hard intelligence was molded, manipulated and fabricated to fit Bush's preconceived war plan.

Tenet, for his part, opted to become a political advocate for Bush's propaganda rather than a protector of the intelligence community.

Office of Special Plans (OSP)

Instead, a rogue Office of Special Plans was created and opened in the Pentagon.

It took the hard intelligence from the CIA and others, and transformed it to what the administration wanted it to say.

Tenet further ingratiated himself by remaining silent about the OSP.

He knew the information Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were giving out was false, but did nothing to disclose it.

The OSP was kept so secret even CIA senior intelligence officers did not know about it.

The OSP was cherry picking intelligence and packaging it for Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to take to the president.

Fixed Intelligence

Some examples of this fabricated intelligence:

1. "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." - Dick Cheney, August 26, 2002

2. "Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent." - George W. Bush, January 28, 2003

3. "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." - George W. Bush, March 17, 2003

4. "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction because it was the one reason everyone could agree on." - Paul Wolfowitz, May 28, 2003

5. "Saddam possesses enough anthrax and potentially enough technology to send unmanned aircraft on spray attacks that could wipe out a third of the West Coast." - U.S. Rep Mike Rogers, March 16, 2003

6. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." - Condoleezza Rice, September 8, 2002

Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski

Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), is an excellent first-hand source concerning manipulated OSP intelligence because she saw it happening.

Her final posting was as an analyst at the Pentagon.

Her writings provide a unique view of the Department of Defense during a period of intense ideological upheaval, as the United States prepared to launch a preventive war.

She states, " ... the pressure of the intelligence community to conform, the rejection of it when it failed to produce intelligence suitable for supporting the 'Iraq is an imminent threat to the United States' agenda, and the amazing things I was hearing in both Bush and Cheney speeches told me that not only do neoconservatives hold a theory based on ideas not embraced by the American mainstream, but they also have a collective contempt for fact."

http://www.amconmag.com/12_1_03/feature.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski-arch.html

In another article she states, " ... They spent their energy gathering pieces of information and creating a propaganda story line, which is the same story line we heard the president and Vice President Cheney tell the American people in the fall of 2002."

"The neoconservatives needed to do more than just topple Saddam Hussein."

"They wanted to put in a government friendly to the U.S., and they wanted permanent basing in Iraq."

"There are several reasons why they wanted to do that."

"None of those reasons, of course, were presented to the American people or to Congress."

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/13/news-cooper.php

Downing Street Memo

Now, more than two years later, shocking documents proving the facts for war were "fixed" are still being covered up.

The Downing Street Memo, written eight months prior to the invasion of Iraq, and other related documents showing the intelligence was fixed, is now the smoking gun.

The Times of London printed this explosive document May 1, 2005.

But it wasn't until Prime Minister Tony Blair's recent visit when he was asked about it, that it got any head wind here in the states.

It is slowly receiving more and more attention here at home.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html

The memo reveals:

Prime Minister Tony Blair chaired a July 2002 meeting, at which he discussed military options, having already committed himself to supporting President Bush's plans for invading Iraq.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw acknowledged that the case for war was "thin" as "Saddam was not threatening his neighbours and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran."

A separate secret briefing for the meeting said that Britain and America had to "create" conditions to justify a war.

A British official reported on his recent talks in Washington.

"There was a perceptible shift in attitude."

"Military action was now seen as inevitable."

"Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD."

"But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

U.S. Representatives Demand Answer From Bush

More than 88 U.S. Representatives have signed a letter to President Bush requesting answers about this grave matter.

"Thus far, our search for the truth has been stonewalled," said Rep. John Conyers.

"American people deserve answers about this matter and should demand directly that the President tell the truth about the memo."

Result of Fixed Intelligence

In conclusion, I will quote a mother who lost her son in Iraq.

She criticized the United States' "illegal and unjust war" during an interfaith rally in Lexington.

Cindy Sheehan of Vacaville, Calif., accused President Bush of lying to the nation about a war which has consumed more than $200 billion and claimed more than 1,700 American lives -- including the life of Army Specialist Casey Austin Sheehan.

Sheehan ridiculed Bush for saying that it's "hard work" comforting the widow of a soldier who's been killed in Iraq.

"Hard work is seeing your son's murder on CNN one Sunday evening while you're enjoying the last supper you'll ever truly enjoy again."

"Hard work is having three military officers come to your house a few hours later to confirm the aforementioned murder of your son, your first-born, your kind and gentle sweet baby."

"Hard work is burying your child 46 days before his 25th birthday."

"Hard work is holding your other three children as they lower the body of their big brother into the ground."

"Hard work is not jumping in the grave with him and having the earth cover you both," she said.

"Civilian Deaths in Iraq Exceed Military"

2 hours, 36 minutes ago

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Violent deaths among Iraqi civilians far exceeded those of soldiers or police during the first six months of this year, according to figures obtained Thursday from separate Iraqi government ministries.

Between Jan. 1 and June 30, 1,594 civilians were killed, according to the Ministry of Health.

Civilians often bear the brunt of car-bombings and suicide attacks.

By contrast, a total of 895 security forces — 275 Iraqi soldiers and 620 police — were killed in bombings, assassinations or armed clashes with insurgents, according to figures from the interior and defense ministries.

The number of insurgents killed during that six-month period was 781, the government said.

Earlier this year, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr told The Associated Press that more mosques and clerics from the country's majority Shiite community had been attacked than those belonging to the Sunni minority.

The minister, citing figures he obtained from an Interior Ministry research center, said about 12,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed during the previous 18 months.

Of those, more than 10,000 were Shiites, he said.

Jabr said he analyzed the figures based on the areas where the victims lived and not data explicitly stating the branch of Islam they belonged to.

And as a public health engineer, here is what I consider to be a real "story of OUR times", here in OUR America:

"Unborn babies carry pollutants, study finds"

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

2 hours, 37 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Unborn U.S. babies are soaking in a stew of chemicals, including mercury, gasoline byproducts and pesticides, according to a report released on Thursday.

Although the effects on the babies are not clear, the survey prompted several members of Congress to press for legislation that would strengthen controls on chemicals in the environment.

The report by the Environmental Working Group is based on tests of 10 samples of umbilical-cord blood taken by the American Red Cross.

They found an average of 287 contaminants in the blood, including mercury, fire retardants, pesticides and the Teflon chemical PFOA.

"These 10 newborn babies ... were born polluted," said New York Rep. Louise Slaughter, who spoke a news conference about the findings on Thursday.

"If ever we had proof that our nation's pollution laws aren't working, it's reading the list of industrial chemicals in the bodies of babies who have not yet lived outside the womb," Slaughter, a Democrat, said.

Cord blood reflects what the mother passes to the baby through the placenta.

"Of the 287 chemicals we detected in umbilical-cord blood, we know that 180 cause cancer in humans or animals, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 208 cause birth defects or abnormal development in animal tests," the report said.

Blood tests did not show how the chemicals got into the mothers' bodies, or what their effects might be on the babies.

MERCURY AND PESTICIDES

Among the chemicals found in the cord blood were methylmercury, produced by coal-fired power plants and certain industrial processes.

People can breathe it in or eat it in seafood and it causes brain and nerve damage.

Also found were polyaromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, which are produced by burning gasoline and garbage and which may cause cancer; flame-retardant chemicals called polybrominated dibenzodioxins and furans; and pesticides including DDT and chlordane.

The same group analyzed the breast milk of mothers across the United States in 2003 and found varying levels of chemicals, including flame retardants known as PBDEs.

This latest analysis also found PBDEs in cord blood.

Slaughter had similar tests done on her own blood.

"The stunning results show chemicals daily pumping through my vital organs that include PCBs that were banned decades ago as well as chemicals like Teflon that are currently under federal investigation," she said in remarks prepared for the news conference.

"I have auto exhaust fumes, flame retardant chemicals, and in all, some 271 harmful substances pulsing through my veins."

"That's hardly the picture of health I had hoped for, but I've been living in an industrial society for over 70 years."

The Government Accountability Office issued a report on Wednesday saying the Environmental Protection Agency does not have the powers it needs to fully regulate toxic chemicals.

The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, found that the EPA's Toxic Substances Control Act gives only "limited assurance" that new chemicals entering the market are safe and said the EPA only rarely assesses chemicals already on the market.

"Today, chemicals are being used to make baby bottles, food packaging and other products that have never been fully evaluated for their health effects on children -- and some of these chemicals are turning up in our blood," said New Jersey Democrat Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who plans to co-sponsor a bill to require chemical manufacturers to provide data to the EPA on the health affects of their products.

And then, there's this, of course, as well, which should come as no surprise, as the environment and ecology up here in the corrupt EMPIRE of New York get tipped right on their ear!

In the field of ecology, it is well known that the top of the food chain, us, always gets taken down by the smallest part of the food chain, which is the microbes .....

"Lyme disease threat takes hold in region - Number of cases more than doubles from 2003 to 2004 in Albany County"

By MATT PACENZA, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Thursday, July 14, 2005

The number of local Lyme disease cases is rising, with officials in Albany and Rensselaer counties reporting more residents are contracting the tick-borne illness.

Lyme slammed the Mid-Hudson Valley a few years ago.

The highest per-capita rates in the nation were once in Columbia and Dutchess counties.

Totals for 2004 and this year's early returns show a swift shift northward and westward into the Capital Region.

The most troubling increase is in Albany County, where cases jumped from 108 in 2003 to 235 last year.

Most people with Lyme disease respond well to treatment with antibiotics, especially if they catch it early.

But 5 percent to 10 percent continue to suffer symptoms for months or years, a problem that has plagued patients and their physicians.

Now, an Albany Medical Center researcher thinks he may have figured out why some people stay sick: They may have also caught another infection from ticks, such as cat-scratch fever.

Dr. Timothy Sellati, who got a $1.8 million federal grant to study Lyme disease last year, is doing lab research on mice to discover the relationship between Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that cause Lyme disease, and other tick-borne bacteria or parasites.

People get Lyme after they are bitten by infected deer ticks, most commonly between May and August.

"There is a growing appreciation, at least in a subset of Lyme disease, that the reason that people may not respond as favorably to treatment is because they're infected with other pathogens," said Sellati, associate professor in Albany Med's Center for Immunology and Microbial Disease.

Statewide, the number of Lyme disease cases peaked at 5,476 in 2002, before dropping slightly the last two years.

Public health officials credit education: Residents have learned to wear long sleeves and install natural barriers like rock walls around their lawns.

"We're not sure why," said Nancy Winch, public health director for the Health Department in Columbia County, which had 408 Lyme cases in 2004, down sharply from 904 the year before.

"Was it the weather, or were people more careful taking ticks off other people?"

Officials in the counties where the numbers are still rising hope they can educate residents quickly to keep infections at bay.

"We're seeing the disease move up the Hudson Valley," said Marcia Fabiano, Albany County Health Department epidemiologist.

One factor driving the jumps could be increased awareness by doctors, who have learned to diagnose and report cases better.

The Rensselaer County Health Department reports that the number of cases increased from 157 in 2003 to 192 last year.

The numbers look even higher this year, said Denise Ayers, the department's public health director.

The numbers are much lower in Saratoga and Schenectady counties, averaging about a dozen a year, but have been creeping up.

Area doctors have become adept at treating Lyme disease.

Some people see a doctor immediately after they are bitten by a tick.

They are typically advised to go home and see if symptoms appear before starting antibiotics.

The key change to look for, said Dr. Liz Higgins, is a tell-tale rash.

Most people infected with Lyme get a 2-inch circular rash, sometimes resembling a bull's eye, near the site of the bite.

If the rash appears, doctors will prescribe an antibiotic, typically for two weeks, without waiting for tests to come back confirming Lyme.

"The tests are really unreliable," said Higgins, an assistant professor of internal medicine and pediatrics at Albany Med.

"And they come back too late."

Other people don't notice they have a tick bite or a rash, or the rash never appears.

They first notice they're sick after developing headaches, aches, joint pain, facial paralysis or even neurological problems.

Wyatt Sexton, a Florida State University quarterback, didn't even know he was sick before he was diagnosed last week with a case of untreated Lyme disease.

It was initially reported that Sexton was on drugs or mentally ill after police found him last month doing push-ups in the street clad only in his underwear, claiming he was the "son of God."

Dr. Anita Kiehl, an infectious disease specialist at Albany Memorial Hospital, sees patients who have already developed symptoms, although rarely any as bizarre as Sexton's.

Severe cases can require intensive treatment.

"If a spinal tap shows evidence of inflammation, we recommend antibiotics by IV, usually for four weeks," she said.

That's exactly what cured the Rev. Jonathan Malone, a Latham native who is now a Baptist pastor in Philadelphia.

In 1999, Malone was hiking the Appalachian Trail from Virginia to Maine, when he started to feel tired and achy while in New Hampshire.

He chalked it up to the difficult hike, but then the problem got worse.

"The next morning, half my face was paralyzed," said Malone.

"I thought maybe there was more to it than just the hike."

Malone returned to Albany, did a month of IV antibiotics, and recovered quickly.

A small number of patients aren't so fortunate.

Some symptoms fade, but others, like headaches and joint pain, persist and even worsen.

Most doctors will try a second course of antibiotics, but then have to tell patients there is little more they can do.

"It is often unclear whether these symptoms are indeed related to Lyme disease, or are chronic joint pain or even psychological," said Kiehl.

Evidence is building that Lyme may be complicated by co-infections, Sellati said.

Field research shows that ticks often carry several strains of bacteria beyond those that cause Lyme disease or cat-scratch fever.

And initial research on patients with "chronic Lyme" shows some feel better after taking antibiotics to treat the other infections.

Sellati's lab is now working to develop a protocol of how the other infections affect people, so they can help doctors spot them.

The researcher hopes that someday his work will help others who have suffered with what they thought was Lyme for years, with nowhere to turn.

"The consequence of the treatment failures of Lyme have been quite devastating in terms of diminished quality of life," he said.

"Bruno's brother lands new job - Robert Bruno, who left $127,500 state post amid controversy, gets part-time position with Assembly's GOP"

By ELIZABETH BENJAMIN, Capitol bureau, Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Thursday, July 14, 2005

ALBANY -- The brother of Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, who resigned under a cloud last year from his job as deputy commissioner of a state agency, has quietly returned to the public payroll as a part-time budget analyst for the Assembly Republicans.

A spokesman for Assembly Minority Leader Charles Nesbitt, R-Albion, confirmed Wednesday that Robert Bruno started work last week as a member of the Republicans' Ways and Means staff.

The spokesman, Josh Hills, said Robert Bruno will be focusing primarily on health care.

Hills said Robert Bruno will be working between 18 and 21 hours a week.

Hills was unable to provide an exact salary, but said it is in the "mid-to-upper" $20,000 range.

Robert Bruno resigned from his $127,500-a-year post as deputy commissioner at the Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services in October 2004.

The state comptroller's office, which maintains a list of all public employees, said Robert Bruno resumed work too recently for his name and new salary to reappear in the database.

Hills said two analysts recently left the Assembly Minority's Ways and Means staff, so Robert Bruno's job was not created for him, but no one else was up for the post.

Joseph Bruno, a Republican from Brunswick, made no request to get his brother the job, Hills said.

"I'm not sure how long he will be part time, or how long he will be working on these issues," Hills said.

"He was at least temporarily hired to deal with health issues, and it seemed to be a fit for his experience."

Robert Bruno stepped down at OASAS amid intense scrutiny over unusual financial dealings at the program he oversaw, Road to Recovery, which provides substance abuse treatment as an alternative to prison for nonviolent felons.

Road to Recovery still exists.

It began in 2002 as a Senate-funded pilot program and is now funded by the state Department of Criminal Justice Services.

In the days before Robert Bruno resigned, it was revealed the state had rented him a plush, $54,400-a-year Saratoga Springs office suite.

The location, partly owned by Saratoga Springs GOP Chairman J. Thomas Roohan, shaved 60 miles off Robert Bruno's commute from his Glens Falls home.

The state terminated its lease for the office suite in February.

Robert Bruno was also found to have tried to get OASAS to buy, or spend more than $245,000 to fix up, a closed residential treatment center, Pinewood Lodge, in Granville, Washington County, that belonged to his Glens Falls neighbor, Donald Skaarup.

Robert Bruno hired Skaarup for a $75,000-a-year job with Road to Recovery.

The Pinewood Lodge deal fell through when OASAS officials deemed it too expensive.

The property was purchased by VESTA Community Housing Development Board Inc.

VESTA was created by the Rev. Peter Young to acquire properties for substance abuse treatment programs.

The Lodge is the only OASAS-licensed halfway house for women in Washington and Warren counties.

It is run by 820 River Street, a Troy-based substance abuse treatment organization also headed by Young.

Four months after Robert Bruno left OASAS, his former boss, ex-OASAS Commissioner William Gorman, also resigned from his $120,800-a-year job.

Gorman was reprimanded in October 2004 by officials in the Pataki administration for hiring his daughter, podiatrist Tara Harbeck, for a part-time, $55,670-a-year job.

The rebuke of Gorman coincided with Robert Bruno's resignation.

Harbeck quit her job soon after its existence was made public.

MSNBC Live Vote @ 7:45 A.M. ET, July 15, 2005

Should Bush fire Karl Rove? * 100871 responses

Yes 88%

No 10%

Don't know 2%

"Source: Rove says reporters told him of Plame - Bush aide reportedly testifies that he learned agent’s name from press"

July 14: As a show of support, President Bush made a public appearance with embattled top aide Karl Rove.

MSNBC News Services

Updated: 1:33 a.m. ET July 15, 2005

WASHINGTON - Presidential confidant Karl Rove testified to a grand jury that he learned the identity of a CIA operative originally from journalists, then informally discussed the information with a Time magazine reporter days before the story broke, according to a person briefed on the testimony.

The person, who works in the legal profession and spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, told The Associated Press that Rove testified last year that he remembers specifically being told by columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame, the wife of a harsh Iraq war critic, worked for the CIA.

Rove testified that Novak originally called him the Tuesday before Plame’s identity was revealed in July 2003 to discuss another story.

The conversation eventually turned to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was strongly criticizing the Bush administration’s Iraq war policy and the intelligence it used to justify the war, the source said.

Column touched off firestorm

The person said Rove testified that Novak told him he had learned and planned to report in a weekend column that Wilson’s wife, Plame, had worked for the CIA, and the circumstances on how her husband traveled to Africa to check bogus claims of alleged nuclear material sales to Iraq.

Novak’s column, citing two Bush administration officials, appeared six days later, touching off a political firestorm and leading to a federal criminal investigation into who leaked Plame’s undercover identity.

That probe has ensnared presidential aides and reporters in a two-year legal battle.

Tale of two reporters

Rove told the grand jury that by the time Novak had called him, he believes he had similar information about Wilson’s wife from another reporter but had no recollection of which reporter had told him about it first, the source said.

When Novak inquired about Wilson’s wife working for the CIA, Rove indicated he had heard something like that, according to the source’s recounting of the grand jury testimony.

Rove told the grand jury that four days later, he had a phone conversation with Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper and — in an effort to discredit some of Wilson’s allegations — told Cooper that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA, though he never used her name.

An e-mail Cooper recently provided the grand jury shows Cooper reported to his magazine bosses that Rove had described Wilson’s wife in a confidential conversation as someone who “apparently works” at the CIA.

Attorney: Rove isn't target of probe

Robert Luskin, Rove’s attorney, said Thursday his client truthfully testified to the grand jury and expected to be exonerated.

“Karl provided all pertinent information to prosecutors a long time ago,” Luskin said.

“And prosecutors confirmed when he testified most recently in October 2004 that he is not a target of the investigation.”

In an interview with NBC Thursday before the latest revelation, Wilson kept up his criticism of the White House.

“Mr. Rove was talking to the press."

"And he was saying things like my wife is fair game,” Wilson said.

“That is an outrage."

"It is abuse of power.”

Plame wasn’t undercover when outed

Wilson later told CNN that his wife was no longer in an undercover job at the time Novak’s column first identified her.

“My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity,” he said.

Federal law prohibits government officials from divulging the identity of an undercover intelligence officer.

But in order to bring charges, prosecutors must prove the official knew the officer was covert and nonetheless outed his or her identity.

Rove’s conversation with Cooper took place five days after Wilson suggested in a New York Times opinion piece that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

Novak’s column identifying Wilson’s wife as a CIA employee and Cooper’s magazine piece came out a few days later.

Pressed to explain its statements of two years ago that Rove wasn’t involved in the leak, the White House refused to do so this week.

“If I were to get into discussing this, I would be getting into discussing an investigation that continues and could be prejudging the outcome of the investigation,” McClellan said.

The Associated Press and NBC’s “Today” show contributed to this report.

And while we are on the subject of TRUTH in America, here, folks, don't worry about global "energy re-distribution", which is mistakenly called "global warming" by the media, because, of course, it is a myth cooked up by "enviros" who want us all to live in caves, if you can find one above water-level, that is, but whoops, there I go, sucked in by that myth, myself .....

"Siberia three degrees warmer than 45 years ago, study warns"

Thu Jul 14, 7:06 PM ET

JENA, Germany (AFP) - Average temperatures in Siberia have risen by three degrees Celsius since 1960, research by a team of German scientists has found.

Furthermore the forests in the region are less effective in soaking up greenhouse gases than previously believed.

Snow and ice are melting earlier, according to the scientists, from the University of Jena in eastern Germany who used data from European, Japanese and US satellites.

Because of the rise in temperatures in the taiga (coniferous forests) there has been an increase in the release of organic carbon from decomposition and in the production of methane, a greenhouse gas.

"All that leads us to believe that the taiga overall absorbs less greenhouse gas than we were supposing until now," Professor Christiane Schmullius said.

She thought her team's findings could also apply to other major northern hemisphere forests such as those in Canada and the United States.

The taiga only soaks up 20 percent of Russia's output of carbon dioxide of human origin and only 10 percent of European output, according to Martin Heimann of the Max-Planck Institute.

The scientists say their findings contradict the idea put forward by supporters of the Kyoto agreement on cutting greenhouse gases that tree planting could help.

The Kyoto protocol, agreed in 1997 but shunned by the United States, the world's biggest producer of greenhouse gases, aims to cut emissions by five percent by 2012 from their 1990 levels.

Since this corner is devoted to Life in OUR America, I believe Mark Twain, one of our greatest American authors ( and one of my favorites) might appreciate a spot in this corner.

So, a bit of biographical information on Samuel L. Clemens ( Mark Twain).
http://www.geocities.com/swaisman/


I love Twain's witty observations about life. A few of my favorites.

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything
--Mark Twain

Etiquette requires us to admire the human race.
--Mark Twain

Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth.
--Mark Twain

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man
--Mark Twain

Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.
--Mark Twain

Always do the right thing. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
--Mark Twain

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education
--Mark Twain

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
--Mark Twain

Suppose you were an idiot... And suppose you were a member of Congress... But I repeat myself.
--Mark Twain

First, God created idiots. That was just for practice. Then He created school boards.
--Mark Twain

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
--Mark Twain

The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
--Mark Twain


The difference between truth and fiction: fiction has to make sense
--Mark Twain

Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer
--Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thought that is forever flowing through one's head
--Mark Twain

I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.
--Mark Twain

"I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what's moving."

"I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves."

- George W. Bush being entirely candid with the American people about how it really was that he found out that Joseph Wilson was an American diplomat, and his wife was a CIA agent, which information came to him via Karl Rove, who himself read about it in a newspaper article, so that he could then brief George W. Bush on how to run the government, here in OUR America, Washington, D.C.; September 21, 2003

One of my favorite books is by Mark Twain, and while I can't think of the exact title right now, it is the one in which he and his brother head out west, where his brother was to assume some kind of duties or other, somewhere out there.

Never have I laughed so hard as at some of the parts of that book, and I think it was all real.

Certainly the part about the flash flood coming was real sounding, anyway, and the alkali dust, as well.

And with this one right above here, I think old Samuel Clemens might just be on to something big .....

And there we have it, I think, anyway!

The truth is finally out!

All along, of course, we have known, here in OUR America, that despite having been to Harvard and Yale, George W. Bush either never had to learn to read, having servants to do that kind of menial stuff, of course, or he just never really wanted to read, being fundamentally lazy, and so, Harvard and Yale simply "passed" him along, likely as a favor to the Bush family, who wanted it to look like young George had some "Callich dergrees", and so, got him some of them from Harvard and Yale, who had some extras that they didn't need, and so, were happy to provide to the Bush family, for the good of young George, and America, as well, since he is, after all, not only OUR MOST CHRISTIAN MAJESTY, but the Commander-in-Chief of OUR military forces, as well, and God help them for that, but I digress .......

The real question, here in OUR America, all along, has been one of how George W. Bush comes to any kind of a decision about anything, if he can't read, and that question has finally been answered above here, by Karl Rove, and of course, Scottie "BOY" McClellan!

Karl Rove reads stuff in the newspapers, and then he tells George W. Bush about it, and then George W. Bush does something or other with what Karl Rove has told him is in the newspapers, and out of that, well, we have the official governmental policy which is fast turning OUR America into the laughing stock of the world, and a target for every two-bit TAY-RIST who thinks we all are as stupid as those down there in the White House that these two-bit TAY-RISTS think are representative of more than just that handful of the thumb-sucking, scared-out-of-their-wits-by-shadows-on-the-wall Americans who voted to put Karl Rove and George W. Bush back into the White House, because four years of ineptness and incompetence just were not enough for them and theirs!

God bless America?

God better help it, instead, because with this clown show down there in charge, we need all of that, that we can get!

And as the American economy bounds forwards, full speed ahead, thanks to the keen economic wisdom and insight of President George W. Bush, gained at HAH-VAD, of course, in the BID-NESS school ....

"HP Expected to Announce Massive Layoffs"

By MATTHEW FORDAHL, AP Technology Writer

45 minutes ago

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Hewlett-Packard Co. is widely expected to cut thousands of jobs next week as part of a long-expected restructuring that will attempt to bring the computer maker's costs in line with business and its rivals' numbers, according to industry analysts.

The exact timing and number of layoffs isn't known, though observers speculate layoffs could range between 5,000 and 25,000 positions.

The huge company, whose offerings range from digital cameras and printers to computers and corporate consulting, has 150,000 workers worldwide.

Shares of HP gained 32 cents, or 1.3 percent, to close at a 52-week high of $24.94, in Friday trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

The stock has gained about 15 percent since HP named NCR Corp. executive Mark Hurd as its new chief executive in late March, replacing the ousted Carly Fiorina.

Hurd has made no secret of his intent to reduce expenses at the Palo Alto-based company.

In May, he told financial analysts that HP's cost structure is "off benchmark in many areas."

Alexa Hanes, an HP spokeswoman, declined to comment Friday on "rumors and speculation."

Some HP workers have taken to calling the upcoming news "the Big One," according to the San Jose Mercury News.

In a research report Thursday, Moors & Cabot analyst Cindy Shaw said a management reorganization could be announced as early as Monday — and could include as many as 25,000 job cuts.

She also said the company might announce the expected retirement of Chief Financial Officer Bob Wayman.

Shaw did not provide details of how she obtained that information.

In June, Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Toni Sacconaghi estimated the job cuts would range between 7,500 and 15,000 with HP enterprise and services division "likely to present the biggest opportunities."

He also said HP's research and development spending is nearly $1 billion higher than the sum of its relevant competitors.

"We think HP is rife with cost improvement opportunities," Sacconaghi wrote in the research report, adding the company could realize annual savings of between $750 million to $1.5 billion.

Richard Chu of SG Cowen & Co. said it's likely between 10,000 and 15,000 jobs will be cut in the upcoming announcement.

Chu expects cost reductions of $1 billion for fiscal 2006 and about $1.4 billion the following year.

HP's core strength is in printers and imaging, but it wants to diversify.

The problem is that it faces competition from super-efficient Dell Inc. in low-end offerings such as personal computers.

At the same time, it competes against well-established International Business Machines Corp. in the more profitable area of enterprise hardware and services.

Since joining HP, Hurd has made several changes, though none is expected to have the impact of the expected major cost cutting.

Earlier this week, Dell Inc.'s chief information officer was hired to fill the same position at HP.

Last month, Hurd split HP's personal computer and printer divisions — a marriage that was one of Fiorina's last moves before her Feb. 9 ouster.

HP, which reported annual sales of $79.9 billion for the year ending Oct. 31, is expected to announce its fiscal third-quarter results on Aug. 16.
___

On the Net:

HP: http://www.hp.com

Boy, jeffmoskin, it's starting to sound an awful lot like Rensselaer County in the corrupt state of New York out there in AH-NOLD's Kah-lee-FAWN-yuh!

Is it cloning, or what?

Can you edify us, please?

Was this San Diego mayor not sinning enough, by Texas standards, or was he sinning too much, by California standards, or is he really looking to come to New York, and so, was just getting into practice for the big leagues of corruption back here in the home of Tammany Hall, and George Pataki, of course, and his Department of Environmental Conservation?

"San Diego Mayor Quits in Midst of Scandal"

By ELLIOT SPAGAT, Associated Press Writer

2 hours, 10 minutes ago

SAN DIEGO - Mayor Dick Murphy packed his belongings and bid farewell to his staff Friday, ending a rocky 4 1/2-year tenure that was cut short when he resigned amid a wave of scandal.

"This is a day of sadness, but you know, this really ought to be a day of pride," he told about two dozen employees at his last staff meeting.

A few employees wiped away tears but the mild-mannered Republican mayor appeared relaxed on what he called a bittersweet day.

Murphy concluded his remarks by saying, "Thank you, God bless you and goodbye."

Eight months after being re-elected, Murphy is resigning in the midst of a federal probe of San Diego's deficit-ridden pension fund and with a federal jury deciding the fate of two councilmen accused of corruption.

In a blistering editorial Friday, The San Diego Union-Tribune wrote that the city is "far worse off" than when Murphy took office and the mayor deserves much of the blame.

"Dick Murphy leaves office today having acknowledged he is not the man to extinguish the conflagration that his actions and inactions helped to fan," the newspaper concluded.

"For that, he deserves San Diegans' respect."

The 62-year-old former judge has said little about his decision to step down, but in an interview with The Associated Press, he said a post-election court battle over the vote count and an increasingly bitter tone at City Hall played roles.

Murphy was named the winner of November's election after a state judge tossed out thousands of ballots for Councilwoman Donna Frye, a write-in candidate who owns a surf shop.

Ballots on which voters wrote Frye's name but failed to darken an adjoining oval were discounted.

A July 26 election is expected to produce a November runoff between the top two finishers.

Among the 11 contenders are Frye, a Democrat, and Republicans Jerry Sanders, a former police chief, and Steve Francis, a wealthy businessman.

Councilman Michael Zucchet is set to take over as interim mayor and serve until voters choose a successor.

But Zucchet would be forced to relinquish public office if a jury convicts him of taking illegal campaign contributions from a strip-club owner.

A federal jury began deliberating the case Wednesday.

Federal prosecutors also are investigating San Diego's pension deficit of at least $1.37 billion, largely the result of decisions in 1996 and 2002 to avoid payments to the retirement fund and, at the same time, enhance benefits.

Murphy refused to discuss ongoing federal investigations of city finances.

He said a Time magazine story that named him one of the nation's worst big-city mayors also weighed on his decision.

He announced his resignation a week after the article appeared.

Murphy said he planned to take a six-month break before deciding his next move.

"I could teach."

"I could write."

"I could go back and, I suppose, seek my assignment on the bench," he said.

"I just haven't decided."
___

On the Net:

City of San Diego: http://www.sandiego.gov

end quotes

"I could go back and, I suppose, seek my assignment on the bench," he said.

Yeah, that's right, make the guy a judge again!

Maybe George W. Bush will put him on the Supreme Court to replace Rehnquist!

Sounds like Karl Rove would like him, anyway.

And this Zucchet?

Is this the same strip club operator that New York State Congressman John Sweeney had as his chief-of-staff, down there in the "ten mile square" of Washington, D.C., do you know?

"Jamaicans Brace for Hurricane Emily"

By MICHAEL BASCOMBE, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 17 minutes ago

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Jamaicans rushed to stock up on emergency supplies and officials urged coastal areas evacuated Friday as a slightly weakened Hurricane Emily churned toward the Caribbean island after ravaging Grenada.

Packing winds of 115 mph, the second major hurricane of the Atlantic season came unusually early and made its presence felt hundreds of miles away, unleashing heavy surf, gusty winds and torrential rains on islands both sides of the Caribbean sea.

The category 3 storm was nearly 400 miles southeast of Jamaica's capital and was moving westward at nearly 20 mph, with a turn toward the northwest expected to take it very close to Jamaica on Saturday, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

If Emily continues on the same path, the storm will make landfall sometime Wednesday between Tuxpan, Mexico, and Galveston, Texas, about a 600-mile span, hurricane center spokesman Frank Lepore said, cautioning that "a lot could change between now and then."

Jamaica posted a hurricane warning.

Prime Minister P.J. Patterson ordered government offices to close early Friday and instructed disaster authorities to draw up plans to evacuate thousands of residents in flood-prone coastal areas.

Jamaicans formed long lines at grocery stores to stock up on water, canned food and batteries, only a week after doing the same for Hurricane Dennis, which washed away several homes, damaged crops and flooded roads.

Many islanders refused to seek shelter during Dennis, fearful of leaving their belongings unguarded.

"I'm hoping that those who are in these areas will heed the call to evacuate before it's too late," Transport and Works Minister Robert Pickersgill said on RJR radio.

Grenada — still recovering from the devastation of last year's Hurricane Ivan — declared a national disaster Friday, a day after Emily destroyed at least 16 homes, blasted out windows, sheared off roofs and flooded two hospitals and scores of other buildings.

Landslides and fallen trees blocked roads, streets were flooded and crops were destroyed.

At least one person was killed in Grenada, a man whose home was buried under a landslide.

Emily's winds decreased to near 115 mph Friday afternoon after reaching a high of 135 mph earlier in the day, making it briefly what meteorologist Stacy Stewart called a "very rare Category 4 hurricane in the Caribbean Sea in the month of July."

The U.S. State Department issued a travel warning for Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, which were expected to get hit hard on Sunday, and authorized the departure of non-emergency staff at the U.S. Embassy.

Heavy rains drenched the southeast Dominican Republic and officials warned boatmen there to stay in port, saying that coastline could expect strong electrical storms, whipping winds and waves higher than 10 feet.

The eye of the storm was projected to come within 40 miles of Grand Cayman Island on Sunday, the Cayman Islands government warned residents.

Emily's next direct hit, according to the hurricane center's projections, was expected to be Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula late Sunday or early Monday.

In Grand Cayman, Texan Carolyn Parker, said she was more apprehensive than she's ever been in 20 years as a resident of the Cayman Islands.

"Ivan was pretty nasty, and I'm scared to go through that again." said the retired police officer.

Emily trails Hurricane Dennis, which destroyed crops, killed at least 25 people in Haiti and 16 in Cuba and stranded thousands of Jamaicans when it collapsed a bridge last week.

Last year, three catastrophic hurricanes — Frances, Ivan and Jeanne — tore through the Caribbean with a collective ferocity not seen in years, causing hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars in damage.

Emily struck hard in Grenada, especially in the north and in the outlying islands of Carriacou and Petit Martinique, where residents were without electricity and water, authorities said.

The damage came as the island nation still was recovering from Ivan, which last year killed 39 people, left a wasteland of ruined buildings and damaged 90 percent of the historic Georgian buildings in the capital, St. George's.

In Trinidad, widespread flooding triggered landslides that cut off the only access road to two east coast communities, marooning hundreds of residents, Mayor Eustace Nancis said.

The Organization of American States called an emergency meeting of its disaster committee Friday, expressing concern at the prospect of a "severe economic setback" to countries hit by hurricanes, especially Grenada.

Forecasters have predicted up to 15 Atlantic tropical storms this year, including three to five major hurricanes.

The hurricane season began June 1 and runs through Nov. 30.
___

Associated Press Writers Jorge Rueda in Cumana, Venezuela, and Loren Brown in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, contributed to this report.
___

On the Net:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov

end quotes

Where, oh where is Dick Cheney's mouth when we really need it?

A good dose of hot air out of him would send this hurricane packing, I bet!

"House not home: Foreigners buy up American real estate"

By Ron Scherer, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Fri Jul 15, 4:00 AM ET

MIAMI - Earlier this year, real estate marketer Melissa Rubin took some South American clients to a party to promote a new condo that developers hoped to sell before a shovel hit the ground.

Even by Miami standards, the party was exotic.

There were tigers, chimps, human flamethrowers, jumbo TVs, and the usual red-carpet food and drink.

There was also a bikini-clad woman covered in chocolate.

"If we take them to a party, it helps them get excited about the project," says Ms. Rubin of Platinum Properties International.

Indeed, developers are going all-out to charm their clients, and more and more those clients include the world's wealthy elite from such countries as Argentina, Mexico, Australia, and Germany.

These foreign buyers, in fact, are one of the important reasons the housing bubble continues to grow in hot markets like Miami, New York, and Las Vegas.

In many cases, they're taking advantage of the strong euro or trying to get their money into a dollar-denominated hiding place.

The result: In Miami, for one, some condo buildings have as much as two-thirds of their units owned by foreigners.

Call it America for Sale.

"No question, foreigners are part of the bubble," says Stephen Wayner, first vice president at Bayview Financial Exchange Services LLC in Miami.

Although there are no numbers indicating how much foreigners are pouring into the United States to buy condos, there are some eye-opening anecdotal signs:

• In Las Vegas, wealthy foreign buyers - mostly from Mexico - have snapped up 12 percent of the condos at Icon, twin 48-story towers that are now almost sold out even though they won't start construction until next month.

• New York City real estate brokers estimate that up to 33 percent of new condos sold in the city are going to non-Americans, especially Europeans, who one broker describes as "very aggressive."

• Asian buyers are jumping in, too.

Real estate agents are flying to Shanghai, Beijing, Bangkok, and Kuala Lumpur to talk up the property market.

Recently, a large group of Korean finance, construction, insurance, and engineering executives conducted a "study tour" of southeast Florida real estate.

They plan to return next April.

A bargain purchase

Part of the allure of American real estate is the cost.

While some of the prices may seem high to Americans, to Europeans and others the real estate feels like a bargain, particularly when figured in euros or pounds sterling.

Miami has long had a history of attracting Latin American investment.

The weather reminds Central and South Americans of home, and they've visited Miami's shops for years, lugging home everything from appliances to designer sneakers.

In addition, Spanish may be the first language of south Florida instead of English.

And the South American elite have long viewed the city as a safe place to stockpile dollar-denominated assets, whether it be in cash or real estate.

"Every planeload comes in with potential buyers," says Ronald Shuffield, president of Esslinger-Wooten-Maxwell Realtors in Coral Gables, which is also representing Met 3, a 74-story condo tower.

"Almost every Latin American who buys a condominium here has in the back of their mind, 'That's my safe refuge."

"If I have to leave, that's where I can go.' "

What's also changed is the active selling of US real estate on foreign shores.

Within the past month, Mr. Shuffield has sent brokers to Argentina and Spain for real estate trade shows.

("They are just like yacht trade shows," he says.)

Recently, he had a broker in Mexico City meeting with people who might want to plunk down up to $2 million for a condo.

Recently, Rubin's partner rented a hotel suite in Caracas, Venezuela, to show floor plans to brokers and their clients.

"He came back with lots of leads and sold a few," says Rubin, who tries to maintain a relationship with her foreign clients by sending birthday cards and calling them every six weeks to update them on the market.

The next wave of buyers might well be from Asia.

Several new Miami condos have Asian names such as Mei, the mythical Chinese symbol for beauty.

This week, John Pinson, a real estate agent in Palm Beach and president of the International Real Estate Federation (FIABCI-USA), is traveling to China and Malaysia.

He has also scheduled future trips to Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan, and India.

"Some of the newest buyers are Vietnamese and Thais," he adds.

Marketing a 'buzz'

Whoever the prospective foreign buyers, marketers say it is important to create a "buzz."

One way to do this is a launch party where no money exchanges hands.

In Las Vegas, the Icon tower party featured a chocolate fountain and South American, Asian, and Californian cuisine.

And, says Sarah Prinsloo, president of Related Prinsloo Realty Services in Las Vegas, there were foreign real estate brokers who speak English.

So far, 12 percent of the units have been sold to Mexicans.

"They are coming for second homes and an investment," says Ms. Prinsloo.

Fortune International, exclusive brokers for Avenue, two new towers in Miami, are even more successful at attracting foreign buyers.

In four months, Fortune has sold almost one-third of the units to South Americans and another third to Europeans.

The company has a large network of foreign brokers who help to line up potential customers.

They also do major events, says Lucrecia Lindemann, the sales director, such as hot-air balloon rides and special lunches.

"I'm just back from Paris, and sales to the Jewish community there are good," says Ms. Lindemann.

"And the Italians are coming here for security and personal reasons."

For many of the foreigners, it's been a beneficial purchase.

Lindemann says in less than a year, prices on condos along Brickell Avenue, where her buildings are rising, have soared almost 75 percent.

"Everything here has been a good investment for them," she says.

end quotes

SO!

A pretty good deal!

Thanks to the Supreme Court, they get to steal OUR land from us, for nothing, and then turn around and sell it for a profit!

Not a bad deal at all, for the foreigners, anyway!

Ah, yes, Enron!

George W. Bush's best buddy, Kenny "BOY" Lay!

"Enron to Pay $1.5B Settlement to 3 States"

By JENNIFER COLEMAN, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 2 minutes ago

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Bankrupt energy company Enron Corp. has agreed to pay more than $1.5 billion to resolve claims that it gouged California and other western states during the 2000-2001 energy crisis, state officials said.

The settlement will end market manipulation and price gouging claims against the once high-flying Houston-based company, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said.

The agreement requires approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Enron will pay $47.5 million in cash and provide California with an unsecured claim for $875 million in the energy company's bankruptcy proceedings.

Oregon and Washington will recieve $22.5 million each from that unsecured settlement.

In addition, the three states will share a $600 million penalty.

The deal will allow California to "squeeze justice from this corporate turnip," Lockyer said.

"All things considered, this is a good resolution for the state's ratepayers."

Enron's ultimate payments to the states won't be known until its bankruptcy proceedings end, Lockyer spokesman Tom Dresslar said.

Lockyer has painted Enron as the mastermind of California's energy crisis, which was marked by blackouts and soaring consumer energy prices.

He accused the company of using trading schemes to drive up the cost of electricity in the state's newly deregulated market.

And since we are on the subject of corruption .....

"Flood of questions meets few answers - Officials sit with residents to discuss dam investigation and aid"

By BRUCE A. SCRUTON, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Friday, July 15, 2005

FORT ANN -- It has been almost two weeks since the Hadlock Pond dam burst, and residents are still looking for answers.

Officials have heard the questions most of which start with "why" and "how much " but they are no closer to definite answers.

Facing the public Thursday night, officials admitted they don't know if the federal government will issue a disaster declaration, don't know what caused the July 2 collapse and don't know if insurance will pay for the dam's replacement.

Perhaps the most dramatic words came from Argyle Supervisor Jock Williamson, chairman of the Washington County board of supervisors.

"I have a lot of heart and wish we could write a check to each person who has a loss, but legally we can't," Williamson said.

"So if it were me sitting out there, I'd remember that restoration is up to the individual."

"It is your responsibility."

The meeting, held in the Fort Ann school, drew more than 300 people, many ready to jeer at officials who couldn't answer questions.

"Just when are we going to get answers?" one man asked, to a round of applause.

Fort Ann Supervisor Gayle Hall seemed to catch most of the heat.

Residents wanted the names of those who authorized refilling the 220-acre lake without possibly getting approval from the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

Hall was asked why the pond continued to grow when several people claimed to begin seeing problems.

"No one in town had any knowledge of the dam leaking," Hall answered.

Residents also wanted answers from the DEC as to why a dam that had existed for 100 years had to be rebuilt, and why DEC wasn't there to make daily inspections.

Sandra Allen, director of water for the DEC, said the questions of what happened are being investigated, but the main concern is trying to get a replacement.

The idea of a replacement dam met some approval.

"As far as I am concerned, why not?" Hall said.

"And do it as fast as we can."

Town Attorney John Aspland Jr. said there could be years of litigation, but money will be there quickly to pay for a replacement.

Allen said the DEC has hired the engineering firm of Clough Harbour and Associates to investigate why the $1.5 million dam project failed so quickly.

The firm has promised to have a final report by the end of August.

Allen said she doesn't foresee any criminal prosecutions.

More than a dozen homes were damaged.

But whether victims can get actual help from a federal declaration, John D'Agostino, deputy director for administration of the State Emergency Management Office, said, "We have a storm and a dam collapse."

"And we're trying as best we can to get as much assistance as possible."

Bruce A. Scruton can be reached at 454-5462 or by e-mail at bscruton@timesunion.com.

"Rove E-Mailed Security Official About Talk"

By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer

38 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - After mentioning a CIA operative to a reporter, Bush confidant Karl Rove alerted the president's No. 2 security adviser about the interview and said he tried to steer the journalist away from allegations the operative's husband was making about faulty Iraq intelligence.

The July 11, 2003, e-mail between Rove and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley is the first showing an intelligence official knew Rove had talked to Matthew Cooper just days before the Time magazine reporter divulged CIA officer Valerie Plame's secret identity.

"I didn't take the bait," Rove wrote in an e-mail obtained by The Associated Press, recounting how Cooper tried to question him about whether President Bush had been hurt by the new allegations.

The White House turned the e-mail over to prosecutors, and Rove testified to a grand jury about it last year.

Earlier in the week before the e-mail, Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had written a newspaper opinion piece accusing the Bush administration of twisting prewar intelligence, including a "highly doubtful" report that Iraq bought nuclear materials from Niger.

"Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he's got a welfare reform story coming," Rove wrote in the e-mail to Hadley.

"When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger."

"Isn't this damaging?"

"Hasn't the president been hurt?"

"I didn't take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn't get Time far out in front on this."

Hadley, now Bush's national security adviser, didn't immediately return a call seeking comment Friday.

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said his client answered all the questions prosecutors asked during three grand jury appearances, never invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination or the president's executive privilege guaranteeing confidential advice from aides.

Rove, Bush's closest adviser, turned over the e-mail as soon as prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into who leaked Plame's covert work for the CIA.

He later told a grand jury the e-mail was consistent with his recollection that his intention in talking with Cooper that Friday in July 2003 wasn't to divulge Plame's identity but to caution Cooper against certain allegations Plame's husband was making, according to legal professionals familiar with Rove's testimony.

They spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the grand jury investigation.

Rove sent the e-mail shortly before leaving the White House early for a family vacation that weekend, already aware that another journalist he had talked with, syndicated columnist Robert Novak, was planning an article about Plame and Wilson.

Rove also knew that then-CIA Director George Tenet planned later that same day to issue a dramatic statement that took responsibility for some bad Iraq intelligence but that also called into question some of Wilson's assertions, the legal sources said.

The AP reported Thursday that Rove acknowledged to the grand jury that he talked about Plame with both Cooper and Novak before they published their stories but that he originally learned about the operative's identity from the news media, not government sources.

Republicans cheered the latest revelations Friday, saying they showed Rove wasn't trying to hurt Plame but instead was trying to informally warn reporters to be cautious about some of Wilson's claims.

"What it says is, Karl Rove wasn't the leaker, he was actually the recipient of the information not the provider," Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman said on Fox News.

"So there are probably a lot of folks in Washington who have prejudged this, who have rushed to judgment who are trying to smear Karl Rove."

Democrats, however, said that even if Rove wasn't the leaker, someone still divulged Plame's identity and possibly violated the law.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and other party leaders asked Speaker Dennis Hastert on Friday to let Congress hold hearings into the controversy regardless of the criminal probe now under way.

"In previous Republican Congresses the fact that a criminal investigation was under way did not prevent extensive hearings from being held on other, much less significant matters," Pelosi wrote.

Federal law prohibits government officials from divulging the identity of an undercover intelligence officer.

But in order to bring charges, prosecutors must prove the official knew the officer was covert and nonetheless knowingly outed his or her identity.

Rove's conversations with Novak and Cooper took place just days after Wilson suggested in his opinion piece in The New York Times that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was used to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

Summarizing a trip he made to Africa on behalf of the CIA, Wilson wrote that he'd concluded it was highly doubtful the nation of Niger had sold uranium yellowcake to Iraq.

Tenet issued a lengthy statement five days later saying that he never should have allowed Bush to use the Niger information in his State of the Union address but that Wilson's report did not resolve whether Iraq was seeking uranium from abroad.

And Bush is making sure that Rove is being(well) taken care of.

Oh, well. Since En-rob screwed us out of 9 BILLION DOLLARS, I gues we should be happy with our "settlement."

I guess half a slice is better than no loaf at all.