House Joins Senate in OK'ing DNA Bill

A proposal to take genetic material from people charged with certain crimes cleared the legislature yesterday(4-1-08) after weeks of debate.

The House voted 130-7 to expand Maryland's DNA database to include some people who haven't been convicted of a crime. Currently, only convicted people must submit samples.

The bill has passed the Senate, though the two chambers must settle differences before sending a final bill to Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley, who proposed the plan.

ACLU: Military Skirting Law to Spy

The military is using the FBI to skirt legal restrictions on domestic surveillance to obtain private records of Americans' Internet service providers, financial institutions and telephone companies, the ACLU said Tuesday.

The American Civil Liberties Union based its conclusion on a review of more than 1,000 documents turned over by the Defense Department after it sued the agency last year for documents related to national security letters, or NSLs, investigative tools used to compel businesses to turn over customer information without a judge's order or grand jury subpoena.

"Newly unredacted documents released today reveal that the Department of Defense is using the FBI to circumvent legal limits on its own NSL power," said the ACLU, whose lawsuit was filed in Manhattan federal court.

ACLU lawyer Melissa Goodman said the documents the civil rights group studied "make us incredibly concerned." She said it would be understandable if the military relied on help from the FBI on joint investigations, but not when the FBI was not involved in a probe.

The FBI referred requests for comment Tuesday to the Defense Department. A department spokesman, Air Force Lt. Col. Patrick Ryder, said in an e-mail that the department had made "focused, limited and judicious" use of the letters since Congress extended the capability to investigatory entities other than the FBI in 2001.

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Centers Tap Into Personal Databases

Intelligence centers run by states across the country have access to personal information about millions of Americans, including unlisted cellphone numbers, insurance claims, driver's license photographs and credit reports, according to a document obtained by The Washington Post.

One center also has access to top-secret data systems at the CIA, the document shows, though it's not clear what information those systems contain.

Dozens of the organizations known as fusion centers were created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to identify potential threats and improve the way information is shared. The centers use law enforcement analysts and sophisticated computer systems to compile, or fuse, disparate tips and clues and pass along the refined information to other agencies. They are expected to play important roles in national information-sharing networks that link local, state and federal authorities and enable them to automatically sift their storehouses of records for patterns and clues.

Though officials have publicly discussed the fusion centers' importance to national security, they have generally declined to elaborate on the centers' activities. But a document that lists resources used by the fusion centers shows how a dozen of the organizations in the northeastern United States rely far more on access to commercial and government databases than had previously been disclosed.

Those details have come to light at a time of debate about domestic intelligence efforts, including eavesdropping and data-aggregation programs at the National Security Agency, and whether the government has enough protections in place to prevent abuses.

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Prevent Digital Pickpocketing by Blocking Radio Frequencies

Stuck on the tarmac, flipping through a travel magazine, you're struck by the blurb for metal-lined wallets. Purpose: to prevent digital pickpocketing by blocking radio frequencies.

These handsome babies start at $79.99 and top out at the $225 Italian Leather Teju Lizard Embossed Travel Wallet.

Your reaction: Wow! Luxury accessories for paranoids!

But you would be wrong. Maybe.

Because, says electronic security expert Bruce Schneier, crystallizing the view of many: "As weird as it sounds, wrapping your passport in tinfoil helps. The tinfoil people, in this case, happen to be correct."

The issue is bigger than just the new style of passports, which contain chips that emit information that can be read by a scanner. We're also talking about your Metro SmarTrip card, your employee ID/building access card, your automatic highway toll pass, the newest wave of credit cards and gas purchasing cards, even digital drivers' licenses being developed in some states.

All of these nifty and oh-so-convenient bits of plastic employ versions of what's known as radio frequency identification technology, or RFID. That is, they toss out bits of data that are caught by receivers, with little or no contact, just through the air in some cases. The new credit cards, such as MasterCard's PayPass, don't have to be swiped through a machine. Swiping is so retro, and takes precious extra seconds. You need only lightly tap the PayPass on a terminal to register a purchase.

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Bernanke Offers Bleaker View on U.S. Economy

Also see: Bernanke warns of possible recession

Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, presented his bleakest assessment yet of the economy on Wednesday morning, warning a Congressional committee that economic growth was likely to stagnate — and perhaps even contract — over the first half of the year.

In his first public remarks since the Fed orchestrated an unprecedented bailout of the brokerage firm Bear Stearns, Mr. Bernanke acknowledged that while the Fed’s actions had “helped stabilize” the credit markets, banks and other financial institutions remained hesitant to lend, causing problems for the broader economy.

“Financial markets remain under considerable stress,” Mr. Bernanke said, in remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday morning to the Joint Economic Committee. “The capacity and willingness of some large institutions to extend new credit remains limited.”

Over all, Mr. Bernanke said, “It now appears likely that real gross domestic product will not grow much, if at all, over the first half of 2008 and could even contract slightly.”

While he said growth would likely recover in the second half of the year, and return to a “sustainable pace” in 2009, he warned that the current turbulence made the economic outlook difficult to predict.

“The uncertainty attending this forecast is quite high and the risks remain to the downside,” he said.

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’03 U.S. Memo Approved Harsh Interrogations!

The Justice Department in 2003 gave military interrogators broad authority to use extreme methods in questioning detainees and argued that wartime powers largely exempted interrogators from laws banning harsh treatment, according to a memorandum publicly disclosed on Tuesday.

In a sweeping legal brief written in March 2003, when the Pentagon was struggling to determine the appropriate limits for its interrogators, the Justice Department gave the Pentagon much of the same authority it had provided to the Central Intelligence Agency in a memorandum months earlier. Both memorandums were later rescinded by the Justice Department.

The disclosure of the 2003 document, a detailed 81-page opinion written by John C. Yoo, who at the time was the second-ranking official at the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, is likely to fuel the already intense debate about legal boundaries in the face of a continuing terrorist threat.

Mr. Yoo’s memorandum is the latest document to illuminate the legal foundation that Bush administration lawyers used after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to give the White House broad powers to capture, detain and interrogate suspects around the globe.

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WHO: Gazans Die Due to Israeli Border Delays

Dozens of Gaza residents have died waiting for medical treatment because of delays in obtaining permits to enter Israel, combined with a crumbling health system in Gaza, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

The U.N. agency listed 32 cases since October in which Gaza residents, ranging from a 1-year-old child to a 77-year-old man, died because they could not obtain urgent medical treatment.

Six were waiting for Israeli authorities to issue a permit to enter, according to the WHO report. It said others were denied permits because they were considered a security risk to Israel — including a 65-year-old woman. A number of other patients had obtained a permit but died while making additional arrangements necessary to cross into Israel, such as getting permission for a Palestinian medical team to accompany them, the report said.

Some weren't able to leave because Israel lacked the necessary hospital beds while others died while waiting at the Erez crossing, which Gazans use to pass into Israel, it said. Israel frequently shuts down the crossing because Hamas militants fire rockets nearby, aiming for Israeli soldiers and nearby Israeli communities.

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Report: IMF Predicts U.S. Recession

The International Monetary Fund will next week forecast that the US economy will go into recession this year, a German newspaper reported Tuesday, citing an upcoming report.

The IMF believes the US will experience at least two successive quarters of negative growth -- the technical definition of a recession -- and will grow only half a percent over the whole of 2008, weekly Die Zeit reported.

Previously the IMF, which will release the report at its spring meeting together with the World Bank next week, had forecast US growth this year of around 1.5 percent, the newspaper said.

The IMF will also lower its forecast for world growth from the current 4.1 percent, Die Zeit said.

For Germany, Europe's biggest economy, the IMF will cut its growth forecast to 1.2 percent from 1.5 percent, government sources said.

The sources said though that the German government's forecast of 1.7 percent still stands.

Nordic-Style Nationalization of U.S. Banks

The Fed has been criticised for its rescue of Bear Stearns, which critics say has degenerated into a taxpayer gift to rich bankers.

A senior official at one of the Scandinavian central banks told The Daily Telegraph that Fed strategists had stepped up contacts to learn how Norway, Sweden and Finland managed their traumatic crisis from 1991 to 1993, which brought the region's economy to its knees.

It is understood that Fed vice-chairman Don Kohn remains very concerned by the depth of the US crisis and is eyeing the Nordic approach for contingency options.

Scandinavia's bank rescue proved successful and is now a model for central bankers, unlike Japan's drawn-out response, where ailing banks were propped up in a half-public limbo for years.

While the responses varied in each Nordic country, there a was major effort to avoid the sort of "moral hazard" that has bedevilled efforts by the Fed and the Bank of England in trying to stabilise their banking systems.

Norway ensured that shareholders of insolvent lenders received nothing and the senior management was entirely purged. Two of the country's top four banks - Christiania Bank and Fokus - were seized by force majeure.

"We were determined not to get caught in the game we've seen with Bear Stearns where shareholders make money out of the rescue," said one Norwegian adviser.

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Mukasey Admits Government Knew Of Call About 9/11, Before 9/11

During a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on Thursday, Attorney General Michael Mukasey tacitly admitted that the U.S. government intercepted a call about 9/11 - before 9/11.

Before the 2001 terrorist attacks, he said, "we knew that there had been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went," reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

Mukasey is then reported to have "grimaced, swallowed hard, and seemed to tear up as he reflected on the weaknesses in America's anti-terrorism strategy prior to the 2001 attacks. "We got three thousand. . . . We've got three thousand people who went to work that day and didn't come home to show for that," he said, struggling to maintain his composure."

Despite Mukasey using the example to justify warrantless wiretapping of Americans by claiming the government was unable to intercept the call, the fact is that no law would have prevented the government from listening in on the call. Existing FISA provisions would have covered the interception of the call.

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Embarrassed U.S. Starts to Disown Basra Operation

As it became clear last week that the Operation Knights Assault in Basra was in serious trouble, the George W. Bush administration began to claim in off-the-record statements to journalists that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had launched the operation without consulting Washington.

The effort to disclaim U.S. responsibility for the operation is an indication that it was viewed as a major embarrassment just as top commander Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker are about to testify before Congress.

Behind this furious backpedaling is a major Bush administration miscalculation about Moqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army, which the administration believed was no longer capable of a coordinated military operation. It is now apparent that Sadr and the Mahdi Army were holding back because they were still in the process of retraining and reorganization, not because Sadr had given up the military option or had lost control of the Mahdi Army.

The process of the administration distancing itself from the Basra operation began on March 27, when the Washington Post reported that administration officials, speaking anonymously, said that al-Maliki had "decided to launch the offensive without consulting his U.S. allies." One official claimed, "[W]e can't quite decipher" what is going on, adding that it was a question of "who's got the best conspiracy" theory about why Maliki acted when he did.

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Beyond the Numbers

Was that a twinkle in the old men’s eyes? They stared down from framed oil portraits at the Fifth Regiment Armory the other day, and their names were Zollinger and Burgwyn, and Gelston and Warfield and others, all lined around a big, murky second-floor room. And maybe the old ghosts were pleased at what they beheld.

For here at the armory were more than a dozen Maryland National Guard members, home from the fighting in Iraq, and they were telling Sen. Barbara Mikulski and Gov. Martin O’Malley about the troubles re-entering civilian life: The psychological shifts, the troubles slowing down, the inability to reconnect with families, the stuff that never makes headlines because we’re too busy counting the dead or confronting the politics of the moment.

Does anybody understand?

“A grateful nation,” Mikulski told them, “never forgets.”

“We’re grateful to you,” O’Malley said, “and we want to do right by you.”

They were talking about increasing mental health funding and cutting through bureaucratic walls. They were hearing about post-traumatic stress disorder and other combat-related illnesses — and how, inexplicably, the federal government doesn’t provide the same help to National Guard members as it does to active-duty enlisted personnel.

“Thank you for what you did for America,” Mikulski said. “Now America wants to stand up for you.”

That’s when you noticed the old paintings on the walls.

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USA 2008: The Great Depression

We knew things were bad on Wall Street, but on Main Street it may be worse. Startling official statistics show that as a new economic recession stalks the United States, a record number of Americans will shortly be depending on food stamps just to feed themselves and their families.

Dismal projections by the Congressional Budget Office in Washington suggest that in the fiscal year starting in October, 28 million people in the US will be using government food stamps to buy essential groceries, the highest level since the food assistance programme was introduced in the 1960s.

The increase – from 26.5 million in 2007 – is due partly to recent efforts to increase public awareness of the programme and also a switch from paper coupons to electronic debit cards. But above all it is the pressures being exerted on ordinary Americans by an economy that is suddenly beset by troubles. Housing foreclosures, accelerating jobs losses and fast-rising prices all add to the squeeze.

Emblematic of the downturn until now has been the parades of houses seized in foreclosure all across the country, and myriad families separated from their homes. But now the crisis is starting to hit the country in its gut. Getting food on the table is a challenge many Americans are finding harder to meet. As a barometer of the country's economic health, food stamp usage may not be perfect, but can certainly tell a story.

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Opposition To Treasury's Blueprint Gains Steam

Senior Treasury officials identified three immediate targets yesterday for their plan to overhaul the nation's financial regulatory structure, including streamlining the approval process for securities that contributed to the crisis now roiling Wall Street. But their hopes for a few quick changes are running into mounting opposition from interest groups and officials elsewhere in the Bush administration.

In formally releasing the blueprint yesterday, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said he also plans to ask Congress this year to set up a new agency to oversee mortgage lending and take action to enhance his department's role as the chief regulator of financial markets.

The Treasury's initiatives seek to sweep away the current patchwork of regulation over the coming decade in favor of three more powerful agencies to oversee banking, market stability, and consumer and investor protection. The plan's authors have argued that such changes are needed because government oversight has not kept up with the pace of financial innovation.

Paulson acknowledged that the recommendations would not prevent future crises but said that they would make government more nimble in addressing them. "We should and can have a structure that is designed for the world we live in," he said in a speech at the Treasury. "Few, if any, will defend our current balkanized system."

Critics said the Treasury's plan is almost too big to succeed. Longtime Washington institutions would undergo wholesale changes or shut down altogether. Few leaders of these agencies -- and the associations that work with them -- welcomed such radical transformation.

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FBI Investigation of HUD Chief is a Blow to Bush

For the first time in President Bush's tenure, one of his Cabinet members is stepping down amid a criminal investigation.

Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson, a longtime Bush ally from Texas, said Monday he'll leave his post on April 18. He announced his departure on the fourth anniversary of his Senate confirmation.

The FBI has been investigating the ties between Jackson and a friend who was paid $392,000 by the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department as a construction manager in New Orleans, according to the Associated Press. Jackson's friend got the job after Jackson allegedly asked a HUD staffer to pass along his name to the Housing Authority of New Orleans.

Other Bush Cabinet members, such as former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, have left office under political clouds. But Jackson, 62, is the highest-ranking Bush official to depart in this manner. Last June, former deputy Interior secretary Steven Griles was convicted and sent to prison for lying to a congressional panel about the access and favors he gave to lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

James Thurber, who directs the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, said Jackson's resignation is not good news for Bush as he seeks political leverage with Congress and tries to stay relevant during an intense presidential campaign to succeed him.

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Government Auditors Blast Weapons Budget

Government auditors issued a scathing review yesterday of dozens of the Pentagon's biggest weapons systems, saying ships, aircraft and satellites are billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.

The Government Accountability Office found that 95 major systems have exceeded their original budgets by a total of $295 billion, bringing their total cost to $1.6 trillion, and are delivered almost two years late on average. In addition, none of the systems that GAO looked at had met all of the standards for best management practices during their development stages.

Auditors said the Defense Department showed few signs of improvement since the GAO began issuing its annual assessments of selected weapons systems six years ago. "It's not getting any better by any means," said Michael Sullivan, director of GAO's acquisition and sourcing team. "It's taking longer and costing more."

Chris Isleib, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a written statement, "We'd like to look at what GAO has said, and then at the appropriate time make an informed comment."

The Pentagon has doubled the amount it has committed to new systems, from $790 billion in 2000 to $1.6 trillion last year, according to the 205-page GAO report. Total acquisition costs in 2007 for major defense programs increased 26 percent from first estimates. In 2000, 75 programs had cost increases totaling 6 percent. Development costs in 2007 for the systems rose 40 percent from initial projections, compared with 27 percent in 2000. Current programs are delivered 21 months late on average, five months later than in 2000.

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Iraq Offensive Backfires

When President Bush said Friday that the Iraqi government's unprecedented offensive against Shiite militias would be a "defining moment in the history of a free Iraq," he surely didn't have in mind the results evident today.

Despite strong backing from U.S. forces, the week-long offensive failed, leaving militias holding the port city of Basra, which controls 80% of Iraqi oil. That failure appears to have weakened Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his government, which are central to U.S. hopes for Iraq.

Just as discouraging, the setback strengthened the hand of Muqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand cleric whose forces were the primary target of the attack and who the United States has long seen as a primary threat to stability. Not only did al-Sadr beat back government troops, he managed to portray himself as a peacemaker and al-Maliki and America as not-very-competent aggressors.

In another piece of bad news, all this helped Iran, where al-Sadr met emissaries of the Iraqi government seeking to broker a cease-fire.

Perhaps the damage will be mitigated in coming days. Fighting and political maneuvering continue. But after months of declining violence, it's hard not to chalk the offensive up as a significant setback and a recurrence of the strategic mistakes that characterized the war until the success of the recent troop "surge."

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Israel to Build on Contested Land

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had barely left Israel on Monday after her latest peacekeeping mission when Israeli officials announced plans to build 1,400 new homes on land Palestinians claim for a future state.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed to keep building in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, dismissing Palestinian claims that construction on contested land is the greatest obstacle to peace.

The disclosure of the construction plans immediately after Rice's visit demonstrated the intensity of the political pressures that Olmert faces.

He continues to support construction in disputed areas, over the objections of the Palestinians and the U.S., because it allows him to keep his fragile coalition intact.

The Israeli construction plans threatened to make it even harder for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to overcome his people's skepticism that diplomacy, not violence, would win them a state.

Rice arrived in the region on Saturday for three days of talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials meant to advance the U.S. goal of achieving a peace agreement before President Bush leaves office in January 2009.

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Former Pentagon Official Pleads Guilty to Espionage

A Pentagon official pleaded guilty Monday to passing US military secrets to an agent working for China after being showered with gifts and gambling money, the Department of Justice said.

Gregg William Bergersen, 51, faces up to 10 years in jail after admitting to one count of conspiracy to disclose national defense information to persons not entitled to receive it, the department said in a statement.

It said Bergersen started handing secret information in March 2007 to Tai Shen Kuo, 58, a Taiwan-born US citizen with business interests in New Orleans.

Bergersen worked as a weapons systems policy analyst at the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which implements the Pentagon's foreign military sales program.

Unbeknown to Bergersen, Kuo was passing the information to an unnamed Chinese government official. But the DoJ statement said the US official knew the documents, many of which were about US weapons sales to Taiwan, were classified and should not be shared with outsiders.

"During the course of the conspiracy, Kuo cultivated a friendship with Bergersen, bestowing on him gifts, cash payments, dinners, and money for gambling during trips to Las Vegas," it said.

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Americans Should Brace for Trillion Dollar Meltdown

Be it ever so devalued, $1 trillion is a lot of dough.

That's roughly on a par with the Russian economy. More than double the market value of Exxon Mobil Corp. About nine times the combined wealth of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.

Yet $1 trillion is the amount of defaults and writedowns Americans will likely witness before they emerge at the far side of the bursting credit bubble, estimates Charles R. Morris in his shrewd primer, ``The Trillion Dollar Meltdown.'' That calculation assumes an orderly unwinding, which he doesn't expect.

``The sad truth,'' he writes, ``is that subprime is just the first big boulder in an avalanche of asset writedowns that will rattle on through much of 2008.''

Expect the landslide to cascade through high-yield bonds, commercial mortgages, leveraged loans, credit cards and -- the big unknown -- credit-default swaps, Morris says. The notional value for those swaps, which are meant to insure bondholders against default, covered about $45 trillion in portfolios as of mid-2007, up from some $1 trillion in 2001, he writes.

Morris can't be dismissed as a crank. A lawyer, former banker and author of 10 other books, he knows a thing or two about the complex instruments that have spread toxic debt throughout the credit system. He once ran a company that made software for creating and analyzing securitized asset pools. Yet he writes with tight clarity and blistering pace.

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