July 30, 2009 by Tim McDowell.

A security researcher has discovered a Trojan that is designed to extract account data from as many as 4,600 of the world’s most popular and wealthy businesses. In “one of the largest and most professional thieving operations on the Internet,” a Trojan called Clampi (also known as Ligats, llomo, or Rscan) has spread across Microsoft networks in a worm-like fashion, and may already have infected hundreds of thousands of corporate and home PC users, according to SecureWorks researcher Joe Stewart, one of the world’s foremost authorities on botnets and targeted attacks.

“We weren’t all that worried about Storm, and we weren’t all that worried about Conficker,” Stewart says. “This one you need to worry about.” The Trojan uses PsExec — a popular, lightweight Telnet replacement tool that lets one system execute processes on other systems — and a sophisticated process of encryption and packing to hide its origins and targets. So far, Stewart says, the Trojan appears to be targeting 4,600 Websites, of which he has identified approximately 1,400 in 70 countries. Among the industries being targeted are banks, credit card companies, stock brokerages, insurance, retail, advertising networks, and utilities.

Posted in CIP, State & Local | Print | No Comments »

July 28, 2009 by Tim McDowell.

bills-111hr3200ih.pdf

To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce
the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes.

Posted in State & Local, HLD | Print | No Comments »

June 12, 2009 by Tim McDowell.

The Homeland Security Department has delayed “until September implementing a rule requiring federal contractors to verify that new hires are eligible to work in the United States, the fourth time the Obama administration has postponed the requirement,” reports NextGov. “… U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which manages E-Verify, said the delay will give the administration more time to examine the system and the requirement placed on contractors.
http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20090605_6483.php

Posted in State & Local, HLD | Print | No Comments »

June 12, 2009 by Tim McDowell.

The United Nations World Health Organization “has declared a global flu pandemic after holding an emergency meeting,” reports the British Broadcasting Corporation. “… It means the swine flu virus is spreading in at least two regions of the world with rising cases being seen in the UK, Australia, Japan and Chile. The move does not necessarily mean the virus is causing more severe illness or more deaths.” Worldwide, there have been 21,940 cases with 125 deaths, reports WHO—up from 19,273 cases and 117 deaths as of last week. As of Wednesday, the United States had 13,217 confirmed and probable cases of swine flu and 27 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—up from 11,054 cases and 17 deaths as of last week.

Posted in State & Local, HLD | Print | No Comments »

December 5, 2008 by Tim McDowell.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate released the final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) today, recommending Manhattan, Kan., as the preferred site for the state-of the-art, high-security laboratory facility to study foreign animal and zoonotic (transferable from animal to human) diseases that can impact livestock.  A formal Record of Decision, which will officially designate a site on which to build the NBAF, will be published on Jan. 12, 2009.  Facility design will begin in 2009 with plans for construction to begin in 2010. It is expected that the NBAF would be operational by 2015.“This facility, once built, will help us to protect our livestock industry, food supply, and public health from the accidental or intentional introduction of a foreign animal or zoonotic disease in the U.S.,” said Homeland Security Under Secretary for Science and Technology Jay Cohen. “The assessment process was extensive, engaging experts within and without the government as well as each potential site community, and this final report carefully weighs the input from all interested parties.”The NBAF will be designed to replace the current facilities at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center (PIADC) in New York, which is currently the only facility in the U.S. that studies the live virus that causes Foot-and-Mouth disease. The current facility is too small to meet new research needs, has an outdated physical structure and is not appropriate for zoonotic disease research that must be conducted at Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4).  There is currently no laboratory facility in the U.S. with capabilities for BSL-4 research on livestock. PIADC will be closed once the NBAF is operational, and DHS will evaluate options in the coming months for transitioning the PIADC facility and land for future sale or use.The EIS analyzes the risks associated with potentially building the NBAF at each of the six proposed locations: Athens, Ga.; Manhattan, Kan.; Madison County, Miss.; Granville County, N.C.; San Antonio, Texas and Plum Island, N.Y. The report also analyzes a “No-Action” alternative, assessing the impacts if no NBAF were built at all.The EIS analyzes health and safety issues, land use, visual effects, infrastructure requirements (potable water, electricity, fuel, sewer, etc.), air and water quality, noise, geology and soils, biological and cultural resources, traffic and transportation issues, waste management, existing environmental issues, and cumulative effects.The process also included extensive community involvement, beginning in July 2007 when DHS announced its intent to evaluate site alternatives for the proposed NBAF.

Further details on the proposed NBAF and the site-selection process are available at www.dhs.gov/nbaf. 

 

Posted in CIP, State & Local | Print | No Comments »

December 3, 2008 by Tim McDowell.

Groups seek power system management. Another major source of demand is on the horizon: plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). The current. President-elect has already expressed his support for expanding the nation’s fleet of PHEVs, calling for a million of them on the road by 2015, and a $7,500 tax credit for the purchase of plug-ins is already on the books. As the Northwest Power and Conservation Council prepares to draft its next Northwest Power Plan, officials are taking a look at the potential impacts of plug-ins on the regional grid. “…Down the line, as you grow the number (of plug-ins) there’s going to have to be some kind of charging regulation,” said the council chairman. Council members met late last month to hash out the benefits and challenges of bringing PHEVs onto the grid, taking in a presentation from a Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratory scientist. He has been working for two years on research into “smart-grid” technology which incorporates sophisticated tools that allow PHEVs to communicate with the power grid, drawing from it during low-demand times and potentially giving back to it — or shutting off — during peaks. His research suggests that by using smart-grid management, between 43 and 73 percent of all the cars and trucks in the United States could be replaced with PHEVs without requiring new power plants or transmission lines. Source: http://www.idahobusiness.net/archive.htm/2008/12/01/Girding-up-for-plugins-Groups-seek-power-system-management

Posted in State & Local | Print | No Comments »

December 2, 2008 by Tim McDowell.

 (Secrecy News, 12/1/08)

Among other things, the executive branch has failed to establish an integrated database of all security clearance authorizations. As a consequence, “no one knows how many people in the U.S. Government hold security clearances.” (It is more than 2.5 million and probably around 3 million people in government, military and industry.) Government agencies have also failed to fulfill a requirement for security clearance “reciprocity,” referring to the acceptance by one agency of a security clearance granted by another agency. This is in spite of an explicit statutory requirement that “all security clearance background investigations and determinations… shall be accepted by all agencies.” http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/

Posted in CIP, State & Local, HLD | Print | No Comments »

October 28, 2008 by Tim McDowell.

A Pennsylvania lawsuit alleging that Barack Obama is not a “natural-born citizen” of the United States took an unusual twist this week, after a federally mandated deadline requiring Obama’s lawyers to produce a “vault” copy of his birth certificate expired with no response from Obama or his lawyers.

The lawsuit, filed by former Pennsylvania Deputy Attorney General Philip J. Berg — a self-avowed supporter of Hillary Clinton — alleges that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and is thus “ineligible” to run for president of the United States. It demands that Obama’s lawyers produce a copy of his original birth certificate to prove that he is a natural-born U.S. citizen.

Berg’s suit and allegations have set off a wave of Internet buzz and rumors, though Obama could easily have put the matter to rest by providing the federal court with the basic documentation proving he is eligible to take the oath of a president. But Obama has apparently decided to deny the court and the public that documentation.

The Constitution provides that any U.S. citizen is eligible to become president if the person is 35 years of age or older and is a natural-born citizen; that is, born in the territorial United States.

By failing to respond to the Request for Admissions and Request for the Production of Documents within 30 days, Obama has “admitted” that he was born in Kenya, Berg stated this week in new court filings.

Berg released a long list of “admissions” he submitted to Obama’s lawyers on Sept. 15, and asked that they produce documents relating to Obama’s place of birth and citizenship.

Instead of responding, lawyers for Obama and the DNC asked the court to dismiss the case. But Judge R. Barclay Surrick of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania has issued no ruling in the case that would have given Obama’s lawyers more time.

“There are lots of legal ways to stonewall,” a well-placed Republican attorney told Newsmax, who was not authorized to comment officially on the case. “But failing to respond is not one of them.”

“The first thing they teach you in law school,” he added, “is don’t put a complaint like this in a drawer. That’s how a nuisance case can become a problem.”

The 30-day deadline for defendants to comply with a discovery request is set forth in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures.

“It all comes down to the fact that there’s nothing from the other side,” Berg said after he filed a motion on Thursday for summary judgment.

“The admissions are there. By not filing the answers or objections, the defense has admitted everything. [Obama] admits he was born in Kenya. He admits he was adopted in Indonesia. He admits that the documentation posted online is a phony. And he admits that he is constitutionally ineligible to serve as president of the United States.”

In a contentious case, lawyers on both sides will haggle over the production of documents, and will frequently go beyond the deadlines, several lawyers told Newsmax.

“The rules are more often complied with in the breech rather than the observance,” a senior trial attorney who has close ties to the Democrat Party, but is not involved in the current case, told Newsmax.

“Lawyers frequently do not return telephone calls or meet discovery deadlines because of sheer inadvertence. Therefore, we do not consider a failure to respond as a ‘violation,’” he said.

Allegations surrounding Obama’s place of birth have been swirling for months. Earlier this year, the Obama campaign sought to put down the rumors by making available a computer-generated Certification of Live Birth, issued in 2007 by the State of Hawaii. [See the Certification of Live Birth — Click Here.]

Respected conservative blogger Ed Morrissey called the Berg lawsuit a “conspiracy theory” that had been put to rest by the Obama campaign over the summer but ”has arisen like a zombie yet again to suck the credibility out of the conservative blogosphere.”

However, the 2007 document produced by the Obama campaign omits key information that normally appears on birth certificates in the United States, including the name of the hospital where he was born, the size and weight of the baby, and sometimes the name of the doctor who delivered him.

In addition, the critics of the 2007 document note that Obama’s father is described as “African,” a term used today. The formal language in official documents at the time — 1961 — would have identified his race as “Negro” or “Colored.”

The Web site snarkybytes.com has produced a vault copy of a Hawaii Certificate of Live Birth from 1963, issued by the Hawaii Department of Health. [See the vault copy — Click Here.]

In addition to naming the hospital and more details about the baby, the 1963 vault copy also includes the “usual residence of the mother,” and the “usual occupation” of the father. None of this information appears on the 2007 Live Birth certificate produced by the Obama campaign.

Berg has been a perennial political candidate in Pennsylvania, having run in Democrat primaries for attorney general, lieutenant governor, governor, and other offices without success. He served as deputy attorney general of the State of Pennsylvania from 1972-1980.

His credibility was tarnished by work he did for the far-left “9/11 for the Truth” campaign, which alleged in a federal lawsuit that the collapse of the twin towers in New York was caused by “controlled demolition” ordered by the president of the United States.

Nevertheless, in recent weeks, lawsuits have been filed in seven additional states demanding that Barack Obama produce an original vault copy of his birth certificate, to dispel the rumors that he is not a natural-born United States citizen.

The latest suits have been filed in state and federal courts in Hawaii, Washington, California, Florida, Georgia, New York, and Connecticut to compel Obama to release his birth records.

Lawsuits in Washington and Georgia are seeking state superior courts to force the states’ secretary of state, as the chief state elections officer, to require Obama to produce original birth records from Hawaii, or else decertify him as a candidate for the presidency.

Ironically, Obama mentions his birth certificate in passing on Page 26 of his 1995 memoir, “Dreams of My Father.” “I discovered this article, folded away among my birth certificate and old vaccination forms, when I was in high school,” he wrote.

Lawyers for Obama and the DNC did not return calls for comment on the current status of the case, or explain why the Obama campaign did not simply put to rest the whole controversy by releasing the birth certificate that Obama apparently cherished as a teenager.

In the past, questions about Sen. John McCain’s legal status have arisen. McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone at a U.S. Army hospital. McCain had legal experts vet his constitutional qualifications, and he also disclosed a copy of his birth certificate.

© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Posted in State & Local, HLD | Print | No Comments »

October 28, 2008 by Tim McDowell.

http://election.newsmax.com/obama_laraza.html
 

Posted in State & Local, HLD | Print | No Comments »

October 28, 2008 by Tim McDowell.

“One of the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement is that it failed to lead to income redistribution in the United States,” Barack Obama appears to state in an audio excerpt of a Chicago public radio program recorded in 2001.

Obama, who then was an Illinois state senator, also stated that people continue to “suffer” because there is no government program to take money from the rich and redistribute it to Americans who are less well off.

The excerpt, posted on YouTube.com, has set the blogosphere abuzz.

It also caught the attention of GOP presidential nominee John McCain, who is using it to help drive home the Joe the plumber theme. McCain states that Obama’s plan to “spread the wealth around” amounts to income redistribution.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iivL4c_3pck&eurl=http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/obama_spread_wealth/2008/10/27/144493.html

The YouTube excerpt attributes the post to a Sept. 6, 2001 interview on Odyssey, an issues-oriented interview program that formerly aired on Chicago public radio station WBEZ-FM. On Monday afternoon, a WBEZ blog listed the actual date of the program, titled “The Court and Civil Rights,” as Jan. 18, 2001. Obama’s remarks came in the context of a somewhat professorial discussion of the Supreme Court’s impact on the Civil Rights movement. In the YouTube excerpt, Obama begins by stating that the strategy of relying on litigation during the Civil Rights movement brought both “victories and failures.”

Where it succeeded, Obama states, “was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order, and as long as I could pay for it, I’d be OK.”

Then Obama adds, “I think one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing, and activities on the ground, that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power throughout which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways, we still suffer from that.”

The audio post, which has been edited heavily, also includes Obama’s response to a caller who asks whether it’s too late to enact a program of income redistribution in America, and whether the Supreme Court could initiate it.

Obama replies, in part, “The court’s just not very good at it, and politically it’s just very hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard, so I mean I think that, although you can craft theoretical justifications for it legally, I think any three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts.”

The McCain campaign issued a statement offering a pointed response Sunday to Obama’s 2001 remarks.

“The American people continue to learn more about Barack Obama,” said McCain senior policy adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin. “Now we know that the slogans ‘change you can believe in’ and ‘change we need’ are code words for Barack Obama’s ultimate goal: ‘redistributive change.’

“In a previously uncovered interview from September 6, 2001, Barack Obama expressed his regret that the Supreme Court hadn’t been more ‘radical’ and described as a ‘tragedy’ the court’s refusal to take up ‘the issues of redistribution of wealth.’ No wonder he wants to appoint judges that legislate from the bench — as insurance in case a unified Democratic government under his control fails to meet his basic goal: Taking money away from people who work for it and giving it to people who Barack Obama believes deserve it.

“Holtz-Eakin’s statement concluded: “Europeans call it socialism, Americans call it welfare, and Barack Obama calls it change.”

Obama also was a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago law school at the time of the interview. The Odyssey program, which Gretchen Helfrich hosted, apparently wasn’t profitable, and the station canceled it in September 2005.

© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Posted in State & Local, HLD | Print | No Comments »