The world's youngest terror suspect... ready to blow himself up at the age of 11

(Compiler's note: What is wrong with this picture? A must read)

.... Originally from Peshawar in Pakistan, Abudullah was training to be a suicide bomber and had learned the principles of jihad - holy war - at the religious school in Pakistan where he was taught.

.... When Mr Neely asked the 11-year-old how felt about becoming a suicide bomber he said he knew he 'would end up in pieces.'

He also said he knew the difference between suicide and sacrifice and that he wanted to kill non-Muslims when he grew up 'so they can't come to our homes and kill us.'

It is not yet clear what authorities will do with the boy but it is likely he will be returned back to his religious school.

Electricity Grid in U.S. Penetrated by Spies

(Compiler's note: Must read)

By SIOBHAN GORMAN

WASHINGTON -- Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national-security officials.

The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, these officials said, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls. The intruders haven't sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure, but officials warned they could try during a crisis or war.

"The Chinese have attempted to map our infrastructure, such as the electrical grid," said a senior intelligence official. "So have the Russians."

The espionage appeared pervasive across the U.S. and doesn't target a particular company or region, said a former Department of Homeland Security official. "There are intrusions, and they are growing," the former official said, referring to electrical systems. "There were a lot last year."

Many of the intrusions were detected not by the companies in charge of the infrastructure but by U.S. intelligence agencies, officials said. Intelligence officials worry about cyber attackers taking control of electrical facilities, a nuclear power plant or financial networks via the Internet.

Authorities investigating the intrusions have found software tools left behind that could be used to destroy infrastructure components, the senior intelligence official said. He added, "If we go to war with them, they will try to turn them on."

Officials said water, sewage and other infrastructure systems also were at risk.

"Over the past several years, we have seen cyberattacks against critical infrastructures abroad, and many of our own infrastructures are as vulnerable as their foreign counterparts, " Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair recently told lawmakers. "A number of nations, including Russia and China, can disrupt elements of the U.S. information infrastructure."

Officials cautioned that the motivation of the cyberspies wasn't well understood, and they don't see an immediate danger. China, for example, has little incentive to disrupt the U.S. economy because it relies on American consumers and holds U.S. government debt.

But protecting the electrical grid and other infrastructure is a key part of the Obama administration's cybersecurity review, which is to be completed next week. Under the Bush administration, Congress approved $17 billion in secret funds to protect government networks, according to people familiar with the budget. The Obama administration is weighing whether to expand the program to address vulnerabilities in private computer networks, which would cost billions of dollars more. A senior Pentagon official said Tuesday the Pentagon has spent $100 million in the past six months repairing cyber damage.

Overseas examples show the potential havoc. In 2000, a disgruntled employee rigged a computerized control system at a water-treatment plant in Australia, releasing more than 200,000 gallons of sewage into parks, rivers and the grounds of a Hyatt hotel.

Last year, a senior Central Intelligence Agency official, Tom Donohue, told a meeting of utility company representatives in New Orleans that a cyberattack had taken out power equipment in multiple regions outside the U.S. The outage was followed with extortion demands, he said.

The U.S. electrical grid comprises three separate electric networks, covering the East, the West and Texas. Each includes many thousands of miles of transmission lines, power plants and substations. The flow of power is controlled by local utilities or regional transmission organizations. The growing reliance of utilities on Internet-based communication has increased the vulnerability of control systems to spies and hackers, according to government reports.

The sophistication of the U.S. intrusions -- which extend beyond electric to other key infrastructure systems -- suggests that China and Russia are mainly responsible, according to intelligence officials and cybersecurity specialists. While terrorist groups could develop the ability to penetrate U.S. infrastructure, they don't appear to have yet mounted attacks, these officials say.

It is nearly impossible to know whether or not an attack is government-sponsored because of the difficulty in tracking true identities in cyberspace. U.S. officials said investigators have followed electronic trails of stolen data to China and Russia.

Russian and Chinese officials have denied any wrongdoing. "These are pure speculations," said Yevgeniy Khorishko, a spokesman at the Russian Embassy. "Russia has nothing to do with the cyberattacks on the U.S. infrastructure, or on any infrastructure in any other country in the world."

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Wang Baodong, said the Chinese government "resolutely oppose[s] any crime, including hacking, that destroys the Internet or computer network" and has laws barring the practice. China was ready to cooperate with other countries to counter such attacks, he said, and added that "some people overseas with Cold War mentality are indulged in fabricating the sheer lies of the so-called cyberspies in China."

Utilities are reluctant to speak about the dangers. "Much of what we've done, we can't talk about," said Ray Dotter, a spokesman at PJM Interconnection LLC, which coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity in 13 states and the District of Columbia. He said the organization has beefed up its security, in conformance with federal standards.

In January 2008, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved new protection measures that required improvements in the security of computer servers and better plans for handling attacks.

Last week, Senate Democrats introduced a proposal that would require all critical infrastructure companies to meet new cybersecurity standards and grant the president emergency powers over control of the grid systems and other infrastructure.

Specialists at the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit research institute, said attack programs search for openings in a network, much as a thief tests locks on doors. Once inside, these programs and their human controllers can acquire the same access and powers as a systems administrator.

The White House review of cybersecurity programs is studying ways to shield the electrical grid from such attacks, said James Lewis, who directed a study for the Center for Strategic and International Studies and has met with White House reviewers.

The reliability of the grid is ultimately the responsibility of the North American Electric Reliability Corp., an independent standards-setting organization overseen by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The NERC set standards last year requiring companies to designate "critical cyber assets." Companies, for example, must check the backgrounds of employees and install firewalls to separate administrative networks from those that control electricity flow. The group will begin auditing compliance in July.

—Rebecca Smith contributed to this article.

NERC Letter

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation on Tuesday warned its members that not all of them appear to be adhering to cybersecuirty requirements. Read the letter.

Gingrich: Obama's 'Fantasy Foreign Policy' Endangering America

By: Rick Pedraza

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says U.S. President Barack Obama is making some dangerous choices in rejecting the anti-terrorism policies of the Bush administration and backing down from confronting North Korea over its threatening missile program.

In a Politico forum with readers, and in several recent interviews, Gingrich has discerned a weakness in the new administration’s foreign policy that he fears is going to embolden America’s enemies.

Moreover, the effort to treat terrorism as a criminal justice problem – rather than an act of war – will only bog the country down in pursuit of enemy combatants, Gingrich fears.

“Dick Cheney is clearly right in saying that, between the court decisions about terrorists and the administration actions, the United States is running greater risks of getting attacked than we were under President Bush,” Gingrich said.

Pointing to what he described as a “vivid demonstration of weakness in foreign policy” the former House speaker said Obama’s actions, including his proposal for a resumption of nuclear arms limitation talks, reflect “a dangerous fantasy that runs an enormous risk.

“The embarrassing repudiation of the United States appeal to the United Nations Security Council Sunday afternoon is a vivid demonstration of weakness,” Gingrich said in the Politico forum. “This is beginning to resemble the Carter administration’s weakness in foreign policy.”

Sure enough, on Tuesday a North Korean envoy threatened retaliation if the United Nations imposed further sanctions for the missile launch.

North Korea warned the U.N. Security Council that it would take "strong steps" if the 15-nation body took any action in response to Pyongyang's launch of a long-range rocket, Reuters reported.

"If the Security Council, they take any kind of steps whatever, we'll consider this is (an) encroachment on our sovereignty and the next option will be ours," Deputy Ambassador Pak Tok Hun told reporters. "Necessary and strong steps will ... follow that."

In several interviews, Gingrich has suggested that the United States should have shot down the North Korean missile, while making it very clear that any missile launched with a trajectory in the direction of the United States will be met with an overwhelming counter-attack.

North Korea “is a totally irresponsible dictatorship run by a person who is clearly out of touch with reality,” says Gingrich, who suggests the threat of “unconventional forces to stand-off capabilities; to say we’re not going to tolerate a North Korean missile launch, period.”

“I think to say, ‘We are now going to have another meeting of the U.N. to have another paper resolution that has meaningless effect,’ is very dangerous,” Gingrich says. “I have yet to see the United Nations do anything effective with either Iran or North Korea.”

Gingrich also raised a moral question. North Korea is responsible for the deaths of at least several million people because of its totalitarian rule, he said. How much longer should a world power like the United States tolerate such a regime.

“Under Kim Jong-Il this dictatorship has been so bad it has starved the people and the average North Korean today is several inches shorter than a generation ago,” Gingrich pointed out. “If we do nothing they are going to continue building nuclear weapons and missiles. If they are this aggressive when they are weak what do you think they will be like when they are strong?”

The Obama administration is rapidly undermining the U.S. missile defense system while imagining a fantasy world of trust and cooperation, Gingrich says.

“Ronald Reagan believed we had to have a missile defense system to stop any country from breaking free and blackmailing other countries,” Gingrich says, adding the reminder that there were only five nuclear powers at the time: the Soviet Union, China, France, Britain, and the United States.

“Reagan would have been much more skeptical about a plan in an age of North Korean, Iranian and Pakistani nuclear developments. How do you apply his slogan of ‘trust but verify’ in dictatorships you can't trust and can't verify?”

It was left up to Reagan to rebuild the United States after Carter allowed U.S. security policy to wither in the late 1970s.

“There's a fascinating analysis of Jimmy Carter's Notre Dame speech when he spoke at the commencement in 1977. And that was the moment in which Carter's fantasy view of the world became clear, and the beginning, I think, of the end of his — of his administration,” Gingrich said, likening Carter to Obama. “The president's in a world where Hamas is firing missiles every day into Israel, Iran is building nuclear weapons, and the North Koreans today during — basically during his speech fired a missile, and he has some wonderful fantasy idea that we're going to have a great meeting next year.

I just think that it's very dangerous to have a fantasy foreign policy, and it can get you in enormous trouble, just like giving — you know, we don't have a war on terror anymore,” Gingrich said. “We don't have terrorist attacks anymore. So now homeland security has manmade disasters.

“I'm somehow not comforted with the thought that 9/11 was a manmade disaster but not a terrorist attack, and I'm not comforted with words instead of serious systematic policies.”

Glimmers of Hope in Great Britain

by David J. Rusin

Because the Islamist project has reached a far more advanced stage in Europe, events there often serve as warnings to America about how not to deal with the challenges that lie ahead. Thus it is quite refreshing to be able to highlight a few positive developments in Britain that the United States should consider emulating.

First, there is growing realization that the UK's old strategy of empowering nonviolent Islamists, assumed to "possess the necessary 'street cred'" to marginalize violent Islamists, has been a disaster. A report by Policy Exchange argues that the government is "underwriting the very Islamist ideology which spawns an illiberal, intolerant, and anti-Western worldview":

"Not only is it failing to achieve its stated objectives; in many places it is actually making the situation worse," they said. "A new generation is being radicalized, sometimes with the very funds that are supposed to be countering radicalization."

[…]

The problem has been caused by the link between violent and nonviolent extremism being "habitually underplayed in official documents produced by central government, local government, and the police."

Second, Britain has launched a new strategy that recognizes the importance of opposing nonviolent Islamism. Among the updated criteria for defining Islamic extremists:

• They advocate a caliphate, a pan-Islamic state encompassing many countries.
• They promote Shari'a law.
• They believe in jihad, or armed resistance, anywhere in the world.

Third, the government has suspended ties with the Muslim Council of Britain — think CAIR with a cockney accent — after one of its senior officials signed a document interpreted as "advocating attacks on the Royal Navy if it tries to stop arms for Hamas being smuggled into Gaza." The government has reinforced the break by pledging to focus its efforts on mosques and smaller groups. Sadiq Khan, the minister for community cohesion, said, "The days of lazy politicians just speaking to one or two powerful community groups or leaders are gone."

America could learn from these changes of direction. While the FBI has cut off CAIR, other Islamist bodies are still welcome in Washington. Moreover, there has been little discernable movement to reach out to smaller organizations representing mainstream Muslims.

Advice for the feds: Contact a few of those Muslims who disowned CAIR publicly this week. They will be some of your best allies in protecting America against the threat of radical Islam, while helping our nation avoid the mistakes that Britain now must correct the hard way.

Pentagon spends $100 million to fix cyber attacks

By LOLITA C. BALDOR

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon spent more than $100 million in the last six months responding to and repairing damage from cyber attacks and other computer network problems, military leaders said Tuesday.

Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, who heads U.S. Strategic Command, said the military is only beginning to track the costs, which are triggered by constant daily attacks against military networks ranging from the Pentagon to bases around the country.

"The important thing is that we recognize that we are under assault from the least sophisticated—what I would say the bored teenager—all the way up to the sophisticated nation-state, with some pretty criminal elements sandwiched in-between," said Chilton, adding that the motivations include everything from vandalism to espionage. "This is indeed our big challenge, as we think about how to defend it."

According to Army Brig. Gen. John Davis, deputy commander for network operations, the money was spent on manpower, computer technology and contractors hired to clean up after both external probes and internal mistakes. Strategic Command is responsible for protecting and monitoring the military's information grid, as well as coordinating any offensive cyber warfare on behalf of the U.S.

Officials would not say how much of the $100 million cost was due to outside attacks against the system, versus viruses and other problems triggered accidentally by Defense Department employees. And they declined to reveal any details about suspected cyber attacks against the Pentagon by other countries, such as China.

Speaking to reporters from a cyberspace conference in Omaha, Neb., the military leaders said the U.S. needs to invest more money in the military's computer capabilities, rather than pouring millions into repairs.

"You can either pay me now or you can pay me later," said Davis. "It would be nice to spend that money proactively ... rather than fixing things after the fact."

Officials said that while there has been a lot of anecdotal evidence on the spending estimate, they only began tracking it last year and are still not sure they are identifying all the costs related to taking computer networks down after a problem is noticed.

The Pentagon has acknowledged that its vast computer network is scanned or probed by outsiders millions of times each day. Last year a cyber attack forced the Defense Department to take up to 1,500 computers off line. And last fall the Defense Department banned the use of external computer flash drives because of a virus threat officials detected on the Pentagon networks.

The cost updates come as the Obama administration is completing a broad government-wide review of the nation's cybersecurity.

Communities print their own currency to keep cash flowing

By Marisol Bello, USA TODAY

A small but growing number of cash-strapped communities are printing their own money.

Borrowing from a Depression-era idea, they are aiming to help consumers make ends meet and support struggling local businesses.

The systems generally work like this: Businesses and individuals form a network to print currency. Shoppers buy it at a discount — say, 95 cents for $1 value — and spend the full value at stores that accept the currency.

Workers with dwindling wages are paying for groceries, yoga classes and fuel with Detroit Cheers, Ithaca Hours in New York, Plenty in North Carolina or BerkShares in Massachusetts.

Ed Collom, a University of Southern Maine sociologist who has studied local currencies, says they encourage people to buy locally. Merchants, hurting because customers have cut back on spending, benefit as consumers spend the local cash.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: United States | North Carolina | New York | Massachusetts | Indiana | Institute of Certified Public Accountants | Depression-era | Plenty | Berkshires | Bureau of Engraving | University of Southern Maine | Tom Ochsenschlager | Piedmont Biofuels

"We wanted to make new options available," says Jackie Smith of South Bend, Ind., who is working to launch a local currency. "It reinforces the message that having more control of the economy in local hands can help you cushion yourself from the blows of the marketplace."

About a dozen communities have local currencies, says Susan Witt, founder of BerkShares in the Berkshires region of western Massachusetts. She expects more to do it.

Under the BerkShares system, a buyer goes to one of 12 banks and pays $95 for $100 worth of BerkShares, which can be spent in 370 local businesses. Since its start in 2006, the system, the largest of its kind in the country, has circulated $2.3 million worth of BerkShares. In Detroit, three business owners are printing $4,500 worth of Detroit Cheers, which they are handing out to customers to spend in one of 12 shops.

During the Depression, local governments, businesses and individuals issued currency, known as scrip, to keep commerce flowing when bank closings led to a cash shortage.

By law, local money may not resemble federal bills or be promoted as legal tender of the United States, says Claudia Dickens of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

"We print the real thing," she says.

The IRS gets its share. When someone pays for goods or services with local money, the income to the business is taxable, says Tom Ochsenschlager of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. "It's not a way to avoid income taxes, or we'd all be paying in Detroit dollars," he says.

Pittsboro, N.C., is reviving the Plenty, a defunct local currency created in 2002. It is being printed in denominations of $1, $5, $20 and $50. A local bank will exchange $9 for $10 worth of Plenty.

"We're a wiped-out small town in America," says Lyle Estill, president of Piedmont Biofuels, which accepts the Plenty. "This will strengthen the local economy. ... The nice thing about the Plenty is that it can't leave here."

Iranian nuke plot vaporized in the city: NY banks unwittingly aided in material transfers, says DA

(Compiler's note: Must read)

BY Melissa Grace

BREAKING: Chinese financier Le Fang Wei indicted in plot to send nuclear materials to Iran.

The Manhattan district attorney's office has smashed a sinister plot to smuggle nuclear weapons materials to Iran through unwitting New York banks, the Daily News has learned.

Officials plan to unseal a 118-count indictment Tuesday accusing a Chinese national of setting up a handful of fake companies to hide that he was selling millions of dollars in potential nuclear materials to Tehran.

"This case will cut off a major source of supply to Iran and it shows how they are going ahead full steam to get a nuclear bomb. Long-range missiles they pretty much have already," a law enforcement source close to the case said.

"We think it is one of the largest suppliers of weapons of mass destruction to Iran."

Experts say Iran, under the leadership of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, appears close to amassing enough nuclear material to make an atom bomb. A United Nations embargo bans Iran from acquiring the high-tech metals needed to make a long-range nuclear weapon a reality.

The indictment will outline the financial conspiracy behind 58 different transactions, including shipments of various banned materials from China to Iran between 2006 and late 2008.

Among them:

• 33,000 pounds of a specialized aluminum alloy used almost exclusively in long-range missile production.
• 66,000 pounds of tungsten copper plate, which is used in missile guidance systems.
• 53,900 pounds of maraging steel rods, a superhard metal used in uranium enrichment and to make the casings for nuclear bombs.

The recipient is believed to have been a subsidiary of the Iranian Defense Ministry.

The suspect, who is not believed to be in the U.S., set up four bogus import-export companies that did business with six Iranian shell firms, one source said.

"They took elaborate steps to conceal the identity of the shipper and the recipient," the source said.

The deals went through "several" New York banks, which cooperated when the alleged plot was uncovered.

"The New York banks were completely unaware," the source said.

Authorities first stumbled over the scheme seven months ago in an unrelated probe into Iranian money-laundering through Lloyd's, a British bank.

In January, Lloyd's paid a $350 million fine to settle accusations it "stripped" information from Iranian money transfers to New York banks, hiding where the cash came from.

Officials said they suspected that money was also used to finance Iran's nuke program.

"The important thing is to put sunlight on these deals," the law enforcement source said.

Exclusive: Do We Justify the Most Brutal Murders by Calling Them 'Honor Killings'?

by Margaret Calhoun Hemenway

Islamic groups in the U.S. are actively trying to discourage use of descriptive terms like "Jihadi" to describe an Islamic terrorist and warn Americans against "Islamophobia" should they use the "wrong" words to talk about Islam or Muslim terrorists. Yet Americans have already succumbed to using an Islamist phrase, "honor killing" to describe the brutal, pre-meditated murders of Muslim women (often wives or daughters) by Muslim relatives (often fathers or brothers). Sharia

.... Women are still forced to enter arranged marriages in many Islamic countries and child brides are commonplace. Feminists are oddly silent about systematic violations of the most basic human rights of women throughout the Islamic world. No murder of a spouse or daughter would ever be associated with the word "honor" in any Western democratic society. In borrowing this phrase, we are falling into the trap of letting Islamic extremists justify and rationalize the most brutal of murders.

U.S. Muslims debate how much to help FBI

A petition organized by a Newark nonprofit urging Muslims to limit social outreach with the FBI has provoked a national debate within the Muslim community about how to deal with law enforcement. ....

US Recovery Is Far Off, Banks Are 'Basically Insolvent': Soros

By: Reuters

The U.S. economy is in for a "lasting slowdown" and could face a Japan-style period of relatively low growth coupled with high inflation, billionaire investor George Soros said on Monday.

Soros, speaking to Reuters Financial Television, also warned that rescuing U.S. banks could turn them into "zombies" that draw the lifeblood of the economy, prolonging the economic slowdown.

AP

"I don't expect the U.S. economy to recover in the third or fourth quarter so I think we are in for a pretty lasting slowdown," Soros said, adding that in 2010 there might be "something" in terms of U.S. growth.

Soros' view contrasts with the majority of economists, who expect the U.S. economy to stop contracting in the third quarter and resume growing in the fourth quarter, according to the latest monthly poll of forecasts conducted by Reuters.

The recovery will look like "an inverted square root sign," Soros said. "You hit bottom and you automatically rebound some, but then you don't come out of it in a V-shape recovery or anything like that. You settle down—step down."

The healing of the banking system and housing markets is crucial to recovery. "The banking system, as a whole, is basically insolvent," Soros said.

• Slideshow: The 15 Companies at Greatest Risk of Default
• Slideshow: The 15 Biggest Holders of US Government Debt

What's more, the Treasury's Public-Private Investment Fund is going to work but it won't be enough to recapitalize the banks in a way that they are able to or willing to provide credit.

"What we have created now is a situation where the banks who will be able to earn their way out of a hole, but by doing that, they are going to weigh on the economy," he said. "Instead of stimulating the economy, they will draw the lifeblood, so to speak, of profits away from the real economy in order to keep themselves alive. This is the zombie bank situation."

The stress tests being conducted by Treasury could be a precursor to a more successful recapitalization of the banks, he added.

Dollar is Vulnerable

Soros, whose latest book, "The Crash of 2008 and What it Means," has made prescient calls during the current credit crisis.

Exactly one year ago, he told Reuters that global losses are likely to top $1 trillion from the credit crisis. To date, U.S. and European banks have recorded more than $700 billion in losses and write-downs, as of Feb. 5. 2009, according to Reuters data.

Soros also said the U.S. dollar is under selling pressure and may eventually be replaced as a world reserve currency, possibly by the IMF's Special Drawing Rights, a synthetic currency basket comprised of dollars, euros, yen and sterling.

"I think the dollar is now under question and I think the system will need to be reformed, so that the United States will be subject to the same discipline as is imposed on other countries," said Soros, whose famous bet against the British pound earned his Quantum Fund $1 billion in 1992. "Being the main issuer of international currency, we have been exempt and we have abused that because we have effectively consumed 6.5 percent more than we have produced. That is now coming to an end."

China recently proposed greater use of Special Drawing Rights, possibly as an eventual global reserve currency. "In the long run, having an international accounting unit rather than the dollar may, in fact, be to our advantage so we can't splurge—you know, it felt very good for 25 years but now we are paying a very heavy price," Soros said.

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China will be the first country to emerge from recession, probably this year, and will spearhead global growth in 2010, Soros said. He said world policymakers are "actually beginning to catch up" with the crisis and efforts to fix structural problems in the financial system.

The system was "fundamentally flawed, and there is no returning to where we came from," he said.

Euro Zone Not in Danger

In Europe, he said the crisis provides an incentive for countries that use the euro to remain inside the monetary union, though countries on the periphery still face serious problems.

The euro has been "a tremendous advantage" to countries that use it, adding there's "no question of a weaker country dropping out," Soros said.

While additional resources for the International Monetary Fund will help it stabilize struggling Eastern Europe, he said the Baltic states still face "serious problems" and Ukraine is not far from default.

Widespread use of credit default swaps has worsened the risks for Europe, he said, though he added that Germany, the euro zone's biggest economy, is becoming more open to offering help. "Germany, which has been the most reserved about being the deep pocket of the rest of Europe, has recognized that it too has a responsibility toward the new member states."

Germany has been one of the most reluctant major economies to meet U.S. calls for more fiscal stimulus spending to boost the global economy and fight the financial crisis.

Group gains against Electoral College

by Valerie Richardson

DENVER | A movement to bypass the Electoral College and elect the president based on the popular vote is gaining steam, racking up almost one-fifth of the support needed to trigger the plan.

National Popular Vote, a California-based group formed in 2006, has won commitments from four states to award their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote. Those four states — Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois and Hawaii — have 50 electoral votes among them.

The goal is for states with a total of 270 electoral votes to enter into a compact in which they agree to give their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote.

Since presidential candidates need 270 electoral votes for victory, such a compact would ensure that the candidate earning the most votes nationwide would win the election, and the Electoral College would be made irrelevant. Campaigning would become radically different. The most obvious change is that there would be no advantage to getting 51 percent in a given state, thus no "battleground states."

The new system wouldn't kick in until the target is reached, said John Koza, chairman of National Popular Vote and the designer of the plan.

"We have 20 percent of the electoral votes we need," said Mr. Koza. "The whole idea of the bill is that no state can do this alone. It only goes into effect when we have 270 electoral votes."

At this rate, however, the system could be implemented in time for the 2016 presidential race. Nearly every state has introduced National Popular Vote legislation this year, and seven have passed bills in one chamber.

The next state to join the compact could be Colorado. In 2007 and 2008, the state Senate there passed the legislation, but not the House. In March, however, the House passed a popular-vote bill and sent it to the Senate, which has changed little since last year.

Proponents argue that the National Popular Vote has numerous advantages over the current system. All but two states now award their electoral votes based on a winner-take-all approach, which creates the chance that the winner of the Electoral College vote could be the loser of the popular vote.

It has happened three times in U.S. history, most recently in 2000, when Republican George W. Bush lost the popular vote but won the election by gaining more electoral votes than his opponent, Democrat Al Gore. In 2004, it almost happened again. If 60,000 votes in Ohio had shifted from Mr. Bush to Democrat John Kerry, Mr. Kerry would have won the electoral vote despite trailing by 3.5 million votes.

"The winner-take-all system isn't only undemocratic, it's also dysfunctional," said Colorado state Sen. Andy Kerr, a Democrat who sponsored the Colorado legislation.

Those recent squeaker elections may explain the push for a system tied more closely to the popular vote. Advocates of the National Popular Vote also insist that the legislation is bipartisan and wouldn't favor either political party in the presidential contest. The group's advisory board includes a handful of former Republican lawmakers such as Sen. Jake Garn of Utah and Rep. Tom Campbell of California.

However, the movement has garnered far more supporters among Democrats than Republicans. In Hawaii, for example, the legislation passed in 2008 only after both Democrat-controlled chambers overrode the veto of Gov. Linda Lingle, a Republican.

Republicans say Democrats are using the proposal to avenge their loss in the 2000 presidential race.

"For Democrats, it's a reaction to wanting to poke George W. Bush in the eye," said Colorado state Sen. Shawn Mitchell, a Republican who opposes the popular-vote legislation. "After the 2000 vote, Democrats seemed to react with 'popular vote good, Electoral College bad,' and Republicans, being more traditionalists, have responded with 'Electoral College good, popular vote bad.' "

Republicans also argue that the plan would favor large states and major metropolitan areas, where candidates are able to reach more voters with their advertising dollars. Since most big cities tilt leftward, the system would be more likely to pull candidates to the liberal end of the spectrum, they say.

Under the current system, say Democrats, candidates often end up concentrating their resources on the handful of close "battleground" states, which means that most voters receive little of the candidates' attention.

In the 2008 election, said Mr. Koza, two-thirds of the campaign dollars were spent in six states, and 90 percent was spent in 15 states.

"When you're in a non-battleground state, which is two-thirds of the states, you tend to get ignored," Mr. Koza said. "People are figuring out that in most states, they don't count. If anything, this presidential election reminded them that they don't count."

He predicted that a popular-vote system would force candidates to run national campaigns in which their focus is spread evenly through all 50 states. Opponents say that it's more likely the campaigns would end up concentrating on places where the voters are, such as Los Angeles and New York City, and Republicans would take their chances with swing states in that case.

"Those swing states can actually be quite diverse," Mr. Mitchell said. "It's a slam-dunk that the 10 battleground states are more representative of the broad national interest than the 10 biggest metropolitan areas."

Despite that argument, such current battleground states as Michigan and Colorado have had the measure go at least as far as approval by one chamber during a legislative session.

"That shows this isn't kryptonite in battleground states, either," Mr. Koza said. "This thing seems to have support all over the country."

National Popular Vote was started by Mr. Koza, a self-professed elections geek who published an Electoral College board game in 1966. He went on to serve as founder and chairman of Scientific Games, where he co-invented the rub-off lottery ticket.

He and Barry Fadeem, NPV's president and an attorney based in Lafayette, Calif., got their feet wet in legislative politics by lobbying on behalf of state-run lotteries. Mr. Koza now teaches courses in medicine and engineering at Stanford University as a consulting professor.

How banks were bullied into making bad loans

'Community activists' used pressure tactics to secure high-risk mortgages
WASHINGTON – Using tools provided by the federal community Reinvestment Act, community organizers led by a self-described "banking terrorist" applied bullying tactics to secure high-risk mortgages and to shake down lending institutions for billions of dollars – actions that likely contributed to the "mortgage meltdown" that triggered the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. ....

America for sale … to China?

(Compiler's note: Our nation's people had better "wake up" before it is too late.)

by JEROME CORSI

Leading economist requests dollar protection larger than U.S. homes

A high profile Chinese economist has begun circulating a new plan under which the U.S. government would guarantee foreign investments, so foreign nations with large dollar holdings in U.S. Treasury debt could convert that debt into equity to buy and own U.S. assets or invest in the nation's infrastructure without risk of loss, Jerome Corsi's Red Alert reports.

In the process, much of U.S. industry and infrastructure would be sold to the Chinese.

In the Financial Times of London, Yu Qiao, a professor of economics in the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsighua University in Beijing, proposed a plan for the U.S. government to guarantee foreign investments in the United States.

Corsi noted that while WND has reported that the Internet rumors Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had given China an eminent domain claim on U.S. homes and property were untrue, the plan advanced by Yu Qiao must be interpreted as a proposal the Chinese government wants the U.S. to give serious consideration.

"Secretary Clinton may not have pledged American homes to China, but the Obama administration may be willing to grant a financial guarantee as an incentive for China to convert U.S. debt into Chinese direct equity investment to establish Chinese ownership in U.S. successful corporations and potentially profitable infrastructure projects," Corsi wrote. "The Obama administration is now willing to put the U.S. up for sale to China to induce China to keep financing U.S. government deficit spending."

As WND has reported, the U.S. Treasury is preparing to borrow $2.5 trillion this year and another $4 trillion in 2010, an amount that would increase by 65 percent in two years the $10 trillion in national debt accumulated since George Washington was president.

WND has also reported the U.S. government faces more than $65 trillion in unfunded Social Security and Medicare benefits scheduled to be paid out largely to baby boomer retirees in coming decades.

Foreign nations now hold $1.6 trillion of U.S. government debt, with Asia, including China and Japan, holding half of the outstanding public-owned U.S. Treasury bonds.

China now directly or indirectly holds more than $1.2 billion of U.S. Treasury bonds.

If the U.S. dollar were to collapse under the weight of Obama's trillion dollar budget deficits, holders of U.S. debt could face substantial losses that the Financial Times estimated "would devastate Asians' hard-earned wealth and terminate economic globalization."

"The basic idea is to turn Asian savings, China's in particular, into real business interests rather than let them be used to support

U.S. over-consumption," Yu Qiao wrote, reflecting themes commonly suggested by Chinese government officials.

Red Alert's author, whose books "The Obama Nation" and "Unfit for Command" have topped the New York Times best-sellers list, said the plan to convert Chinese debt to equity investments in the United States could easily add another $1 trillion to outstanding Obama administration guarantees issued in the current economic crisis.

Corsi received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972. For nearly 25 years, beginning in 1981, he worked with banks throughout the U.S. and around the world to develop financial services marketing companies to assist banks in establishing broker/dealers and insurance subsidiaries to provide financial planning products and services to their retail customers. In this career, Corsi developed three different third-party financial services marketing firms that reached gross sales levels of $1 billion in annuities and equal volume in mutual funds. In 1999, he began developing Internet-based financial marketing firms, also adapted to work in conjunction with banks.

In his 25-year financial services career, Corsi has been a noted financial services speaker and writer, publishing three books and numerous articles in professional financial services journals and magazines.

For more information on China's push to acquire U.S. assets and for financial guidance during difficult times, read Jerome Corsi's Red Alert, the premium, online intelligence news source by the WND staff writer, columnist and author of the New York Times No. 1 best-seller, "The Obama Nation." ....

First U.S. Based Pro-al Qaeda Magazine Released

Insider Report

from NewsMax

1. Kissinger, Shultz Behind U.S.-Russian Arms Talks
2. Media Shun ‘Illegal Alien’ Designation
3. 100-Plus Scientists: Obama ‘Simply Incorrect’ on Global Warming
4. White House Staffers Prefer Foreign Cars
5. Arab Summit ‘Led Nowhere’
6. We Heard: Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Netanyahu, New York Times

1. Kissinger, Shultz Behind U.S.-Russian Arms Talks

A meeting in London between President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ended with the announcement that the U.S. and Russia will seek to further reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

But Newsmax has learned that progress toward arms reduction was set in motion by a little-publicized meeting last month involving Russian strong man Valdmir Putin and the two American elder statesmen, Henry Kissinger and George Shultz.

Kissinger, who served as Secretary of State under Presidents Nixon and Ford, and Schultz, President Reagan’s Secretary of State, traveled to Moscow along with former Sen. Sam Nunn and former Defense Secretary William Perry.

They were acting as private citizens and not on an official visit, but Obama was using the statesmen to sound out the Russians on arm reduction.

A source revealed that Obama and Schulz spoke by telephone before the Russian meeting, and that Obama voiced his strong support for their nuclear initiative. Obama reportedly said the matter was a priority for his new administration, though economic issues were taking center stage for the moment.

Kissinger told the Los Angeles Times that after meeting with Putin he had found ample grounds for cooperation.

“I’m happy to report that the differences were not so remarkable and the agreements were considerable,” he said.

Kissinger, Shultz, Nunn and Perry made their views on arms reduction clear in an article that was published in The Wall Street Journal in January.

The four statesmen advocate “reversing reliance on nuclear weapons globally as a vital contribution to preventing their proliferation into potentially dangerous hands, and ultimately ending them as a threat to the world.”

They argue that the end of the Cold War made the doctrine of mutual deterrence obsolete, but warn that the world is now “on the precipice of a new and dangerous nuclear era” in which North Korea and Iran could become nuclear powers and terrorists might obtain nuclear weapons.

To deal with the threat, what is needed is “intensive work with leaders of the countries in possession of nuclear weapons to turn the goal of a world without nuclear weapons into a joint enterprise,” the Kissinger team wrote in the Journal.

“Such a joint enterprise, by involving changes in the disposition of the states possessing nuclear weapons, would lend additional weight to efforts already under way to avoid the emergence of a nuclear-armed North Korea and Iran.”

Among the steps the statesmen suggest are “continuing to reduce substantially the size of nuclear forces in all states that possess them.”

That is precisely what Obama and Medvedev discussed in London. In a statement released after their meeting, the two leaders announced talks aimed at replacing the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which is set to expire in December.

Obama accepted Medvedev’s invitation to visit Moscow in July to assess negotiators’ progress on arms reduction, which would give the U.S. Senate enough time to debate and approve a new treaty before the December expiration date.

2. Media Shun ‘Illegal Alien’ Designation

Ingmar Guandique, recently charged in the 2001 slaying of Washington, D.C. intern Chandra Levy, is an illegal alien — a fact that has been widely ignored by much of the mainstream press.

“The designation of Guandique — who entered the U.S. illegally in 2000, was convicted of two nonfatal attacks on women and incarcerated — has reignited a debate over whether a person’s immigration status is relevant to the story,” conservative activist Howard Phillips writes in his Issues and Strategy Bulletin.

“Journalists also are debating whether the words ‘illegal’ and ‘immigrant’ are too loaded to use in an already emotionally charged story.”

Phillips — chairman of The Conservative Caucus, an advocacy group — notes that the National Association of Hispanic Journalists has campaigned against the use of the word “illegal” in copy and headlines, saying it “stereotypes” undocumented people.

But Brent Baker of the Media Research Center said: “Too many journalists don’t want to provide ammunition to those who want stricter immigration laws, so avoid connecting illegal immigrants to evidence which will bolster the argument that illegals cause harm.”

And John Solomon, executive editor of The Washington Times, has stated: “The suggestion that immigration status somehow is irrelevant or should be treated like race in a crime story seems flawed. Being white or black or Hispanic or Asian isn’t a crime. Entering the country illegally is.”

Phillips, who has run for president three times as the candidate of the U.S. Taxpayers Party, said The Washington Post referred to Guandique as a “Salvadoran day laborer,” ABC News called him an “incarcerated felon,” and CNN said he was a “jailed laborer.”

MSNBC called Guandique an “imprisoned Salvadoran immigrant,” CBS News and the Los Angeles Times said he was a “Salvadoran immigrant,” and The New York Times referred to him as a “suspect.”

The Washington Times, Time magazine and USA Today are among those that have called him an “illegal immigrant.”

3. 100-Plus Scientists: Obama ‘Simply Incorrect’ on Global Warming

Over 100 prominent scientists from more than a dozen countries — including a Nobel Prize winner — have signed a letter to President Barack Obama charging that his views on climate change are “simply incorrect.”

The letter — sponsored by the Cato Institute — cites a statement Obama made in November: “Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear.”

Under the headline, “With all due respect, Mr. President, that is not true,” the scientists state:

“We, the undersigned scientists, maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated. Surface temperature changes over the past century have been episodic and modest and there has been no net global warming for over a decade now…

“The computer models forecasting rapid temperature change abjectly fail to explain recent climate behavior. Mr. President, your characterization of the scientific facts regarding climate change and the degree of certainty informing the scientific debate is simply incorrect.”

The 115 signatories include Ivar Giaever, Ph.D., who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1973 for his work with superconductors at General Electric; John Blaylock, formerly with the Los Alamos National Laboratory; Richard Lindzen, Ph.D., at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and William Gray, Ph.D., the respected hurricane expert at Colorado State University.

The signers include scientists at Princeton University, U.S. Naval Academy, University of Kansas, University of Oklahoma, University of Colorado, and University of Missouri.

Among the countries represented by the signers are Britain, Canada, Italy, Norway, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Argentina and South Africa.

A number of the scientists are current or former reviewers with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with climate change crusader Al Gore — and have since reversed their views on man-made global warming.

4. White House Staffers Prefer Foreign Cars

President Barack Obama has taken steps to encourage Americans to buy more U.S.-made cars — but administration officials show a clear preference for vehicles from foreign-owned firms.

Obama said the government will guarantee warranties on any GM or Chrysler vehicles, and the IRS is notifying consumers who purchased cars after Feb. 16 that they can deduct the cost of any sales and excise taxes.

Yet Politico.com took a look at the vehicles on West Executive Drive, where White House staffers park, and found only five American cars out of 23 vehicles there.

As for several members of Obama’s presidential task force on the auto industry, The Detroit News reported:

• Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner owns a 2008 Acura.
• Larry Summers, Director of the White House’s National Economic Council, owns a 1995 Mazda.
• Peter Orszag, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, owns a 2008 Honda and a 2004 Volvo.
• “Climate czar” Carol Browner doesn’t currently own a vehicle, but previously drove a 1999 Saab.
• Vice President Joe Biden’s chief economist Jared Bernstein owns a 2005 Honda.
• Obama’s economic adviser Austan Goolsbee owns a 2004 Toyota.

5. Arab Summit ‘Led Nowhere’

If the recent Arab summit was intended to demonstrate solidarity within the 22-member Arab League, it was an utter failure — instead exposing deep rifts within the Arab world.

The summit in Qatar got off to a raucous start on Monday when Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi grabbed a microphone and insulted Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, calling him a “British product and American ally” — then stormed out of the gathering, according to The Associated Press.

Next, various factions got into a dispute over Iran. Egypt — whose leader Hosni Mubarak boycotted the summit — has expressed concern over Tehran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and its effort to promote Shia Islam in predominately Sunni nations, and Morocco went so far as to sever diplomatic relations with Iran over that issue.

But Syria let it be known that it stands staunchly beside Iran, and the host of the summit, the Emir of Qatar, defended Iran’s position.

The envoy from Egypt proceeded to issue a veiled criticism of the Al Jazeera network, which the Emir owns, saying that Arab media should be more responsible and refrain from exacerbating differences of opinion between Arab states, according to the Jerusalem Post.

But by the end of the first day of the scheduled 2-day summit, “it had become clear to the participants that they were going nowhere. So profound were the differences of opinion that there was no point of going on and no hope of reaching a consensus,” the Post reported — so the second day of the summit was cancelled.

But the Arab leaders did form a united front on one issue — they expressed support for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who has been accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court due to the genocide in his nation’s Darfur region.

A final statement read at the summit rejected an international arrest warrant issued against al-Bashir, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.

“We reiterate our solidarity with Sudan and our rejection of the measures of the … International Criminal Court against his Excellency,” the communiqué read.

Zvi Mazel wrote in the Post: “Once again, an Arab summit led nowhere. [The leaders’] weakness and indecision was made all too evident in the early closure of the summit.”

6. We Heard . . .

THAT people in more than 1,000 cities in over 80 countries observed Earth Hour 2009 on March 28, turning off lights in homes, offices and landmarks for 60 minutes to raise awareness about climate change.

The Hour began at 8:30 p.m. local time all around the world.

But when Drew Johnson, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, drove past the Nashville mansion of global warming alarmist Al Gore, he found floodlights illuminating the driveway and lights on inside the house.

THAT President Barack Obama has signed a bill designating the birthplace of former President Bill Clinton as a National Historic Site.

Clinton’s boyhood home on Hervey St. in Hope, Ark., joins 32 other presidential historic sites maintained by the National Park Service, according to the Texarkana Gazette.

The house was built in 1917, but has been restored to the era when Clinton was living there, from 1946 through 1950. It is now owned by the Clinton Birthplace Foundation, which has operated the home as a museum.

THAT a newspaper in Israel is reporting that new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“Politicians in touch with Netanyahu say he has already made up his mind to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations,” the Haaretz newspaper reports.

Haaretz cited a statement Netanyahu made during the campaign: “I promise that if I am elected, Iran will not acquire nuclear arms, and this implies everything necessary to carry this out.”

THAT New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said The Times will be “left standing after the deluge” of newspapers shutting down or going Internet-only.

Speaking at Stanford University to mark the opening of a new building for the student newspaper, Keller also quipped that the event felt a bit like a “ribbon-cutting at a new Pontiac dealership.”

It's official, Dem budget to 'redistribute income'

from WorldNetDaily

Tax hikes to hit $250,000 earners, 'maybe even going further down'

The nation needs to face the fact that income will be redistributed and health care rationed under a federal budget plan moving through Congress at the behest of President Obama, according to an official who served under President Clinton.

The plan, according to Lawrence J. Haas, former communications director for Vice President Al Gore, said Obama "wants to make permanent all the tax cuts from those years [2001 and 2003] for people making up to $250,000 a year and frankly to redistribute income a bit in a fair way so he would raise taxes on those above $250,000."

His comments came in an interview with Greg Corombos of Radio America/WND, and the audio is embedded here:

Haas, who also was communications director for the White House Office of Management and Budget under the Clinton administration, later worked as director of public affairs for the president at Yale University.

The interview starts out with Haas' condemnation of a GOP proposal for an alternative budget this year, saying it contains "unrealistic spending cuts."

Haas also said in recent budgets, the income "has been redistributed … in exactly the other direction," condemning tax cuts for anyone in an upper income bracket, a category that includes many business owners.

Haas said GOP plans for restraint are "radical."

"They would impose … they propose to severely limit spending across the board other than for defense and veterans programs," he said.

He explained the income redistribution plan:

"The tax cuts from 2001 and 2003 provided a disproportionate amount of the benefits for those in the top one, two percent of earners, so in essence what the president is attempting to do is make things a little bit fairer by way of asking those who have done so well in recent years to pay a little bit more … [while continuing] tax relief for people at the bottom, in the middle, in all candor who have struggled in recent years."

He said while the president "has proposed" protecting from tax increases those who make less than $250,000, even that's not assured.

Feel like you've lost control of your country? Get "Taking America Back," Joseph Farah's manifesto for sovereignty, self-reliance and moral renewal

"To the extent we need to raise taxes down the road we're going to have to sort of work our way down that income level starting with people making over $250,000," he said, "and maybe even going further down. I hope we don't have to do too much of that."

He said health care costs will play a major role in coming budgets.

"That's going to cause us to make some real decisions as to who gets how much health care and when they get it," he warned.

President Obama famously created an issue during the 2008 campaign by telling a plumber his goal was to spread the wealth.

WND also reported Obama believes the Constitution is flawed, because it fails to address wealth redistribution, and he says the Supreme Court should have intervened years ago to accomplish that.

Obama told Chicago's public station WBEZ-FM that "redistributive change" is needed, pointing to what he regarded as a failure of the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren in its rulings on civil rights issues in the 1960s.

The Warren court, he said, failed to "break free from the essential constraints" in the U.S. Constitution and launch a major redistribution of wealth. But Obama, then an Illinois state lawmaker, said the legislative branch of government, rather than the courts, probably was the ideal avenue for accomplishing that goal.

In the 2001 interview, Obama said:

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be OK

But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted, and the Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can't do to you. Says what the federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.

And that hasn't shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused I think 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 coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.

The video is available here:

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Surviving economic meltdown in the age of Obama

Families learning of $163,000 tax 'bomb'

An economics professor from Stanford is warning Americans soon will discover a $163,000-per-family tax "bomb" inside President Obama's budget plans, which have pushed U.S. deficits toward "banana republic levels."

The alert comes from Michael J. Boskin, who praised some of Obama's economic plans in a Wall Street Journal column but saw red flags waving for other provisions.....

Controversial Arizona Sheriff Snubbed by House Panel on Immigration

from FoxNews

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio couldn't defend himself because the House didn't invite him.

Two House Judiciary subcommittees convened Thursday to examine allegations of unconstitutional immigration enforcement tactics -- and took target practice at Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona, whose controversial methods have been called racist by activists and Democratic lawmakers.

But Arpaio didn't defend himself on Capitol Hill. He did not testify to the committee and he did not attend the joint hearing.

That's because the Maricopa County, Ariz., law enforcement chief wasn't invited, said House Judiciary Committee sources.

"He was not asked or invited to come to this hearing, but he wasn't the direct focus of it," a source within the Judiciary Committee, speaking on condition of anonymity, told FOXNews.com.

The joint hearing by the House Judiciary Committee Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law Subcommittee and Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Subcommittee Thursday was convened to "focus on wide-ranging allegations of racial profiling in connection with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement's 287 program." It also was used to "examine allegations of unconstitutional policing and immigration enforcement tactics" like those used by Arpaio.

Arpaio's policing methods have drawn widespread criticism from lawmakers and activist groups, like Amnesty International and the ACLU, for allegedly using racial profiling to fight crime in the Southwest. The Arizona sheriff and his deputies have also come under fire for keeping harsh prison conditions and for unfairly targeting illegal immigrants.

Arpaio, who promotes himself as "America's Toughest Sheriff," said he's being unfairly vilified for his approach to law enforcement.

"It's a political witch hunt to use me to stop local law enforcement from enforcing federal laws," Arpaio told FOXNews.com on Thursday, noting that activists who regularly protest his policing hold up signs calling him "Hitler" and "Nazi."

"I've been the sheriff going on 17 years, and I always get re-elected. And all the polls on this issue of immigration support me so it's just a small minority of politicians and activists who accuse me" of mistreating suspects, Arpaio said.

Among the primary concerns during testimony was section 287 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which was put into law in 1996 as a result of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.

Section 287 authorizes the secretary of Homeland Security to enter into agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies that allow them to identify and detain immigration offenders they encounter during their law enforcement operations.

On Thursday, members of Congress and some of Arpaio's most outspoken critics -- like Mesa, Ariz., Police Chief George Gascon -- met on Capitol Hill to review the impact of federal immigration law on the ability to combat crime by illegal immigrants while also protecting their civil rights.

Gascon did not mention Arpaio by name during his opening testimony, but said the authority handed to local police by federal officials has created an environment in which racial profiling and "constitutional concerns" are setting back the effort to protect the public.

"The impact on local law enforcement in this politically charged environment can be devastating. In some cases, it is setting the police profession back to the 1950s and '60s when police officers were sometimes viewed in minority communities as the enemy," he said.

During Thursday's testimony, Arpaio's absence was noted.

"I want to make clear that he declined to come," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., chairwoman of the immigration subcommittee.

But when Lofgren was questioned by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, about whether the sheriff had been formerly invited, Lofgren said, "No, he said in advance he would not intend to come. In a newspaper article he said he would not come."

Arpaio, who has served as Maricopa County's sheriff since 1992, said he has dedicated the last 30 years working with the federal government, inside the Justice Department and as a Drug Enforcement Administration official, and he would think lawmakers would want to hear about his experience.

"You think they would have called me just to get my expertise -- if nothing else -- about the Mexican-U.S. border. But instead they get one of my biggest critics -- a Mesa police chief who doesn’t like me going into his town arrested illegals -- and a couple other people," he said.

"These congressmen never had the courtesy to ask me to speak," he said.

Arpaio also defended his policing methods, saying they are both constitutional and effective in lowering crime rates.

"We investigated 147,000 people booked into our jail under 287. And 23,000 murderers all the way down we proved are illegal so they can not get back on the street. That's why crime has gone down in this area," he said.

The sheriff said he has invited congressional critics to come to Arizona to observe his operations, but so far has got no response.

"I'm just enforcing the law that I took an oath of office to enforce. And nobody's going to deter me or scare me away," he said. "They can go after me all they want, but I'm very comfortable the way I run my operation."

Perry Asks US to Share Illegal Immigrants' Data

by Houston Chronicle

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has requested that top Department of Homeland Security officials resolve “vulnerabilities” that have allowed illegal immigrants to hold onto valid Texas driver’s licenses and slip undetected through the state’s jails.

Perry asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano this week to take a series of steps to improve information-sharing between federal, state and local law enforcement. The Homeland Security-related issues “seriously affect public safety in Texas,” Perry wrote earlier this week in a letter to Napolitano.

A spokeswoman for Napolitano, Sara Kuban, said Napolitano would respond directly to Perry and declined to comment on the specific issues raised in the letter.

The governor’s requests include:

• Giving all Texas jails access to a database that automatically checks suspects’ immigration history. So far, 19 of the 252 jails in the state with electronic fingerprint booking participate in the program, including the Harris County Sheriff’s Office and Houston Police Department.....

Fusion Centers: A Reality Check

(Compiler's note: Must read)

by Phil Leggiere

DHS civil liberties officer dispels negative myths but acknowledges real privacy challenges of fusion centers

Last month DHS secretary Napolitano praised fusion centers, the state and major city facilities that enable federal, state, local, tribal and territorial governments and the owners and operators of critical infrastructure to share information and intelligence, calling them a front line area of law enforcement and a lynchpin of efforts to improve intelligence sharing.

The Fusion Center initiative, which has inspired several dozen state and local centers nationwide over the past few years, has nonetheless been a civil liberties lightning rod and, by implication political hot potato.

Revelations late last year that Maryland State Police had entered the names and personal information of peace activists and anti-war protesters into state and federal databases as potential terrorists have raised the specter of rampant domestic spying.

As covered in depth by HSToday.us, the exposure last month of a February 2009 Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) report on the militia movement which critics said listed support for third-party candidates like Ron Paul and Bob Barr as potential signs of “extremist” tendencies, has also sparked widespread outcry about unwarranted and inappropriate federal government monitoring. Facing a political firestorm Jay Nixon (D-Mo.), governor of Missouri, last week formally retracted the report.

On Wednesday of this week, in testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment, Acting DHS Deputy Officer for Programs and Compliance David D. Gersten, Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, acknowledged and addressed some of the challenges faced by fusion centers, while at the same time dispelling some of the myths he said were being unfairly promulgated.

One current myth, Gerstein explained, was that the armed forces are prominent players in the fusion centers. While some armed forces service members participate in a handful of fusion centers, he said, “the presence is nominal, not pervasive, and their role is to provide support to civilian law enforcement and other non-Federal agencies with homeland security responsibilities, not to lead, direct or participate in it.”

Another myth, according to Gerstein, involves inappropriate sharing of information with the private sector. Some fusion centers, he explained, have leveraged “the expertise of local sector associations or coalitions in identifying critical infrastructure and how to secure it.”

These activities, he maintained, “are squarely within DHS’ mission and the mission of State and local law enforcement.”

“Fusion centers,” Gerstein said, “share information when it relates to protection of critical infrastructure, or upon learning of a threat to a particular company or business. While this potentially poses some concerns, our Office has not seen civil liberties problems arising out of the relationship between fusion centers and the private sector.”

Although fusion centers in general could invoke civil liberties issues, Gerstein said, “the reality has not borne out the theories that have been advanced by some concerning fusion centers’ actual activities.” In almost all cases, he added, “fusion center activity involves exactly what the 9/11 Commission recommended – Federal, State, local and tribal personnel sitting elbow-to-elbow, sharing information and connecting the dots to ensure homeland security and public safety.”

Myths aside, Gerstein acknowledged continued concern that fusion centers face a number of challenges that could impact civil rights and liberties.

The primary, still relevant concern, he said, was lack of consistency in mission.

“Fusion centers are comprised of representatives of multiple Federal, State, local and tribal governments, and therefore lack single, one-size-fits-all structures or identical chains-of-command,” Gerstein said. “Instead they are more like task forces, formed under one State or local agency’s legal authority, but comprised of representatives of many agencies. They are typically led by a State Police or State homeland security equivalent, or possibly under the management of the local Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council established by the United States Attorneys."

Gerstein said "collaborative agreements then are used to integrate partners who work within the fusion center. With few exceptions, Memoranda of Agreement or Understanding do not exist, though many are being negotiated between states and the Department of Homeland Security. These MOUs are needed to govern the roles and responsibilities of deployed DHS analysts in fusion centers, and their absence could lead to a lack of clarity of institutional roles within fusion centers.”

Oversight of the fusion centers also poses a challenge, Gerstein said.

“Because fusion centers are run by the States,” Gerstein explained, “direct oversight by the Federal government presents real federalism issues. While some fusion centers are closely overseen by State government offices, such as the State’s attorney’s office, the precise extent of close supervision by State, local and Tribal governments at each fusion center is not always clear due to varying State government structures.”

Gerstein expressed optimism, however, that at the Federal level DHS could establish certain expectations through Federal grant funding and guidance documents.

In particular he cited the Baseline Capabilities document released in September 2008.

“ In partnership with the fusion centers,” he said, “ DHS and its Federal partners have established expectations and guidelines on fusion center operations through the Fusion Center Guidelines and the Baseline Capabilities for State and Major Urban Area Fusion Centers.”

“The Guidelines are intended to be used to ensure that fusion centers are established and operated consistently, resulting in enhanced coordination efforts, strengthened partnerships, and improved crime-fighting and antiterrorism capabilities,” he added. “By achieving a baseline level of capability, fusion centers will have the necessary structures, processes, and tools in place to support the gathering, processing, analysis, and dissemination of terrorism, homeland security, and law enforcement information. Most fusion centers are in the process of achieving the capabilities, though it may take up to five years to achieve all of the capabilities.”

In regard to privacy impact assessment, cited some progress in providing a uniform training mechanism through the creation of the “Civil Liberties Institute”, a program that provides high quality training on issues at the intersection of homeland security and civil rights and civil liberties.

Through a partnership with the DHS Privacy Office and the DHS I&A State and Local Program Office 34 analysts currently deployed to the fusion centers are undergoing civil liberties training, Gerstein said. In addition DHS in collaboration with the Department of Justice ( DOJ) Office of Justice Programs has launched what Gerstein referred to as a “multifaceted privacy and civil liberties training program to support the more than 70 fusion centers around the country.”

Alluding to the Maryland surveillance incident involving collection of data on anti-war protest groups, Gerstein said that, “ One specific area that has been much in the media involves the difficulty in sharing information and providing threat assessments where protected activities, such as First Amendment free speech and assembly, are involved. Security personnel at all levels of government often struggle with this problem.”

For example, Gerstein said, “ if a demonstration is going to occur at a Federal facility, those charged with securing the facility would be negligent if they failed to ensure the safety of the facility and those within. Yet “right-sizing” security measures would be impossible without knowing the nature of the protest, and whether it is likely to cause security or operational problems. This necessarily requires at least a limited inquiry into the nature of a group planning a protest, and whether it espouses violence, civil disobedience, or other potentially disruptive tactics.”

“ At the same time,” he insisted, “ we must be very careful to ensure that the Government is not infringing or chilling an individuals’ right to speak freely and to protest. Intelligence personnel at the Federal level are not authorized to collect information regarding US Persons solely for the purpose of monitoring activities protected by the US Constitution, such as the First Amendment protected freedoms of religion, speech, press, and peaceful assembly and protest. If information has some connection to constitutionally protected activities, it may be collected only where such collection is incidental to the authorized purpose. Procedures are in place that require intelligence personnel to consult with counsel or I&A’s Intelligence Oversight Officer when any initiative may impact constitutionally protected activities.”

An ongoing problem, Gerstein acknowledged, was how to apply these clear-cut distinctions on a local level.

At the State level, he said, “ policies relating to these topics are often less clear and uniform. The question of how State, local and Tribal governments handle these issues is often decided by State, local or tribal agencies other than the fusion centers. The well-publicized struggles with this problem, particularly at the State level, demonstrate a need for continued policy development and training.”

More broadly, Gerstein observed, especially on the state level, “there is still a significant challenge in determining whether and to what extent it is appropriate for fusion centers to use open source information that involves First Amendment-protected activities. If the collection, retention and use of information - even publicly available - involves protected speech, assembly or other activities, it could be viewed as unlawful monitoring by government. As we have seen in recent months, the collection of open source information about protected activities may result in scandal when government is perceived to be keeping tabs on protest groups for political purposes.”

Gerstein concluded that the major civil liberties challenge for fusion centers going forward was to apply strong unified federal frameworks already in place within a context of diverse state laws. Addressing this challenge, he added, would be critical to the long-term success not only of the fusion center concept, but to the “new federalism” in homeland security policy and operations advocated by President Obama and Secretary Napolitano.