Of Heroes and Hatred

By Lt. Col. Oliver North (ret.)

July 15, 2005

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In the midst of one of the greatest challenges we have ever faced, we in the Western world have developed a serious communications problem. In this era of hyper-sensitivity and political-correctness, words no longer have meaning. Those who are good are too often portrayed as evil; indefensibly wicked acts are made less so by the way they are described. Words like "hero" and "hatred" have lost definition. In the midst of a struggle for survival, the inability to discern attackers from allies, friends from foes and heroes from cowards is potentially catastrophic.

Earlier this week, Scotland Yard and MI5 -- the British domestic intelligence service -- concluded that three of the four young men who killed 52 people with backpack bombs in London on July 7 were home-grown. Law enforcement and security officials suspect that the plastic explosives used to create the carnage originated in Bosnia -- and were smuggled into the U.K. "by a criminal enterprise" after transiting much of the European Union. Investigators described the perpetrators as "criminals" and characterized the event as "unlawful." The government-subsidized BBC referred to them as "bombers" and the act as "barbaric." But for reasons too arcane for most of us to comprehend, none of these stewards of public safety are calling the killers what they are -- or their deed what it is. Those who planned and carried out the killing are, of course, radical Islamic fanatics who committed a horrific act of terrorism.

In the Netherlands, Mohammed Bouyeri, the confessed murderer of Dutch documentary filmmaker Theo van Gogh went on trial in The Hague this week. Instead of putting on a defense, Bouyeri arose in the court and announced that he was proud of what he had done, would have killed more if he could and would do it all again if given the chance. The charge Bouyeri faces is "aggravated murder," not terrorism. In describing the crime, Dutch prosecutors have steadfastly refused to describe Bouyeri as an Islamic radical -- though he has called himself a "soldier of Allah."

Here in the United States, we're not doing much better. The U.S. media has made the Abu Ghraib story front-page "news" for nine months -- and left the impression that the aberrant behavior of a few was common-place in the U.S. Armed Forces. An edited tape of a U.S. Marine firing at what he thought was a wounded, but armed and hostile, enemy combatant in a mosque in Fallujah was broadcast countless times by our television networks. Yet, when the Marine's court martial resulted in an acquittal, it was barely covered. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., compared the men and women of our Armed Forces to those of Cambodia's Pol Pot, Joe Stalin and Adolf Hitler -- and there were U.S. politicians who said there was no need for an apology.

The flip side of all this is also painfully obvious. The word "hero" no longer means one who has willingly put himself in grave physical jeopardy for the benefit of another. Heroes are people who overcome evil by doing good at great personal risk. Through self-sacrifice, fortitude and action -- whether they succeed or fail -- heroes provide a moral and ethical framework -- and inspiration -- for the rest of us.

Unfortunately, our modern definition of "hero" has been corrupted to include all manner of people who do not warrant the title. The athlete who just set a new sports record isn't a hero. Nor is the "daring" movie star or even the adventurer out to be the first solo climber to scale Mt. Everest. They may be brave -- but they don't meet the definition of a hero, for whatever they achieve benefits only "self." Real heroes are selfless.

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Jonathan Holsey really is a hero. A nine-year Army veteran, Staff Sgt. Holsey was serving in the 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment -- one of the units I've been privileged to cover in Iraq for FOX News. A roadside bomb -- placed by a terrorist, not an insurgent, not a "bomber," a terrorist -- so severely wounded him that his left leg had to be removed below the knee at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He now wears a prosthetic leg -- yet he plans to stay in the Army. When I asked him why, he replied, "because my soldiers need me. We have a war to win -- and my country needs me."

Marine Lance Cpl. Jake Knospler is another hero. On November 12th, 2004, Knospler was leading his fire team in the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines during the fight to liberate Fallujah from terrorists -- not "freedom fighters," terrorists. An enemy grenade hit Knospler in the face, blowing away his jaw and part of his skull. He miraculously survived his terrible wounds and more than a dozen surgeries since. In the next two weeks, doctors at Bethesda National Naval Medical Center will reinstall part of Knospler's shattered skull that was removed and sewn into his chest until he was healthy enough to withstand the operation. Knospler told me, "I have to get better. My country, my corps and my family are counting on me."

These are just two of the countless heroes I've been blessed to see on the battlefield -- and in hospitals around the country. Unlike Her Majesty's government, Dutch prosecutors, much of our media and too many of our politicians, they have no trouble telling good from evil. They have confronted terror and persevered. In this age of ruptured rhetoric and garbled language we should be grateful that we have such young Americans who know the difference.

Oliver North is a nationally syndicated columnist and the founder and honorary chairman of Freedom Alliance.

Let's hear MORE on Karl

For those of you, who aren't FROM around here, or haven't paid much attention to my letters to The Daily Nonpareil newspaper, I have recently asked one of my detractors to offer us some timely advice, or articulate his version of the Karl Rove story. This is a person who supposedly has a son, serving in the Marines in Iraq, and is completely against anything and everything done by the current administration in Iraq, and elsewhere on the globe.

He's the kind who cannot have an intellectually-honest discussion of facts, and who eschews the truth with the disdain of an eight-year-old child, on his second trip to the dentist for several fillings. He cannot help but attack his political adversaries, in a very personal way, and attempt to hold them responsible for everything he can utter, in the way of misdeeds, whether true or not.

As a hard-core member of the extreme left, he probably is obsessed with destroying Rove simply because they want to taint President Bush by taking out one of his closest confidants.

This guy, and his kind, are not completely focused on their fantasy that Vice President Cheney is the de facto president, . . . . sometimes, they think Karl wears that hat. To them, the destruction of Karl Rove is to neuter the Bush presidency. It's all about playing to their base.

As resolute, effective, and visionary as President Bush has been, during his time in office, the extreme left obviously still doesn't consider him the man in charge. Only a superhuman Machiavellian strategist could have engineered this bumbler's unlikely ascension to the presidency. Again, playing to the base.

And, anyone capable of facilitating a lightweight's rise to the highest office in the land must be not only brilliant, but sinister. For who but a sociopath would foist on the nation such a dangerous Neanderthal, hell-bent on reversing the advances of "progressivism"?

The extreme left's underestimation of Bush and irrational fear of Rove distort their perception and drive them into a mouth-foaming feeding frenzy to devour this mad political scientist. These misapprehensions also explain their jaded view of the baseless claims against Rove in the Valerie Plame matter.

But in considering the extreme left's possible motives in this manufactured scandal against Karl Rove, let's not forget the underlying subject matter driving the story: the extreme left's obsessive claim that Bush lied in maintaining that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling or trying to acquire WMD. Talk about revisionists! These guys conveniently forget that they were right there, calling for action, (playing to their base), during the months of late-September, October and November of 2001, but we're all supposed to ignore those facts, and concentrate on the rhetoric they're uttering these days, instead.

As editorial columnist, David Limbaugh pointed out, recently, "If there were such a thing as the personification and eventual death of an ideology, American liberalism would doubtlessly derive some degree of deathbed comfort from repeatedly chanting until it's final breath the 'Bush lied' mantra. What began as a monstrous deception would finally ripen into a full-blown delusion where the engineers of the lie came to believe it themselves into eternity."

But the extreme left is far from gone, and it's eager to retrofit any available snippets, no matter how intrinsically unreliable, onto its "Bush lied about Iraqi WMD" template. One such snippet was former-Ambassador Joseph Wilson's supposed revelation that President Bush lied when stating these notorious 16 words in his 2003 State-of-the-Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Now, let's be completely clear, here, . . . . President Bush's statement was true when he made it, and it remains true today. The British made such a claim and reiterated it emphatically (with the Butler inquiry expressly validating President Bush's State-of-the-Union claim) even after the Bush-scavenging extreme left falsely accused him of inventing the story. So much for honoring truth, among those we send to Congress.

That Joseph Wilson claims he couldn't substantiate Britain's findings on his own trip to Niger in no way alters the irrefutable fact that the British made, and stood by, their claim. But as we now also know, analysts contradict Wilson's present version of the story, saying that his findings did more to support the Brits' conclusion than discredit it.

In their zeal to dispatch Karl Rove, the extreme left willfully ignores that Joseph Wilson not only lied about his findings but also about who sent him, denying his wife recommended him for the job, and sometimes, even alleging that Vice President Cheney, who didn't know him from any other bureaucrat, sent him.

The extreme left simply ignore that a bipartisan (that means it includes members of the extreme left party, the Democrats), Senate Intelligence Committee completely discredited Joseph Wilson in two essential particulars: 1.) It confirmed that Plame recommended her husband for the African junket, . . . and, . . . 2.) It found that certain forged documents Wilson bragged about debunking were not even discovered until some EIGHT MONTHS after his trip to Niger.

The extreme left also chooses to overlook Joseph Wilson's OBVIOUS political motivation to damage President Bush -- his admitted longtime support of John Forbes Kerry and his monetary contributions to Kerry's presidential campaign.

They would have us believe the flawlessly calculating genius, that man named Karl Rove is gratuitously vindictive. That he is foolish enough to risk conspicuously violating a federal criminal statute by revealing an undercover CIA operative to a presumptively hostile member of the mainstream media, . . . and all for the sake of petty revenge on the Joseph Wilson/Valarie Plame duo. I can only imagine the fabricated facts that will appear, when my adversary takes up the gauntlet. Are you out there, Bill?

It strains all intellectually-honest credulity far less to deduce that Mr. Karl Rove -- who readily provided information to authorities with no apparent fear of incriminating himself -- alluded to Joseph Wilson's wife's CIA status to refute his fraudulent implications against the Bush administration: that it sent former Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger.

It is uncontroverted that Karl Rove didn't know Plame's name, much less that she was a covert operative. He was alerting Time's Matt Cooper to the incestuous, conflict of interest-laden genesis of Wilson's assignment (through his wife) in defense of his boss, not to lash out at or imperil this star-struck couple, who didn't even respect Ms. Valarie Plame's undercover status themselves. It's also uncontroverted that the couple had appeared in Vanity Fair, PRIOR to all this hoopla.

If the extreme left didn't have so much invested in Joseph Wilson's fictions and obliterating Karl Rove and his boss, George W. Bush, they would abandon this non-starter against Rove and concede that the clear misfit in this overblown episode is the truly tainted and already thoroughly discredited Joseph Wilson, himself. I sure hope my adversarial nemesis takes up my challenge, as I cannot wait to point him to these archives for this very story, predicting his position, and debunking it, in advance. Looking forward to having heard from you in The Daily Rag, Bill! In the mean time, I'm still praying for your son.

God Bless,
Dan'L

Presidential Privilege

You win the White House, you make the judical nominations.

By Senator Orrin G. Hatch

The judicial-selection process must be fair, constructive, and consistent with constitutional principles. Yet less than two weeks after Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement, and before President Bush has even chosen a nominee, we already see some disturbing signs that could threaten both the Senate's integrity and the judiciary's independence.

The Constitution has established a judicial-selection process by clearly assigning separate roles for the president and the Senate, giving authority to nominate and appoint judges to the president. Some senators and left-wing groups, apparently unwilling to accept that elections have consequences, seem to accept this arrangement only when it produces judges they like. If not, they prefer to talk about alternative arrangements that they either make up out of thin air or that the Constitutional Convention rejected.

We are, however, governed not by principles America's founders rejected, but by those they enshrined in the Constitution. If reading Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution is not clear enough, Alexander Hamilton reminds us in Federalist No. 65 that "in the business of appointments the executive will be the principal agent."

After the president nominates, the Senate has a role of "advice and consent" as a check on a nominee's final appointment. Perhaps the best way to understand this phrase is that the Senate gives its "advice" about whether the President should appoint someone by giving or withholding its "consent." In Federalist No. 66, Hamilton again clarifies that senators "cannot themselves choose" nominees, but "can only ratify or reject the choice of the president." Traditionally, the Senate has done so through up or down votes.

Some senators and their left-wing allies are trying to change this constitutional arrangement. In absolute contradiction to the Constitution's plain text and the Founders' clear intent, they claim that the Senate has an independent, co-equal role in picking judges. They separate "advice" from "consent," applying the former to nomination and the latter to confirmation.

The fact that the president and the Senate each has a role, however, does not make those roles co-equal. The Founders' view that the president is the "principal agent" and this new theory that the president and Senate are "co-equal partners" cannot both be true. The purpose of this novel theory is obvious, and it is to change the Constitution's assignment of judicial selection roles in order to appoint different judges. As Senator Edward Kennedy said on the Senate floor on July 12, the consultation Democrats demand "is more than a process, it's about an outcome." That outcome is a "consensus" nominee who will win "widespread bipartisan support," whether or not it is whom the president wants to appoint.

In other words, this scheme aims at forcing the president who did win the election to nominate someone acceptable to his opponents who did not. It seeks to turn consultation into co-nomination. Not content to exercise the role the Constitution does assign to the Senate by vigorously debating and then voting on a nominee, these senators and their left-wing enablers want to create a role the Constitution does not assign to the Senate, by manipulating the president's choice of a nominee.

This invented arrangement may serve their political agenda, but it is radically different from what the Constitution prescribes. Especially where the judicial branch is concerned, we should prefer the Constitution over politics. And the Constitution allows the President to decide how best to fulfill his constitutional responsibility of nomination.

Those who cannot justify their actions on the merits often retreat to saying "they did it too."
Those trying to justify filibusters of majority supported judicial nominations, for example, claimed Republicans had done the same. That, of course, completely re-defining what a filibuster is, but that is what happens in the absence of a persuasive argument. And today, some senators try to say that their demand for pre-nomination consultation producing consensus nominees is no different than what happened in the 1990s, when the partisan roles were reversed.

In 1993, President Clinton sought my input when considering a replacement for the retiring Justice Byron White. Some senators are today fond of waving my book Square Peg, in which I described cautioning President Clinton that confirming some candidates he was considering, such as then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, would be difficult. President Clinton instead nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and she was easily confirmed.

President Clinton sought my input without my demanding it because he believed it would help him fulfill his constitutional responsibility for making judicial nominations. He did so not because Senate Republicans threatened filibusters or demanded some kind of veto power over his nominations. We did not try to impose a "consensus" standard or insist that a nominee meet some super-majority "widespread support" threshold.

Instead, President Clinton sought my input because I had established a cooperative relationship with him, because he knew his nominees would be treated fairly. Senators demanding consultation and threatening filibusters today might instead consider taking the same approach. Perhaps earning consultation will work better than demanding it.

While I appreciate publicity for my book, I have yet to hear a Democratic senator who holds it up also quote from page 126, where I write: "One of the consequences of a presidential election...is that the winner has the right to appoint nominees to the court." In fact, at the same time I was giving President Clinton the input he sought, I also said on the Senate floor: "The President won the election. He ought to have the right to appoint the judges he wants to." Some who today demand consultation appear to have rejected that notion altogether.

In the end, the constitutional principle is simple. The president, not the Senate, makes judicial nominations. The Senate's role is a check on appointment, not a veto on nomination. Every president must decide for himself what will help him fulfill his constitutional responsibility. President Bush has chosen to reach out to more than 60 senators for input, including more than half of the Democratic Caucus and every member of the Judiciary Committee. Such consultation, as well as his eventual nomination, are his choice.

Shortly after President Bush took office in 2001, the Senate Democratic leadership vowed to use "whatever means necessary" to defeat undesirable judicial nominees. That spring, Democrats huddled with left-wing strategists to "change the ground rules" for the judicial-confirmation process. The filibusters that followed and the current demand for "consultation" and "consensus" nominees is part of that strategy. As Senator Kennedy put it, this is not about a fair process but a desirable outcome. The Senate's integrity and the judiciary's independence, however, requires rejecting political gimmicks and sticking with constitutional principle.

— The Honorable Orrin G. Hatch is a Republican senator to the United States Senate from Utah. Senator Hatch is former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Who's carrying the Water??

Ex-Clinton Aide Charges Republicans 'Want to Kill Us'

By Jeff Johnson
CNSNews.com
Senior Staff Writer

July 15, 2005

(CNSNews.com) -- Young liberals this week flocked to the nation's capital to hear, among other things, liberal television pundit and Democrat political strategist Paul Begala accuse Republicans of wanting to kill him and his children to preserve tax cuts for the rich.

Begala was featured at the first-ever Campus Progress National Student Conference, which was designed to provide campus liberals with the tools necessary to fight the conservative movement. The event also drew former President Bill Clinton, for whom Begala once worked as an advisor.

A panel discussion entitled "Winning the War of Ideas" centered on the book of the same name by Thomas Frank and detailed the challenges that Democrats face in persuading voters in the American heartland and elsewhere to embrace their agenda and support their candidates.

Begala's presence on the panel created a stir when he declared that Republicans had "done a piss-poor job of defending" the U.S.

Republicans, he said, "want to kill us.

"I was driving past the Pentagon when that plane hit" on Sept. 11, 2001. "I had friends on that plane; this is deadly serious to me," Begala said.

"They want to kill me and my children if they can. But if they just kill me and not my children, they want my children to be comforted -- that while they didn't protect me because they cut my taxes, my children won't have to pay any money on the money they inherit," Begala said. "That is bulls*** national defense, and we should say that."

The Clinton administration's national security efforts involved the right blend of "experience" and "strength," Begala said, an assertion with which the 9/11 Commission apparently disagreed.
In its report, the bipartisan commission stated that "each president considered or authorized covert actions, a process that consumed considerable time -- especially in the Clinton administration -- and achieved little success beyond the collection of intelligence."

Begala also included Republican domestic policies in his sweeping criticism. The GOP, he said, "ain't had a new idea since they opposed Social Security, and guess what, they still do. ... They are beginning to figure out that there is no Soviet Union, but they still want Star Wars to stop it," Begala said.

"Okay, they are utterly and completely brain-dead," echoing comments earlier this year by Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, who accused Republicans of being "brain dead."

Frank insisted that Republicans are not quite as tough on national security as many Americans think.

"Franklin Roosevelt got us in World War II. They dragged the Republicans kicking and screaming. They didn't want to get in that war. They didn't have any problem with Hitler. I won't go so far as to say they thought Hitler rocked. But there were people in America who did, and they didn't want us to get in that war. Democrats have always been just as tough as Republicans once they're in office," Frank said.

Frank did not mention one of the most vocal opponents of U.S. intervention in World War II: Democrat Joseph P. Kennedy, who was one of Roosevelt's top fundraisers, the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain and father of John F. Kennedy, who would later become America's 35th president.

Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., the eldest of the ambassador's sons, wrote his father with his own observations of the global conflict. Hitler's "dislike of the Jews ... was well-founded," the younger Kennedy explained in his letter.

"In every revolution, you have to expect some bloodshed. Hitler is building a spirit in his men that could be envied in this country," wrote Kennedy, Jr., expressing an opinion his father shared.

"I was very pleased and gratified at your observations of the German situation, and I think your conclusions are very sound," the elder Kennedy replied to his son.
Frank defended his point, however, claiming that Republicans didn't see Hitler as a threat to America until Pearl Harbor.

He repeated the Democratic criticism of America's invasion of Iraq. Saddam Hussein "was a horrible (sic), a dictator, a butcher, a tyrant, a mass murderer -- as evil as they come," Frank said, but he added: "I don't think he was a threat to the U.S. at the time."

Former Clinton administration Chief of Staff John Podesta told the students that "you can fight hard for what you believe without breaking the law, without cheating and certainly without checking your morals at the door."

Attack Mode -- DefCon Four

So there it was.

Yesterday, New York Senator Chuck Schumer held a press conference with his fellow partisan leftist Joe Wilson, husband of Valerie Plame. First off, it's important to understand the politics of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Wilson is not a principled husband upset that his wife's cover as a CIA agent was blown.

Joe Wilson is a Bush-bashing partisan Democrat who is determined to sell as many copies of his book as possible and try and embarrass the Bush administration.

Now that we have that out of the way, let's examine what this slug said yesterday when he slithered out from underneath his rock:

Wilson says that since George Bush said last year he would fire anyone who leaked Plame's name, he thinks that means Rove should be fired.

Well , . . Let's look at the facts. There's a bit of a problem here. Bush said that he would "handle" anyone who "broke the law." Rove broke no law. He's not even the target of any criminal investigation. And just in case Wilson or his cronies want to claim that Rove lied a year ago when he said that he wasn't the source of any leak; what Rove said was that he did not name Valerie Plame.

He's right, he didn't. This all comes back to the war in Iraq. After his wife sent him to Africa to investigate the Saddam uranium claims, Wilson lied about who sent him, Wilson wrote a hit piece on the administration in the New York Times. This is all about Wilson's politics. These lies have been thoroughly debunked, and stand of their own accord, against investigations by Congress and others, who have discredited nearly all of Wilson's statements.

We still don't know where any of this leads. Keep an eye on that New York Times reporter who is protecting her source. A source we probably don't know, as I've already pointed out.

The special prosecutor says Rove isn't the target.

Who is?

We don't know, and neither does the anyone in the media. When the special prosecutor finishes his work, we will know, . . . and THAT'S the way it's supposed to work!

God Bless,
Dan'L

ALERT:
In 1994, during the Clinton administration, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) introduced the "Violence Against Women Act" (VAWA). It passed, and was re-authorized in 2000; now, it's up for another re-authorization vote in the Senate, with support from plenty of groups like NOW and the Feminist Majority.

Sounds good, right?? No one supports violence against women. So we should support the re-authorization of this Act, right?

Actually, NO -- at least, not as it's presently written. Somewhere along the way, VAWA became "a huge funneling scheme to radical feminist activists who use the funding to basically set up anti-men programs," according to Wendy Wright, senior policy director of Concerned Women for America, the largest women's organization in the country. Now, the Act "seems more to be about funding the radical left than about finding a solution," says Wright.

Gee, no wonder NOW and the Feminist Majority are so hyped on pushing this bill through.
Recognizing the need to protect women from violence, the Violence Against Women Act, as currently written, is DECEPTIVE in its purported aims and DESTRUCTIVE to American families and freedom. Well-intentioned lawmakers are being misled about its purposes and effects. Even feminist advocate Andrea Dworkin acknowledged that the original bill was enacted only because "Senators don't understand the meaning of the legislation that they pass."

The vote for re-authorization of VAWA is coming up SOON in both houses of Congress. We need to URGE our elected representatives to withhold or withdraw ANY support for this re-authorization bill, unless and until VAWA is significantly modified to END its gender-based discrimination and its funding of radical left-wing organizations.

TAKE ACTION: VAWA is a prejudiced act which violates the 14th amendment's guarantee of equal rights. It does not help male victims of family violence (who studies show are fully HALF of the victims), and it's explicitly written in such a way as to effectively eliminate help to male victims.

The political reality, however, is that this Act *will* be re-authorized (what candidate wants to go on record as being against women and children?). We can, however, *change* VAWA -- and a good start would be to rename it the "Family Violence Prevention Act," making the bill gender-neutral; amend it to explicitly prohibit denial of funding or services to any victims of domestic violence; and strictly prohibit funds from being used for any political purpose.

Click through NOW to urge your Congressman and Senators to withhold or withdraw ANY support for re-authorization of the "Violence Against Women Act" (S. 1197, HR 2876) unless VAWA is modified in both name and funding:

http://capwiz.com/sicminc/issues/alert/?alertid=7829836&type=CO

NOTE: Be sure to send this Alert to EVERYONE you know who wants to help END the "Violence Against Women Act's" gender-based discrimination and its funding of radical left-wing organizations! Thank you!

God Bless,
Dan'L

It's California, AGAIN!

Yup! Los Angeles again.

A man comes out of his house blazing away at police, . . . trying to kill the cops. He's holding his infant daughter in his hands. The police fire back, and the little girl is killed, . . . by a police bullet. Now it's all the fault of the police.

This Los Angeles event is nothing less than a tragedy that is being exploited by the cop-hater crowd for their own benefit.

It was the girl's father, José Pena, who takes the blame here. Thankfully, he's dead also.

Pena set the chain of events in motion, not the police.

Nobody in their right mind, (except the well-intentioned, nipple-thinking, crowd of liberals who live there), can expect the police to just sit there and let this good advance on them firing his weapon without a response. Let's face it -- these people are morons.

In the meantime, . . . practitioners of the wonderful, peaceful, religion of Islam continue to intentionally, and with premeditation, kill children in Iraq. Their own children. The morons protesting in Los Angeles seem to have nothing to say about that. Morons here. Morons there. We must deal with morons, world-wide!

God Bless,
Dan'L

Karl Rove, Whistleblower

He told the truth about Joe Wilson.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

Democrats and most of the Beltway press corps are baying for Karl Rove's head over his role in exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. On the contrary, we'd say the White House political guru deserves a prize--perhaps the next iteration of the "Truth-Telling" award that The Nation magazine bestowed upon Mr. Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed him as a fraud.

For Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real "whistleblower" in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal. He's the one who warned Time's Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson's credibility. He's the one who told the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been recommended for the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice President Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn't a whistleblower but was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign. Thank you, Mr. Rove.

Media chants aside, there's no evidence that Mr. Rove broke any laws in telling reporters that Ms. Plame may have played a role in her husband's selection for a 2002 mission to investigate reports that Iraq was seeking uranium ore in Niger. To be prosecuted under the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Mr. Rove would had to have deliberately and maliciously exposed Ms. Plame knowing that she was an undercover agent and using information he'd obtained in an official capacity. But it appears Mr. Rove didn't even know Ms. Plame's name and had only heard about her work at Langley from other journalists.

On the "no underlying crime" point, moreover, no less than the New York Times and Washington Post now agree. So do the 36 major news organizations that filed a legal brief in March aimed at keeping Mr. Cooper and the New York Times's Judith Miller out of jail.
"While an investigation of the leak was justified, it is far from clear--at least on the public record--that a crime took place," the Post noted the other day. Granted the media have come a bit late to this understanding, and then only to protect their own, but the logic of their argument is that Mr. Rove did nothing wrong either.

The same can't be said for Mr. Wilson, who first "outed" himself as a CIA consultant in a melodramatic New York Times op-ed in July 2003. At the time he claimed to have thoroughly debunked the Iraq-Niger yellowcake uranium connection that President Bush had mentioned in his now famous "16 words" on the subject in that year's State of the Union address.

Mr. Wilson also vehemently denied it when columnist Robert Novak first reported that his wife had played a role in selecting him for the Niger mission. He promptly signed up as adviser to the Kerry campaign and was feted almost everywhere in the media, including repeat appearances on NBC's "Meet the Press" and a photo spread (with Valerie) in Vanity Fair.

But his day in the political sun was short-lived. The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report last July cited the note that Ms. Plame had sent recommending her husband for the Niger mission. "Interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD [Counterproliferation Division] employee, suggested his name for the trip," said the report.
The same bipartisan report also pointed out that the forged documents Mr. Wilson claimed to have discredited hadn't even entered intelligence channels until eight months after his trip. And it said the CIA interpreted the information he provided in his debrief as mildly supportive of the suspicion that Iraq had been seeking uranium in Niger.

About the same time, another inquiry headed by Britain's Lord Butler delivered its own verdict on the 16 words: "We conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that 'The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was well-founded."

In short, Joe Wilson hadn't told the truth about what he'd discovered in Africa, how he'd discovered it, what he'd told the CIA about it, or even why he was sent on the mission. The media and the Kerry campaign promptly abandoned him, though the former never did give as much prominence to his debunking as they did to his original accusations. But if anyone can remember another public figure so entirely and thoroughly discredited, let us know.

If there's any scandal at all here, it is that this entire episode has been allowed to waste so much government time and media attention, not to mention inspire a "special counsel" probe. The Bush Administration is also guilty on this count, since it went along with the appointment of prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in an election year in order to punt the issue down the road. But now Mr. Fitzgerald has become an unguided missile, holding reporters in contempt for not disclosing their sources even as it becomes clearer all the time that no underlying crime was at issue.

As for the press corps, rather than calling for Mr. Rove to be fired, they ought to be grateful to him for telling the truth.

God Bless,
Dan'L

Nominee May Come From Outside the Judiciary

By Susan Jones CNSNews.com Senior Editor
July 13, 2005

(CNSNews.com) -- The four senators who met with President Bush at the White House Tuesday morning discussed a number of potential Supreme Court nominees, but Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said he thinks they've agreed not to name those names.

"We have a long ways to go," Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters after the breakfast meeting at the White House. He said President Bush has hundreds or thousands of names to go through and "he didn't give us any names."

Nevertheless, Reid added, "There were a lot of names discussed at the meeting, of which we're not going to talk about any of those names. I think that's an agreement that we have, and we'll stick by that."

[The names of women and Hispanics did come up, Sen. Patrick Leahy later told Fox News.]
Reid said there's been enough "discussion, debate and contention on judges." He said he hopes to avoid that scenario in the weeks ahead.

Reid said the friendly relationship between the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee -- Sens. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) -- have "set an example" of how Reid and Sen. Frist should get along.

"I feel comfortable and good that we are going to be able to have someone who is a consensus candidate. I certainly hope so," Reid concluded.

A consensus candidate is anyone acceptable to Democrats.

Diversity
Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called it a "very productive session," with President Bush listening to the "advice" offered by senators.
Specter said it's possible that the Supreme Court nominee will not come from the traditional circuit courts.

Speaking for himself, Specter said it "would be good to have some diversity" on the Supreme Court, and he mentioned the possibility of having a former senator on the court, as has happened in the past.

"That was one item that the president listened [to]," Specter said. The U.S. Constitution does not require a Supreme Court justice to be an attorney or a judge.

'Uniter'
Sen. Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, called Tuesday's meeting with Bush a "first step" in the consultation process, and he also seemed to back the idea of selecting someone from outside the "judicial monastery."

Leahy said whoever the nominee is, it must be somebody who would "unite us and not divide us" and somebody who would garner bipartisan support.

"That would be a great thing to do for the integrity of the court, for the comfort level of the country, because after all, the court is there for every one of the 280 million Americans, not there for any special interest group on the right or the left."

Leahy called this an important decision, and he alluded to the possibility that there may be similar decisions ahead -- an oblique reference to the widely discussed possibility that Chief Justice William Rehnquist may also retire soon.

'Dignity'
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said senators made it "very clear" to the president that they're ready to engage in a "fair" process that "treats the nominee with dignity and respect and that will be conducted in a timely way."

Specter told reporters, "The word ought to go out that the special interest groups vastly overstate their influence" in the selection process; and that much of what they're doing is "counterproductive, and a lot of the times, insulting."

Frist said there's a general agreement that the goal is to have a nominee on the court by early October.

Sen. Reid told reporters there is no timeline for the president to name someone. "I would hope he would do it in the next couple of weeks," Reid said, adding that it's up to the president.

THAT DAMNED TAX CUT FOR THE RICH
Yet, another big lie, . . .

Okay, . . . so all the extremist liberals and Democrats absolutely hate it when you point out that there was indeed a connection, . . . and a very dangerous one it seems, between Iraq and Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Well, let me tell you another little fact that liberals run from like it was death itself. That fact would be the relationship between tax cuts and increased tax revenue.

No matter how many times it happens, . . . the Kennedy tax cut, . . . the Reagan tax cut, . . . and now the Bush tax cut, . . . liberals just absolutely by God refuse to admit that the relationship exists. To the surge in tax revenue, . . . about a billion dollars a day higher than it was one year ago, . . . . cutting the projected budget deficit by $90 billion dollars. If tax revenues continue apace it may well be that Bush will meet his pledge to cut the deficit significantly three years before the end of his term. You will remember that just a few months ago the media was full of reports that our deficit was going to increase, not decrease. Alas! It hasn't turned out that way.

Don't fret, my dear liberal friends. You will still be able to rant about the economic ills brought upon us by Bush's horrible tax cut for the rich. You'll be able to continue with your prevarications because you can rest assured that the mainstream media will pay little attention to this news of revenue increases. Only people who watch the Fox News Channel and listen to that stuff you call "hate radio" will know the truth, . . . and you'll be free to continue with yet another Big Lie.

God Bless,
Dan'L

The Big Lie Technique is alive and well ..

. . . and being practiced to perfection by the extremists in the Democratic Party and their fellow travelers in the mainstream American media.

You certainly don't have to travel, or read far to hear some Democrat say that there was absolutely no connection whatsoever between Saddam Hussein, Iraq and Al Qaeda. In fact, you'll usually hear it stated something like this: "Everybody knows that there was no connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda." or "It's been proven that there was no connection, . . . " etc., etc. ad nauseum

The trouble is that those statements are just flat-out lies.

There was a connection, and the connection has been proven. Not proven by American intelligence estimates and statements, but proven by documents secured from the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

This is a link to an amazing article that appears in the current edition of The Weekly Standard.

The article is entitled "The Mother of All Connections." It's 15 pages long -- and a somewhat complicated read. Here are just a few gems from the article:

1.) Saddam agreed in the mid 1990's to a request from Al Qaeda to broadcast anti-Saudi messages on Iraq radio.

2.) In 1998 there were a series of payments from Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden's No. 2 goon, Ayman al Zawahri in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. This was happening at the same time the U.S. was putting increased pressures on Saddam for more inspections, and at the same time Bill Clinton was actually making speeches at the Pentagon that some viewed as preparing the nation for war against Iraq.

3.) Other documents recovered from Iraqi intelligence show that there were meetings between a high-level Al Qaeda operative and Iraqi intelligence officials in Baghdad. It was also at this very time that Osama bin Laden issued a Fatwa for the "killing of Americans wherever you find them." Not only were these meetings referenced in the documents recovered from the bombed-out Iraqi intelligence headquarters, these meetings were also detailed in the 9/11 Commission Report ... a section of the report never, or so it would seem, released to the Democrats.

4.) You want more? How about evidence that a former Iraqi soldier who was recruited by the Taliban to fight in Afghanistan was found to have participated with Iraqi intelligence in a plot to blow up an American embassy in Pakistan, . . . with a chemical bomb. Chemical Bomb?? That would be a WMD, in case you didn't know. The Democrats have been lying about that topic, too!

You're going to see much more of this "connection" topic,right here, on this Blog, . . . Just stay tuned, . . . There was a solid connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The evidence is still coming in, but there was a definate connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. And, . . . Yes, connections can be shown between Iraqi intelligence officials and the people who actually carried out the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

Those who seek to politicize the war on terror will never admit the connections. Those who believe that we need to commit ourselves to fighting those who want to kill us will understand that the connections are, in fact, real, . . . and that the current front for the war on terror is rightfully in Iraq.

God Bless,
Dan'L

Lawyer runs a stop sign and gets pulled over by a Sheriffs Deputy.

He thinks that he is smarter than the Deputy because he is sure that he has a better education.

He decides to prove this to himself and have some fun at the deputy’s expense, . . .

The Deputy says, "License and registration, please."

Lawyer says, "What for?"

Deputy says, "You didn't come to a complete stop at the stop sign ."

Lawyer says, "I slowed down, and no one was coming."

Deputy says, "You still didn't come to a complete stop. Driver’s license, and registration, please."

Lawyer says, "What's the difference?"

Deputy says, "The difference is, you have to come to a complete stop, that's the law. License and registration, please!"

Lawyer says, "If you can show me the legal difference between slow down and stop, I'll give you my license and registration and you give me the ticket, if not you let me go and no ticket."

The deputy then says, "Exit your vehicle, sir."

At this point, the deputy takes out his nightstick and starts beating the ever-loving crap out of the Lawyer and says: "DO YOU WANT ME TO STOP, . . . OR JUST SLOW DOWN??"

God Bless,
Dan'L

SOCIAL SECURITY:

Do you recall something like this from your youth ?


Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a truly Great Democrat, introduced Social Security (FICA) Program. He promised:

1.) That participation in the Program would be completely voluntary, . . .

2.) That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual incomes into the Program, . . .

3.) That the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year, . . .

4.) That the money the participants put into the independent "Trust Fund" rather than into the General operating fund, and therefore, would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no other Government program, and, . . .

5.) That the annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income.

Since many of us have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a Social Security check every month -- and then finding that we are getting taxed on 85% of the money we paid to the Federal government to "put away," you may be interested in the following facts:

Question: Which Political Party took Social Security from the independent "Trust" fund and put it into the General fund so that Congress could spend it??
Answer: It was Lyndon Johnson and the Democrat-Party-controlled House and Senate.

Question: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax deduction for Social Security (FICA) withholding??
Answer: The Democratic Party.

Question: Which Political Party started taxing Social Security annuities??
Answer: The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the "tie-breaking" deciding vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the United States.

Question: Which Political Party decided to start giving annuity payments to immigrants?
(MY FAVORITE) Answer: That's right! Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party. Immigrants moved into this country, and at age 65, began to receive SSI Social Security payments!

The Democratic Party gave these payments to them, even though they never paid a dime into it!

Then, after doing all this lying and thieving in violation of the original contract (FICA), the Democrats turn around and tell you that the Republicans want to take your Social Security away!

And the worst part about it is, apathetic, uninformed citizens believe it! (Mostly because they cannot get the truth from the mainstream media outlets)

God Bless,
Dan'L

(Photo Credit to Mr. David G. Decker)


















LIES and BETRAYAL

Once upon a time there was a company that, every so often, would advertise the nicest merchandise for really great prices. Their advertising never actually showed the merchandise but instead showed the beautiful boxes in which the merchandise would arrive.

When their customers received their boxes they would open them only to discover the boxes were empty. If their customers complained the company would blame their competition for the fact that the boxes were empty.

The next selling season the company would again advertise the nicest merchandise for really great prices and when their customers received their boxes they would again be empty and would again blame that fact on their competition.

The next selling season the company would again advertise the nicest merchandise for really great prices and when their customers received their boxes they would again be empty and would again blame that fact on their competition.

And so forth ad infinitum, . . . .
Okay, now let's take that same story and change it around a little. We will change the selling season into national election campaigns, the company into the liberal Democrat Party; their advertising and the pretty boxes into the Democrat Party campaign promises; their competition into the Republican Party; the empty boxes into their unfulfilled campaign promises; and their customers into the constituancies the Democrats say they represent (unions, minorities, women, gays, environmentalists, the poor, etc, etc, etc).

Just about as far back as I can remember what was being said in national elections the Democrat party was promising to its constituancies almost everything under the sun and when asked why they didn't deliver on those promises they always blamed the Republicans. It was the same every time national elections rolled around and still is.

But wait a minute!!! What if the Democrats had the ability to keep those campaign promises but chose not to. What if they had a majority in Congress and could pretty much do as they pleased. What if they had a veto-proof majority in Congress and could pass any legislation they wanted to even if every Republican voted against it. What if they had a veto-proof majority in Congress AND the Presidency and still didn't keep their campaign promises.

Folks, for most of the time since the 1930's one or the other of those conditions has been in effect.

At the top right, is a chart to show you what I am talking about (raw data supplied by the Clerk of the US House of Representatives).

Killing spotlights people searches

Cliff Goldsmith, a private investigator based in Evesham, said he knows his profession already has a bad reputation. Dan Larsen of Evidence, Inc. in Omaha, Nebraska agrees.

Goldsmith said yesterday the arrest of a Philadelphia man who prosecutors claim used a Burlington Township-based private investigator to locate a Bucks County, Pa., man he has been charged with killing might leave his profession with, yet another, huge black eye.

"I just hope the negative backlash doesn't affect my profession too much," said Goldsmith, a member of the board of directors of the New Jersey Licensed Private Investigators Association Inc. "One bad apple could affect every hard-working private investigator." Larsen, who has offices in both Iowa and Nebraska, and is a past-president of the Iowa Association of Private Investigators says that there have been a number of incidents of loss of personal data by the same companies who provided data in this case.

In the case at hand, Stanford A. Douglas Jr., 29, of Philadelphia was arrested Sunday and charged with murdering William Berkeyheiser, 62. Berkeyheiser was shot six times with a handgun March 27 outside his home in Upper Makefield, Pa., according to Bucks County District Attorney Diane Gibbons.

Larsen said Douglas held a seven-year grudge against Berkeyheiser that led to the murder. Douglas, who is black, told police he had wanted to kill Berkeyheiser since 1998 when he over overheard Berkeyheiser, who is white, tell a joke with racial overtones, Gibbons said.

Police said Douglas told them he paid a private investigator $150 to track down Berkeyheiser's home address. At this point, police cannot say whether the private investigator in question was actually licensed to do business in any state, but they claim they are looking into that angle. The information leads them to a company in Connecticut.

According to John Ciaccio, chief executive officer of A-Plus Investigations Inc., Douglas hired his investigators to locate Berkeyheiser. Ciaccio said all of his company's business with Douglas was done by telephone and Douglas never visited the Burlington Township headquarters of A-Plus on Connecticut Drive in Crossroads Business Center, an industrial park near Interstate 295.
Citing client confidentiality and the fact that the investigation into Douglas' case was continuing, Ciaccio declined to comment further.

"We want to cooperate in the prosecution of this and we'll continue to cooperate," Ciaccio said. "Our thoughts and prayers are with (Berk-eyheiser's) family." Larsen related that his firm will "never provide personal data to a client, unless, and until that client has an attorney on retainer, who has an action on file."

According to Goldsmith, private investigators are not required by federal or state law to ask clients why they want to locate a person, but Larsen said most legitimate agencies wouldn't consider working for any client who wouldn't provide that information. "It's a matter of ethical morality," he said.

"There's really good and legitimate reasons that people need to locate someone 99 percent of the time," said John Stenton, a private investigator who owns Associate P.I., based in Evesham.

"Still, you always have those nuts out there that use the (private investigator) to get the information for something like this," he said.

Stenton said he has located estranged fathers and mothers, former husbands who owe child support, and old college or military friends among others during his 18 years as a private investigator.

Stenton said he has charged anywhere from $100 to $1,800 to locate someone. He said if a client's motives seem at all suspicious, he will not agree to a search.

Larsen also points out that this isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened. He mentioned the Amy Boyer case, where a stalker bought personal data from an unlicensed Florida firm, named DocuSearch, and the case of televison celebrity Rebecca Schaffer, where an unlicensed investigator in Arizona sold her driver's license information to a stalker, who then showed up at her door, and killed her.

This all points to evidence that the various state licensing laws should be looked at for enhancement, with strick background investigations done by competent law enforcement people; before licenses are issued. Once that is accomplished, enforcement of the laws that prohibit conducting private investigations outside the existing laws, should be strictly enforced, with serious penalties for violations.

Currently ONLY California and Florida have ongoing efforts, with qualified personnel assigned to investigate complaints of unlicensed activity. A few states are moving toward stricter enforcement of current statutes, but the bureacracies always seem to get into the way of real progress.

ID Hijacked??

Hire A Private Eye!!

July 09, 2005

Your phone bill says you've made long expensive calls to remote island nations you've never heard of. Your computer floods screen after screen with ads and runs as if someone poured molasses into it. After faithfully paying bills on time for years, you apply for a loan and are told, "Sorry, not with your bad credit."

If these scenarios sound familiar, it's a good possibility that your computer or your personal financial information has become the personal playground of a computer hacker or identity thief. Each year 10 million Americans have their identities - their names and personal information - stolen. They lose an average of $500 and spend about 30 hours trying to clean up the mess, according to a 2003 survey by the Federal Trade Commission.

In this discouraging, even frightening situation, privacy gumshoes offer a ray of hope. More adept with gigabytes than guns, these 21st-century Sam Spades can make the problems go away - for a price.

At the top end are companies such as Gavin de Becker & Associates, a California consulting firm that among other things advises celebrities and other high-risk individuals on how to "hide your identity from people who'd like to steal it," says Beth Givens, director of the nonprofit Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego.

The fee: Don't ask. (Mr. de Becker is out of the country and unavailable to speak, and no one else at the company is permitted to talk about its work, a spokeswoman says by phone.)

Some private investigators will track down records and straighten out identity theft too, Ms. Givens says, but they can be another potentially pricey option. Or you can do it on your own, if you have the time and energy, she adds. "Protecting your privacy is not something you can do in an afternoon." Her Web site offers 40 fact sheets on how to do it.

But just as some people can't bear to face tax season alone, they want more than a list of tips.

Last year, Allstate Corp. began offering identity-theft insurance in Texas and a few other states as a $30 rider on its homeowner and renter policies.

The spadework is contracted out to Kroll Inc., a risk-consulting company. "We take a lot of the work of identity restoration off the shoulders of victims," says Troy Allen, vice president for fraud solutions at Kroll. "It's very time-consuming and difficult and frustrating." The Allstate plan includes filing paperwork for the victim, such as notifying credit-reporting agencies, credit-card companies, and the Social Security Administration.

Kroll will also help victims understand their legal rights and work with police and collection agencies to sort out claims - basically, everything except those tasks that victims must do themselves, such as report the crime and appear in court.

One of the biggest misconceptions about identity theft, Mr. Allen says, is that most of it occurs on the Internet. Thieves often simply steal mail or paper documents, not digital files. Your personal information is in doctors' offices, with former and current employers, in banks, and at colleges or universities you've attended, Allen says. "You are as exposed for what you've done in the past as for what you do in the future."

You need not have even done anything foolish. Last month, ChoicePoint, a data-gathering company, announced it apparently was robbed of personal information for at least 145,000 people, including names, addresses, and Social Security numbers. The theft was an old-fashioned scam that used dummy companies and involved no computer legerdemain.

Next to that, computer hackers might seem like small potatoes. And some of them only send users annoying ads, says Curt Brooks, a technician at Tech Rescue, a computer installation and repair firm in suburban Boston. But some are more malicious - searching for credit-card or bank-account information to steal money.

His shop usually sees machines only after the spyware and adware have gotten out of hand. "We've seen computers that have 4,000 [secret] programs running" - picked up through everyday actions such as clicking on e-mail attachments, visiting websites, or sharing music files. In two or three hours - at $59 an hour - nearly any computer can be cleaned up.

"Phishing" scams are the most potent online hazard. People get e-mails saying they should verify their accounts at, say, eBay or PayPal (an online payment service). They click on a link that seems legitimate but is actually a dummy site. Once they enter personal data, such as their name, credit-card or bank-account number, and password, the thieves have it.

"There are some [phishing scams] that are so slick that law enforcement officers fall for them," says Jay Foley, co-executive director of the Identity Theft Resource Center (www.idtheftcenter.org) in San Diego, a nonprofit group. But no legitimate business would ask for such sensitive information in an e-mail. If in doubt, call the company, Mr. Foley says.

This story was written by Gregory M. Lamb
Copyright 2005 The Christian Science Monitor. Permission to republish granted by CSM.

Can you believe that the extremist left is upset with the number of times the President mentioned September 11, 2001 in his most recent speach?

I can.









Okay, . . . Here’s what's at work here. The extremists know that the American people still harbor harsh feelings toward the Islamic terrorists who killed 3000 of their countrymen on 9/11. The left also knows that the American people will not have any kind feelings toward anyone with any connection, no matter how tenuous, with the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks. Since the left is placing its hopes on any possible electoral gains in 2006 to discrediting Bush's actions in Iraq, they know that they must stand steadfast in their battle to use whatever means necessary, even lies, to make sure that nobody -- and certainly not the president -- is allowed to connect Iraq and Saddam Hussein with Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda.

The truth is that there is no shortage of evidence that there were contacts between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. We'll detail some of those associations on the air today . . . but if you can't listen to the program here's one source you might want to take a look at. It's an excellent article appearing on the online edition of National Review Andrew McCarthy makes the case that "It's All About 9/11" Yes, there's a link there .. But I would not recommend this article to any of you leftists out there who can't handle the truth about this matter. There's also an excellent editorial on the National Review website, "The Day that binds" which puts forth the premise that you simply cannot make the case for the removal of Saddam without reference to 9/11. Of course, the extreme left tries to make the case that the National Review is some kind of right wing voice. Okay, . . . then what about Newsweek??

The troubling question here is in light of all of the documented evidence that there were contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda .. and the evidence that some of Saddam's henchmen might have participated in the early planning of the 9/11 attacks, why do so-called "journalists" will actually write or state things like "everybody knows that there was no connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda" or "It's been proven that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11??

These people have access to the same information that I do or that you do . . . Information that shows those connections existed. They can't plead stupidity. The information is out there. It's in the report from David Kay. It's in the 9/11 Commission report . . . it's there, yet its existence is continuously denied by so many in the mainstream media. Why??

Well . . . let's try to answer the "why." As I said, it can't be ignorance. So what's at work here? How about bias? Could it be that these "journalists" are consciously practicing the "big lie" technique? Even though they know better, do they constantly make absolute statements such as "Everybody knows that there's no connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda" in an attempt to convince the American people of something that they know full well isn't true? And why would they do that? To carry forth an anti-Bush administration agenda? I can’t figure it out, but it’s really silly to expect thinking Americans to buy in.

God Bless,
Dan'L

Dealing with identity theft


As database companies restrict access to Social Security numbers private investigators find it tougher to track down witnesses and missing persons

By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff July 10, 2005

The campaign to stamp out identity theft may claim some unexpected victims -- the nation's private investigators.

Modern PIs do a lot of their work with computers, using commercial databases to obtain Social Security numbers. These can be used to help track down missing persons or locate witnesses to a crime. But investigators say that in the aftermath of recent identity theft scandals, database companies are cracking down in ways that make it harder for them to do their work. And they worry that proposed federal legislation will make matters worse.

''It's like throwing the baby out with the bath water," said Bruce Hulme, chairman of the legislative committee of the National Council of Investigation and Security Services in Baltimore. The group is lobbying Congress to prevent passage of a bill introduced in April by Representative Clay Shaw of Florida, a Republican, which would tighten restrictions on the sale of Social Security numbers.

Hulme said that many of his members rely on Social Security numbers, and that without full access to them, they'll lose their ability to crack cases. Investigators are also worried about a similar bill introduced last month by Republican US Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

No action has been taken on the Specter-Leahy bill. But Gail Gitcho, a spokeswoman for Shaw, said his legislation had been substantially modified from the version first introduced last year, and will now place fewer restrictions on private detectives. For example, the bill would allow the US attorney general to issue regulations granting the investigators access to Social Security numbers. But Hulme and others want a specific ''carve-out" in the language of the bill, allowing database companies to sell detailed personal information to licensed private investigators.
Even if these bills are defeated or modified to ease the detectives' concerns, they'll still face tougher restrictions imposed by the database companies themselves. Firms like LexisNexis and ChoicePoint Inc. hold detailed files on millions of Americans, which they sell to businesses, government agencies, journalists and private investigators.

But these companies have been hit hard by reports that their records have been misplaced or stolen. In February, ChoicePoint admitted that criminals posing as legitimate business people had purchased files on about 140,000 people, some of whom were later defrauded. In March, LexisNexis revealed that someone with a stolen account password had swiped the files of about 310,000 people.

John Buckley, president of the Licensed Private Detectives Association of Massachusetts, said people in the PI business weren't surprised by the problems at LexisNexis and ChoicePoint. ''It's ridiculous how they've been giving this information to everybody," he said. ''We've always been concerned about it."

But after the recent thefts, database companies have begun to crack down. For example, last year LexisNexis bought Seisint, a Florida database firm popular with private eyes because it sold personal data including Social Security numbers. Soon after the Seisint acquisition, the data thieves struck.

Now LexisNexis has modified its service. Its database listings include names, addresses and phone numbers, but the last four digits of each Social Security number are deleted. LexisNexis does provide more detailed information to law enforcement agencies and financial services firms investigating fraud. But it will no longer provide full Social Security numbers and driver's license numbers to private investigators. ChoicePoint has adopted a similar policy.

''We're under a lot of pressure to minimize the availability of Social Security numbers," said LexisNexis spokeswoman Mary Dale Walters. Marco Piovesan, vice president of business services at ChoicePoint, said that his company has discussed the issue with private investigators, but has decided not to sell them Social Security numbers. ''We restrict that information to a large number of business types, including the PI group," Piovesan said.
Detectives like Buckley say that truncated Social Security numbers aren't enough to provide positive identification of missing persons, especially when they're trying to locate someone with a common name, like Bob Jones or John Smith.

But not all detectives share Buckley's concern. Kroll Associates, one of the world's largest investigation firms, uses Social Security numbers to identify their investigative targets. But Kroll's executive managing director, Dan Karson, said that his investigators should be able to find Social Security numbers even if the big database firms clam up.

''For most of the population, I don't think you'd need these databases to get SS numbers," Karson said, noting that the numbers for millions of Americans can be found by scrutinizing freely accessible public records.

Longtime Boston private eye Gil Lewis prefers to find people using courthouse records, data on previous employers, and places of residence. Lewis said that he never uses Social Security numbers in his work. ''If a guy doesn't want to be found, he's not going to use his Social Security number," Lewis said.

Indeed, he said that when he tried Social Security number searches, he has found the same number being used by four or five people, making it useless as an identifier. ''I don't care if they do away with every SS number in the world," Lewis said.

No matter how much a person might try to hide, he'll still find work, make friends and spend money. In the process, said Lewis, he'll leave a trail that a skilled investigator can track. ''You really can't hide for very long," Lewis said. ''If you've got the time and money to pursue somebody, you can find anybody."

But Hulme said that easy access to Social Security numbers, drivers license numbers and other personal data are vital for private investigators working to establish the innocence of a defendant in a criminal case. He said that police will continue to have full access to the data, enabling them to quickly track down witnesses for the prosecution.

''If it all gets tied up," said Hulme, ''only police organizations will have access to this information, and the defense will not." He said that this could put defense attorneys and their clients at a serious disadvantage.

That means that detectives may have to get used to finding people the old-fashioned way, a prospect that doesn't bother Lewis. ''You just have to be imaginative." he said. ''If you find a closed door, you find another door."

God Bless,
Dan'L