Congress approves expansion of presidential wiretapping powers

Both houses of Congress have passed a bill that updates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to allow warrantless wiretapping when at least one party is a foreigner, without any requirement that the foreigner be suspected of having connections to terrorists. Wiretaps in such cases do not require approval of the FISA court, only of the attorney general and the director of national intelligence. As Tim Lee at Technology Liberation Front observes:

So let me get this straight: the White House says “we think we should be able to eavesdrop on virtually any domestic-to-foreign phone call without court oversight, based on the say-so of one of the president’s subordinates.” And the Democrats response was “Hell no! Warrantless spying should require the say-so of two of the president’s subordinates!”

Arizona's Congressmen voted along party lines except for Harry Mitchell, who sided with the Republicans in favor of the bill, which provides for this expansion of powers for the next six months. (UPDATE, August 8, 2007: Actually, McCain didn't vote on this bill at all, it's another of his no-shows.)

Kudos to Pastor, Grijalva, and Giffords for voting against this.

(Hat tip to Technology Liberation Front and Stranger Fruit.)

UPDATE (August 7, 2007): Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has more on how this bill has gutted any oversight of what the Executive branch is doing.

Arizona doctors who question evolution

Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity is an organization of Darwin-denying doctors being touted by the Discovery Institute as evidence of growing dissent against evolution. Those on their membership list in Arizona:

Dr. Richard D. Friedman, Internal Medicine, Chandler, Arizona
Dr. Joseph M. Kezele, Emergency Medicine, Cave Creek, Arizona
Dr. William H. Noland, Neurology, Tucson, Arizona
Dr. Joel T. Rohrbough, Orthopaedic Surgery, Flagstaff, Arizona
Dr. Allan T. Sawyer, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Glendale, Arizona

Personally, given the new developments in biological science and medicine that are discovered as a result of evolutionary science, I would not want to use a doctor who denies evolution.

Jarrett Maupin Sr. and Jr. controversies

Jarrett Maupin II, protege of Al Sharpton, wants to be mayor of Phoenix, but unfortunately for his campaign, incumbent mayor Phil Gordon's challenges to his ballot petitions have disqualified enough signatures to get him off the ballot. It seems that Maupin hired individuals with felony convictions to collect signatures, and a majority of his signatures were from people not registered to vote, leaving him 91 signatures short. Maupin said he was "outraged" by Gordon's challenge of his petition and insisted that he would be on the ballot.

Maupin got press by showing up at the mayor's office with a voter registration form, stating that Gordon is a Democrat in name only and should switch his registration to Republican. Ironically, Maupin was head of the Young Republicans at Brophy College Preparatory (though this was before he was of legal voting age).

I also just came across a news report from 2005, regarding Maupin's father:

A car carrying the Rev. Al Sharpton led sheriff's deputies on a nine-mile chase at speeds up to 110 mph before state troopers stopped the vehicle and arrested the driver, authorities said.
Chief Deputy Charles Sullins said driver Jarrett B. Maupin, 43, was rushing Sharpton to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport after Sharpton visited anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan on Sunday at her camp outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford.
Because the 2005 Lincoln was rented to Maupin, of Phoenix, sheriff's deputies impounded the car. Maupin posted a $1,000 bond on charges of evading arrest with a vehicle and reckless driving, authorities said.
The car carrying Sharpton and two other passengers was clocked doing 110 mph in a 65 mph zone on the interstate south of Dallas, Sullins said.
He said the driver ignored deputies' attempts to stop it and weaved in and out of traffic before state troopers were able to get in front of the car.

Maupin Jr. was also present in the vehicle. Sharpton denied the allegations, saying that he was not part of any police chase. He declined an offer from the police to drive him to the airport, and began walking down the road, accepting a ride from a passing vehicle.

In 2005, Maupin Jr. ran for Phoenix City Council but was defeated by incumbent Michael Johnson. In 2006, he was elected to the Phoenix Union High School District Board for a four-year term.

Maupin, who attended but did not graduate from my alma mater, Brophy College Preparatory (he transferred to St. Mary's after making accusations of racial harassment), was profiled in Phoenix's New Times regarding his politics in an article titled "Kid Sharpton."

UPDATE (April 28, 2009): Rev. Jarrett Maupin Jr. has resigned from the Phoenix Union High School District Board as part of a plea agreement in U.S. District Court after being arrested for giving false information to the FBI. In exchange for his plea, he will not be prosecuted for other crimes, for which he is paying restitution to victims.

I hope this means the end of his political career.

UPDATE (July 9, 2016): It came out in 2015 that the false statements Maupin made were false allegations against Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, accusing him of being a child molester. Maupin claimed he had seen pictures and video, but the charges had been completely fabricated by Gregory Coleman, an aide to City Councilman Michael Nowakowski, as a test of Maupin's ethics. Maupin failed (though I would argue that the same is true of Coleman).

Maupin was unapologetic for his fabrications and saw himself as the victim of Coleman:

Maupin told 12 News’ Halloran that Coleman came to him with the information about Gordon and that he simply reported it to authorities. It was, he tells her, a mistake, one for which he's sorry.

“I'm not guilty of anything more than Martha Stewart or any number of people making a false statement to a federal entity,” he told her. “And most of us probably do that on our income taxes every year. I think the difference is they had the ability to attempt to politically lynch me. And I am a survivor of an attempted political lynching.”

Arizona's #7 for per-capita preforeclosures

Arizona is the #7 state for per-capita preforeclosures:

TOP 10 PREFORECLOSURE STATES
State	Filings	Per Capita
Nevada	19,044	2.55 percent
Florida	111,250	1.76 percent
Colorado	24,045	1.49 percent
Illinois	52,984	1.35 percent
New Jersey	37,250	1.22 percent
California	132,101	1.15 percent
Arizona	20,669	1.09 percent
Utah	5,773	0.90 percent
Texas	46,595	0.81 percent
Georgia	19,382	0.75 percent

SOURCE: Foreclosures.com

I'm not sure what the timeframe is for this data, but it looks like the last twelve months.

Phony faith healer is top-paid CEO of a religious charity

Charity Navigator has issued a report on salaries of CEOs of charities for 2007. While religious charities have the lowest average CEO compensation of any category (educational charities have the highest), at the top of the religion list is Peter Popoff Ministries, which pays Peter Popoff an annual salary of $628,732. His wife Elizabeth Popoff gets another $203,029.

Not bad for a phony faith healer who was exposed as a fake on the Tonight Show by James Randi two decades ago.

Abolish the CIA

I'm currently reading Pulitzer Prize winning author Tim Weiner's 20-years-in-the-making history of the Central Intelligence Agency, Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA (2007, Doubleday). All of Weiner's facts are sourced and on-the-record, including numerous recently declassified sources (some of which the government is attempting to re-classify).

This review of the book by Chalmers Johnson, a former outside consultant for the CIA, does a good job of pointing out some of the highlights and arguing at the conclusion for the abolition of the CIA and letting the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research fill in for the foreign intelligence function.

Weiner's book points out how the CIA has been mismanaged since its creation from the ashes of the Office of Strategic Services, failing to come up with accurate information about major events of significance and leaving a wake of damage from failed covert ops designed to stop the spread of communism even where there was none. And it has regularly deceived presidents, massaged or fabricated intelligence information, and violated the laws of the United States. Johnson writes:

Nothing has done more to undercut the reputation of the United States than the CIA's "clandestine" (only in terms of the American people) murders of the presidents of South Vietnam and the Congo, its ravishing of the governments of Iran, Indonesia (three times), South Korea (twice), all of the Indochinese states, virtually every government in Latin America, and Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The deaths from these armed assaults run into the millions. After 9/11, President Bush asked "Why do they hate us?" From Iran (1953) to Iraq (2003), the better question would be, "Who does not?"

This paragraph understates the case--Johnson goes on to describe how the CIA provided funding for Japanese and Italian politicians. Weiner's book observes that the CIA helped a convicted war criminal become prime minister of Japan in 1957 and bribed the leading officials of the Liberal Democratic Party, which it helped maintain in power until the 1990s. CIA broadcasts from Radio Free Europe called for uprisings. To their surprise, former Hungarian prime minister Imre Nagy, who had been expelled from the Communist Party, announced on state radio a break with Russia, and within days formed a new coalition government in October 1956, but CIA Director Allen Dulles rejected him because he had been a communist and RFE attacked him. RFE broadcasts as much as promised U.S. assistance to Hungarian rebels, only to leave them to die on their own in November 1956 when the Soviets crushed the rebellion. Tens of thousands of people were killed and thousands shipped off to Siberia. Dulles lied to Eisenhower about the content of the broadcasts, transcripts of which only became available in English in 1996, and claimed the U.S. had done nothing to encourage the Hungarians.

I've still got much to read in the book (I'm only up to 1958), but so far it is eye-opening and appalling.

UPDATE (August 11, 2007): The CIA has issued a press release taking issue with Weiner's book for its bias.

UPDATE (December 16, 2009): The CIA has published a review critiquing the accuracy and reliability of Weiner's book.

Did Cheney send Gonzales and Card to Ashcroft's hospital room?

The New York Times editorialized that vice president Dick Cheney was the person who sent then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and chief of staff Andrew Card to the hospital bedside of Attorney General John Ashcroft to try to get him to reauthorize the warrantless wiretapping program that the acting Attorney General James Comey and many Department of Justice staff (including Comey and FBI Director Robert Mueller) threatened to resign over.

Larry King asked Cheney about it, and his response is that he had no recollection of such an event, and besides, he didn't read the New York Times editorial. Sounds like a lie to me, and Larry King seems to suggest he thinks so as well.

Talking Points Memo thinks they've identified a Cheney "tell." (And no, it's not just that his lips are moving...)

Words Fail Me...

July, 2007, saw 2503 Notices of Trustee's Sales in Maricopa County - yet another record.

Dirty Politician: Ted Stevens

Sen. Ted Stevens' (R-AK) home was raided today by the FBI. All of Alaska's federal legislators are now under investigation for corruption, as are some Alaskan state legislators, such as Ted Stevens' son Ben Stevens, president of the Alaska State Senate.

UPDATE (August 1, 2007): George W. Bush continued his habit of supporting legislators with criminal investigation and ethics problems by hosting a White House dinner in Ted Stevens' honor back on May 23 of this year.

UPDATE (October 28, 2008): Ted Stevens was convicted yesterday on seven charges, making him the fifth sitting Senator to be convicted of a felony.

A marketplace for software vulnerabilities

The July 21, 2007 issue of The Economist has an article about a Swiss company that has opened a market for software vulnerabilities:

Since economics, like nature, abhors a vacuum, a small industry of “security companies” has emerged to exploit the hackers' dilemma. These outfits buy bugs from hackers (euphemistically known as “security researchers”). They then either sell them to software companies affected by the flaws, sometimes with a corrective “patch” as a sweetener, or use them for further “research”, such as looking for more significant—and therefore more lucrative—bugs on their own account. Such firms seek to act as third parties that are trusted by hacker and target alike; the idea is that they know the market and thus know the price it will bear. Often, though, neither side trusts them. Hackers complain that, if they go to such companies to try to ascertain what represents a fair price, the value of their information plummets because too many people now know about it. Software companies, meanwhile, reckon such middlemen are offered only uninteresting information. They suspect, perhaps cynically, that the good stuff is going straight to the black market.Last week, therefore, saw the launch of a service intended to make the whole process of selling bugs more transparent while giving greater rewards to hackers who do the right thing. The company behind it, a Swiss firm called WabiSabiLabi, differs from traditional security companies in that it does not buy or sell information in its own right. Instead, it provides a marketplace for such transactions.

A bug-hunter can use this marketplace in one of three ways. He can offer his discovery in a straightforward auction, with the highest bidder getting exclusive rights. He can sell the bug at a fixed price to as many buyers as want it. Or he can try to sell the bug at a fixed price exclusively to one company, without going through an auction.

WabiSabiLabi brings two things to the process besides providing the marketplace. The first is an attempt to ensure that only legitimate traders can buy and sell information. (It does this by a vetting process similar to the one employed by banks to clamp down on money launderers.) The second is that it inspects the goods beforehand to make certain that they live up to the claims being made about them.

Herman Zampariolo, the head of WabiSabiLabi, says that hundreds of hackers have registered with the company since the marketplace was set up. So far only four bugs have been offered for sale, and the prices offered for them have been modest, perhaps because buyers are waiting to see how the system will work. A further 200 bugs, however, have been submitted and are currently being scrutinised.