More Divisive Hate Speech at Barack Obama's Church

Hat Tip to my YouTube Buddy CafeNetAmerica

Oklahoma: Tax Break for NRA Events in Budget Bill

On Friday, May 23, with just a few hours remaining in the 2008 Legislative Session, the Oklahoma Legislature gave final approval to an omnibus budget bill (HB1387), which included an important amendment that will exempt purchases and sales at Friends of NRA events from state taxes.

We all know the numerous benefits derived by the Friends of NRA program and this legislation will only enhance our efforts on this front.

Special thanks to State Senator Anthony Sykes (R-24) and State Representative Randy Terrill (R-53) for their leadership on this effort, and to our allies in both chambers for their support of Friends of NRA!

This budget measure has been sent to Governor Brad Henry (D) for his consideration.

Some say Cherokee Chief Chad Smith is a proven racist

Chief Chad Smith is proving that he is proven racist. History will judge him harshly! Chief Chad Smith and his cadre of henchmen are working full-time to see that Black Cherokees are denied their historical rights. This, in spite of the fact, that the Cherokee court system had demanded they be included as citizens and given full and complete rights as tribal members.

American Minute - May 31 - Presidential Memorial Day Addresses

American Minute
with Bill Federer

In his Memorial Day Address, MAY 31, 1923, President Calvin Coolidge said:

"Settlers came here from mixed motives...Generally defined, they were seeking a broader freedom. They were intent upon establishing a Christian commonwealth in accordance to the principle of self-government...

It has been said that God sifted the nations that He might send choice grain into the wilderness."

Calvin Coolidge continued:

"They had a genius for organized society on the foundations of piety, righteousness, liberty, and obedience of the law...

Who can fail to see in it the hand of destiny? Who can doubt that it has been guided by a Divine Providence?"

At the Memorial Day Ceremony, MAY 31, 1993, President Bill Clinton remarked:

"The inscription on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier says that he is 'Known only to God.' But that is only partly true. While the soldier's name is known only to God, we know a lot about him.

We know he served his country, honored his community, and died for the cause of freedom. And we know that no higher praise can be assigned to any human being than those simple words...

In the presence of those buried all around us, we ask the support of all Americans in the aid and blessing of God Almighty."

What Does Conservatism Mean?

Hat Tip to my YouTube Buddy Wyatt @ wyattmcintyre
Without a doubt Ronald Reagan was one of the most prolific spokesmen for conservatism in our lifetime and beyond. With that he defined a movement, a grassroots coalition stretching from one end of the nation to another, helping to define what it meant to be a conservative. This is meant to hear what he has to say about key issues that we are facing, that we are talking about today as we seek to once more reclaim our strong conservative heritage in a changing world.

Hoo-ah: Iraqi armed forces and police are rebuilt and kicking ass !

The U.S. is beginning its withdrawal from Iraq. U.S. troops strength is expected to decline from 170,000 to 140,000 by the end of the Summer. The reduction is made possible by the growing number of Iraqi army and police units that can do the job. U.S. military advisors have seen this coming for years, as they tracked dozens of different metrics (statistics on various aspects of Iraqi performance).

The Iraqi armed forces and police had to be completely rebuilt. That's because the Saddam era army and police existed mainly to keep Saddam in power. Most of the leadership in that force was Sunni Arab, and the new Shia and Kurd dominated government did not trust these guys to serve a democratic Iraq.

These metrics are kept secret, as the enemy would love to have some insight into the effectiveness of the security forces. But in the last year, many Iraqi army and police units have revealed their capabilities through their performance. The greater number of capable soldiers and cops was a big reason why the Sunni Arabs turned on the Sunni Arab terror groups (especially al Qaeda) they had long supported. A year ago, it finally became obvious to most Sunni Arabs that the Shia majority had finally done the impossible (according to Sunni Arab beliefs) and created a large number of effective soldiers and police. That force, backed by the Americans, could not be defeated.

The attitude towards the U.S. troops had also changed. For five years, the American troops consistently demonstrated their superior combat ability, while also observing strict ROE (Rules of Engagement) that protected civilians far better than Arab terrorists or soldiers ever did. Many Sunni Arabs had come to see the Americans as protectors (from Shia and Kurd death squads, out for revenge).

When the security forces went after the Shia militias earlier this year, the militiamen were dismayed. It was widely known that the Iraqi army and police were defeating al Qaeda, and a few hold-out Sunni Arab militias.

Now these forces were moving into Shia Mahdi Army strongholds, and the Mahdi gunmen quickly discovered they could not hold out against these Iraqi troops who dressed like American troops, and fought a lot like them as well. Worse, the Shia militias could not exploit the U.S. ROE (and hide out in mosques or use civilians for cover) when confronted by Iraqi forces. The "new" Iraqi troops were also systematic and relentless like the Americans. Mahdi Army strongholds in Baghdad and Basra are being taken apart, week by week. By the end of the Summer, the Mahdi Army will be reduced to weak remnants.

Iraq still has the corruption and tribal loyalties, but at least the police are now able to go after the many criminal gangs that have made life miserable, for more people, than the terrorism of the last five years. That leaves the corrupt politicians to be taken down. That depends on trained and disciplined voters, which are less numerous than the newly reformed security forces.

China’s Cyber-Militia

China’s Cyber-Militia
BY SHANE HARRIS, NATIONAL JOURNAL 05/29/08

Computer hackers in China, including those working on behalf of the Chinese government and military, have penetrated deeply into the information systems of U.S. companies and government agencies, stolen proprietary information from American executives in advance of their business meetings in China, and, in a few cases, gained access to electric power plants in the United States, possibly triggering two recent and widespread blackouts in Florida and the Northeast, according to U.S. government officials and computer-security experts.

One prominent expert told National Journal he believes that China’s People’s Liberation Army played a role in the power outages. Tim Bennett, the former president of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, a leading trade group, said that U.S. intelligence officials have told him that the PLA in 2003 gained access to a network that controlled electric power systems serving the northeastern United States. The intelligence officials said that forensic analysis had confirmed the source, Bennett said. “They said that, with confidence, it had been traced back to the PLA.” These officials believe that the intrusion may have precipitated the largest blackout in North American history, which occurred in August of that year. A 9,300-square-mile area, touching Michigan, Ohio, New York, and parts of Canada, lost power; an estimated 50 million people were affected.

Officially, the blackout was attributed to a variety of factors, none of which involved foreign intervention. Investigators blamed “overgrown trees” that came into contact with strained high-voltage lines near facilities in Ohio owned by FirstEnergy Corp. More than 100 power plants were shut down during the cascading failure. A computer virus, then in wide circulation, disrupted the communications lines that utility companies use to manage the power grid, and this exacerbated the problem. The blackout prompted President Bush to address the nation the day it happened. Power was mostly restored within 24 hours.

There has never been an official U.S. government assertion of Chinese involvement in the outage, but intelligence and other government officials contacted for this story did not explicitly rule out a Chinese role. One security analyst in the private sector with close ties to the intelligence community said that some senior intelligence officials believe that China played a role in the 2003 blackout that is still not fully understood.

Bennett, whose former trade association includes some of the nation’s largest computer-security companies and who has testified before Congress on the vulnerability of information networks, also said that a blackout in February, which affected 3 million customers in South Florida, was precipitated by a cyber-hacker. That outage cut off electricity along Florida’s east coast, from Daytona Beach to Monroe County, and affected eight power-generating stations. Bennett said that the chief executive officer of a security firm that belonged to Bennett’s trade group told him that federal officials had hired the CEO’s company to investigate the blackout for evidence of a network intrusion, and to “reverse engineer” the incident to see if China had played a role.

Bennett, who now works as a private consultant, said he decided to speak publicly about these incidents to point out that security for the nation’s critical electronic infrastructures remains intolerably weak and to emphasize that government and company officials haven’t sufficiently acknowledged these vulnerabilities.

The Florida Blackout

A second information-security expert independently corroborated Bennett’s account of the Florida blackout. According to this individual, who cited sources with direct knowledge of the investigation, a Chinese PLA hacker attempting to map Florida Power & Light’s computer infrastructure apparently made a mistake. “The hacker was probably supposed to be mapping the system for his bosses and just got carried away and had a ‘what happens if I pull on this’ moment.” The hacker triggered a cascade effect, shutting down large portions of the Florida power grid, the security expert said. “I suspect, as the system went down, the PLA hacker said something like, ‘Oops, my bad,’ in Chinese.”

The power company has blamed “human error” for the incident, specifically an engineer who improperly disabled safety backups while working on a faulty switch. But federal officials are still investigating the matter and have not issued a final report, a spokeswoman for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said. The industry source, who conducts security research for government and corporate clients, said that hackers in China have devoted considerable time and resources to mapping the technology infrastructure of other U.S. companies. That assertion has been backed up by the current vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said last year that Chinese sources are probing U.S. government and commercial networks.

Asked whether Washington knew of hacker involvement in the two blackouts, Joel Brenner, the government’s senior counterintelligence official, told National Journal, “I can’t comment on that.” But he added, “It’s certainly possible that sort of thing could happen. The kinds of network exploitation one does to explore a network and map it and learn one’s way around it has to be done whether you are going to … steal information, bring [the network] down, or corrupt it.… The possible consequences of this behavior are profound.”

Brenner, who works for Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, looks for vulnerabilities in the government’s information networks. He pointed to China as a source of attacks against U.S. interests. “Some [attacks], we have high confidence, are coming from government-sponsored sites,” Brenner said. “The Chinese operate both through government agencies, as we do, but they also operate through sponsoring other organizations that are engaging in this kind of international hacking, whether or not under specific direction. It’s a kind of cyber-militia.… It’s coming in volumes that are just staggering.”

The Central Intelligence Agency’s chief cyber-security officer, Tom Donahue, said that hackers had breached the computer systems of utility companies outside the United States and that they had even demanded ransom. Donahue spoke at a January gathering in New Orleans of security executives from government agencies and some of the nation’s largest utility and energy companies. He said he suspected that some of the hackers had inside knowledge of the utility systems and that in at least one case, an intrusion caused a power outage that affected multiple cities. The CIA didn’t know who launched the attacks or why, Donahue said, “but all involved intrusions through the Internet.”

Donahue’s public remarks, which were unprecedented at the time, prompted questions about whether power plants in the United States had been hacked. Many computer-security experts, including Bennett, believe that his admission about foreign incidents was intended to warn American companies that if intrusions hadn’t already happened stateside, they certainly could. A CIA spokesman at the time said that Donahue’s comments were “designed to highlight to the audience the challenges posed by potential cyber intrusions.” The CIA declined National Journal’s request to interview Donahue.

Cyber-Espionage

In addition to disruptive attacks on networks, officials are worried about the Chinese using long-established computer-hacking techniques to steal sensitive information from government agencies and U.S. corporations.

Brenner, the U.S. counterintelligence chief, said he knows of “a large American company” whose strategic information was obtained by its Chinese counterparts in advance of a business negotiation. As Brenner recounted the story, “The delegation gets to China and realizes, ‘These guys on the other side of the table know every bottom line on every significant negotiating point.’ They had to have got this by hacking into [the company’s] systems.”

Bennett told a similar story about a large, well-known American company. (Both he and Brenner declined to provide the names of the companies.) According to Bennett, the Chinese based their starting points for negotiation on the Americans’ end points.

Two sources also alleged that the hacking extends to high-level administration officials.

During a trip to Beijing in December 2007, spyware programs designed to clandestinely remove information from personal computers and other electronic equipment were discovered on devices used by Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and possibly other members of a U.S. trade delegation, according to a computer-security expert with firsthand knowledge of the spyware used. Gutierrez was in China with the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, a high-level delegation that includes the U.S. trade representative and that meets with Chinese officials to discuss such matters as intellectual-property rights, market access, and consumer product safety. According to the computer-security expert, the spyware programs were designed to open communications channels to an outside system, and to download the contents of the infected devices at regular intervals. The source said that the computer codes were identical to those found in the laptop computers and other devices of several senior executives of U.S. corporations who also had their electronics “slurped” while on business in China. The source said he believes, based on conversations with U.S. officials, that the Gutierrez compromise was a source of considerable concern in the Bush administration. Another source with knowledge of the incident corroborated the computer-security expert’s account.

National Journal had a series of conversations with Rich Mills, a Commerce Department spokesman. Asked whether spyware or other malicious software code was found on any electronic devices used by Gutierrez or people traveling with him in China in December 2007, Mills said he “could not confirm or deny” the computer-security expert’s allegations. “I cannot comment on specific [information-technology] issues, but the Department of Commerce is actively working to safeguard sensitive information.” Mills added that the source had provided some inaccurate information, but he did not address the veracity of the source’s claim that the delegation was electronically compromised.

“China is indeed a counterintelligence threat, and specifically a cyber-counterintelligence threat,” said Brenner, who served for four years as inspector general of the National Security Agency, the intelligence organization that electronically steals other countries’ secrets. Brenner said that the American company’s experience “is an example of how hard the Chinese will work at this, and how much more seriously the American corporate sector has to take the information-security issue.” He called economic espionage a national security risk and said that it makes little difference to a foreign power whether it steals sensitive information from a government-operated computer or from one owned by a contractor. “If you travel abroad and are the director of research or the chief executive of a large company, you’re a target,” he said.

“Cyber-networks are the new frontier of counterintelligence,” Brenner emphasized. “If you can steal information or disrupt an organization by attacking its networks remotely, why go to the trouble of running a spy?”

Stephen Spoonamore, CEO of Cybrinth, a cyber-security firm that works for government and corporate clients, said that Chinese hackers attempt to map the IT networks of his clients on a daily basis. He said that executives from three Fortune 500 companies, all clients, had document-stealing code planted in their computers while traveling in China, the same fate that befell Gutierrez.

Spoonamore challenged U.S. officials to be more forthcoming about the breaches that have occurred on their systems. “By not talking openly about this, they are making a truly dangerous national security problem worse,” Spoonamore said. “Secrecy in this matter benefits no one. Our nation’s intellectual capital, industrial secrets, and economic security are under daily and withering attack. The oceans that surround us are no protection from sophisticated hackers, working at the speed of light on behalf of nation-states and mafias. We must cease denying the scope, scale, and risks of the issue. I, and a growing number of my peers believe our nation is in grave and growing danger.”

A Growing Threat

Brenner said that Chinese hackers are “very good and getting better all the time.… What makes the Chinese stand out is the pervasive and relentless nature of the attacks that are coming from China.”

The issue has caught Congress’s attention. Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., who chairs the Homeland Security panel’s Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, and Science and Technology, said that his staff has examined a range of hacker networks, from criminal syndicates to nationally supported groups. “China has been a primary concern,” he said. The deepest penetrations into U.S. systems have been traced back to sources within China, Langevin noted.

(At a hearing last week, Langevin said that the private sector, which owns the vast majority of U.S. information networks, including those that operate power plants, dams, and other critical infrastructure, had taken a “halfhearted approach” to improving security. He cited a new report by the Government Accountability Office, which found that the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation’s largest power generator, “has not fully implemented appropriate security practices to secure the control systems and networks used to operate its critical infrastructures.” Langevin said that the TVA “risks a disruption of its operations as the result of a cyber-incident, which could impact its customers,” and he expressed “little confidence that industry is taking the appropriate actions.”)

The Chinese make little distinction between hackers who work for the government and those who undertake cyber-adventures on its behalf. “There’s a huge pool of Chinese individuals, students, academics, unemployed, whatever it may be, who are, at minimum, not discouraged from trying this out,” said Rodger Baker, a senior China analyst for Stratfor, a private intelligence firm. So-called patriotic-hacker groups have launched attacks from inside China, usually aimed at people they think have offended the country or pose a threat to its strategic interests. At a minimum the Chinese government has done little to shut down these groups, which are typically composed of technologically skilled and highly nationalistic young men. Officially, Chinese military and diplomatic officials say they have no policy of attacking other governments’ systems.

“This has been a growing wave in recent years,” Brenner said, attributing China’s cyber-tactics to its global economic and political ambitions. “The Chinese are out to develop a modern economy and society in one generation.… There is much about their determination that is admirable. But they’re also willing to steal a lot of proprietary information to do it, and that’s not admirable. And we’ve got to stop it as best we can.”

High-profile penetrations of government systems have been occurring for several years. In 2007, an unidentified hacker broke into the e-mail system for Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s office, and the Pentagon shut down about 1,500 computers in response. But officials said that the intrusion caused no harm. In 2006, a State Department employee opened an e-mail containing a Trojan horse, a program designed to install itself on a host machine to give a hacker covert access. As a result, officials cut off Internet access to the department’s East Asia and Pacific region, but the department suffered no long-term problems.

The Homeland Security Department, which is responsible for protecting civilian computer systems, suffered nearly 850 attacks over a two-year period beginning in 2005, officials have said. In one instance, they found that a program designed to steal passwords had been installed on two of the department’s network servers. In these and other incidents, there is considerable debate about whether the intruders stole truly valuable information that could compromise U.S. strategy or ongoing operations.

“The penetrations we’ve seen are on unclassified systems, which are obviously less protected than classified systems,” Brenner said.

Private Sector Foot-Dragging

There is little indication that cyber-intrusions, however menacing, have severely impaired government operations for very long. So why are so many officials increasingly sounding the alarm about network attacks, Chinese hacking and espionage, and the advent of cyberwar?

Part of the answer lies in officials’ most recent appraisals of the cyber-threat. They cite evidence that attacks are increasing in volume and appear engineered more to cause real harm than sporadic inconvenience. Without naming China, Robert Jamison, the top cyber-security official at DHS, told reporters at a March briefing, “We’re concerned that the intrusions are more frequent, and they’re more targeted, and they’re more sophisticated.”

“In terms of breaches within government systems, it’s something that has happened quite a bit over the last six, seven years,” says Shannon Kellogg, the director of information-security policy for EMC Corp., which owns RSA, a top cyber-security research firm. “But the scale of these types of breaches and attacks seems to have increased substantially.”

Government officials are more concerned now than in recent years about the private sector’s inability, or unwillingness, to stop these pervasive attacks. When Donahue, the CIA cyber-security officer, warned the gathering in New Orleans about foreign hackings of power plants, some saw it as a direct challenge to American companies.

“Donahue wouldn’t have said it publicly if he didn’t think the threat was very large and that companies needed to fix things right now,” Alan Paller, the highly regarded director of research at the SANS Institute, told The Washington Post at the time. (SANS, a cyber-security research and education group, sponsored the January meeting in New Orleans.) Another security expert noted that in the previous 18 months, there had been “a huge increase in focused attacks on our national infrastructure networks … and they have been coming from outside the United States.”

In comments posted on Wired magazine’s Danger Room blog, which is trafficked by many techno-elites who are skeptical of the administration’s more boisterous public warnings, Donahue’s remarks about power plants drew support. Michael Tanji, a former intelligence officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency, said that the comments weren’t part of a government plot to hype the threat. “Having worked with [Donahue] on these and related issues in the past, I regret to inform conspiracy theorists that he is virulently allergic to hyperbole,” Tanji said. “I’ve long been a skeptic of claims about being able to shut down the world from the Net.… But after today, I’m starting to come around to the idea that the ignorance or intransigence of utility system owners just might merit a more robust response than has been undertaken to date.”

Tanji’s remarks pointed to one of the most nettlesome realities of cyber-security policy. Because most of the infrastructure in the United States is privately owned, the government finds it exceptionally difficult to compel utility operators to better monitor their systems. The FBI and DHS have established formal groups where business operators can disclose their known vulnerabilities privately. (Companies fear that public exposure will decrease shareholder confidence or incite more hackings.) But membership in these organizations isn’t compulsory. Furthermore, many of the systems that utility operators use were designed by others. Intelligence officials now worry that software developed overseas poses another layer of risk because malicious codes or backdoors can be embedded in the software at its creation. U.S. officials have singled out software manufacturers in emerging markets such as, not surprisingly, China.

Military Response

The intelligence community’s and private sector’s vocal warnings and dire suspicions of Chinese hackers join a chorus of concern emanating from the Defense Department in recent months. In the most recent annual report on China’s military power, the Defense Department declared publicly for the first time that attacks against government and commercial computer networks in 2007 appear to have emanated from China. “Numerous computer networks around the world, including those owned by the U.S. government, were subject to intrusions that appear to have originated within” the People’s Republic of China. Although not claiming that the attacks were conducted by the Chinese government, or officially endorsed, the declaration built upon the previous year’s warning that the People’s Liberation Army is “building capabilities for information warfare” for possible use in “pre-emptive attacks.”

The military is not waiting for China, or any other nation or hacker group, to strike a lethal cyber-blow. In March, Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, the chief of U.S. Strategic Command, said that the Pentagon has its own cyberwar plans. “Our challenge is to define, shape, develop, deliver, and sustain a cyber-force second to none,” Chilton told the Senate Armed Services Committee. He asked appropriators for an “increased emphasis” on the Defense Department’s cyber-capabilities to help train personnel to “conduct network warfare.”

The Air Force is in the process of setting up a Cyberspace Command, headed by a two-star general and comprising about 160 individuals assigned to a handful of bases. As Wired noted in a recent profile, Cyberspace Command “is dedicated to the proposition that the next war will be fought in the electromagnetic spectrum and that computers are military weapons.” The Air Force has launched a TV ad campaign to drum up support for the new command, and to call attention to cyberwar. “You used to need an army to wage a war,” a narrator in the TV spot declares. “Now all you need is an Internet connection.”

Defense and intelligence officials have been surprised by China’s cyber-advances, according to the U.S-China Economic and Security Review Commission. In November, the commission reported that “Chinese military strategists have embraced … cyberattacks” as a weapon in their military arsenal. Gen. James Cartwright, the former head of U.S. Strategic Command and now the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told the commission that China was engaged in cyber-reconnaissance, probing computer networks of U.S. agencies and corporations. He was particularly concerned about China’s ability to conduct “denial-of-service” attacks, which overwhelm a computer system with massive amounts of automatically generated message traffic. Cartwright provocatively asserted that the consequences of a cyberattack “could, in fact, be in the magnitude of a weapon of mass destruction.”

A former CIA official cast the cyber-threat in a similarly dire terms. “We are currently in a cyberwar, and war is going on today,” Andrew Palowitch, who’s now a consultant to U.S. Strategic Command, told an audience at Georgetown University in November. STRATCOM, headquartered at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, oversees the Defense Department’s Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations, which defends military systems against cyber-attack. Palowitch cited statistics, provided by Cartwright, that 37,000 reported breaches of government and private systems occured in fiscal 2007. The Defense Department experienced almost 80,000 computer attacks, he said. Some of these assaults “reduced” the military’s “operational capabilities,” Palowitch noted.

Presidential Attention

President Bush has personally devoted more high-level attention to the cyberattack issue in the last year or so than he did in the first six years of his tenure combined. Many security experts are surprised that the administration is only now moving to take dramatic measures to improve the security of government networks, because some Cabinet-level and White House officials have been warning about the threat for years to just about anyone who will listen.

Until McConnell, the national intelligence director, personally drove the point home to Bush in an Oval Office meeting in 2006, there was little top-level support for a comprehensive government cyber-security plan. “They ignored it,” one former senior administration official said flatly. “McConnell has the president’s ear.”

McConnell, a former director of the National Security Agency, whose main job is to intercept foreign communications intelligence but which is also responsible for protecting U.S. classified information and systems, takes the computer-security issue as seriously as his counter-terrorism mission. After McConnell left the NSA, in 1996, he took over the intelligence practice at Booz Allen Hamilton, where he again turned to security problems, particularly within the nation’s financial infrastructure. Working with officials from the New York Stock Exchange, McConnell developed a report for the government on network vulnerabilities; he has said that it was so revealing, the administration decided to classify it.

Lawrence Wright of The New Yorker reported earlier this year that McConnell told Bush during the 2006 Oval Office meeting, “If the 9/11 perpetrators had focused on a single U.S. bank through cyberattack and it had been successful, it would have had an order-of-magnitude greater impact on the U.S. economy.” According to Wright, the president was disturbed, and then asked Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr., who was at the meeting, if McConnell was correct; Paulson assured the president that he was.

Brenner confirmed Wright’s account as “a true story.” And separately, a former senior administration official told National Journal of another dimension. In that meeting, McConnell also told the president that White House communications systems could be targeted for attack just as other U.S. government systems had been targeted. The intelligence chief was telling the president, “If the capability to exploit a communications device exists, we have to assume that our enemies either have it, or are trying to develop it,” the former official said.

This meeting compelled the White House to craft an executive order laying out a broad and ambitious plan to shore up government-network defenses. Known internally as “the cyber-initiative,” it was formally issued in January. The details remain classified, but it has been reported that the order authorizes the National Security Agency to monitor federal computer networks. It also requires that the government dramatically scale back the number of points at which federal networks connect to the public Internet. The Office of Management and Budget has directed agencies to limit the total number of Internet “points of presence” to 50 by June.

Limiting connection points is analogous to pulling up drawbridges in order to defend the government’s cyber-infrastructure. Security experts interviewed for this story said that it shows how little the government can do, at least for now, to ward off intrusions if the first line of defense is to “unplug.”

Mixed Reactions

Under the president’s cyber-initiative, the Homeland Security Department will be responsible for monitoring government agencies apart from the Defense Department. In March, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told National Journal that the first step is “to survey all the points” of presence. “We have no final number yet.”

“The agencies’ networks have grown very haphazardly. No one really knows where [the connections to the Internet] are,” said Bruce McConnell, who was the chief of information technology and policy in the Office of Management and Budget. He left government in 2000. “Trying to catalogue where things are so you could turn them off is a daunting task in and of itself,” said McConnell, who is not related to the intelligence chief.

Bush’s cyber-initiative has received mixed reviews. Generally, cyber-experts favor a comprehensive approach, and they are relieved that the issue finally has the president’s full attention. But some question how the program is being implemented—under a cloak of secrecy and with a heavy reliance on the intelligence community.

The sharpest criticisms are directed at the NSA, an intelligence agency whose traditional mandate is to collect information coming from outside the United States; it has no customary role monitoring networks inside the country, although this has changed in the years following the 9/11 attacks. It’s not clear just how far the government’s monitoring of computer networks will extend into the private sector and precisely what role the NSA will play tracking networks inside the United States, but lawmakers have already raised concerns that the cyber-initiative will creep into domestic intelligence-gathering. The same kinds of technologies that are used to monitor networks for viruses and other malicious threats could be used to track domestic communications. On May 2, DHS’s top overseers sent a letter to Chertoff questioning “the secrecy of the project.” Sens. Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, the chairman and ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, respectively, noted that the department had requested an additional $83 million for its National Cyber Security Division; DHS had already been allocated $115 million for the cyber-initiative in the 2008 omnibus appropriations bill. “This would be a nearly $200 million increase, tripling the amount of money spent on cyber-security in DHS since 2007,” the senators wrote. The full cost of implementing the president’s cyber-initiative is estimated to be $30 billion. The entire 2009 budget request for the Homeland Security Department is about $50 billion.

Marc Sachs, who was the director for communication infrastructure protection in the White House Office of Cyberspace Security in 2002, praised the administration for taking a bold initial step. But he said that the level of attention is 10 years overdue. Sachs noted that in 1998, President Clinton issued a directive that set ambitious infrastructure-protection goals. “I intend that the United States will take all necessary measures to swiftly eliminate any significant vulnerability to both physical and cyber attacks on our critical infrastructures, including especially our cyber-systems,” Clinton wrote.

Without pointing to particular policies, Brenner, the counterintelligence chief, said, “We need to take these policy declarations that we’ve had for 10 years and turn them into practical reality.” He said the job of securing cyberspace is hardly as simple as “put two padlocks on the door.… This is an incredibly open and porous and, in many cases, wireless system. Controlling cyber-security is like controlling the air flow in a large, segmented building complex in a noxious neighborhood. You cannot be sure you are keeping all the noxious stuff out. What you’ve got to say is, gee, in the infirmary, we’ve really got to deal differently than we do in the lobby.”

False Accusations?

Given the political fallout that could stem from a proven Chinese attack on power plants or theft of government secrets—not to mention the pressure to launch some sort of military response—skeptics have asked whether the Chinese really are behind so many high-profile incidents.

Brenner affirmed the widely held view that it’s technologically difficult to attribute the exact source of any cyberattack and that the government needs better technologies to do so. But despite his assurances that the government has indeed sourced cyber-intrusions to China, others urge caution.

“We want to find a natural enemy, so we’re looking everywhere,” Sachs said. He noted that some hackers launch their attacks through computers based in other countries, and that China is an easy mask. “I think all of us should remember that not everything you see online is truthful.”

Another former administration official echoed those sentiments. “I think it’s a little bit naive to suggest that everything that says it comes from China comes from China,” said Amit Yoran, the first director of DHS’s National Cyber Security Division, who left the post in 2004.

But there is little to no doubt, including among skeptics, that China is vigorously pursuing offensive cyber-capabilities. Military analysts say that the Chinese know their armed forces cannot match America’s in a head-on confrontation, and they realize their nuclear arsenal pales in comparison. These imbalances have forced Chinese military planners to adopt what the Pentagon calls “asymmetric” techniques—tactics that aim at a foe’s vulnerabilities—in order to counter, or at least deter, U.S. military power.

“There has been much writing on information warfare among China’s military thinkers, who indicate a strong conceptual understanding of its methods and uses,” according to the Pentagon’s annual report on China’s military power. The report stated that “there is no evidence of a formal Chinese … doctrine” but noted that the People’s Liberation Army has “established information-warfare units to develop viruses to attack enemy computer systems and networks.”

U.S. military officials see cyber-warfare as one arrow in a quiver of asymmetric techniques to disrupt an enemy’s command-and-control systems. The Chinese strategy, according to this line of thinking, is not to defeat U.S. military forces but to make it harder for them to operate.

China’s military history has been defined by asymmetric warfare, said Harry Harding, an expert on Chinese domestic politics and U.S.-China relations, who teaches at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. Cyber-warfare is just one of the more recent tactics. If the U.S. government tries to protect its systems, the Chinese will simply attack the private sector; he cited the financial services industry as an obvious target. “I have no doubt that China is doing this,” Harding said.

Bennett, the former head of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, said that if China has penetrated power plants and the power grid, it serves as a show of force to the United States and is likely meant to deter any U.S. military intervention on behalf of Taiwan. He noted that the Florida blackout occurred only a few days after the Navy shot down a failing U.S. satellite with a missile designed to intercept inbound ballistic missiles. A year earlier, the Chinese had downed one of their own satellites in orbit. The Bush administration has pursued ballistic missile defense systems, and Taiwan has sought that technology from the United States.

Cyberwar

The Chinese are not alone, of course, in their pursuit of cyber-warfare. The Air Force is setting up the Cyberspace Command, the 10th command in the service’s history.

“The next kind of warfare will be asymmetric warfare,” Gen. William Lord, the provisional commander, said during a roundtable discussion at the Council of Foreign Relations in March. “Who is going to take on the United States Army, Marine Corps, U.S. Air Force, and U.S. Navy as probably the most powerful force on the face of the planet?”

Lord didn’t limit his remarks to China. He said that cyber-criminals and other “bad guys” were as much a concern for the military. He also pointed to a massive cyberattack launched last year against computers in Estonia, in which Russian hackers—perhaps operating at Moscow’s behest—tried to take down the country’s systems in retaliation for Estonia’s decision to move a statue commemorating fallen Soviet troops, a statue that Russians living in Estonia love but that native-born Estonians don’t. The attack has been billed as the first “cyberwar” because of the overwhelming electronic force brought to bear on the tiny country of 1.3 million people.

“I had an opportunity to speak with the minister of defense from Estonia,” Lord said. “He was attacked by 1 million computers.”

The Estonia attack probably shook nerves more than it caused long-term damage. But it served as a potent example of how determined, coordinated hackers could gang up on a foreign government. It has also created profound policy questions about what qualifies as war in cyberspace.

“The problem with this kind of warfare,” Lord said, “is determining who is the enemy, what is their intent, and where are they, and then what can you do about it?”

Brenner, the senior U.S. counterintelligence official, said, “Another country knows that if it starts taking out our satellites, that would be an act of war.” But “if they were to take out certain parts of our infrastructure, electronically, that could be regarded as an act of war,” he said. “It’s not my job to say that.”

NATO officials are reluctantly struggling with that question, too. At a ministerial meeting last June, Defense Secretary Gates asked the allied members to consider defining cyberattacks in the context of traditional warfare. Cyberwar is still abstract, and there are no international conventions that govern military conduct on a digital battlefield.

“The U.S. government doesn’t really have a policy on the use of these techniques,” said Michael Vatis, a former director of the FBI’s National Infrastructure Protection Center. “The closest analogy is to covert actions,” he said, meaning spy operations undertaken by intelligence agencies against foreign governments. “They take place, and people have strong suspicions about [who’s responsible]. But as long as they’re not able to prove it, there’s very little that they can do about it. And so there’s often not as much outrage expressed.”

Staff Correspondent Bruce Stokes contributed to this article. The author can be reached at sharris@nationaljournal.com

Hoo-AH: American Minute - May 30 - Origin of Memorial Day

American Minute
with Bill Federer

Southern women scattered spring flowers on the graves of both the Northern and Southern soldiers who died during the Civil War.

This was the origin of Memorial Day, which in 1868 was set on MAY 30. In 1968, it was moved to the last Monday in May.

From the Spanish-American War, to World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, War against Islamic Terror, up through the present, all who gave their lives to preserve America's freedom are honored on Memorial Day.

Beginning in 1921, every President placed a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which is guarded 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The number 21 being the highest salute, the sentry takes 21 steps, faces the tomb for 21 seconds, turns and pauses 21 seconds, then retraces his steps. Inscribed on the Tomb is the phrase:

"HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY AN AMERICAN SOLDIER KNOW BUT TO GOD."

In his 1923 Memorial Address, President Calvin Coolidge stated:

"There can be no peace with the forces of evil. Peace comes only through the establishment of the supremacy of the forces of good.

That way lies through sacrifice...'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.'"

Alaska Becomes 9th State to Reject Real ID, Oklahoma AWOL ?

Alaska Becomes 9th State to
Reject Real ID
(5/29/2008)

Movement within states still very much alive

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
CONTACT: (202) 675-2312, media@dcaclu.org

WASHINGTON – Yesterday, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin returned a bill to the legislature that would prevent the state from funding implementation of the federal Real ID Act. By neither signing nor vetoing the bill 20 days after overwhelming passage in the legislature, Governor Palin allowed the bill to become law, effective August of this year. Real ID is a federal mandate imposing a national ID card on all Americans through their state drivers' licenses.

"Alaska has joined a growing nationwide movement against Real ID, and by allowing this legislation to become law, Governor Palin has made Alaska the 9th state to pass a law prohibiting compliance," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU Technology and Liberty Program. "The act was hastily passed by Congress without receiving the proper assessment of cost and implementation and is now being forced on the states by administration officials who will not be around in 2017, when final implementation is projected to occur. As the Department of Homeland Security continues its practice of kicking the can down the road, states are continuing to stand up for their residents' privacy and reject Real ID. "

The Real ID Act of 2005 mandates that all states have compliant identification cards consistent with federal regulations, as well as requiring that all Americans' private information be held in a giant federal database – the cost and security of which is unknown. The states' response to the passage of Real ID has been steady. To date, 19 states have passed either resolutions or statutes against the program, including nine that have opted out completely.

"Governor Palin and the Alaska legislature deserve praise from all Alaskans for standing up to the federal government," added Jeffrey Mittman, executive director of the ACLU of Alaska. "Officials of both parties came together to pass legislation that will not only protect the privacy of Alaskans, but will protect their pocketbooks as well by rejecting Real ID's massive financial burden."

Steinhardt added, "By allowing this vital legislation to become law, Governor Palin has opened the door for other governors to do the same."

Wheeling, West Virginia ACLU Opposes Real ID Act

ACLU Opposes Real ID Act
By IAN HICKS Staff Writer
May 29, 2008

The Wheeling chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union voted unanimously Wednesday to oppose the Real ID Act, a controversial law mandating national standards for state-issued drivers’ licenses and identification cards.

The Real ID Act, which was signed into law May 11, 2005, set national standards for what data is included on identification cards, what documentation must be presented when applying and for the sharing of motor vehicle databases between states. The original deadline for compliance was to be May 11 of this year, but the federal government has extended that deadline to Dec. 31, 2009.

Much of the opposition to the act stems from the use of machine-readable technology, which is a standardized two-dimensional bar code. Some believe this could enable the federal government to more easily track the activities of Americans.

“The government wants to keep track of everyone. It is (the ACLU’s) mission to protect civil and human rights, including privacy,” said Frank Calabrese, a member of the ACLU’s Wheeling chapter and member-at-large of the organization’s West Virginia affiliate. “This would be a huge invasion of privacy. Our state mantra is ‘Mountaineers Are Always Free.’”

Wheeling chapter President Barbara Jenks said she plans to inform ACLU-WV of her chapter’s opposition, in hopes of bolstering opposition to the law on a statewide level.

After the Dec. 31, 2009, deadline passes, citizens presenting driver’s licenses or identification cards issued by states that have not complied with the new national standards may have difficulty entering federal buildings or boarding federally regulated commercial aircraft without further screening.

Forty-six of the 50 states have requested extensions for compliance, citing funding issues. The law places the burden of funding on individual states — the cost to Maine taxpayers alone will be at least $185 million over five years, according to a resolution passed by that state refusing to comply with the measure.

Calabrese alluded to a classic George Orwell novel in voicing his opposition to the Real ID Act.

“It’s going to be ‘1984’ — just a little later, in 2008,” he said.

ACLU-WV is one of the fastest-growing state affiliates in the country. It has been in existence for just 40 years, making it one of the newest affiliates east of the Mississippi River.

First Amendment Think Tank: "Oklahoma Clean Campaigns Act" Poses Serious First Amendment Concerns

Hat Tip to Oklahoma Political News Service

First Amendment Think Tank:
"Oklahoma
Clean Campaigns Act"
Poses Serious
First Amendment Concerns

Oklahoma Bloggers Beware!

The Center for Competitive Politics (CCP) highlighted serious First Amendment concerns in H.B. 2196, the "Oklahoma Clean Campaigns Act of 2008," in a letter the educational group sent today to Governor Brad Henry. The bill would make it a crime for any person to intentionally participate in the dissemination of false political advertising. The engrossed bill currently awaits the governor's signature or veto.

CCP is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that works to protect the First Amendment political rights of speech, assembly and petition. If enacted, the bill "would place a chill upon political speakers of all varieties and undermine the robust nature of political debate in Oklahoma," writes CCP president Sean Parnell in the letter to the governor. While truth in political speech is important, the specific provisions of the bill, "puts the government in the position of determining what constitutes 'truth' in an arena where what is 'truth' is itself often the focus of fierce debate," Parnell counsels.

The bill relies on a vague standard that "allows the State to determine the 'truth' of any communication that relates to the 'character, voting record or acts of the candidate," Parnell continues. "Statements about the 'character' of a candidate are more opinion than fact; they are characterizations. A governmental system that determines the 'truth' of a characterization, under penalty of law, is a standard so vague and overbroad that to enforce it would chill speech of every variety."

Parnell notes that in an opinion overturning a similarly crafted Washington state law last year the Washington State Supreme Court wrote, "the notion that the government, rather than the people, may be the final arbiter of truth in political debate is fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment."

"As the Supreme Court of Washington aptly put it, a provision like the Oklahoma proposal 'naively assumes that the government is capable of correctly and consistently negotiating the thin line between fact and opinion in political speech,'" Parnell concludes.

Oklahoma tests on river show low levels of harmful bacteria

Oklahoma tests on river show
low levels of harmful bacteria

BY ROBERT J. SMITH

Samples pulled from the Illinois River on May 21 by the Oklahoma Scenic Rivers Commission showed low levels of fecal matter in the water.

The samples taken at six sites on the Illinois River and at two tributaries showed low levels of enterococci and Escherichia coli, known as E. coli.

Such samplings will take place each Sunday and Wednesday this summer as a way to determine the necessity to protect those who recreate in the river, said Ed Fite, director of the scenic rivers commission.

The commission will spend about $ 6, 000 on sampling this summer and use the results to determine whether advisories should be issued to warn the public about bacteria.

The tests aren’t connected to the federal lawsuit filed by Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson against eight Arkansas poultry companies, Fite said. Edmondson alleges in U. S. District Court in Tulsa that fecal bacteria in poultry litter threatens human health in the Illinois River watershed.

Oklahoma believes poultry farmers are responsible for the bacteria in the river that causes diarrhea and other illnesses.

“This may overlap with the lawsuit, but it’s not intended to fuel the lawsuit,” Fite said. “It’s intended to show what the river is like when people are using the river.” The low levels of the two types of fecal bacteria were discussed cautiously by officials in Edmondson’s office who didn’t want to make too much of the samples.

Edmondson, during a nineday hearing that ended in March, asked a federal judge to ban poultry litter spreading in the watershed.

“The bacteria levels in the river change from day to day depending on the flow and recent rains,” said Charlie Price, an Edmondson spokesman. “During the motion hearing, we presented a history of U. S. Geological Survey samples that proved high levels of dangerous bacteria in the water.

“ If the tests are accurate, it’s good news for that day and location,” he said. “We are pleased the regulatory agencies have taken the testimony of our experts to heart and will be testing the river twice weekly.” But a poultry company spokesman on Wednesday used the samples to rebut the information presented by Edmondson during the hearing.

“The reports of these sampling results appear to be consistent with the evidence that we presented to the court at the preliminary injunction hearing which showed that Mr. Edmondson’s claims of unsafe bacteria levels in the Illinois River are unfounded exaggerations,” said Jackie Cunningham, a spokesman for the Poultry Community Council, an Oklahoma organization created by the poultry companies in the lawsuit to educate the public about the poultry industry.

Gerald Hilsher, a scenic rivers commissioner, was reluctant to make too much of the first samples.

“We need a few weeks of sampling before we should be making any suggestion of what this means,” Hilsher said.

Fite on Wednesday wasn’t about to get drawn into a conversation about what the first results mean, either.

“I’m going to be the only person pulling the samples for the most part,” Fite said. “I want to make sure it’s done right and done consistently.”

Hoo-ah: China Special Operations Forces

China has reportedly developed a force capable of carrying out long-range airborne operations, long-range reconnaissance, and amphibious operations. There are currently about 8,000 of them.

While recruiting and training is centralized, the SOF troops are assigned to the seven military districts, with each one getting about a thousand. Another thousand located in bases with the 15th Airborne Corps (a force of 30,000 troops that supplies a lot of recruits for SOF units).

The SOF units in each military region have their own name, and lots of spirit. The Beijing SOF units is called the Divine Sword, Nanjing's is the Flying Dragons, Guangzhou's is the Sword of Southern China, Jinan;s are the Black Berets, Shenyang's are the Furious Tigers, Chengdu's are the Falcons and Hunting Leopards, and Lanzhou's are the Nocturnal Tigers.

The force supposedly receives army, air force and naval training, including flight training, and is equipped with "hundreds of high-tech devices", including global-positioning satellite systems. All of the force's officers have completed military staff colleges, and 60 percent are said to have university degrees. Soldiers are reported to be cross-trained in various specialties, and training is supposed to encompass a range of operational environments.

At the time of the 1991 Gulf War, the Chinese only had a few hundred commando type troops, and they were intended mainly for long range recon missions. But after seeing what American SOF soldiers did in the Persian Gulf, the Chinese began forming units similar to American Rangers. By the time the 2001 war in Afghanistan came along, the Chinese decided to develop more commandos along the lines of American Special Forces, Delta Force, and British SAS.

Chinese SOF units mainly train and plan for operations against Taiwan. This would include attacks on key targets, as well as kidnapping or killing senior military and political leaders. Some of this would involve Chinese SOF operators who snuck on to the island as tourists or commercial travelers beforehand. Meanwhile, the SOF units also train for counter-terror missions, which includes dealing with particularly troublesome incidents of civil disorder.

China has been recruiting and training SOF personnel heavily for nearly twenty years now. That means they have hundreds of very experienced operators, each with over a decade of SOF experience. Most of the SOF troops, however, are more similar to U.S. Rangers or British Royal Marine Commandos.

Hoo-ah: Mystery Money For A Black Bomber

Recent financial reports from U.S. aircraft manufacturer Northrop Grumman showed $2 billion in mystery money ("restricted programs", or secret stuff.)

This means an unnamed "black project," and one of the likely ones is a prototype of the U.S. Air Force's next generation heavy bomber. The air force has been openly discussing building their next heavy bomber as pilotless, or as a "crew optional" aircraft.

Meanwhile, over the past few years, considerable work has been done on smaller UAV bombers, that appear to be small scale versions of larger aircraft. The prime suspect is the X47B, a 15 ton, 36 feet long UAV, with a wingspan of 47 feet. It has a two ton payload and able to stay in the air for twelve hours. This is actually a navy project, a scaled up model of the X47A.














The Department of Defense wants the air force and navy to agree on a single design, although the navy version will need stronger landing gear and better corrosion protection (from the salt water exposure) for carrier operations.

Nevertheless, the X47B has "scale model prototype of UAV heavy bomber" written all over it. The $2 billion that Northrop Grumman had to show in its mandatory (as a corporation whose stock is publicly traded) financial reports would cover the costs for that.

Indiana Photo ID Law Works

As the Indiana polls opened at 6:00 am on May 6, opponents of Indiana’s Photo ID law eagerly anticipated word from our more than 5,500 precincts that the state’s requirement that all voters show a photo ID at the polls was causing havoc. It’s what they told the United States Supreme Court would happen. To them, it was time to watch Indiana’s most highly anticipated presidential primary in generations collapse under the weight of the requirement.

In Indiana, our election officials and voters are fully committed to increasing confidence in and the integrity of our elections. We have invested a great deal of time, money, and energy over the last few years in needed improvements to our election processes. The central component to this effort is the preservation of the fundamental right of each citizen over the age of 18 to have ONE vote, and to have that vote count.

In recent years, sweeping reforms and improvements to the way we administer elections have included new voting systems in all 92 counties, improved accessibility of polling places, educational outreach and training, and absentee ballot reform. One of the most significant and important reforms has been our photo identification law, which requires voters to prove their identity by presenting a photo ID before casting a ballot.

One week prior to Indiana’s primary elections, the United States Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s photo ID law. The Justices agreed that, with our law, Indiana is paving the road to better voter confidence for states by preventing in-person voter fraud.

Jeffrey Milyo, a professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Missouri, had noted in a recent study that overall voter turnout in Indiana has actually increased since the implementation of the photo ID law. I attribute this directly to voters having better confidence in the process, and therefore, being more willing to invest their time in it.

Several other studies by organizations like the Universities of Nebraska and Delaware and the Heritage Foundation tell us requiring ID at the polls does not reduce voter turnout.

On May 6th, opponents to the law were left disappointed. Indiana experienced one of its highest turnouts ever for a primary election. Turnout increased from 21 percent in the 2004 primary to around 40 percent for the 2008 primary. Presumably, the hotly contested Democratic presidential primary brought scores of new voters to the polls. Nearly 76 percent of the participants took part in the Democratic primary.

By comparison, in 2004, only 40 percent of those who participated voted in the Democratic primary.

Simply put, Indiana voters showed up by the hundreds of thousands to fulfill their civic duty with a photo ID in hand. According to our figures, the number showing up to vote without ID continues to be miniscule, dropping slightly even from previous elections when the rate has been two-tenths of a percentile. In fact, opponents of the concept of having a voter identify his or herself still cannot produce one voter who has experienced a violation of his or her rights.

The deadline to file recounts with the state recount commission has passed. Despite close contests in both the Democratic presidential race as well as that party's gubernatorial primary, no one has filed for a recount. No one has found reason to question the results our closely watched, closely contested statewide election.

With the Supreme Court’s decision, election leaders across the country can now confidently move forward with their efforts to protect voters and improve the integrity of the election process. Mississippi, Missouri, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Kansas, Illinois, Oklahoma and Texas are all states where photo ID requirements were debated and voted on in legislatures this year, and scores of other states have called my office wanting details on the law.

Sure, my staff was in place before sunrise on primary day, ready to ensure a smooth election by helping voters find their polling places, answering questions, and looking into any polling place issues that would come up. But of the more than 1,300 calls we took that day from voters, only two even related to enforcement of Indiana’s photo ID law -- neither demonstrating that someone was shut out from voting.

And even if they were, photo ID opponents fail to point out one very important Federalist notion – that states have the right to put parameters on, and therefore, introduce order into their electoral processes. To not do so would allow chaos to ensnarl the process, rendering it useless. Results would be in doubt and voter confidence shredded. The likelihood of increased participation would dwindle.

Indiana has now conducted eight successful elections since the passage of the photo ID law. There has not been one proven instance of a voter who was unable to exercise his or her right to vote due to the law. The law itself helps prevent this, including provisions to allow voting by those who forget their ID, can’t make it to the polls on Election Day, or who have religious objections to being photographed. The well-publicized nuns in South Bend, who were reportedly unable to vote during this year’s primary election due to not having proper photo ID indeed had the opportunity under the law to cast a provisional ballot and have their votes count by producing ID within ten days. This is eight days longer than Jimmy Carter even suggested when the Carter-Baker Commission suggested photo ID was needed in the polling to boost election integrity and participation. Sadly, they all waived this right to participate in the election process.

Indiana’s photo ID law is our state’s means of protecting the integrity of elections in a manner that creates the least burden for citizens. Furthermore, it’s a right and duty given to us by the 10th Amendment. It is about ensuring accuracy through increased integrity. It’s a 21st century way to manage our election process that gives us confidence again in exercising our franchise -- our most sacred civic transaction. I look forward to an exhilarating 2008 general election with this issue finally settled.

Todd Rokita is the Secretary of State of Indiana. We are proud to note that he was an intern at Human Events in 1992.

Legislature Closes Loophole

State lawmakers have voted to close a loophole that allowed some rapists to avoid harsh penalties.

Among other things, Senate Bill 1992 amended Oklahoma's first-degree rape law to include cases where rape occurs when "the victim is intoxicated by a narcotic or anesthetic agent" or cases where "the victim is at the time unconscious."

"This legislation will make it easier to subject rapists to the full punishment allowed under the law," said state Rep. Pam Peterson, a Tulsa Republican who authored the proposal. "Unfortunately, we've already seen one case where an accused rapist was able to exploit this loophole. We don't want any rapist to ever evade justice on a technicality."

The legislation was proposed after Olayinka Osifeso, a former St. Francis Hospital nurse, was accused of raping a drugged patient at the hospital but could not face a first-degree rape charge because state law only permitted a second-degree charge in those cases.

Another recent incident in the town of Coyle illustrates the need for the new law, Peterson said. According to news reports, a teenage girl in that town recently attended a party and was given a drink she now believes contained a "date rape" drug. After passing out, the girl says she was raped and woke up with six men in the room. Coyle police are reportedly investigating the crime and believe two men may have committed the alleged rape while four others were aware of it.

James Willie Chupp, a 24-year old Coyle man, has been charged only with second-degree rape by intoxication.

Peterson said state Sen. James Williamson (R-Tulsa) was a key player in the process and helped find legislation that could be amended to include the rape language.

State Rep. Randy Terrill, a Moore Republican who authored the bill, was also active in the effort.

"This is a great law and order bill," Terrill said. "Most importantly, it closes the loophole in the rape statutes. Under current state law, a thug who drugged someone before raping them could not face first-degree rape charges, which could only be applied only in cases where force or violence was used. There was no logical rationale for making that distinction. A rapist who drugs his victims or otherwise renders them unconscious is just as brutal and the consequences for the victim are just as devastating, so the punishment should be the same in both cases."

Terrill noted the bill also allows greater punishments for individuals found with more than 100 images of child porn and allows for property used in the commission of that crime to be seized and sold for the benefit of law enforcement. The bill also expands the definition of child stealing and makes desecration of a dead body a separate crime with enhanced penalties when the desecration is an attempt to conceal evidence of crime or the identity of a victim.

Senate Bill 1992 passed the state Senate 45-0 and passed the Oklahoma House of Representatives 94-0 last week. It now awaits the governor's signature to become law.

(REAL ID) The Great Free State

Elizabeth Marsh Cupino
The Great Free State

Originally published May 29, 2008

I work up in Pennsylvania these days, and I am the only employee out of 20 who lives below the Mason-Dixon line. I love to brag about our Great Free State of Maryland.

You can just imagine how popular I am at work, but I'm merely providing facts and truth. Maryland kicks Pennsyltucky's Hillary-voting butt in every conceivable way. Maryland is America in miniature -- with ocean beaches, wide bay, rolling farmland, and green mountains east to west, and Charm City, and Fredericktowne, and history that beats the "P" out of Philadelphia.

Maryland was pivotal in the American Revolution. Baltimore was the seat of the Continental Congress for awhile. Frederick's own Catoctin Furnace furnished 100 tons of shells used at Yorktown. The list is as long as your arm. And Maryland was a hub in the Underground Railroad and a major battleground in the Civil War.

O say, can't you see? Maryland is the birthplace of American liberty.

We're still trying. Maryland is one of only five states holding out on compliance with the federal REAL ID program. For the moment, anyway.

It looks like Gov. Martin O'Malley will ultimately cave in, toe the line with the unfunded REAL ID mandate, and retool the system that issues driver's licenses and other IDs. Otherwise, a Maryland ID will not be adequate documentation to get you on a plane to Cancun or into a Smithsonian exhibit.

I have a Real Problem with REAL ID. It's not so much about proof of citizenship. It's about Big Brother.

The Real purpose of REAL ID is to get every American citizen logged into the federal government's big central databases. Don't believe me? Check out Section 203 of the REAL ID Act: "Linking of Databases." Why isn't anybody picketing about this outside Maryland's MVA offices?

I'm not trying to say that the REAL ID program is, like, the Mark of the Beast or anything. I'm just saying it's another tentacle of a giant, radioactive federal surveillance octopus reaching in and attaching its suckers to our private information.

Besides the National Crime Information System and the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (which tracks everyone who's ever had a mental illness, been dishonorably discharged from the armed forces, or been "an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance"), there's a big push by the FBI to get fingerprints and DNA from every person in this country. Congress recently passed legislation to prevent discrimination on the basis of genetic information, but somehow I'm not reassured.

The Bush Administration is establishing nationwide interoperable (shared) electronic medical records. It will be a requirement by 2014. As if giving the IRS all our financial information wasn't enough -- now your bout with Hep C or chronic fatigue syndrome will be captured and catalogued in a federal system.

If I had any confidence in the feds' motives or ability to manage, protect or use our private information in a responsible, ethical way, it might be different. But I don't. (Can you say habeas corpus?)

REAL ID and all these other programs constitute Real infringements on our privacy and our freedom. I think Maryland should hold out as long as possible on REAL ID, if only to make a point. Maryland doesn't take too kindly to being bullied.

I'm sure you all have our state anthem memorized ... so everybody sing! "The despot's heel is on thy shore, Maryland! His torch is at thy temple door, Maryland!"

American Minute - May 29 - John F. Kennedy

American Minute
with Bill Federer

Awarded the Navy's medal of heroism during World War II and the Pulitzer Prize for his book Profiles in Courage, he was the youngest elected President, serving just over 1,000 days before being shot.

This was John F. Kennedy, born MAY 29, 1917.

Kennedy stated in his Inaugural, January 20, 1961:

"I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forbears prescribed nearly a century and three quarters ago. The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life."

John F. Kennedy continued:

"Yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe - The belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God."

Writing to Brazil's President, Janio da Silva Quadros, January 31, 1961, John F. Kennedy stated:

"Once in every 20 years presidential inaugurations in your country and mine occur within days of each other. This year of 1961 is signalized by the happy coincidence.

At this time, each of us assumes challenging duties...To each of us is entrusted the heavy responsibility of guiding the affairs of a democratic nation founded on Christian ideals."

Hoo-ah: What you are NOT hearing about Iraq from the Media !

Al Qaeda web sites are making a lot of noise about "why we lost in Iraq."

Intelligence agencies are fascinated by the statistics being posted in several of these Arab language sites. Not the kind of stuff you read about in the Western media.

According to al Qaeda, their collapse in Iraq was steep and catastrophic. According to their stats, in late 2006, al Qaeda was responsible for 60 percent of the terrorist attacks, and nearly all the ones that involved killing a lot of civilians. The rest of the violence was carried out by Iraqi Sunni Arab groups, who were trying in vain to scare the Americans out of the country.

Today, al Qaeda has been shattered, with most of its leadership and foot soldiers dead, captured or moved from Iraq. As a result, al Qaeda attacks have declined more than 90 percent. Worse, most of their Iraqi Sunni Arab allies have turned on them, or simply quit. This "betrayal" is handled carefully on the terrorist web sites, for it is seen as both shameful, and perhaps recoverable.

This defeat was not as sudden as it appeared to be, and some Islamic terrorist web sites have been discussing the problem for several years. The primary cause has been Moslems killed as a side effect of attacks on infidel troops, Iraqi security forces and non-Sunnis. Al Qaeda plays down the impact of this, calling the Moslem victims "involuntary martyrs." But that's a minority opinion. Most Moslems, and many other Islamic terrorists, see this as a surefire way to turn the Moslem population against the Islamic radicals. That's what happened earlier in Algeria, Afghanistan, Egypt and many other places. It's really got nothing to do with religion. The phenomenon hits non-Islamic terrorists as well (like the Irish IRA and the Basque ETA).

The senior al Qaeda leadership saw the problem, and tried to convince the "Al Qaeda In Iraq" leadership to cool it. That didn't work. As early as 2004, some Sunni Arabs were turning on al Qaeda because of the "involuntary martyrs" problem. The many dead Shia Arab civilians led to a major terror campaign by the Shia majority. They controlled the government, had the Americans covering their backs, and soon half the Sunni Arab population were refugees.

Meanwhile, the "Al Qaeda In Iraq" leadership was out of control. Most of these guys are really out there, at least in terms of fanaticism and extremism. This led to another fatal error. They declared the establishment of the "Islamic State of Iraq" in late 2006. This was an act of bravado, and touted as the first step in the re-establishment of the caliphate (a global Islamic state, ruled over by God's representative on earth, the caliph.) The caliphate has been a fiction for over a thousand years. Early on, the Islamic world was split by ethnic and national differences, and the first caliphate fell apart after a few centuries. Various rulers have claimed the title over the centuries, but since 1924, when the Turks gave it up (after four centuries), no one of any stature has taken it up. So when al Qaeda "elected" a nobody as the emir of the "Islamic State of Iraq", and talked about this being the foundation of the new caliphate, even many pro-al Qaeda Moslems were aghast. When al Qaeda could not, in 2007, exercise any real control over the parts of Iraq they claimed as part of the new Islamic State, it was the last straw. The key supporters, battered by increasingly effective American and Iraqi attacks, dropped their support for al Qaeda, and the terrorist organization got stomped to bits by the "surge offensive" of last year. The final insult was delivered by the former Iraqi Sunni Arab allies, who quickly switched sides, and sometimes even worked with the Americans (more so than the Shia dominated Iraqi security forces) to hunt down and kill al Qaeda operators.

If you can read Arabic, you can easily find these pro-terrorism sites, and see for yourself how al Qaeda is trying to explain its own destruction to its remaining supporters. While it's common to assume the Information War has been going against the West, this was not the case when you checked with what was going on inside the enemy camp.