] U.S. President George W. Bush (news - web sites) is
] pictured in this combo image falling off a Segway
] personal transporter on the front driveway of his
] parents' summer home June 12, 2003 in Kennebunkport,
] Maine. Bush arrived from Washington to spend the weekend
] with his father, former President George Bush, who
] celebrates his 79th birthday today and his mother
] Barbara. Bush was not injured in the fall.

Oh this is hysterical - tipping these things really takes some doing! But then we aren't talking about the sharpest tool in the shed either.

Laughing Boy

Bush falling off a Segway!

] ``Our ability to prevent another catastrophic attack on
] American soil would be more difficult if not impossible
] without the (USA) Patriot Act,'' Ashcroft told the House
] Judiciary Committee. But ``the law has several weaknesses
] which terrorists could exploit, undermining our
] defenses.''

So does the CIA. You doing anything about that, Ashcroft?

] Ashcroft said he wants the law changed so that anyone
] supporting or working with suspected terrorist groups can
] be prosecuted as ``material supporters;''

I can see this one getting twisted into abuses REAL quick. You donated money to a charity that turns out to be a terrorist front? Well, guess the gov't is seizing your assets and you're going to jail. You sold computer parts to a guy who turs out to be a hacker? You're going to jail too. I know, it seems unlikely, but passing bills like the Patriot Act seemed unlikely 5 years ago, too.

] all terrorist
] acts can result in the death penalty or, at least, life
] in prison; and suspected terrorists can be held
] indefinitely before trial.

This is going too far. Much, much too far. "All" terrorist acts do not deserve the death penalty, considering what are defined as "terrorist acts" by the government.

Um, does anyone happen to remember that computer crimes are considered terrorism now? What else is on the list to be considered terrorism? Saying the President of the US is a totalitarian pig? Making fun of Ashcroft's bad hair? I'm not interested in living in the kind of regime I'm seeing develop.

] ``In criminal cases where public safety is a concern such
] as drug dealing, organized crime and gun crimes,
] defendants in federal crimes are presumptively denied
] pretrial release,'' Ashcroft said. ``It seems as though
] the crime of terrorism should have the same
] presumption.''

Yes, but they are given access to lawyers, while terrorists are not.

I'm really worried now. I thought I was worried before, but it's just getting worse. This is madness.

Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | Ashcroft Wants Broader Anti-Terror Powers

Decius wrote:
] ] Federal authorities said today they have captured a man
] ] they believe to be suspected serial bomber Eric Robert
] ] Rudolph.
]
] Wow, they finally got him...

All I can say is, HELL YEA!!

I hate trying people in the court of public opinion, but based on what I've seen so far, the FBI has got the goods on this jackass.

I feel unusually strong about this, because, well... I was in Centennial Olympic Park the night the pipe bomb went off - just a couple hundred feet or less away. In fact I must have been right behind the guy with the video camera that captured it going off because that’s just about the vantage point I had, yet I've been unable to see myself in the video. I had walked thru the Swatch Pavilion (where the bomb went off) just about 10 minutes prior.

So I have a VERY personal vendetta here. As far as I'm concerned, he tried to kill ME and almost did.

Laughing Boy

RE: statesman.com | Olympic park bombing suspect captured

Laughing Boy wrote:
] ] Young girls at a mixed primary school in Somerset have
] ] been banned from wearing thongs and G-strings after the
] ] headteacher deemed them "inappropriate".
] ]
] ] Concerned Anna Roxburgh, head of Hamp Community Primary
] ] School in Bridgwater, wrote a letter to parents after she
] ] saw four 11-year-olds wearing the risqué underwear while
] ] changing after sport.
] ]
] ] She said the "revealing" items could lead to "possible
] ] embarrassment" if they fall over in the playground or are
] ] spotted by boys.
] ]
] ] Although some parents slammed her decision, the move was
] ] welcomed by children's welfare charity Kidscape which in
] ] the past has campaigned for the withdrawal of sexy
] ] underwear for pre-teens.
]
] OK... what kind of parent lets their 11 year old wear a thong?
] Never mind - likely the same type of parent like Patsy Ramsey
] that lets her 7 year old daughter be in swimsuit competitons
] for beauty pagents. It's just plain sick - and people wonder
] how/why peophiles exist?
]
] What the hell is wrong with people?

They think it's 'cute' for their little girls to be dressed up like little adult dolls. I guess they do it for attention since they can't dress like that, or something. I don't know - classless.

RE: UK: Headteacher Bans Young Pupils From Wearing Thongs

] Michigan lawmakers took a tentative first step Wednesday
] to criminalize a bizarre high-tech weapon called the
] e-bomb, which sounds really scary but might not exist at
] all.
]
] Acting on the better-safe-than-sorry model of
] legislating, the House Criminal Justice Committee voted
] unanimously to add e-bombs -- also called electromagnetic
] bombs -- to Michigan's criminal code along with dynamite
] and other explosives.

The "better-safe-than-sorry model"? Interesting..

] At Wednesday's committee meeting, one witness used the
] movie "Ocean's 11," in which thieves use an e-bomb to
] disable electronics for a casino heist, as an example
] of its use.

... when Hollywood drives security awareness.

Michigan might ban high-tech weapon; Bills would add e-bomb to state's criminal code

] America has 47,000 power plants, airports and other
] "critical infrastructure facilities."
]
] Walker believes a terrorist can get within 100 feet of
] most of them, unchallenged and undetected, and kill or
] injure thousands.
]
] But if onsite cameras beamed photos to the World Wide
] Web, Americans could monitor these sites from home. If
] they spied a potential attacker a masked man
] trying to scale a power plant fence, or a van parked next
] to a reservoir they could alert security agents
] with a click of the mouse. Agents would call local
] authorities and help avert disaster.
]
] Walker envisions spotters getting up to $10 per hour,
] paid by the government agencies and companies that need
] protecting. He wants to sell USHomeGuard to the federal
] government for $1, then charge fees to run the system.

This is so freaking Orwellian, its scary. Keep an eye on this one folks...

Laughing Boy

Webcam homeland

Terror evidence, blah blah blah. But what caught my eye was the end of the article. I forget sometimes there are families where terrorists come from who do not believe in their relative's insanity.

] One Saudi who allegedly took up arms was Abdul Kareem
] Yazijy, 35, a suspected member of the cell that carried
] out the suicide bombings here last week. It is unclear if
] Yazijy was killed in the attacks, because only three of
] the nine bombers who died have been positively
] identified.
]
] But at his family home in Riyadh today, Yazijy's younger
] brother, Abdullah, called on him to turn himself in.
] "Whatever the authorities will do to you is not worse
] than what you are thinking of doing," Abdullah Yazijy
] said in a plea spoken to two American journalists.
]
] Yazijy said his brother, the third of eight children in a
] family of civil servants, disappeared about 18 months
] ago. He said his brother had a long history of "emotional
] instability."
]
] He said his mother, in particular, wants to believe her
] son had nothing to do with the bombings. But he
] reluctantly outlined his brother's past, which is
] familiar to investigators.
]
] Yazijy said his brother went to Afghanistan for a few
] months in 1990 after Soviet forces withdrew from the
] country and he later worked for two years in Sarajevo,
] Bosnia, for a Saudi charity. That charity, the Supreme
] Committee for the Collection of Donations for
] Bosnia-Herzegovina, was raided in 2002 because of
] suspected links to al Qaeda.
]
] On May 6, Abdul Kareem Yazijy's face was shown on Saudi
] television as one of 19 men being sought by authorities
] following the discovery of a major arms cache. Six days
] later came the bombings.
]
] "This man brought disaster to the whole family," said
] Zakaria Yazijy, Abdul Kareem's nephew. "He is a crisis in
] the family, like a demon."
]
] "What," Abdullah Yazijy asked plaintively, "do the
] Americans think of us?"

Audio Message Urges Muslims to Attack (washingtonpost.com)

] The world's richest man and one of the country's top news
] anchors sat down at a cafe for cappuccino but both
] walked away without paying the bill.
]
] NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw also was in town and
] interviewed Gates at the Past Times Cafe, where they both
] ordered a cappuccino. But when the interview was over,
] they left and no one paid the bill.
]
] "They just got right out the door, the security people
] ushered them right out," said Jackie Harrington, the
] waitress who prepared and served the coffee.
]
] No one thought much more about it until the cafe's owner,
] Corinne Arnold, got a call from Gates' office asking
] whether he owed some money. The cafe insisted the
] cappuccinos, which cost $3 each, were on the house.
]
] But Brokaw, a South Dakota native, thought otherwise and
] took care of the debt Wednesday with a note that included
] two $20 bills.
]
] "When we walked out without paying we got nailed," Brokaw
] wrote. "One 20 is for the coffee. The other is for the
] wall. Thanks, Tom."
]
] Cafe workers say the payment was unnecessary
] having the opportunity to serve Brokaw and Gates was
] reward enough, Harrin

Yea right. Fuck that shit - when you wipe your ASS with $100 bills, when you make more money in 60 seconds then most people make in a year, you don't get so fucking arrogant to think "oh they will comp us". And I'm not just talking about Gates. Brokaw isn't exactly hurting for cash himself.

Arrogant bastards.

Laughing Boy

Gates and Brokaw forget the check

] In the end, the Republican Congress looks likely to force
] through a stimulus package that is largely based around
] tax cuts. Some of these measures may be sensible
] long-term reforms, and returning money to taxpayers is
] seldom unpopular. But the stimulus will not create many
] jobs now, whatever Mr Bush says.

Don't quit your day job. No, really. How many 'jobless recoveries' can we survive?

Another Bush, another jobless recovery

This article gives some insight into the flaws of the National No-Fly List associated with CAPPS and CAPPS II. Along with the horror stories of existing problems, there are examples of why the new plan for CAPPS II is even worse than the current one.

"Remember, this isn't just about privacy, it's also about accountability," Tien says. "It's not just Orwell -- it's Kafka."

A bigger problem with CAPPS II, though, is that it may not work very well at finding terrorists. In May 2002, Samidh Chakrabarti and Aaron Strauss, two graduate students in computer science (and a few other disciplines) at MIT, decided to see if they could come up with an algorithm that terrorists might use to beat a profiling system like the current version of CAPPS. After studying everything that is publicly known about CAPPS, the pair determined that anyone with the will and not very many resources could easily get around the system. They concluded that airlines would be safer if, instead of profiling, they instead selected a portion of fliers at random and subjected them to more thorough searches for weapons. (Chakrabarti and Strauss wrote up their findings in a term paper for a class, but it was picked up by First Monday, a peer-reviewed academic journal on the Web.)

'Please step to the side, sir'