Slashdot Mirror
Electronic Burglary in the Senate
earthworm2 writes "The Boston Globe is reporting that Republicans on the Senate judiciary committee have spied on confidential Democratic files for a year, studying their strategies and passing on the juicy bits to the media."
Microsoft backs the Republicans.
Microsoft shares exploit with the Republicans.
Democrats get sodomized.
Fuhrer Bush and Reichstag Security Head Ashcroft smile.
You KNOW it's true because it's on slashdot!
That's why I'm a... damn!
W@tergate ??
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
So I misread that as "Electronic Buggery in the Senate".
If the files were supposed to be confidential, shouldn't they have been protected?
And if the Republicans are hackers doesn't that mean we should be supporting them??
Since information wants to be free and all.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Let's see how they like "terrorism" charges brought aginst themselvs.
it is confirmed that Nixon will be replacing Cheney as Bush's running mate in the upcoming elections...
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
Republicans on the Senate judiciary committee have spied on confidential Democratic files for a year
Why bother? They are all on the rich kids' team anyway.
--
In London? Need a Physics Tutor?
American Weblog in London
Didn't a republican president resign over things like this? How much do you want to bet we'll just roll over and tollerate this, rather than procecuting the people responsible.
It's okay to spend $$44 million dollars on a multi year witch hunt to find nothing more than a stain on a dress. Why can't we spend the same amount to investigate THIS administration, and the cronies in the congress who support them?
But this is slashdot. A slashdoter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber!
ComputerGate and lets's start the impeachment trial today :) ;)
I was going to call it BillGate but I thought nobody would get it
Is this is a surprise? Both sides are doing the same thing. The problem is that the media, for the most part, is pro-liberal and will report spin on any story that favors non-republicans.
Move along.
After all, the Democrats were against the war, and thusly terrorist sympathizers!
We are exactly 20 years off on our calendar.
Watergate, anyone?
Seriously, though, it'll be interesting to see if this is just a case of an overzealous intern and an incomptent tech, or if there is more to it.
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
So far, the Deomocrat's judiciary strategy has been to not allow nominations to come to the floor for a vote. What's the secret?
Trespassing? Perhaps. Spying? That's a stretch. But BURGLARY?? This looks more to me like Michael once again using inflammatory headlines to push his well-known anti-Republican agenda on the readers of Slashdot.
Mod me down if you don't like what I'm suggesting, but really folks, think about it for a minute.
"Hackergate." The media will be eating it up. Well, except for Fox News ;)
"A technician hired by the new judiciary chairman, Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, apparently made a mistake that allowed anyone to access newly created accounts on a Judiciary Committee server shared by both parties -- even though the accounts were supposed to restrict access only to those with the right password."
This is actually scary news for Americans!
DrkBr
As the extent to which Democratic communications were monitored came into sharper focus, Republicans yesterday offered a new defense. They said that in the summer of 2002, their computer technician informed his Democratic counterpart of the glitch, but Democrats did nothing to fix the problem.
... they get caught with both hands in the honey pot.
While it sounds like the Dems' tech guy is missing his distro of Clue, I wonder... what if he/she left the backdoor open on purpose?
Here's a scenario:
1. Repo tech tells Demo tech about security problem.
2. Demo tech realizes that any security breach could bite the Repos in the butt if discovered.
3. Optional: Tech tells Demo leadership about the plan.
4. Demo tech keeps an eye on traffic through the breach, letting the Repos pull info until...
5.
Step 3 is optional because it assumes cluefulness on the part of political leadership, which I wouldn't want to assume. But there are some tech-savvy members of Congress (surely!) who might understand the honeypot concept.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
In DC, this is called `Business As Usual`.
Skip from this incident of Republicans spying back to the years during the Clinton White House, wherein the FBI was found to have pulled confidential files on tons of prominent Republicans and provided that information (quite illegally).
Quick link to info on Filegate
Quick summary for people who don't remember 1998: "[There was a] class action suit on behalf of the more than 900 Bush and Reagan appointees and possibly others whose FBI files were unlawfully obtained by the Clinton White House. Louis Freeh, Director of the FBI, has admitted that there was an "egregious violation of privacy without justification."
It goes around, it comes around, Watergate wasn't the first time, and this isn't the last time.
Politics.
feh.
In the US, however, doesn't this make them terrorists and entitled to a free, one way, all expenses paid trip to Cuba?
Further investigation reveals that the Democrats were using Usenet for their correspondence.
Best Windows Freeware
...that "Deep Throat" re-enter the popular vernacular.
Note that an anonymous coward posted this joke prior to paren't post, yet parent received a +1 funny, and the a/c hasn't received moderation. a/c should have +1 funny, and this should be marked redundant.
KTHXBYE.
It's called political P2P downloading.
What is the jail term for that? Really?
This could very well be the next Washington fiasco.
...
Unfortunately, congress can't seem to do anything, particularly with respect to policing itself
They should have used Digital Rights Management:
Ideological opponents: ( ) Allow (+) Deny
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Stop spoiling my well-ingrained stereotype of republicans as slack-jawed rednecks who couldn't crack into a nut, let alone a computer! How can this be? :)
These sigs are more interesting tha
I try not to post anything about my political beliefs on Slashdot, I find it to be -1 Offtopic. But seriously, they really need to go down for this one.
A leak through Robert Novak that benefits the White House agenda?
This sounds just like the Valerie Plame deal. And that leak was supposedly from high-level White House officials.
Very curious where this leads. It could actually be a Watergate...
W = (-president)^1/2
Preach one thing, practise another!
Tell everyone that you're all for fair play, an even playing field for everyone but then read other people's confidential memos to gain an unfair advantage. How sleazy is that?
I wonder what Republicans who thought Bill Clinton getting a blowjob was worthy of impeachment have to say about Senators and their staffs committing crimes punishable by up to a year in prison?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
That will teach them not to lock down their 802.11b access point!
Is this salon.com now? Give me a break this is a stupid story, guess all you hackers and crackers should support the Republicans now, and there should be plenty of cries of how stupid the Dems are for not securing their own files and using Windoz etc.
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
Wow, what do you say about this? Watergate, anyone?
Considering the Patriot Act has made most of the crimes that occured in the Watergate affair a legal activity, this smacks of someone bending the rules a little too far in their favor. Who is watching what these people are up to these days?
i teh s3n4t0r
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
It probably didn't help that several of these people most likely had post-it notes on their monitor saying "Username pleahy Password republicanssuck12"
SmashTech - No smashing of tech involved
told the RIAA that there were GOPs sharing music in Senate. That would have gotten them all sued and surely lead to a decline of unshared online documents.
It is believed that the Gops used a new p2p network called "Democrapster"
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
They had to do it. The Democrats are a threat to national security. Heck, many of the voted against the Patriot Act.*
*note: This is sarcasm.
It also seems important to point out the irony of this kind of illegal activity among members of the JUDICIARY committee.
Finally, even with this secret information, the Republicans still had to stoop to some really sick stuff - remember Protestant Orrin Hatch acusing Catholic Richar Durbin of anti-Catholic prejudice? Or other ultra-whitey Republicans acusing Democrats of racism? Crazy. This reminds me of Watergate - Nixon was solid going into the election, but he couldn't resist going that extra bit and got into this sort of illegal 'dirty tricks'.
I'm not surprised that they are spying on each other...
I am surprised that it get's into the press...
I am dissapointed that it doesn't get into the press more often...
but there isn't much you can do when the parent company of an "independent" and "free" paper has an agenda that should not be published then it will not be published
I'm also curiouse about "behind the scenes" of this story - who own Boston Globe (all the parent and related corps.) and where the involeved senators are from, who supports them financially, and how they vote, etc.
Just because I don't care, it doesn't mean I don't understand. Homer J. Simpson
Inserting 'gate' into the short hand term for a new political scandal automatically robs that scandal of any real importance.
Gatewaygate.
All's true that is mistrusted
Hmmm, Republicans use unethical means to determine Democrats also unethical.
File this under: double plus obvious, tell us something new.
First, BG just endorsed Kerry. Second, it would appear that tracing this back to Republicans in general is hardly the case. On the other hand, who among us given an open share wouldn't view a tantilizing document. I have a good friend who was a sysadmin at a firm. While restoring data onto a laptop he "came across" a document outlining his co-workers salaries. It cost him his job, event though this was (as I recall) a document that he needed to restore for this user. His downfall was mentioning to the exec he was doing this for.
Novak declined to confirm or deny whether his column was based on these files.
"They're welcome to think anything they want," he said. "As has been demonstrated, I don't reveal my sources."
At least he's consistant in enabling criminals. A Bush administration official got Novak to blow the cover of a CIA operative involved in stopping WMD proliferation and Novak won't reveal his source in that case either. Whatta patriot!
they are all corrupt.
Interesting how we are supposed to trust a government that doesn't trust itself, eh?
Gah. I'm moving to Emland. It's a small island off the coast of your imagination. Right next to the Citgo, across the street from the Chinese takeout/wireless internet cafe/pizzaria/gas station/home depot/Publix.
Bah.
Sent from your iPad.
That's about all the article says about the "glitch" that occurred, presumably due to human error. At first I thought the account was probably M$ Windows related, since it is would be harder with Linux/UNIX to "accidentally" create accounts which were accessible to anybody.
But then, the technician could have done anything stupid like assigning the easily guessable password across to all accounts. Or who knows, maybe they were using a database system or other software which created accounts on top of the OS.
A little more information about the OS/software in use would certainly shed more light on who was actually responsible for the glitch...instead of blaming it outright on the technician.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
them to act like little fairies?
It's funny - if this was Diebold with the insecure files, most here would think it was ok as it might expose some "truth."
Since the Republicans did it, it's a travesty.
Go figure.
Nixon: Oh no? Well listen here missy. Computers may be twice as fast as they were in 1973. But your average voter is as drunk and stupid as ever. The only one whose changed is me. I've become bitter and lets face it, crazy over the years. And when I'm swept into office, I'll sell our childrens organs to zoos for meat, and I'll go into peoples houses at night and wreck up the place! MWUHAHAHAHAH!
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Atleast this burglary in their own (political) backyard should make them think twice with the SERVE voting system that Defense Dept is so keen on accepting
Slashdot covered the SERVE story earlier.
Free XBox, PS2
A technician hired by the new judiciary chairman, Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, apparently made a mistake
That wasn't a computer malfunction. The computer and the software worked exactly like the way they were supposed to work.
Seriously, given the political leanings of the Boston Globe is it any doubt they claim it's the Republican's killing firstborn children and all?
Kinda balances out what the Washington Times says about the Democrats.
Thou Shalt not be suprised when the documents saved in a public share show up the the Wall Street Journal.
This story is appalling, but also ancient. Let's
bring it back out closer to election time, though,
when it is again relevant.
I mean it's not like the Republicans were downloading music or anything.
This
The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
Censure
> Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary
> Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year,
> monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically
> passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The
> Globe.
> Novak is also at the center of an investigation into who
> leaked the identity of a CIA agent whose husband
> contradicted a Bush administration claim about Iraqi
> nuclear programs.
So, Novak leaks the name of a CIA operator for political gain to hide the fact that Bush lied about Iraq trying to buy uranium for nuclear weapons. Then he blows the cover of a CIA front operation to further his story. Why isn't this guy in jail?
More importantly, some Republicans keep doing crazy stuff like this. We still don't know which "senior Bush official" leaked the info to Novak, and Bush seems uninterested to find out who committed this crime. The Republicans have been desperate to bury Watergate's effect on their image, but stuff like makes it alive and well.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
is it any shock GOP and Dems spy on each other to get an advantage. Wake up people.
Lets just be slightly objective here, rather than immediately accuse the "evil republicans" because it's the trendy thing to do.
There's nothing in the article that specifically points fingers at republicans. Hell, these memos could be leaked by the very democrats that receive the memos! These memos could be leaked by the interns that handle these things.
It's also entirely possible that this could be a well timed pawn in the Democrat's strategy to regain control of the country... being a few days away from democrat elections and all.
Of course, this brings forth another point... what are members of the senate doing in secret that need to be kept out of public view? The correct answer should be NOTHING, and therefore, all memos should be open to the public anyway. I'd advise that we shouldn't re-elect secretive, unaccountable senators at the next election.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Are there actually going to be any repercussions for this, and will the media actually pick this up and turn this into a major incident which the 'average person' is aware of?
Or will this just wind up with a bunch of "liberals" being very outraged, followed by a short flurry of page 7 articles in newspapers, followed by this story dropping off the face of the planet forever with around election time the only indication this ever happened being an occational mention in maybe a Tom Tomorrow strip or two?
eh, who am I kidding. Like with so many other things that republicans have done in the last four years, it will probably be the latter.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Let's assume for a moment that Senators and/or their staffers were illegally accessing systems that they were not supposed to be gaining entry to.
Using the same Draconian laws that they themselves enacted, these people could end up serving hard time for their deeds, losing their rights to privacy, vote and carry a gun. That and losing their jobs and pensions, not to mention medical benefits, etc. In other words, as felons, they become no-ones.
That to me, is the definition of irony.
"They are gonna get Ross Perot for VP! I read it on the secret files!"
The FBI/Ashcroft would be beating down our door, seizing anything that plugs into a wall outlet, and charging us with domestic terrorism. ...even if we had done it simply for the challenge of it.
Why is it that when the Republicans do it, for _nefarious_ reasons, it's largely ignored/shrugged off? Where are the charges? Where the zealosy?
Double standards are great, especially when they cost people their lives to our Judicial system, while the true criminals get kickbacks and screw their constituencies.
Everyone's kneejerk reaction is to scream bloody murder against the opposing political party, but as you've pointed out, its politics as usual. Both sides are hell bent on keeping and expanding what power they have in our government. In the end, the citizen is always the one to get screwed. Hence why I vote Libertarian.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
...this could never have happened!
Ninnle Linux...choice of the NSA.
A technician hired by the new judiciary chairman, Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, apparently made a mistake that allowed anyone to access newly created accounts on a Judiciary Committee server shared by both parties -- even though the accounts were supposed to restrict access only to those with the right password.
Maybe if the software source had been made publically available, or the source were from some project with available source then the bug would have been found. Instead they just wanted to trust one guy to find all errors?
Advocate government use of open source/Free software? maybe.
Can anyone find the security hole?
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
If you post sensitive information on an open share with no password then expect people to read it. Nothing illegal happened at all.
I am not a crook! Yeah, yeah, I know, read the telapromoter thing.
Sigs are bad for your health.
"Green? Libertarian? Reform? Independent?
Power corrupts."
And PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
You got'a love it! when anyone else looks at files they should not be looking at, it is "criminal hacking" when they look at the same stuff it is called "glitch" :)))
From the article:
A technician hired by the new judiciary chairman, Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, apparently made a mistake that allowed anyone to access newly created accounts on a Judiciary Committee server shared by both parties -- even though the accounts were supposed to restrict access only to those with the right password.
To me, it looks like what happened here is that the Dems didn't configure thier system correctly, and accidently gave the Rebublicans access to thier confidential files.
Of course, the right thing to do would have been for the Republicans to let them know that thier system was wide open, but then again, we all know what happens when you try to do the right thing and inform admins of thier security problems.
I don't know that it matters who got caught, I'd bet both would have done it if they had the chance. Maybe something about computer security issues will stick however, and it won't come to a total waste of time after all.
Regardless of whether or not the tech failed to do his job, the Republicans were still peeking in areas they had no business peeking.
COnsider this analogy: Just because a locksmith installs a weak lock on someone's front door, that does not give everyone an automatic free pass to enter the house and treat themselves to a PB&J and a shower.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
I am not a crook...
photoplankton
Louis Freeh, the source that you're quoting authoritatively, is also the FBI Director who misallocated funds and agents to investigate Clinton's WhiteWater scandals.
In case you weren't familiar with those, the WhiteWater scandals were shown to be completely baseless. As a matter of fact, several independent government agencies acquitted the Clintons of wrongdoing from the very beginning. Despite this, Freeh continuned to play up to his Republican buddies in Congress.
While we're meditating on this era, let's remember the outrageous scandals that neo-conservatives used to ruin a great presidency.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
Though honestly, I'd like to know what this "glitch" is. Sounds like someone had a rootkit, and the tech didn't patch windows.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
A technician hired by the new judiciary chairman, Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, apparently made a mistake that allowed anyone to access newly created accounts on a Judiciary Committee server shared by both parties -- even though the accounts were supposed to restrict access only to those with the right password.
Does this mean the party that controls the senate gets to hire the technician who manages the servers? Am i the only one who sees a problem with that?
Then why won't the media report any of these "juicy bits"?
It strikes me as ironic (in the scary, not-very-funny-at-all sense) that it's the judiciary committee that got caught breaking the law, violating ethics, and spying on their counterparts.
We're supposed to trust these people with judicial nominees?
Is it just me, or does this sound an aweful low like Watergate, electronic style?
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
Well, this bug would seem to affect all members on the shared computer system, yet the Boston Globe only biasly charges Republicans with computer fraud?
If this bug was known, as the story would suggest, wouldn't Democrats have done the same... or is the "Party of Lawyers", as Newt Gingrish would say, suddenly obedient, quiet choir boys? I think not!
Or, maybe the Republicans were smart enough to NOT put their documents on this machine knowing it was mismanaged.
Or, now that I've put on my tinfoil hat, the Democrats purposely hired an incompetent administration who purposely put the "hole" in the system so the Democrats could read Republican documents... but the Republicans spotted it and stopped using the system while the Democrats didn't.
Or, maybe this is just being blown all out of proportion because the Boston Globe is known for it's liberal bias and would do anything, even risk their journalistic integrity (not that it means anything nowadays), to remove the Republicans from the White House in favor of it's homeboy John Kerry (the would-be irishman).
It is a shame the article didn't go into any technical details about what kind of servers these were.
I'll give you one guess what i think it is.
By want, I assume that you meant took. Maybe yes, maybe no.
But when you competitor does, it's pretty clear that it's theft.
Sigs are bad for your health.
Making Way for Designer Insects
Risks and Benefits of Gene-Altered Bugs Merit Thorough Study, Report Says
By Justin Gillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 22, 2004; Page A01
The insect world could shortly undergo a genetic makeover in the laboratory. Scientists are at work developing silkworms that produce pharmaceuticals instead of silk, honeybees resilient enough to resist pesticides and even mosquitoes capable of delivering vaccines, instead of disease, with every bite.
Researchers are tinkering with insect genes to develop more than a dozen new varieties, offering potentially broad social benefits while posing complicated new health and environmental risks. Though most of the designer insects are at least five to 10 years away from reality, concern is growing that government agencies have yet to think about how to oversee the research.
A new report scheduled for release this morning warns that the issues posed by gene-altered insects are so complex that unless federal agencies begin now to design methods of oversight, the necessary rules may not be in place when scientists are ready to start releasing insects into the environment.
The report by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, a think tank in Washington, outlined laboratory work of astonishing ambition, with goals that go far beyond the relatively limited uses to which genetic engineering has been put to date.
Research is already underway, for instance, to create mosquitoes with genes that render them incapable of transmitting malaria, with the idea that the souped-up mosquitoes would be released into the environment to spread their new genes into every type of mosquito capable of carrying the disease.
Malaria sickens more than 300 million people a year and kills more than a million, many of them babies in Africa, so any technology that brought it under control would be a milestone in social history. Yet, in one example of the complicated questions society will have to confront, it's theoretically possible that rendering mosquitoes immune to malaria will make them ecologically fitter, and therefore more likely to transmit other diseases, some of which are fatal.
Mosquito researchers have said they are well aware of the potential risks and have pledged caution in moving forward with their experiments.
The Pew report noted that someone is going to have to decide what kind of research is needed to estimate the likely effects, and then decide whether the benefits of releasing the designer mosquitoes are worth the risks. And that decision will have to be made in a complex international environment: Many African and Asian countries are ill-equipped to assess elaborate genetic technologies, and their citizens are sometimes suspicious even of simple technologies designed in the West. Just recently, resistance to polio vaccination in some Muslim communities in Africa led to an upsurge of that disease.
American regulatory agencies are likely to play a key role in overseeing the insect research, since much of the laboratory work will be conducted in the United States, the Pew report said. Yet only the Agriculture Department has moved to assert jurisdiction, and only over a relatively limited group of gene-altered insects, namely those that could become plant pests. The few gene-altered insects likely to be ready for commercialization in the next five years would probably be covered under those rules, including an altered variety of pink bollworm meant to help control that pest in cotton. But the majority of insects on the drawing board would not be covered, the Pew report said.
The Agriculture Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration all have congressional authority that might give them some oversight power, but the agencies have yet to stake out whether, or how, they will use their authority to oversee the full range of ge
Remember how Republicans cheered when it was discovered the Reagans election team had "appropriated" Carter's notes before thier debate?
.
"History repeats itself, but I guess that's been said before" -- A. Whitney Brown
.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
welcome our new Repubican overlords.
Err, maybe this is a few years late.
The general consensus seems to be "those evil Repbulicans! How DARE they invade the privacy of those well meaning Democrats!"
Sorry, but I think that if it were reversed, it would be "Heh, stupid Republicans. That's what they get for being, err, Republicans. The Dems exploited a hole. So what. All's fair in love and war, and the Republicans should have been smarter, big deal. Nothing to see here, move along."
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
having knowingly accessed a computer without authorization or exceeding authorized access
intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains information from any department or agency of the United States
intentionally, without authorization to access any nonpublic computer of a department or agency of the United States, accesses such a computer of that department or agency that is exclusively for the use of the Government of the United States or, in the case of a computer not exclusively for such use, is used by or for the Government of the United States and such conduct affects that use by or for the Government of the United States
knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a protected computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access, and by means of such conduct furthers the intended fraud and obtains anything of value, unless the object of the fraud and the thing obtained consists only of the use of the computer and the value of such use is not more than $5,000 in any 1-year period
knowingly and with intent to defraud traffics (as defined in section 1029) in any password or similar information through which a computer may be accessed without authorization, if such computer is used by or for the Government of the United States
Though the Republicans claimed that the information was accesible through a "glitch," exploiting such a glitch to obtain private memos is still breaking the law.
Now, I doubt this will ever end up in a trial of any sort, but if it does, and (as is most likely) the case is dropped, couldn't people accused of hacking a gov't computer use this hypothetical case as part of their defense argument? By ignoring their own laws, the US gov't will eventually dig itself into a hole it can't get out of.
Whatever. Clinton's presidency was average, if anything. He presided over the dot-bomb era and passed the savings on to the current president.
The fact that there was no 'hack' to get to the files (dubious, I know), just proves that BOTH PARTIES are full of power-mad creeps. The Democrats did their part when they had control of the Congress, and the Republicans did (and do) their part. It's politics. It's ugly. I hate it. But that's what you get when you put lawyers in charge of anything.
To minimize Filegate because of the actions of the FBI director regarding Whitewater is simply being a good party drone. Ethically void people try to turn focus away from the real issue with unrelated items....it's a shame.
This is the political equivalent of an insider trading scandal or other form of corporate crime. Those who care about the law want it to be prosecuted to its full extent. However, everyday people look at corporate crooks or corrupt Republicans stealing Democratic memos off the network and think, "Damn! I wish I had gotten away with that!"
In this situation, the Republicans come away looking like the sly rogues who "got away with it," and the Democrats look like beleasguered victims... and at the end of the day, most people would rather be the victimizers than the victims, and thus will identify with the Republicans.
That hot rep from Minnesota is into S, but not M
most requested food item: spring rolls
Tom DeLay spent 250 dollars on a manicure
John Kerry's total amount of unpaid parking tickets: 347
total amount to be paid from those parking tickets: 257 dollars.
The law is, if it's meant to be secure (whether or not it actually is being immaterial) then accessing that information without permission is a major felony.
So, when will we see the perps in prison? Not that Whitewater, this-is-just-a-camp-with-a-fence type prison, but a real-live fuck-you-in-the-ass type prison? (Probably never.)
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Republicans cannot be trusted.
Excuse me, but isn't cracking into computers considered terrorism under the PATRIOT act? Why aren't these guys being shipped off to Gitmo?
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
It seems like this should be a major scandal. The theft of confidential and private files is not small beans. There's hardly any information about it on the major news sites, however. Looking on Google News, I was able to find a few articles from small publications. I didn't see anything on www.cnn.com, www.msnbc.com, or news.bbc.co.uk.
There's a reply up there about "this is business as usual", but I can't think of any possible excuse or mitigating of extenuating circumstances for this sort of crime. Saying that "well it's been done before" certainly doesn't make me feel any better about it.
It's hard enough to take our government, and my role in it, seriously. Blowing off this kind of scandal certainly doesn't help.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
Not sure I saw much outcry when someone posted internal memos from Diebold?
"There appears to have been no hacking, no stealing, and no violation of any Senate rule," Miranda said. "Stealing assumes a property right and there is no property right to a government document. . . . These documents are not covered under the Senate disclosure rule because they are not official business and, to the extent they were disclosed, they were disclosed inadvertently by negligent [Democratic] staff."
Translation: "I didn't do it, but even if I did you couldn't prove I did anything wrong."
Now we see the moral *squishiness* of the individuals involved. If these files had been national security documents (government documents) or salary action documents (also government documents), would Miranda still claim that they were open season for anyone who wanted to read them?
Does anyone still believe that the USA Patriot Act will be used exclusively for criminal investigations?
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Helllooooooo Richard Nixon! Glad to see the republicans haven't changed their tactics at all. Next thing they'll be sabotaging elections and stealing things from the democratic national headquarters... Wait, they've already been caught once doing that. The media and republicans couldn't ignore it again, could they?
Oh yes they can. This shows how much influence the republicans really have. It's not a matter of opinion, it's fact. They do have a lot of influence. Some people's dislike for the republicans comes from their using their powers to benefit only themselves and their cronies. If you like the moral standards that they say they have, then you're in denial.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
is it intellectual property theft? I suppose that if asked about what to do if you found a wallet on the street these God fearing, law and order Republicans would, for example, say that the right (no pun intended) thing to do would be to return the wallet to its owner cash intact. So what's the difference here? Oh, you aren't really stealing digital content because ... Interesting spin on lobbying from the RIAA
I've finally got around to changing my sig
After reading through the article, it seems as if the data that the Repubs were reading was posted on an (un)secured server that both groups had access to.
While this should be considered unethical, it doesn't smack of being particularly criminal.
Dems shouldn't have posted sensitive (I note that none of this data has been described as CONFIDENTIAL, CLASSIFIED or SECRET) information on an unsecured, shared server.
Republicans should have had the ethical fortitude to keep their noses out of the files.
Better yet, they should have told someone and then kept their noses out (50% effort doesn't count).
Dems should have known that placing juicy conversations right under the noses of nosy Republicans was going to be a great temptation.
'Opportunity makes the thief' - Sir Francis Bacon
Republicans should have known that the sneaky, petty Dems would try to set them up with a honey-pot so that they could make a big stink about another "Watergate".
I dunno, I guess that personally, if you are dumb enough to leave your war plan out in plain sight, you deserve to be stopped by the Maginot Line.
Oh wait.
Why was iran-gate/nixon/deepthroat such a big deal and this is, well, just an interesting news bit.
NO SIG
A majority of the people interviewed by McCarthy weren't communists. That didn't make it any different either. In McCarty's eyes, they were ALL communists.
that we are living in the Post-Democratic period in history.
Democratis are Liberal and Evil, therefore, logically Democracy is Liberal and Evil as well and both should be eliminated.
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
W@trg8
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
To set Senate Democrats up with a secure Linux system...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Democrats recently temporarily suspended efforts to spy on Republican electronic information...
A modern day witchhunt.
It certainly is business as usual, but I don't think people think of this properly. I will translate:
A great many of our leaders are unrepentant felons and racketeers. Were justice served, most of those would go to federal prison (where they belong) for 3-10 years. They are not even hald up to the same standards of conduct as a 16 year old 'hacker'.
Here's an idea (not that it'll EVER get past Congress). If any elected or executive government official is found to have committed a felony (by simple preponderance of the evidence) and does not end up on trial, the law is stricken from the books and all persons convicted for the same crime are pardoned. LawMAKERS are to be held to the highest legal standards of conduct, not the lowest. Since nothing is done to them, I suppose that means we'll have to lower the standards for everyone else to match.
Note that for this to work, we must stipulate that the action may be brought by anyone who has been convicted of the same crime. This is necessary since the Attournies General are notorious for failing to pursue felony charges against members of their own political party.
Note that the intent of such (fictional, don't hold your breath) legislation would be to force the hand of corrupt officials rather than to empty the prisons. While it could result in the latter, at least our system of laws would be simplified in the process and the corruption would be too obvious to ignore.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled political reality.
If I'm reading the article correctly, these documents were on a shared file server, and the tech who set it up didn't set it up to password protect each sides files/folders. If thats the case, then the Democrats should have been able to read the Republicans documents as well.
You can bet Barney Frank was involved!
Allow me to coin the inevitable term for this Republican crime: "CyberGate". This time, we should be even more freaked out than in 1972. The stakes are higher now, with the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions on the line, even worse backfire threats than Vietnam. And more importantly, Republicans cracking the Democratic Senate files and leaking them to the press demonstrates their predatory menace to the privacy and security of all Americans, all people in the world. In the shadow of Nixon's Watergate breakin to spy on the Democrats in his 1972 reelection campaign, and their bugging of the Democratic National Committee at the 1972 Democratic convention, this obvious pattern of criminal behavior at the top of the Republican Party is intolerable. Senators should be jailed, GOP party heads should be jailed under RICO as mafia. Otherwise, the Republican mafia juggernaut will barrel through every hall of justice, leaving nothing but destruction.
--
make install -not war
Still, I've lived for brief periods of time in towns where nobody locks their doors. I don't think it's dumb at all that this is treaspassing; most people wouldn't care if you randomly wandered in for a friendly chat, but they have the right to toss you out if you're being a bastard, and a right to their privacy.
The world of politics is indeed a nasty one. I'm not so naive as to believe that either of the two major parties is above yielding to the pressure of money. Unless you're some sort of true believer, when it comes time to vote, you must realize that you're choosing between the lesser of two evils.
Although I see it as part of the problem, it's hardly surprising that voter turnout is as low as it is. Your vote is either thrown away on a third party or you make a choice that leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
Sorry if this was offtopic. I read the article and this was my reaction.
A publicly traded company exists solely to make profits for shareholders.
From the article:
"There appears to have been no hacking, no stealing, and no violation of any Senate rule," Miranda said. "Stealing assumes a property right and there is no property right to a government document. . . . These documents are not covered under the Senate disclosure rule because they are not official business and, to the extent they were disclosed, they were disclosed inadvertently by negligent [Democratic] staff."
No property rights to a governemnt document? Interesting, if it is true, though this argument is so slippery and sounds like it's grabbing at straws. Regardless of if it was against Senate rules or not, the Republicans intercepted communications not intended for them. It could have started as an accident, yes, but they kept going for over a year. If that is not illegal, it is highly unethical and immoral, and the people who participated in this need tobe removed from office.
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
Is anyone else wondering why this is being reported now? From the article, it looks like this happened in april 2003.
I hate my sig
I think they should be investigated using the Patriot Act, and prosecuted under the DMCA.
Everyone involved should be prosecuted as a terrorist under the PATRIOT act that they themselves signed into law.
FileGate was a tool by the republican party to throw crap on the face of the Clinton administration. Before using this as a basis for an argument of "That's okay, the democrats did it too", learn the facts:
A well detailed, fact filled summary of what -actually- happened
As usual, the facts of what happened, who got what files, and the 'numbers' involved were lost in the media frenzy, perpetuated by the Washington Post, et al.
REad. Learn. Understand. If you still feel that there was this huge scandal, then feel free to continue, but don't continue spouting O'Reilly's rhetoric without knowing the facts.
Event Management Solutions : http://www.stonekeep.com/
In case you weren't familiar with those, the WhiteWater scandals were shown to be completely baseless.
Baseless? Only if you define baseless as "Having plenty of evidence from several sources, but the papers that prove the wrongdoing are sitting in the suspect's private office, and mysteriously disappear when we look for them". Did you forget that they sat for over 2 years in Hillary's office and were only discovered when a janitor or someone handed them over without her knowledge? Do some more research, or post links supporting your claim.
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
link
Dems are weak on security.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
...the schmucks who think they run the world got h4x0red. As Brak would say, "That's a feeling that smells like SUCCESS!"
-----------------------
You are what you think.
Baseless??? You might want to go back and see how many indictments/arrests were made in regards to Whitewater. How about 12 convictions including the Clinton's business partners Jim McDougal, who died in prison, and Susan McDougal, who refused to testify, former Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker and Mrs. Clinton's Rose Law Firm partner and Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell. I wouldn't say that investigation was baseless.
In college, if we left our term papers on the network unprotected, we were accused and punished for allowing others to cheat. Isnt this the same deal? For cheating we get expelled from school at the worst. Minor incidents we would get dropped from the class and given an F. Why not hold our leaders to these same standings that they insist that we must follow.
I find it funny that as things get closer to elections, more reports come out about who did what, whether or not it is true and you never see all of the facts, just a spin on the event in a newspaper. I blame the media, just so i can say i blame someone.
Most laws enacted do not apply on the Hill. You can't arrest someone for something that wasn't illegal. Morality and ethics aside - this is done everyday by both sides and is old news. It always surprises me how liberal the average Slashdot reader appears to be. Such a waste.
"There appears to have been no hacking, no stealing, and no violation of any Senate rule," Miranda said. "Stealing assumes a property right and there is no property right to a government document. . . . These documents are not covered under the Senate disclosure rule because they are not official business and, to the extent they were disclosed, they were disclosed inadvertently by negligent [Democratic] staff."
So they are "government documents" but not "official business." And it's not stealing because they were "disclosed" by someone making a mistake setting up security. You heard it straight from the Senate Majority Leader's staff: If a sysadmin mistake allows you to get into a system, then everything in the system is freely "disclosed" and there's no penalty for copying it.
Also, documents can be "government" but not "official" - presumably the Republican Party is the only "official" government by now?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
This is one of those classic things that looks sneaky but within the usual beltway rules, until everyone finds out about it. Some smart guy figures out how to pull a fast one without thinking through the consequences. But this is a lot bigger than a simple dirty trick. It looks like numerous criminal laws were broken, although IANAL.
I just remember Watergate. The story simmered in the background through the summer and fall of 1972. Few people paid much attention to it. In 1973, the thing suddenly went critical and took out a major chunk of the Republican leadership over the next year and a half. The major crimes in Watergate happened during that quiet period in late 1972. But the scandal ripped the lid off a festering pool of nastiness with all kinds of secondary consequences. Guys like Agnew got nailed for things completely unrelated, but without the scandal, they never would have been investigated. If this blows up, watch for a lot of other things (Haliburton?) to suddenly show up on the law-enforcement agendas.
The Patriot Act allows Republicans to look at any computer files they want.
-- cloudnine --
(a) Whoever
(1) having knowingly accessed a computer without authorization or exceeding authorized access, and by means of such conduct having obtained information that has been determined by the United States Government pursuant to an Executive order or statute to require protection against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national defense or foreign relations, or any restricted data, as defined in paragraph y. of section 11 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, with reason to believe that such information so obtained could be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation willfully communicates, delivers, transmits, or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it;
(2) intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains--
(A) information contained in a financial record of a financial institution, or of a card issuer as defined in section 1602(n) of title 15, or contained in a file of a consumer reporting agency on a consumer, as such terms are defined in the Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. 1681 et seq.);
(B) information from any department or agency of the United States; or
(C) information from any protected computer if the conduct involved an interstate or foreign communication;
(3) intentionally, without authorization to access any nonpublic computer of a department or agency of the United States, accesses such a computer of that department or agency that is exclusively for the use of the Government of the United States or, in the case of a computer not exclusively for such use, is used by or for the Government of the United States and such conduct affects that use by or for the Government of the United States;
(4) knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a protected computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access, and by means of such conduct furthers the intended fraud and obtains anything of value, unless the object of the fraud and the thing obtained consists only of the use of the computer and the value of such use is not more than $ 5,000 in any one-year period;
(5)
(A)
(i) knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer;
(ii) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, recklessly causes damage; or
(iii) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage; and
(B) by conduct described in clause (i), (ii), or (iii) of subparagraph (A), caused (or, in the case of an attempted offense, would, if completed, have caused)--
(i) loss to 1 or more persons during any 1-year period (and, for purposes of an investigation, prosecution, or other proceeding brought by the United States only, loss resulting from a related course of conduct affecting 1 or more other protected computers) aggregating at least $5,000 in value;
(ii) the modification or impairment, or potential modification or impairment, of the medical examination, diagnosis, treatment, or care of 1 or more individuals;
(iii) physical injury to any person;
(iv) a threat to public health or safety; or
(v) damage affecting a computer system used by or for a government entity in furtherance of the administration of justice, national defense, or national security;
(6) knowingly and with intent to defraud traffics (as defined in section 1029) in any password or similar infor
Maybe the "technician" set the password to "liberal" for the Democrats and "conservative" for the Republicans?
"d00d, joo found leahy's stash of bo0bie flicks and carl levin's mp3 collection! you voilated the patriot act while doing it, but at least we caught some DMCA breakers! all in a day's work. let's go beat up some poor people now."
The people who masterminded and orchestrated electronic incursions wouldn't be going to jail and becoming felons, unfortunately. It would be the intern/computer tech who gets sentenced.
Question: Senator Frist, did you have any part or have any knowledge of these incursions at any point?
Answer: The first I learned of these incursions were when I read the story on CNN. I am appalled that someone on my staff could do such a thing. Here, have a sacrificial lamb.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
Not true. There is an Arkansas Governor in Jail for WhiteWater involvement. The Rose Law firm files that were never found may have implicated one or the other of the Clintons. The charges are "not proven" which does not mean "not guilty" or acquitted. To be acquitted you must be tried. The Whitewater case against the Clintons themselves never came to trial but it COULD in the future if those records happen to be found or witnesses get tired of being intimidated! I'm not sure when the statues toll on Fraud and Perjury but I don't think it is too late. Now about Freeh, AG Janet Reno could have removed Freeh at any time, I think he was a horrible FBI Director. I'm conservative but those hired to do such an important law enforcement job should be competent and should follow the LAW not the "money" or politics. IMO, An incompetent FBI Director actually played well into the Clinton Admin strategy! He ran around chasing down leads the Clintons knew would never yield results, thus there was not any creative thinking of where else they might look for evidence. Also recall that Bill was convicted of perjury, was disbarred in AR and lost his law license (big whoppie, he basically got off with a slap). Clinton has been voted by many historians (who are generally liberal) as one of the WORST presidents in modern US History. Don't try to rewrite history. The facts are plentiful that Clinton was a real bozo who just happened to get elected. Hillary is the brains of that outfit and used Bill to get to where she wanted. The only reason she has not divorced him is his ability to raise money for her within the liberal community.
I'm just glad there weren't any .mp3s on that server! Can you imagine the trouble they'd be in? Illegal .mp3 sharing across a government network. RIAA'd throw a fit!
If your only button choices are "Previous" and "Next", how do you know when you've successfully appplied the security restrictions you wanted on the computer.
Hey! "Next" is greyed out! Now what do I do?
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
wouldn't it be nice if we had more power to root out these lying bastards...like a vote of no confidence and/or a reshuffle of the house and senate.
Clinton left the country with a budget surplus and with the US held in higher regard by other nations than any time in recent history - since at least WWII.
Neither of those is a trifling matter. Bush, OTOH,
Has a more interesting resume
With the Diebold stuff, it was OPENLY posted with references to HOW it was obtained.
This case is different because no one is willing to stand up and say "I took those files".
Instead, you have Novack "protecting" his "sources" who leaked this information and the FBI digging to find who did what.
I look out my kitchen window and see across the yard that my stupid neighbor has left for vacation with his back door wide open.
Do I:
[ ] Call him on his cellphone and tell him
[ ] Call the police and tell them
[ ] Go and close and lock the door myself
[ ] Ignore the problem - its not mine
[ ] Wander over at will and rummage through his refrigerator
[ ] "Barrow" his snow-blower
[ ] Go through his softcore porn collection leaving samples on the doorsteps of his adjacent neighbors
The Clinton presidency has already been shown to be one of the worst in history. He gave us the recession, let al-queda run loose while he played diplomat, and let all the current accounting scandals pass. The White House under Clinton cosigned 19 of 20 loans to Enron totalling over $1 billion and this article shows the lenghts to which Clinton's pals would go to help their business buddies.
The WhiteWater scandals were not baseless, as they resulted in tons of indictments and guilty verdicts. The fact that the Clintons dodged the bullet only shows how adept they were at hiding info. Bill Clinton lied in open court about getting Monica, what makes you think he wouldn't lie to cover up even more serious charges?
When some idiot plows into a crowd and claims his gas pedal stuck, we all know that's just his state of denial (no, Egypt is not the 51st state!), but in practical terms, it doesn't matter whether it was a car malfunction or a driver malfunction, it's still a car which hit the people. You can argue all you want that this is clueless media, but it involves a computer, and the technician is part of that computer system.
If a power supply fails, is that a computer glitch? Well, it came with the computer.
If the power cord itself fails, is that a computer glitch? It, too, came with the computer.
In practical terms, if it involves the computer, whether thru misconfigured software or whatever, it is a computer glitch.
Infuriate left and right
Especially that intern stuff! So trumped up!
If you call a man who sticks his head in a hole (look up the Geonocide in Rowanda - 200,000 dead, only an appology note from Clinton) while he recieves, ahem, generous contributions in the Oval Office a great presidency I'm rather worried for you.
If you would like to cite the economy, and the ammount of jobs then available please tell me what the presidency has to do with the stock market, available jobs, and so on. While it can lower taxes and change things so more money is in the hands of the consumers which drive our economy that doesn't do much other than just that. Finally, the so-called "recession" started 18 months before Clinton was even out of office. That has everything todo with the market and other private factors and very little to do with who was sitting in the White House.
So unless you count "scoring" on the job (a working man's dream I'm sure) and saying "I feel your pain" a lot, I'm not really sure what contributes to making Clinton's presidency "great".
Where did the poster either say or even imply that? Of course it's not right...even the average slashdot idiot can still tell that I hope. That doesn't make him any less correct...they DO both try these kinds of things...and I would add that when it comes to political party activities, it's hardly unique in history or the world. (That isn't insightful...it's blatantly obvious.)
I still can't believe what gets moderated as "insightful" on Slashdot.
Morality and ethics aside - this is done everyday by both sides and is old news. It always surprises me how liberal the average Slashdot reader appears to be. Such a waste.
I can't believe you said such a thing. Morality and ethics aside? What sort of argument is that? Having expectations that government work in a smooth and orderly fashion, in a manner that will express the will of the people, is not a liberal position. Saying "morality and ethics aside" is like saying "notions of civilization aside". If being conniving, crooked and dishonest are your ideas of how a political philosophy should work, please point me to the other side.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
Where was your outrage then?
anyone remember 700+ F.B.I files ?
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
Had you or I cracked into these systems, we'd be going to jail. For a long time. Why aren't charges being files ? Are Republicans above their own laws ?
Why waste mod points on an AC post? It doesn't help or hurt their karma.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding as to the point of the slashdot moderation system.
When you are thinking of moderation in terms of karma and that moderation's effect on that user's karma, you are, at best, misunderstanding the mod system. At worst, you are abusing the mod system.
As a point of reference, I would like to refer to the the first Slashdot troll post investigation . Specifically, I'd like to call you attention to the following point:
Logged in people are modded down faster than anonymous cowards. Presumably these Nazi Moderators think it's more important to burn a user's existing karma, to silence that individual for the future, than to use the moderation system for what it's meant for : identifying "good" and "bad" posts (Notice how nearly all oppressive governments in the past and present do the same thing : marking individuals as bad and untrustworthy because they have conflicting opinions, instead of engaging in a public discussion about these opinions
The reverse is also true, as you have demonstrated by your comment.
we'll all die of a mysterious disease spread by unused voting machines!
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
My number 1 gripe about the current Republican party. They're too unified, and too efficient. We're a pluralistic nation with many interests, and our government should reflect that. Most of the time, that means they should be quibbling and arguing and getting NOTHING done. Then the rest of us can be about our business without excessive interference. That's my idea of "less government."
The current Republican party pursues its vision as if it's the only on that counts. Moreover, there's little-to-no debate within the Republican party - it's as if they've got their marching orders from the Secret Government (Who pulls the strings of the Republican Campaign Finance Committee?) and are being dutiful soldiers.
I'd be just as annoyed if the Democrats were in the same position doing the same things.
As for the Supreme Court, only 3 justices are of any interest at all. Fortunately the other 6 balance each other out so true thought and deliberation can come through.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Here's a good suggestion:
Slashdot should automatically grab the text of the linked site, and use the contents as a first post. That way, we'll maybe save some poor soul's bandwidth as well as we get rid of the lame fp kiddies
This is a good idea. I can't believe some mod modded this "offtopic".
I guess you were right to post anonymously...
They have. Spying on cell phone calls. Not much happened, other than the media making a story of the contents of the conversations.
You and I would be in trouble just for tuning in those frequencies, but the Dems and the media just had a big laugh about what a fun little caper it was.
They like to be refered to as "leaders", but they're really just politicians.
Real leaders, usually, do not make good politicians. Real leaders don't spend time building concensus and spinning the decision and working with focus groups to sharpen the message.
You're correct about the leader having final responsibility for the behaviour of his/her people. But, when was the last time we saw anything like THAT in politics here?
Anyone too stupid to encrypt their cheesy memo is too stupid to be in the Senate. Or maybe not...
As a self-described conservative who is a registered Republican, I can't understand how any of my political allies think this is okay or right at all. And why do my allies defend it by bringing up past problems that Democrats have been involved in? What do those events have to do with this one? Two wrongs don't make a right.
Instead, we Republicans should focus on tracking down the wrongdoers. Find all staffers who did this, and fire them. Find any and all politicians who knew about this and impeach them.
Someone left the access wide open on user accounts. Flat out incompetence on the Dem's part. Flat out dirty tricks on the Repub's part.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
The republican's do something unethical, and Democrats around the country rally as if it is the most absurd and horrible thing they have ever heard of, while Republicans either remain fairly quiet or defensive.
The Democrats do something unethical, and Republicans around the country rally as if it is the most absurd and horrible thing they have ever heard of, while Democrats either remain fairly quiet or defensive.
Will the day ever come that people understand that politicians (Dems and Reps) are in it for the power? As long as all the power of the Federal government is available to be bartered, it will continue to be, and people will continue to do unethical things to gain advantage. Remove the power available for trade, and the unethical behavior becomes less impactful/significant.
A modern day witchhunt.
This is their argument...?
"Stealing assumes a property right and there is no property right to a government document. . . . These documents are not covered under the Senate disclosure rule because they are not official business and, to the extent they were disclosed, they were disclosed inadvertently by negligent [Democratic] staff."
So essentially it is your fault for not securing your network and your computers. Isn' t there an implied sense of private property? If this is their argument you could argue the following....without recourse:
a) walk into the republican party's offices and rummage through their file cabinets
b) ask the republican office's secretary to leave, and then review all the emails on the computer
c) we were wrong with the Watergate debocle.
"One option is voluntarily outing the source. Press advocates argue that's career suicide. But just three years ago Novak himself publicly revealed a confidential source: FBI agent Robert Hanssen. After Hanssen was arrested for espionage, Novak wrote that "in order to be honest to my readers, I must reveal" that Hanssen had been an unnamed source in prior Novak columns. Novak feels no such necessity today to reveal the identity of the sources who unmasked a CIA operative's undercover status."
So here we have Novak claiming that his journalistic ethics prevents him from revealing an anonymous administration source, even when it's clear that by so doing he is not only engaging in obstruction of justice but also protecting himself from potential felony prosecution. Yet, when it's to his advantage (or at least not to his disadvantage) he is just as willing to release another anonymous source. I would like to see how the Poynter Institute would defend those "journalistic ethics".
Novak has a clear bias due to his close ties with the Republican Party and personal relationship with Karl Rove. Nobody should take what he has to say at face value, however, we should all expect him to behave within the confines of the law. While it's unclear just where his obligations to his source vs. obligations to society lay, it is also just as clear that his editors and publishers should have at the least censured him in the extreme for this action. Actually, I would have preferred he be fired from the Washington Post and CNN. But that's JMO.
--Maynard
it's your goverment. If they're not allowed to break the law, who is?
Did you watch the state of the union address? Did you notice who was cheering when Dubya said we needed to renew the Patriot act? Quick hint...it wasn't the Democrats.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
How do we mod this one up? Damn, guess I'll have to RTFM.
According to the Distinguished Gentleman from Utah, an appropriate response to the Republicans' illicit trafficking in Democrats' documents would be to destroy the Republicans' computers... right?
First off read the article, the Demos go on to say "no harm no foul" since the documents aren't "owned" by anyone and are not official govt business. They even put the blame on their own admin.
A few other things to clear up: This was not a "glitch," instead it was a simple permissions issue where certain security policies were not implemented properly or at all.
Second: If a document is readable, people will read it. Right wrong or otherwise I don't really see what the big deal is. These people are supposed to running our fscking country not trading dirty secrets about how to screw the president out of a judicial nominee.
Sure the people who weren't supposed to have access should have said somthing, but by the same token I can say the admin should have double checked to make sure they didn't have access.
If the honeypot theory is correct, and Demos knew the documents weren't secure whey would they allow stupid shit like "hes a latino" go there in the first place. If anything they would place false documents there and make he republicans look bad when they come out with all these lies and rumors.
In my opinion this doesn't even hurt the republicans credibility...so what if they were seeing stuff they weren't meant to see...the shit found more than makes up for any "ethical" issues involved. I say we pass a law that anything written, typed, or electronicly produced by any of our governmental representatives (that isn't top secret or national security) should be made public within 24hours of its creation.
Its time our government was held responsible for all the BS it creates.
Apple free since 1990!
Have these people forgotten what committee they sit on? The only thing worse would be an ethics committee doing this.
Man. I miss the good old days when partisan squabbles were settled by duels or a good brawl. This is just sad. The "greatest deliberative body in the world" has shamed itself.
(By the way: if you live in Oregon, there's an initiative being floated to make the state legislature nonpartisan, and thereby avoid this sort of shenannigan. For more info, see this article. If only we could do the same at the federal level!)
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
A technician hired by the new judiciary chairman, Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, apparently made a mistake that allowed anyone to access newly created accounts on a Judiciary Committee server shared by both parties -- even though the accounts were supposed to restrict access only to those with the right password.
That sounds a lot more like fucked up permissions than computer hacking. How can you have an expectation of privacy when you share the same server with your enemy?
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
On the other side of the aisle, it becomes Patriotism instead of Treason.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
All congressional documents outside of intelligence committees, including congressional email, is a matter of public record under the FOIA (freedom of information act). There is no such thing as an American "spying" on public records. This is just a vain partisan attempt to discredit the people who caught the wrongdoers red-handed. The Republicans would probably try to discredit the Democrats in the same way had the roles been reversed, but the important facts in this case are that the Republicans caught the Democrats engaging in unethical activities by accessing public records that the Dems thought were private, but weren't. Sour grapes.
Politicians work for themselves. People in power (such as in congress) have something to trade. They trade the power they have through control of government in return for things. They trade some of that power to the masses, in the form of "social services", redistribution of wealth, and sometimes just empty promises. In return, they get votes that allows them to stay in power.
They also trade some of that power to corporations and rich individuals in return (generally) for money so that they can buy votes so they can continue to get more power (or maintain the power they have).
A modern day witchhunt.
It's not like anybody got a BJ or anything.
Or is a P2P network an essential part of piracy these days?
Senators should be jailed, GOP party heads should be jailed under RICO as mafia.
... didja know that the Christic Institute used RICO went it went after the ... well, call it the Octopus. Of course, the Christics got themselves shot at, bombed, and bankrupted for their troubles -- but it was a noble attempt at using RICO for busting genuine racketeers.
Once again, you are right on the money -- accurate and articulate.
Speaking of RICO
-kgj
-kgj
"Voting for a third party in this country basically equates to not participating in the political system."
Utter, complete bullshit. You are spouting the Two-Party Party Line. That's probably the same line the Whig party used when they had power in the 1800s.
Voting for a third party is the best example of participating in the political system there is, other than convincing large numbers of people to vote for a third party.
America is so overdue for the rise of a third party, and is becoming so inbred and stale from the constant powerhold by the Republicrats for too long.
That Democratic Party (a non-governmental body) strategy position papers stored on a Senate (decidedly governmental body) server constitutes, quite possibly, misuse of government property.
That's splitting hairs, I'm sure, BUT...
After reading though the DOJ Code post below, it won't fit the general criteria called for in the code if it IS non-governmental data.
Therefore the action could be non-criminal.
of a whole set of new laws that redefine computer crimes? What will the political outcome of this breech be. I guarantee that it will be no small thing. I think they've been looking for an excuse to broaden what consists of a computer crime for awhile and this will give the dems the fuel to push it forward and restrict what we do and what we can use our computers for even more. Hillary Clinton did after head the RIAA and I'm sure her friends there are chomping at the bit to put through some new legislation.
I think it's time for some more really good dystopian novels to come out. It's getting that way again.
Come on....if the positions were reversed, Slashdotters would be high fiving each other over this, and bragging on Democratic cleverness and Republican stupidity.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Duh!
If they discussed their strategy in the open, the Republicans would be able to tailor THEIR strategy to counter the Democrats' strategy.
Didn't this break a couple of months ago. Looks like we get a second bite at the apple on this one. These were staffers, to say this was republicans on the committee is a stretch. The whole 'infiltrated' thing is also subject to interpretation, probably a windows share folder with incorrect access. It really is mendacious to claim this was infiltration if files simply weren't passworded as seems to be the case. There's no tangible link to Novak.
Seems like one side's staffers are blaming the other side'e staffers for their own eggregious security gaffe.
"While we're meditating on this era, let's remember the outrageous scandals that neo-conservatives used to ruin a great presidency."
I dont think anyone forced clinton to screwthe intern and lie about it under oath. Wake up.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
This was NOT a computer malfunction. It was Human error. The Human did not tell the computer the right thing to do. I.E. block every one except this list of users. The guy F'ed up and left the system wide open. But it doesnt mean your allowed to enter.
Oh my God, you're too stupid to even be a good troll....
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Even the most OSS/FS zealots do not support this line
> Since information wants to be free and all.
if it comes to *private* communication.
Purposely offering music, software whatever, which is meant for the public is a completely different thing to private communication.
It makes me wonder: are the Democrats not spying at all, or are they just more sophisticated about it? The fact that the Republicans are able to gleen so much intel for such a long period of time makes me discount the second theory (i.e., Democrats are better spies). And I don't believe for a second that they have any moral highground on the Republicans. Maybe somebody should teach the Democrats a thing or two about network security, just to balance out the two-party system?
oooh, a gay joke, very funny... jesus fucking christ, you are an idiot...
Just because you're paranoid does not mean that the world is not full of assholes.
I won't argue that this is unambigous in the eyes of the law. I will argue that this is entirely unabiguous with regards to morals.
Anybody read Machiavelli? Those in power want to keep it, and those without want to take it away. Certain individuals of both groups will do anything to accomplish their goal. The moral outrage from the peanut gallery when somebody gets caught is an unfortunate inconvenience, but it in no way stops the show.
It's nice to believe that those people we elect to represent us really, truly care about what we do, and want to do the right thing. But in the end, it takes a certain amount of dirtiness to gain any position of power, and he who is willing to get the dirtiest wins, if he isn't caught first.
-- Hamster
There have always been political differences and disputes, but I never remember any time in my life that the country has been this divided and so viciously polarized.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Tired of unsightly deficits? Vote Howard Dean [deanforamerica.com]!
I have one comment:
"YAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Thank you.
John Stockwell, former CIA agent, described the phenomenon of a "soft file". He had been a field agent, in half a dozen field offices, for his first decade or so in the CIA. His final field post being in Vietnam, just prior to the fall of the South.
Following his return from Vietnam he got a plum post, back in HQ, co-ordinating the CIA's 1975 Angola efforts.
This was during a period when the CIA was starting to get a lot of Congressional scrutiny. And the response to this was the destruction of a lot of official files -- together with the creation of unofficial "soft files". Since the soft files had no official existence they couldn't be subject to a normal subpoena ro FOIA request. The drawback to them was that your colleagues could only request a copy of them through word of mouth. But this drawback was worth living with if the contents would destroy your career, if subjected to outside scrutiny.
Should CIA employees keep soft files -- whose intent is to cover their tracks and deceive the American public? In my opinion absolutely not. CIA employees are supposed to carry out policies, not make them.
Is it then okay for Politicians to keep soft files? I dunno.
THESE Republicans cannot be trusted. There have been (and still are) a few Republicans that can be trusted. Blanket Statements are bad. (Not that I like the majority of Republicans that are around these days.)
I'm looking California... but feeling Minnesota...
If any individual person (one of us, the slashdot reader, for instance) did something like this, we would be under investigation or arrest rather quickly. This is referred to in the media as "hacking". It doesn't matter one whit whether or not the victim was "wide open" or not. NOT have unbreakable defenses up on your computer does not make it A-OK for anyone to waltz on in and do whatever. It is considered a crime and many "hackers" have been prosecuted for this.
The Republicans are getting away with it. It is OK for them to do this but any human being (they aren't human) does the same thing and they're looking at jailtime.
Bullcrap! Say I. Equal enforcement of the law. Hacking into computers you do no own is considered a crime and it should be handled as such. It is obvious that Senator Hatch, hypocrit of all hypocrits, belongs in jail. His pukes did it (he probably thought it was cute and funny). How about I do it to his personal systems? Still funny? Still OK?
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
...in Chris Toshok's apartment. :-P
But I bet more than a few of the republicans who accessed the open files are probabably ones that have recommended long prison terms for 'hackers'.
And I really hope that This Manual Miranda wasn't the Chief Judicial Nominee...
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
Several people have commented that they are dissapointed that this story hasn't reached more mainstream media outlets such as CNN.
Here is a link to CNN's 'News Tips' section where you can submit breaking news and ideas. I sincerely hope some of the slashdot population takes advantage of this as I just did.
In this day and age, responsible file protection on the part of our elected officials is mandatory. I realize that's a loaded remark, but no matter how you slice it, something has to change within our Congressional offices and infrastructure. Either someone hacked protected files or someone failed to protect files that should have been protected. I have general administrative access on our LAN and even I occasionally stumble across files I can't access. There are multiple levels of security for all things digital and either someone is misusing them or neglecting there use. Is their a third alternative?
Soap Box:
I too am disturbed by this revelation.
But, if negligence is a factor (on either side), or some level of corruption, or misrepresentation of the people, then let us use our tricameral system to resolve it. Otherwise we are guilty of doing nothing but whipping up yet another impotent hysteria-of-the-moment using mass media. Take them to court. Elect new representatives. Our system of government is designed to be manipulated by the citizenry, intending to enact the will of a majority while protecting the rights of minorities. Problem is that the majority don't participate. The only ones doing the manipulating are an ambitious minority, some championing worthy causes, others power hungry and greedy, perhaps even rotten to the core, but all an ambitious minority just the same.
Well, wasn't that ingenious.
As an American:
Now, off to pound-me-in-the-ass prison, boys.
That's why we need a constitutional amendment banning flag-unwrapping.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
You know what? This time, Republicans got caught with their shorts down.
As I see it, they have two choices:
1) Blame the Democrats
2) Fix their party
If the Republicans would fix their party - I might, might maybe one day vote for one of them.
And I hope that next time, when it's Democrats who get caught with their shorts down, they'll fix their party, so I can keep voting for them.
Education is the silver bullet.
Judging from the relevant federal code (helpfully posted below), there does appear to be *some* chance that the Republican senators broke the law, by exceeding their authorized access to the files which, although were not "property" of the government, were stored on a government computer.
On the slim chance that any of the Republican senators are prosecuted, how much would you like to bet that they get off with a reprimand and a slap on the wrist?
Now, if the janitor in that office had been caught paging through the Dems' (or the Repubs') confidential memos, you can be sure he would have been prosecuted as a computer criminal. Judges are getting more heavy-handed as of late, and it's becoming increasingly more popular to invoke the Patriot Act in cases of computer crime. There's a very good chance that our poor janitor would have been tried, and convicted, as a terrorist.
But, because the criminals in this case are rich, powerful, important white men with many friends in government, they'll likely get off scot free.
I say: give these slandering, pandering, filibustering, dirty-bird legislators a taste of their own medicine! Let them be tried under the inappropriately harsh laws that snuck into the books under THEIR noses. It'll never happen of course, but it sure would be nice.
Have a link to back up your claim?
As to who "ruined" President Clinton's presidency.
President Clinton would have been embarrassed, but not impeached, had he simply told the truth during his testimony in a sexual harassment case against him. Telling the truth would have likely cost him money, and some dignity, but far less than he ended up paying as a result of his misdeeds, and subsequent attempts to cover them up.
Microsofties are both the last to know about exploits AND the last to acknowledge said exploits.
Dunno about where you live, but most places in the US, it is legal to go onto someone else's land unless there are posted "no tresspassing" signs or you've been specifically told by that person you are not allowed.
2004 - unsatisfied with just debating which home-made elvish font is better, the slashdot community was absorbed into the big left vs right debate
..but both sides still agree linux rules
2005 - slashdot.red is taken over by the second amendment white supremacist theologist movement. slashdot.blue is run by the gay indian liberation league
One more reason not to use strcpy().
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
... and vice-versa.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
I prefer something catchier, something that people can hear as a difference...
How about Watergate XP?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Maybe some tech set them to:
Democrat passwd = "password"
Republican passwd = "nucular"
Therefore, the republican passwd was encrypted using GWB encryption and it was harder to crack.
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
If you put world readable documents in a public shared folder on a shared computer system, you have no right to complain when other system users read or copy them. You might as well post them on a bulletin board in the committee meeting room. Your intent is irrelevant, your actions are what count.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
What do our elected officials have to hide anyway? Now we just need to get the Democrats to do the same thing to the Republicans and we'll be all set.
Way to not take the "Everyone" entry off the NT ACL list, Dems. This wasn't hacking, since the Democrats told the computer to make their information public.
That would be a copyright violation in most cases
I meant W@rg8
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
Sometimes I'm really upset by our divisive and angry Two Party System; it seems like nothing ever gets done. Other times I am very, very grateful that the government is not one gigantic unified son of a bitch, because then all those manipulative, controlling and totally evil tendencies would be aimed squarely at me.
Hmmm...what if it is aimed squarely at us and the interparty bickering such as this is simply to distract us from the fact that both parties pretty much taste like chicken?
Pepsi and Coke's "cola wars" campaigns did the same thing by squeezing out the small soda manufacturers and turning the soda market into what is basically a shared monopoly. If either one ever came out on top it'd be shut down but as long as there's two of them it's somehow okay and we forget about all the other flavors out there.
... but discordians would limit the rights of corporations while expanding the rights of individuals. Committees and other forms of administrative organisations are an abomination in Eris' eyes.
Think about it. Anonymous corporations are virtual entities with little to no sense of responsibility or vision or ethics. Money power should always be associated to a real person, name and face, and personal responsibility.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Funny, normally when somebody is accused of something like this and their stuff gets confiscated, you folks are screaming bloody murder about the inequity of taking hard drives, and of the assault on a poor innocent person's dignity at being branded by the press as "guilty" when there has been no such determination by the courts.
But when it's folks with whom you have a political disagreement, all of a sudden you're thirsting for blood.
What did the President know, and when did he know it?
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
Dems and the media just had a big laugh about what a fun little caper it was.
o nnelly/70397_joel1 5.shtml
The 'Dems' were not caught spying on cell phone call. The call was intercepted by a couple in Florida who paid a $500 fine.
The tape was, in fact, leaked to the media by a democratic congressperson, according to this article (which is not friendly to the congressperson):
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/c
It is disingenuous, at best, to call what happened an example of "spying" on phone calls by Democrats. An elected official received the tape from ordinary citizens; no goverment employees or party apparatchiks involved in the interception of the call.
I would also like to see some evidence to support your contentions about "big laughs" and "fun little caper".
Send lawyers, guns, and money. Dad, get me out of this.
Flame on?!
YAAARRRR!!!!!
I agree, this is biggest thing since Monica. Right now I should be reading about dozens of people retiring and massive penalties for the staff's that did this. This is the fucking US Senate Judiciary Commitee for pete's sake. If we can't count on these people to be honest who can we count on?
Could you imagine instead of the Republicans doing this, this was instead the Democrats spying on George Bush's strategy sessions and then LEAKING the freaking confidential information to the world? Heads would role and there would be tens times are many "-Gate" words being pushed by the press right now.
I can only hope that this is taken seriously and that every single party to this is forced to resign and face civil and criminal charges.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Of course not! Why, didn't our President just say in his State of the Union address...
See, the Patriot Act will only be used for naughty, naughty terrorists. We wouldn't want to use it on people who might actually have the protection of the Constitution to defend them -- only "unlawful combatants."
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Excellent karma troll, red floyd.
For the record, violating DMCA requires circumvention of an encryption mechanism. I don't think it could apply when the security wasn't enabled and, therefore, no circumvention occured.
There may be a case for more traditional computer tresspass, but since it was a shared server that both parties had legitimate access to, it could be difficult even to press that.
Whatever the case, it was certainly ethically rotten!
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
This guy is citing NewsMax, of all places, as a news source.
Should I laugh or cry?
I just remember Watergate. .... Guys like Agnew got nailed for things completely unrelated, but without the scandal, they never would have been investigated. If this blows up, watch for a lot of other things (Haliburton?) to suddenly show up on the law-enforcement agendas.
Didja know that Rumsfeld was a member of Nixon's cabinet?
"Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, Assistant to the President, and a member of the President's Cabinet (1969-1970); and, as Counsellor to the President, Director of the Economic Stabilization Program, and a member of the President's Cabinet (1971-1972)."
- Source
The Rumsfeld-Cheney-Nixon connection is also interesting:
"When President Richard M. Nixon selected Rumsfeld as White House counselor in 1970, Cheney joined him as his deputy. In August 1974, Gerald Ford assumed the presidency and asked Rumsfeld to be his chief of staff. Rumsfeld immediately sought out Cheney."
- Source
Rumsfeld never got press as a major Watergate player. But this is interesting:
"Rumsfeld was not entirely divorced from Nixon's political operations. There is no sign that he was involved in any of the illegalities of Watergate, but he was willing to offer Nixon other help of a not particularly exalted nature--some dirt on political enemies, some covert ties with a prominent pollster. The Nixon tapes reveal that Rumsfeld often worked with and was a special favorite of John Mitchell and Charles Colson, Nixon's roughest political operators, who viewed Rumsfeld as savvier than other White House aides."
- Source
Mitchell was an obstructor of justice, and Colson was a hatchet man. Rummy was close with those guys? Must be sweet to have a resume like that -- fits right in with the Bush administration.
-kgj
-kgj
Say you came across the SCO internal documents about their lawsuits that were inadvertenly put on their web site (no links to it...you just happened to "find it").
How long would it take you to go to slashdot with the links...
Today is a gift. Save the receipt.
studying their strategies and passing on the juicy bits to the media.
Pray tell, what juicy bits?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
This is just Watergate brought to the new millenium .... why should you be suprised .... only their spokespeople are slack jawed rednecks
In the shadow of Nixon's Watergate breakin to spy on the Democrats in his 1972 reelection campaign, and their bugging of the Democratic National Committee at the 1972 Democratic convention, this obvious pattern of criminal behavior at the top of the Republican Party is intolerable.
Doc -- cf. my post re. Nixon, Rumsfeld, & Co.
-kgj
-kgj
Doesn't this qualify as the same sort of junior-level "unauthorized access" hacking that Asscroft wanted to punish with prison terms up to life? I demand that these perpetrators be punished to the fullest extent of the law!
To those on /. who think that
"information wants to be free" or
"this wasn't hacking, the tech screwed up" or
"these were public (govt) computers"
ask yourself this:
what do you think would happen if you just sat down at your boss's computer and started reading stuff? Suppose your boss is a state senator (making the machine one 'owned' by the public).
you'd be fired.
for a damn good reason.
the Reps who did this were doing something wrong and they knew it, or should have known it. The Dems were negligent in protecting themselves but that doesn't absolve the crime.
And I use the word crime very deliberately.
Those Republicans again... until somebody comes up with some evidence that senior party members were involved it seems pretty trivial to me.
If somebody comes up with an email from GWB to leak the memos than maybe you can start drawing Watergate parallels.....
love is just extroverted narcissism
Just remember that nobody "exceeded authorized access".
This will probably never get read but I want to make a point to anyone who might be reading this far. Why are our representatives able to make so much of thier communications confidential in the first place, This is a democracy isn't it? I want to know what is being discussed, what tactics are being used by my representatives to achieve thier goals. I think these confidential memos and other communications would tell us more about what the people we elected believe than the "promises" they make while on the campaign trail. I say we pull out all the stops and let all those memos flow freely, just think of the accountability that our representatives would be held to if we could see everything they talk about behind closed doors. they might actually start having to represent the people that elected them and not just make the decisions with no consideration to what the people think. The only case i can think of that a document should be kept confidential would be in a case where it may involve the safty of military, fbi, cia operatives that are working to stop the evils of this world. But what am i thinking, this is a fallen, broken world, and even my own ideas are imperfect, all i can do is make the best of this world i am living in and look forward to the day when the Lord Jesus Christ comes back to take me and all the other followers of Christ to be with him in a perfect place for all eternity. That ends my rant, i hope maybe someone reads this and it gets them to think.
I am on the Blue side of the isle. As an honest man, have taken issue with Rep beheavor even since becoming aware of my own consience.
/.'rs feel if a system isn't protected that it's a license to walk right in. We often blame "STUPID" administrators for their own problems, taking pride in that our systems have been "secured".
What bothers me most is that the victoms have been blamed:
"There appears to have been no hacking, no stealing, and no violation of any Senate rule," Miranda said. "Stealing assumes a property right and there is no property right to a government document. . . . These documents are not covered under the Senate disclosure rule because they are not official business and, to the extent they were disclosed, they were disclosed inadvertently by negligent [Democratic] staff."
I know many
Sometimes I leave to go to the market and forget to lock the front door to my house. I no more expect to come home to someone going through my belongings as the next person would. And I would not and will not accept personal blame for the intruders behavour. The intruder is wrong, at fault and is to blame. The intruder is the scum, I am but forgetful.
I wouldn't care at this point if Micky Mouse won the Democratic nomination, I still wouldn't vote for Bush and his NeoCons.
To keep this post more on topic... I do NOT agree that because their system was vunerable, that they are the parties responsible for the disclosure. This is so Orwellian. War is Peace, Freedom is Occupation and now... this. Stealing is Ownership?
Doesn't it seem ironic that when reading the article you get this sense of the old Hacker idea "it's your job to secure it, otherwise, it's your fault if we get in"? The article even mentions that the tech who was responsible for the glitch was a Democrat and really doesn't treat the incident like the major Patriot Act deserving Act of Total Terrorism that politicians have been falling all over themselves trying to protect against.
$45 per U Colocation Special
Sorry, in today's world you can't split the nickel and there's no change from a dollar.
Either you are fer me or agin me, no matter how stupidly I might behave. There is no time for anything that's not black or white - only liberals think in color. We must act against people we don't like and strong-arm friends into showing our gang colors. Any issue, no matter how complex, must be distilled into a PowerPoint bullet or sound byte. Someone is either left or right, good or evil. You either use Linux or you use Windows.
Sigs are bad for your health.
Clinton setup the computer system that was compromised, his right hand man Gore invented the internet that was used to steal these documents. If Clinton hadn't have lied so much none of this, 911, the recession and a host of other problems would never have happened. GET IT THROUGH your head you america hating liberals Clintoon ruined America and our hero Bush is fixin it.
Yeah, let's hold the Globe up as great moral journalism with unbiased credibility. The Globe, aka The Kerry Herald, is the same paper that never met a Republican they liked, thinks Yassar Arafat is a swell guy, and equates the state of Israel with racism and evil.
Just because they're old doesn't make them a good newspaper. The New York Post was founded by Alexander Hamilton, is one of the oldest papers in the U.S., and now is nothing but a tabloid.
And it seems that the only entities that give a rats ass about this are:
A- The Boston Herald
B- Democratic Senators
C- Slashdot readers
Unless you buy into the theory that EVERY OTHER MEDIA OUTLET is controlled by The Man, could it be that, oh, the public just doesn't give a shit?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
actually, it is the "crackee's" fault. I'm not a fan of blame the victim mentality, but I think it's fair to ask why the drunk girl was wandering around a bad neighborhood at 3 in the morning naked, no?
From a vice president who is still being paid by Halliburton who are recieving billions in no-bid contracts (mild) to the politically motivated outing of a CIA agent in breach of Federal Treason laws (wild), and now this.
Hell, it's not my country so I shouldn't have to pay attention to this crap. But seriously guys, what the hell is going on?
Personally I think the Valerie Plume thing is going to kill them. The CIA have the spine to push this thing through.
Wah!
Uh, individuals control corporations. Enron, HealthSouth, etc., the lack of responsibility, vision and ethics is a lack of those at the individual level. Blaming a corporation is like blaming a car for running down pedestrians. Look behind the wheel. I think a big problem is that we keep removing personal responsibility for these crimes. The book cooking CEOs that run these companies, and the accountants that don't stand up for what's right are the criminals who are responsible, and should be treated like the felons they are. In causing people to loose the amounts of money, that equate to vast majorities of their lives that they will never get back, I say send the worthless cheating CEOs to a federal "pound me in the ass" prison! But never blame a business structure for it. There are alot of well run corporations that make great improvements on our lives and society as a whole without the scandals. Without corporations, well, you don't exactly see a Mom and Pop Microchip fabrication facility, do you?
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
My take-away summary from the article:
Are there any places left with a government that has some semblence of ethics?
There is a difference between break-in-and-entry vs. just entry.
But it may be an invitation to take a peek inside. Which, in my opinion, more closely resembles what was done.
Better yet, how about I post my credit and medical histories on my mailbox by the entrance. Should I blame the passers-by when bits and pieces of my personal info are discussed in a local bar?
Accessing a network share may seem difficult (and thus more like a break-in) to a computer illiterate person, which is (partially) why the law-makers are all infuriated, but -- when the share is not password protected -- it really is aking to stopping by and reading a posting on a pole. There was no break-in...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
They didn't just find that Clinton lied under oath (a crime), he also coerced a witness to lie under oath (a bigger crime) in order to to cover up his tracks against a sexual misconduct lawsuit brought by a private citizen, who, shock of shocks, had a case that Clinton was forced to settle because his witness tampering (a crime) didn't pan out.
Actually, the new laws don't really care if there are technical barriers at all. E.g., if a page is "protected" by an unlinked URL or (har) by adding a default directory index and you "discover" information by plugging in numbers or figuring out the pattern to the URL naming then you are as guilty as someone who exploited a software vulnerability to gain access. In fact, the new laws put the burden of "protection" on the good will of the public. If you knowingly gain access to information that you are not privileged to know then you are guilty. The fact that they knowingly disseminated the information further is even more damning.
Lest you think I have any bias, I think both parties are equally evil. Neither can be trusted.
I am interested in discovering if anything similar to this occured in recent history - where the Democrats were the perpetrators.
Aside from the NewsMax.com nonsense posted (and de-bunked) elsewhere on this thread, anyway.
Vote Responsibly...Write In!
...you can feed'em information, but you can't make'em think
An elected official received the tape from ordinary citizens
Sure. "Ordinary" citizen, that cruises around town following cell towers with a microwave receiver tuning into and recording signals from a specific network user and shooting the results directly to Connelly's people. That sounds pretty damn ordinary. With ordinary citizen's like that who needs government spies or party apparatchiks?
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
having sex with *A* woman and lying about it is unpardonable, he should have been impeached and shot and trampled on.
having screwed the whole country and lying through the teeth about it: re-election
"If you ain't cheatin, you ain't tryin. And if ya get caught, ya wasn't tryin hard enough". The Republicans need to try harder next time it seems.
akma
Hillary wanted to fire the White House Travel Office to place her own cronies in. So she did. And then, to create the justification for the firing, she ordered an FBI investigation of the travel office, forcing them to defend themselves against unfounded CRIMINAL allegations. In short, she was trying to destroy other people's lives.
hmmm... you just disqualify yourself with quoting that. Of course your former president had the moral right not to talk or even to lie to keep his sexual activities private - a few years ago people even would have considered this a gentleman's duty (a concept that is apparently foregin to you)
and quoting the utterly discredited special dependant counsel and his office of republican campaign supporting ivestigator just shows you have either failed to understand or deliberately ignored the inner workings of this sorry affair.
and, fwiw , it's just another sign of american barbary that people still rot in jail (and rotted there for years) mostly for the fact that they happened to be friends or associates of the Clintons.
One thing that puzzles me, though, is the intense emotional all-cosuming hate that US conservatives feel about Clinton, inducing them to accept and condone even the most bizarre and embarrassing attacks on him - like this impeachment thing - with a straight face. That guy was one of the best and most successful presidents your country ever had, so even though he was in the other party, one might expect some kind of grudging respect mixed with a few "ifs" and "buts". Instead of that the typical republican utterly freaks out and loose any semblence of an intelligent beeing and common sense, just because of hearing this name (as this thread amply demonstrates again).
Oh fooey! The cell call was intercepted in D.C. not Florida. Ever try to get the cell tower just a quarter mile away? And you don't just stumble across the cell phone band on your Sony. In fact you can't legally buy a reciever that tunes the 850 Mhz band in the U.S.
But you fail to address the issue. Here we have the Dems making hay by publicizing a private conversation. What happened? Nothing. That answers the previous poster's question.
And finally, who ever modded my previous reply a 0 flamebait is obviously a Dem, misusing the system.
For those of you who didn't read to the bottom of the article, the guy who is supposed to have done this has said:
"There appears to have been no hacking, no stealing, and no violation of any Senate rule. Stealing assumes a property right and there is no property right to a government document. . . . These documents are not covered under the Senate disclosure rule because they are not official business and, to the extent they were disclosed, they were disclosed inadvertently by negligent [Democratic] staff."
These were not password protected files, they were on a network available to any members of the Judiciary committee. When the Republican's first learned of this (both sides were affected by the mistake) they fixed their files and told the Democrats to do the same. When they didn't, they took advantage of it.
It was unethical, but the only worse thing in politics is to be incompetent. Think for a minute now, if these had been paper documents which had been left alone in a place where any Senator could get to them, there would be no story here except that the Dems screwed up.
Note: I do not suport either of the two parties involved in this accident.
It is interesting how this thing is spun by the Globe. The opposite spin might be:
Dems to Fucking Stupid to Protect Secret Documents with a Password
-Peter
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Politicians cannot be trusted.
I fixed your statement. If you don't believe the Democrats would be doing this, or aren't doing it themselves, then you're naive.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Was with you up until "a great presidency".
Need we forget that he still LIED?
Wasn't a "bad" presidency by any means, but "great" is probably a little strong.
Sig it.
All -
How different is this from Watergate? In Watergate, members of the Republican Party's Committee to Re-eleect the President (CREP, pronounced like you would think) broke into the DNC (Democratic National Committee) offices in the Watergate Hotel.
Why? To look at confidnetial files on activities, positions, planning, etc., to the end of being able to use this information to beat them in the 1972 presidental election.
What happened here? Members of the Senate Judicary Committee (the folks that craft our laws and have created Draconian laws around illegal access of computer systems) broke into a computer system - not just to see if it could be done - but for the express purpose of stealing information.
Imagine if this had been some kid who broke into a unsecure system (say a credit bureau's computer system) and was going through the notes and files there. Say he leaked the files to the media. What would be the uproar? The secret service would swoop in, the computers would be confiscated. People would be heading to Sing-Sing.
What is happening here? Well, the Sargent at Arms is investigating (remember under our separation of powers in the US, the Executive Branch can't use its police powers on the legislative branch), but has asked for support from the Secret Service's computer crimes team. Computers have been confiscated. An investigation is running...
Sounds like we are on a similar path. Do I think this deserves more play in the media? Definitely. Do I think that some heads should roll on this one? Definitely? Do I think some people need to do hard time? Defintely, for what is good for the goose is good for the gander. I believe that the folks that make the laws, when they break them, should get the maximum.
Am I surprised that this isn't getting the media play it deserves? No. Remember, before Woodward and Bernstein, Watergate was considered a "second-rate burgarly". I hope - and have some faith - that this will get the play it deserves...
Do I think the Democrats would have pulled this is they could? Yes. Do I think this says something about the character - in a negative way - of our legislators? Definitely.
But that is isn't being sweeped under the rug completely, that it is being addressed.
Yours,
Jordan
A technician hired by the new judiciary chairman, Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, apparently made a mistake that allowed anyone to access newly created accounts on a Judiciary Committee server shared by both parties -- even though the accounts were supposed to restrict access only to those with the right password.
If they can't be trusted with their own secrets, how they gonna keep the country safe?
Personally, I am going with the Ashcroft Internet Security Suite. That way, I know only the NSA will be reading my stuff.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
That newsmax article is absurd. The writing is horrible, the quotes are unattributed, and the analysis is the definition of bias.
So what? What's that got to do with the subject matter? You discount the news, without even trying to verify it, just because of the source?
Aw, for pete's sake! Do I have to spell EVERYTHING oput for you?
(Not Flamebait)
The goverment os america is supposed to be an open prcess for the people, by the people, and of the people. I don't know how any political party can have an expectation of secrecy.
Those who maintain that there should be security between parties are arguing security-through-obscurity. It is only a matter of time before the actions are brought before the people in open congress, and played out in the media. All in all, I think party secrecy is just as effective as security-though-obscurity -- doesn't work good for long.
If the people own the government (which we claim) then all memos should be availible, not just the ones that get voted on.
Finally, no one seems to remember:
Didn't the Democaric party run Linux (at least on their website) and the Rebublicans Windows?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
As I've read many times here on Slashdot every time someone comes to the defense of various enchroachments of civil liberties: "If the Democrats haven't done anything illegal, what have they to worry about?"
Wake up, for Christ's sake! This is how power given to the government is abused. It will always be abused, which is why we have to protect our privacy at all costs.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
I read the internet for the articles.
I guess all these people just got lost and wandered into a jail cell, eh?
Clinton's Associates Who Have Been Convicted Of Crimes
The count of convictions and guilty pleas coming out of the Whitewater investigation is between 10 and 20, depending on what one considers a Whitewater conviction and what one considers merely a new investigation started due to evidence uncovered during the Whitewater investigation.
And let's not even start discussing how many Friends of Bill have died under unusual circumstances, many of them under investigation for crimes related to the Clintons.
"...history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." --Ghandi
Umm, discordians would giggle voraciously, and probably setup a few corporations (DisAssociates Inc.) just to prank from.
Corporations get their power from government (how else are they defined as virtual entities except through law). No government, no power. Your money doesn't do you a damn bit of good unless there is someone to bribe.
Chinese New Year, the season of Bureaucracy is over. The Aftermath has begun. Didn't you get the memo?
Get off yer catma or else I'm force-feeding you buns this Friday (don't worry, they'll be dipped in LSD). You can discuss abominations with Eris _personally_ then.
Your credit card will not save you.
I've never met a Southern Baptist Discordian before. You're a freak, and that's good.
See http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/6805/legislation/18us
here's hoping he goes to the theater to see a play.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I suppose my posts on Slashdot might have the effect of "changing the tone". Too many people find it easy to go along with the crimes perpetrated on us. And too many people think that progressive politics are for "nice guys who finish last", sissies, unrealistic dreamers. My comments might be pointed, but they're not meanspirited. I don't expect to convert anyone in these debates, but I know that I often reflect later on points made by others in the heat of argument, especially if they're memorable.
To clarify my codependency comment, I'm translating the codependent fallacy of "I'm OK, you're OK" (which is not OK when either party is not OK) into the Republican style flipside of "I'm a crook, you're a crook, that's OK". That's embracing evil, and I will not get dragged down with these degenerates with no imagination for constructive work, who choose only theft, with no honor among thieves.
We're dealing with unprecedented violations of rights and decency with the current political class. This is not business as usual, exceeding even the depths of past Republican crimes - we're facing tyranny. I will match their viscous actions with appropriately incisive rhetoric.
I appreciate your candor and selfawareness, as well as your ability to keep your cool in the face of these egregious assaults. I'm sure that there are people who will consider your posts more carefully than they do mine. And the converse is also true. As long as you and I are reflecting the truth, about these crimes as well as the diverse styles of their effect on the conscience of anyone paying attention, we're complementary to one another. When I hear yells of "fire!", and realize I've been smelling smoke, I head for the exit. Even if the yeller is clad in straitjacket and tinfoil hat. And if I've been too focused on the stage of this crowded theater to notice the usher gently pointing to the fire escape, I'm glad that the freak got my attention.
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make install -not war
Because he replied to the troll, therefore it was a good troll, so the onus is off the troll and onto the jackoff who replies to the troll. Do not feed the troll!
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
I know this is /. and you probably didn't read RTFA but there was no hacking. The technician screwed up.
/. for gods sake.
How do you know? Everyone is missing the obvious question.
WHO HAD ROOT?
Think about it people this is
So to answer your question: President Truman :)
Or that's what he said, anyway.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
No -- not just a gay joke, a BUGGERY-RELATED gay joke, those are the funniest kinds.
In jail? Come on. He just needs to ride it out until November. Assuming (HOPING!) Bush gets his ass out of office there will be a huge amount of Presidential Pardons issued. Seems to be standard practice.
Now THAT is something that need to be changed. They should be up for review or balanced out by congress.
When someone does something bad, like going through documents they KNOW are not theirs, that have been placed on a system that was supposed to be secure, the opposing party has no right to feel outrage?
I look at it this way:
If you and I are on opposite sides of a fence, and you throw poop on my lawn, it shouldn't matter that you and I are on opposite sites - what was done was still wrong, period.
Republicans love to talk about moral absolutes, and moral values - as long as it's someone else accused of doing the immoral acts, and not a bright, shiny spotlight on their own conduct.
But this is slashdot. A slashdoter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber!
Bob better be careful about the security of the software he runs... as this story demonstrates, it would be quite possible for his sources to be revealed for him.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I mean, really. Shouldn't everyone remotely involved in this be brought up on DMCA charges, have their homes raided, and all of their and their staff's computers confiscated?
I mean, shouldn't they?
I have misplaced my pants.
I heard news all afternoon, at lunch, on CNN and MSNBC and didnt see a thing about this mentioned.
However its still the first artice on the Boston Globe website.
This is shocking and disappointing.
The Gate suffix implies wrong doing. Bush and such are too in control of the media for this to get much attention. For instance there is no mention on CNN yet, and only 2 sites on news.google.com list the story.
I'm sure if it was the other way around it would be interupting your regularly scheduled program to inform you of it.
The information in these "memos" was not "...information that has been determined by the United States Government pursuant to an Executive order or statute to require protection against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national defense or foreign relations, or any restricted data, as defined in paragraph y. of section 11 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954..."
Because of that, the law does not apply to them.
Who posted this? Did they read the article?
A Democratic tech improperly gives worldwide read access to every account created on a server, and this is the Republican's fault?
Not to mention that there is no evidence presented that Republicans made use of this flaw - only claims by the Democrats!
Clear, Dark Skies
This is patently absurd, and I don't think you will find ANYONE in government who holds this position, in any party.
It is not YOUR data. The data belongs to the federal governemnt, a government elected by the people, but a seperate entity non the less.
It is not YOUR server. It is a federal government server, one which should be kept secure in order to safeguard YOUR security, as well as everyone elses. What if this had been defense secrets? Bet you wouldn't be so happy then.
They are not YOUR tax dollars. They are EVERYONE's, and they are administered by the governemt. You want a say on how they are spent? Fine. Tell your congressman, or better yet, run for, and get elected.
He is not YOUR tech. Try calling the congress, and tell them to send him around to your house to work on your computer. I will personally give you $100 if you get them to do this. Hell, I'll even hand deliver it.
It is not your hardware. In that same call to your congress critter, tell them you want the server delivered to your home. I'll tripple what I will hand deliver if you get them to do that too.
I could go on, but I trust my point is clear.
But this is slashdot. A slashdoter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber!
Who broke into what, dude?
It's really pitiful that on a supposedly geek-oriented site people are throwing around words like "burglary" and "broke into" without either evidence or explanation.
The only hard fact here is that the Democrats opened a security hole in their *own* machine - which the Republicans claim they were warned about a year and a half ago. The rest of this article is supposition, speculation and fear mongering.
Clear, Dark Skies
The truth is sometimes absurd.
Plus, they're crying "Watergate" when, as yet, there is no evidence that the Republicans were the ones leaking the unsecured documents.
Clear, Dark Skies
"Brrrr, "I am...," ..(oops, sorry), "Brrr, We are not crooks"
That struck me as odd, too. I mean, shouldn't they have been able to set up a pair of servers, one for each party?
Clear, Dark Skies
Unattributed quotes and unverified accusations very much matter. The writer should at least make an effort at credibility, rather than rely on me to do his research, especially in cases where there is such a bias. I expect the same from left-wing sources I read as welll.
A blog about stuff.
I guess it didn't help in the case of 9/11 where all the hijackers were middle-class Saudi who had a pretty good life. This computer break-in (yes, that's what it is) disappoints me, but doesn't surprise me. I just wish someone on the GOP stopped it while it was happening. That would at least give them some moral ground.
Yes. Instead let's discuss how full of crap you are and how you can come up with a list like that for anyone.
A term of life in prison, thanks to the patriot act that the high moral conservatives passed.
How about if they live up to their own standards?
(a) Whoever (1) having knowingly accessed a computer without authorization or exceeding authorized access....
So, the relevant question is: What is the legal definition of "authorization"?
(In law, words have very specific definitions, but which are not always synonymous with their colloquial counterparts.)
Administratively, the Repubs did not have authorization, but as far as the computer was concerned, they did. What say the lawyers? IANALBIUTDO (IANAL, but I used to date one).
Of course your former president had the moral right not to talk or even to lie to keep his sexual activities private - a few years ago people even would have considered this a gentleman's duty (a concept that is apparently foregin to you)
A gentleman's duty aside (and I quite agree with you, there), it is ALSO the duty of an upstanding moral citizen to NOT LIE when he was UNDER OATH.
I don't give a rat's ass what he said in public, or even if he lied in public. In a courtroom, under oath, you tell the fucking truth or say "no comment". Period.
"America has done some terrible things. But I know that Americans don't cheer when innocents die." -Dave Barry
The theory before was a disgruntled Democrat was leaking the info. No proof has been submitted to show it was a Republican. Given it's a Boston Globe story, why am i mot surprised.
The "Dem" tech guy is actualy in the pocket of the republicans...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
"members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos"
my god, that is horrid. GWB commanded his subversive agents to go through Democrat documents inserting phrases like:
think of the power of Howard Dean in a Beowulf cluster
i don't have any WMDs ... you insensitive clod!
all your polling booths are belong to us
i'd just LOVE to pour some hot grits over Ann Coulter
Take away the right to say "fuck" and you take away the right to say "fuck the government." - Lenny Bruce
Congratulations, you fail basic logic. A sentence that starts out 'The British Government has learned that ...' can only be a lie if in fact the British government has not learned the item in question, and the speaker knows this. Well, as it turns out, the UK continues to stand behind their statement, saying that they have intelligence from sources that they can't reveal to us (their right, after all).
Bzzt, too bad. Don Pardo has some nice parting gifts for you, though, including the Slashdot home game.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
...Slashdotters were for file sharing.
So your response is to post an eight year old article made up soley of accusations, and ignore all of the further investigation that happened after that time?
Even Orrin Hatch, in that same article said "Now, whether [the accusation that the White House used the files improperly is] true or not, I don't know. That's why we have to do this investigation."
You can vote against.
Don't vote.
Our whole lives as a americans we're taught by the public schools, and forced through peer pressure, that we have to vote. Most people feel 'ashamed' if they didn't vote and will LIE. I know what I'm writing will cause some zealot to call me names of some sort, that's how he/she was programmed...
Don't vote, it only encourages the bastards...
The term in "information wants to be free"
This means that if you find a piece of paper lying on the ground and read it, the information ends up in your brain, even if it was illegal for that to happen. It's like water flowing downhill, it is a natural phenomenon.
Now somebody writing source code might "want it to be free". They might also "want it to be secret". In fact somebody could work on their clever idea that they plan to GPL, but they want to keep it secret right now, because it is so clever and they don't want to see another rip-off GPL program appear before theirs is done and steal all the credit. So they might very well "want it to be secret" and then change to "want it to be free". Microsoft probably wants their code to be secret, but they certainly also release lots of code as examples that they don't mind people copying. Plenty of people publish books and source code with normal copyright where they want people to see the code but don't want them to copy it.
All of these have nothing to do with the natural effect if you see some source code printed on a piece of paper, and you pick it up and read it to see what it is. That is why "information wants to be free". The copyright holder's desires have nothing to do with the information being free or not.
Right. Squat. He was far more interested in SDI and those tax cuts.
And do you seriously think he would have done something about Enron--his largest campaign contributor?
This entire story is framed this way to coverup the contents of the documents.
... he is Latino". They're guilty of racial discrimination.
The Democrats explicitly state in their private documents that they opposed a judge "because
Republicans are only guilty of finding out about it.
Dude - everyone is still mad at Clinton. Clinton was unremarkable in every way, including his corruption. He who does not study the past is doomed to repeat it, but you seem to be arguing that the past is more important than the present. I'm not trying to troll here, I just would like to hear your thoughts on this (especially since you are so active in this thread).
"My God, this must be a truly remarkable corn chip, to be so widely and confidently touted."
It seems like this should be a major scandal.
The Democrats do not want to promote this issue. In claiming that Republicans did someththing wrong by leaking the memos to the press, Democrats are working to divert attention from the actual contents of the documents which were leaked. They will continue to counter by saying that the leak was unfair, but they will not work to promote the issue beyond that.
For the benefit of foreign readers who might not be familiar with United States government (and also US citizens who don't know shit about their own government): According to the United States Constitution, federal judges must be appointed by the president and approved by the Senate. Approval by the Senate requires a vote by the Senate. For the first time in US history judges are not receiving a Senate vote; The US Senate is no longer fulfulling its constitutional duty to either aprove or reject judical candidates appointed by the president. That is because Democrats now fillibuster when the Republicans bring the confirmation for a vote. Because the senate confirmation pipline is backed up by fillibustering there are now so many vacancies in the federal judiciary that appeals are being denied becauase there are no judges to hear them. So: You might be innocent, but because there is no judge to hear your case we will go ahead an execute you.
The Democrats claim they they are fillibustering because the Bush nominees are ultra extremists and therefore should be denied their constituation right to recieve a Senate vote. But to an outsider, the common charactersitic of the appointees which the Democrats choose to fillibuster appears to be their mintority status.
Though it never seemed fair to accuse the Democrats of racism and sexism based on appearnaces. Just because Democrats selectively denied women and mintorites appointed to the federal bench their constitutional right to a Sente confirmation vote does not imply that they are racist. Maybe it really was true that most of the appointees who were unqualified were also women and minoroties.
Well now we have the answer: Senate Democrats are racists. Their "talking points" memo reveals why the Democrats denied Miguel Estrada his constitutional right to a confirmation vote, "because he is Latino."
That's the big story here folks, and the Democrats are claiming that public knowlege of thier own racist motives is illegitimate knowledge. If Democrats are going to deny someone his rights "because he is Latino" I have right to know know that, and fuck them for saying I don't . I think the person who leaked this deservers a medal.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
# 2003-12-18 18:52:34 Cybercrime hits capitol hill (articles,usa) (rejected)
This was reported in the December issue of Cryptogram. You can find a Washington Post article here. And the Information Week article here.
espo
This isn't big news because it isn't new. The Republicans probably have just as many allegations waiting to throw at the Democrats if this comes to the forefront, so the Dems and their press cronies are keeping it on the back-burner.
This, like ever other scandal in Washington, will consume the beltway-boys for the next few days until someone else decides to flash his privates on C-SPAM.
There is no morality in Washington. Ethics are a weapon to be wielded. Dave Barry for Prez. At least he's funny.
After reading through many of the posts in response to the Boston Globe's article, there appear to be two general opposing opinions. First, the Republicans did nothing illegal because the files were unsecured. Second, The Democrat's files were illegally obtained because there was malicious intent to find and read them. I would like to think that most of us could agree that even if the activity was legal, the viewing of the documents were at least unethical. In any case there certainly appears to be a number of questions unanswered. For instance, who on the Republican side viewed the documents? Did they stumble upon the documents or did they search for them? Who on the Democratic side was alerted of the security hole? Did the Democrats believe their memos were fully secure? Are there ethical behavior rules of the Senate/Congress that were broken? I encourage all /.ers to write his or her Senators to ask that the investigation be complete, ethical rules be developed to prevent this behavior in the future, and if any illegal activity did occur that the individuals involved be turned over to the appropriate law enforcement agency.
If you do not know who your Senator are (tisk tisk), you can find out at http://www.senate.gov/.
"Gate" means "caught", and these injudicious Senators have been. If you look at a Watergate timeline, you'll see how timeconsuming these processes are:
The Republican goons were caught bugging the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel at 2:30AM 6/17/72. It took 2 days until the Washington Post even reported the Republican security aide among the "burglars", on 6/19/72. A couple more months to report the $25K paycheck from Nixon's campaign to one of the Plumbers, 8/1/72. Another couple months to report Attorney General Mitchell's anti-Democrat espionage fund, 9/29/72. The FBI determined that the Watergate breakin is the tip of an iceberg of political crimes by Republicans against Democrats, reported weeks later on 10/10/72. NIXON IS REELECTED IN A LANDSLIDE on 11/7/72. Nixon aides Liddy and McCord are convicted conspiracy, wiretapping and burglary 7 months after their crimes at the Watergate, on 1/30/73. Three months later, top Nixon aides Erlichman and Haldeman, and Attorney General Kleindienst, resign to escape pressure over the operation and the coverup, while Nixon lawyer Dean is fired for refusing to play ball, on 4/30/73. The Senate hearings begin weeks later, on 4/18/73. Nixon is impeached for obstruction of justice on 7/27/74. Nixon resigns 8/8/74.
From the Watergate breakin to Nixon's resignation took over 2 years from . Public interest didn't begin to snowball for months after the crimes, 6/17/72 - 8/8/74; counting from the first Republican breakin, at the doctor's office of Daniel Ellsberg (leaker of the revelatory Pentagon Papers) on 9/3/71, that's almost 3 years - 75% of a Persidential term. With the Murdoch fascist pablum global media empire, including Fox News, the NY Post, the Weekly Standard, even the P2P news media like the Internet might take a lot of time to get these latest crimes in the Senate into the public consciousness.
Don't write this story off yet. As the various Federal criminal investigations of Cybergate, the 9/11 Kean-Hamilton commission, the Ernergy Bill graft investigations, as well as a host of other criminal investigations in the US and around the world begin to bear fruit, there will be plenty of fascinating stories of traitorous Republican plotting and scheming to read at the beach this Summer. The vast rightwing conspiracy will be accepted as a theory as reliable as the Pythagorean.
--
make install -not war
Worse, even if we do intervene, there is no guarentee that we can make the situation any better. Look at Iraq, they're free of a brutal dictator only to be immediatly manuvered by foreign agents into (what will probably become) a brutal theocracy hell bent on breeding more terrorists to keep the region unstable.
This is the same idiotic logic that inspired the Star Trek 'Prime Directive.' Cannot guarantee your actions will have ZERO negative side effects, even if the positive effects are likely to far outweigh them? Then you must do nothing! This logic of self distrust was originally shaped in the West by liberals with a political bias for Communism and against the status quo capitalist systems. Of courst they only break it out when a political enemy is in power.
Let me ask you this simple question: Would YOU rather be living in Iraq today, or before the invasion?
If your view has been so clouded by the domination of major media by left wing zealots, I suggest you read some of the Iraqi blogs.
I find it interesting that no one is focusing on the reported contents of these memos. So the Democratic party feels threatened by a Hispanic man gaining a position of power without a hand-out from the government? If this is true, it's absolutely shameful.
I might as well bring up Iran/Contra.
Genuine treason makes all of this pale in
comparison. And the perpetrators are still
in power.
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
After so many times people stopped believing the source.
I do not believe repeat liars. So when I see something reputable, and a little less biased, then we will see. The NY Times does not count.
Wow. Harness that denial of yours and we can have clean, cheap energy for the whole world for decades.
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
In the US, espionage laws generally don't apply to the elites, unless they really fuck up (ala Enron, Watergate).
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Since it will take months to sort out whether a crime was committed, I've drafted a summary of expected consequences for people who do this sort of thing:
Please note that the RIAA may seek additional punishment if the material was copyrighted. So kids, think before you act
damn it
The Dems have handled this brilliantly. They have completely turned the focus of this from the contents of the pilfered material to the act of pilfering itself.
Everyone is all in righteous rant over Republicans raiding Democratic staffer computers, and not a peep is heard at the racist rants against Estrada and other minorities in the documents themselves.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
You hit that nail on the head. Clinton's moral failings and mistakes were truly pedestrian and unremarkable.
Of course, I rather prefer my leaders to fuck one just constituent at a time, rather than fuck the whole country like the current one does. Takes them longer to get around to me, you see. But that's just my preference.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
s/plantation/corporation/g
#include "usual_inhabitants"
This, I think, is the world some (no, I don't believe all) of the Republicans want, and will stop at nothing to create.
Some of these power hungry grubbers really seem to miss flat out owning people.
Compare some of the last few events to some of the characters (villians) in a Vernor Vinge novel (e.g. - Marooned in Real Time, Deepness in the Sky). While the characters in a book may be caricatures, it's still somewhat disconcerting what with TIA, protecting us for our own good and all the other stuff about how much Big Brother loves me. Bah!
Yow! I'm supposed to have a plan?
You *DO* and *SHOULD* "discount news without even trying to verify it" if the "news" starts out its life with no credibility. See, "news" without basic credibility is "gossip" and giving gossip a venue into the social discourse is a very bad idea.
Without this filter, we would each have to spend hours each day dealing with the un-discounted accounts of Bigfoot Performing Dark Rituals with Aliens on their UFO's to cause Devil Boy to Possess retired woman's Toaster in Desmoins.
So yes, unattributed "quotes" about unsubstanciated ideas that belch forth from untrustworthy sources can, and indeed must, be assumed to be crap, and therefor safe to ignore.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
... if the Republicans are claiming that the government documents aren't protected, that is they did nothing wrong accessing them, that means the Democrats can request any document from the Republicans!
So, open, honest communication is good, right?
I know that they did. They voted on it under duress, without being allowed to debate, and they got swept up in the tide of nationalism. Now that things have cooled down, however, people with their head screwed on straight are ready to sit down and seriously examine the ramifications of the legislation that was so hastily and unfortunately passed.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
November 2004 is not just about the presidential election, it's also about controlling Congress. If Republicans continue to hold majority power, there is no way anything like this will be followed up on.
On the other hand, if the GOP becomes a minority (Dems + others, ideally), then Watergate II this indeed may become. In a less dystopic world, anyway.
Yow! I'm supposed to have a plan?
Where is fucking Osama bin Laden?
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
hmmm... you just disqualify yourself with quoting that.
I'm sorry, I didn't realize that you were king for today. Is there some factual error in the posting, or just things you want to gloss over? Facts are stubborn things.
Of course your former president had the moral right not to talk or even to lie to keep his sexual activities private - a few years ago people even would have considered this a gentleman's duty (a concept that is apparently foregin to you)
That isn't the stand of our legal system, either in theory or practice. The irony is that President Clinton ran afoul of sexual harassment law and precedent which strips away privacy. The most extreme versions of those laws have been pushed primarily by his own party. Any corporate executive that did what he did would have likely spent time in jail.
and quoting the utterly discredited special dependant counsel and his office of republican campaign supporting ivestigator just shows you have either failed to understand or deliberately ignored the inner workings of this sorry affair.
Special counsels have generally come from the opposition. The special counsel acted within the law, found violations of the law, and prosecuted people. There are people that would not accept any judgment against President Clinton no matter what the evidence. As a practical matter President Clinton has a cult of personality.
and, fwiw , it's just another sign of american barbary that people still rot in jail (and rotted there for years) mostly for the fact that they happened to be friends or associates of the Clintons.
The people who went to jail are there because they broke the law, such as for fraud, or other crimes. "Friendship with a Clinton" was not, and is not, a crime under US law. Nobody is in jail for that. Follow the link and you can see that for yourself.
One thing that puzzles me, though, is the intense emotional all-cosuming hate that US conservatives feel about Clinton, inducing them to accept and condone even the most bizarre and embarrassing attacks on him - like this impeachment thing - with a straight face.
There are indeed people who went overboard in their dislike, even hatred, of the Clintons. They did a disservice to themselves, and their cause. Unfortunately their behavior pales beside the level of vitriol and hate directed at the current president by a far larger number of people. I doubt it will serve the left any better than it did the right. It may even turn out worse for the left. The suspicions about the Clintons involved shadowy dealings and rumors about matters that were complex and difficult to easily prove or disprove. The hatred of Bush is over the fact that he is President, and often involves claims that are reasonably described as a willful disregard of the facts.
That guy was one of the best and most successful presidents your country ever had, so even though he was in the other party, one might expect some kind of grudging respect mixed with a few "ifs" and "buts".
President Clinton was successful by many measures, including the relatively rare feat of getting reelected, and did have a number of policy successes. But he tarnished his own legacy by a lack of discipline, poor judgment, and an administration that at times showed lamentable judgment in policy making and behavior.
Instead of that the typical republican utterly freaks out and loose any semblence of an intelligent beeing and common sense, just because of hearing this name (as this thread amply demonstrates again).
What this thread demonstrates, so far, is that some people still try to spin history to obscure the faults and magnify the successes of President Clinton, and become quite unhappy when contrary facts are presented. It may be that in time history will judge President Clinton to be one of the giants of history, but that is not how I think it is likely to turn out. I think history will record him as a popular president with a mixed record, and the second president to be impeached.
Oh fooey! The cell call was intercepted in D.C. not Florida. Ever try to get the cell tower just a quarter mile away? And you don't just stumble across the cell phone band on your Sony. In fact you can't legally buy a reciever that tunes the 850 Mhz band in the U.S.
g ingrich .ethics/index.shtml
Are you just trolling, or are you unable to comprehend written words?
The cell phone call was intercepted in north Florida, according to this web page:
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/01/10/
As I recall, it was a conference call in which one of the members of the call was talking on a cell phone in Florida. I could probably find a link for you but you seem to need some practice using Google.
As far as monitoring cell phone calls, it has only relatively recently become illegal to sell scanners that can pick up the cellular bands. Many people still have scanners much older than that law. In addition, try a google for "Scanner mods" and see what you can see. Other people buy their scanners in countries which allow you to monitor all transmissions which pass through your body, not just the ones the government wants you to hear. Finally, RF scanners are not exactly rocket science; home hobbyists could easily construct a scanner which could pick up cell transmissions.
But you fail to address the issue. Here we have the Dems making hay by publicizing a private conversation. What happened? Nothing.
Let's go over this again, slowly. The link I posted earlier takes you to a page which states that the people who taped the conversation were fined $500 for violating the law. The Congresscritter who leaked the tape had to step down from the Ethics committee. What happened? Something.
The point of that article was that not much really happened as a consequence of the leak. You wanna know why? Because the tape itself was EMBARASSING for the Republicans and they probably didn't WANT to make a big issue of it.
What exactly did you expect to happen?
Send lawyers, guns, and money. Dad, get me out of this.
You've given a fair number of facts that people should know about this case, but I do see one point on which I think you are mistaken. That's "creative thinking of where else they might look for evidence".
It's very hard to actually do that without supoenaing people without proper cause. The FBI had been repeatedly chastized for that sort of creative thinking. Any attempts to do that would be gambles, where the FBI would have had to turn up big evidence damned quick or get censured for it and told to back off on that tactic, and the chance of getting a nothing, or a little break that they would never get to use, was a lot higher than of getting that big break. As Alan Sherman supposedly said about Gus Grissom's Mercury flight, "sometimes you get a pooch that just can't be screwed".
Who is John Cabal?
And should be punished by the fullest extent of the law. Good. I thought for a second that you were trying to argue that because clinton ( "oh no the Clenis!!!!") did it, somehow it makes it allright for the GOP to do the same thing.
I hope you aren't making that argument, cus then, well you would be accusing yourself of hypocrisy. Which is novel, even for slashdot. Also odd, that you are pointing to a news source. SO it did make the news!
Wrong!
The problem is the present funding allows for more than one vote for the rich.
Democratic would be a system of funding by individuals (not companies, unions, special interrest groups) only and per individual a sum that's affordable to any in the country.
Like $10.- a head per year. That would be one man one vote!
Ofcourse it would kill an industry.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Here is part of an interview with couple who taped the call; take it for what it's worth. I got it here: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/congress/january97
Sounds pretty ordinary to me.
Send lawyers, guns, and money. Dad, get me out of this.
Let's try that again, this time with honestly.
Hubbell was convicted of stealing from the Clintons, and the Starr team eventually determined that McDougal had defrauded the Clintons.
Of course, that makes it a foul and reprehensible fraud - perpetuated on the Clintons.
I'm the best IRC client ever.
Another poor right-wing hackery.
There's a boatload of aspersions cast, and the only fact - made up.
I'd like to see just a few historians who voted Clinton has one of the worst presidents in modern US history. Of course, you can't do that, because you are making shit up.
I'm the best IRC client ever.
More lies perpetuating as fact:
You allege the White House cosigned loans. In addition to not having the constitutional power to do so, they also did not do so. You allege that an article shows how far Clinton's Pals were using influence to help their buisness budies - but they didn't, beucase Rubin was not working in the White House and he got rebuffed by actual Clinton appointees.
Whitewater was not baseless - the Clintons were defrauded, and then we were defrauded.
I'm the best IRC client ever.
Just because I disagree with him/her, but it's a perfectly valid argument.
You all seem to have missed the obvious conspiracy here. You think that security setup problem was an accident? You don't suppose he was on the Republican payroll? We need to track him down and check his bank records, see what kind of payoff he got. But then, he's probably retired to a non-extradition country by now.
Treason.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
I'm sure this will have been said many times in this thread, but if you took the time to find out more details about this incident rather than use just one news article, you'd understand what has actually happened. Files were placed on a PUBLIC file server. It was up to each owner to restrict access to anything they stored on this server. When this was explained to the Dems, they failed to act. It's no different than if they had sent them to a printer in a publicly accessible area and never picked them up. There's no crime here, just unethical behavior by certain individuals. And based on the content of the files, it looks like unethical behavior is the norm around there.
This poll was conducted by the Pew Trust, one of the more liberal leaning organizations. YOu can find it and many more on Google. Some show Clinton to be at best Average, none show him to be the "hero" the left wing wants his "legacy" to be. And which of these ten presidents we have had since World War II would you consider the worst president?" 2/00 2/99 % % Nixon 28 28 Clinton 20 21 Carter 12 11 Reagan 12 11 Johnson 5 7 Ford 4 5 Truman 3 2 Eisenhower 3 2 Bush 3 4 Kennedy 1 1 None (vol.) 2 2 No opinion 7 6
Thats true that they can't go on a fishing trip but they could have tried to find alternate sources of information than those records, like SOMEONE had to pay for all that time so why not go after bank records of those suspected of involvement. Yes, I know you need cause, I thought the trail of the Governor would have given the Feds some data but looks like he was carefully setup to take that fall alone. I will say that the Clintons are as good as the Mafia ever was about not leaving evidence around!
"They had an obligation to tell each of the people whose files they were intruding upon"
Doesn't that kinda take all the fun out of reading someone else's email?
-- sometimes AND gates turn me on.
You wrote, and I quote:
"Clinton has been voted by many historians (who are generally liberal) as one of the WORST presidents in modern US History."
I asked for some sort of backup for this - you provided a link to a poll you allege was conducted by Pew (it was actually conducted by Gallup). It used a sample of 1,050 adults nationwide.
Again, please provide a refrence to historians, you lying partisan hack.
I'm the best IRC client ever.
I was caught looking at confidential employee information on a network share that was not password protected. I lost my job (FIRED) because of it. They said they were going to prosecute, but couldn't prove any damages, so no action was taken other than my removal.
In the very least, anyone that accessed the files without permission should lose their job and be barred from government work.
Damages occured here to the Dem party by the press leaks. Sounds to me like there is a strong case for criminal prosecution and possibly civil as well, though IANAL.
Who Rules America?
The Alien Grip on Our News and Entertainment Media Must Be Broken
By the Research Staff of National Vanguard Books
P.O. Box 330 Hillsboro West Virginia 24946 USA
There is no greater power in the world today than that wielded by the manipulators of public opinion in America. No king or pope of old, no conquering general or high priest ever disposed of a power even remotely approaching that of the few dozen men who control America's mass media of news and entertainment.
Their power is not distant and impersonal; it reaches into every home in America, and it works its will during nearly every waking hour. It is the power that shapes and molds the mind of virtually every citizen, young or old, rich or poor, simple or sophisticated.
The mass media form for us our image of the world and then tell us what to think about that image. Essentially everything we know -- or think we know -- about events outside our own neighborhood or circle of acquaintances comes to us via our daily newspaper, our weekly news magazine, our radio, or our television.
It is not just the heavy-handed suppression of certain news stories from our newspapers or the blatant propagandizing of history-distorting TV "docudramas" that characterizes the opinion-manipulating techniques of the media masters. They exercise both subtlety and thoroughness in their management of the news and the entertainment that they present to us.
For example, the way in which the news is covered: which items are emphasized and which are played down; the reporter's choice of words, tone of voice, and facial expressions; the wording of headlines; the choice of illustrations -- all of these things subliminally and yet profoundly affect the way in which we interpret what we see or hear.
On top of this, of course, the columnists and editors remove any remaining doubt from our minds as to just what we are to think about it all. Employing carefully developed psychological techniques, they guide our thought and opinion so that we can be in tune with the "in" crowd, the "beautiful people," the "smart money." They let us know exactly what our attitudes should be toward various types of people and behavior by placing those people or that behavior in the context of a TV drama or situation comedy and having the other TV characters react in the Politically Correct way.
Molding American Minds
For example, a racially mixed couple will be respected, liked, and socially sought after by other characters, as will a "take charge" Black scholar or businessman, or a sensitive and talented homosexual, or a poor but honest and hardworking illegal alien from Mexico. On the other hand, a White racist -- that is, any racially conscious White person who looks askance at miscegenation or at the rapidly darkening racial situation in America -- is portrayed, at best, as a despicable bigot who is reviled by the other characters, or, at worst, as a dangerous psychopath who is fascinated by firearms and is a menace to all law-abiding citizens. The White racist "gun nut," in fact, has become a familiar stereotype on TV shows.
The average American, of whose daily life TV-watching takes such an unhealthy portion, distinguishes between these fictional situations and reality only with difficulty, if at all. He responds to the televised actions, statements, and attitudes of TV actors much as he does to his own peers in real life. For all too many Americans the real world has been replaced by the false reality of the TV environment, and it is to this false reality that his urge to conform responds. Thus, when a TV scriptwriter expresses approval of some ideas and actions through the TV characters for whom he is writing, and disapproval of others, he exerts a powerful pressure on millions of viewers toward conformity with his own views.
And as it is with TV entertainment, so it is also with the news, whether televised or printed. The insidious thing about this form of thought control is that even when we rea
would require actual evidence before declaring that a crime has been committed.
Clear, Dark Skies
What you're neglecting is social equality. Women are now free to determine their own fates in the labor market. You're right to point out that families have been degraded economically, but socially single women now are no longer dependent upon men to support themselves financially.
In this case, wage slavery is the cost of social freedom. Live it, love it.
the lottery, dude - that doesn't mean I did it.
You're arguing that because the Republicans might have done it, they must have done it. Sorry, but an absense of evidence is, in fact, proof of innocence in any court of law.
Be sure to write me for a recommendation when you join the police force.
Clear, Dark Skies
That depends. If I were browsing through my Samba setup and found an unknown machine in my workgroup, and that machine's files aren't protected, am I a {h,cr}acker?
Remember, the problem was that a tech screwed up. You and I have no idea how minor or huge the mistake was.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
heh heh, I guess the catchy acronym is the FReACC (aka freak) Act?
Work for Change & GET PAID!
I especially like the no-bullshit part about the UFOs!!
What if you leave your credit card statement on a billboard at the edge of your lawn so anyone driving by can see it?
Are they trespassing by looking at your sign you put up without realizing you accidently put your credit card info on it?
The article presents no evidence that the Republicans were reading Democratic memos. It asserts that certain leaks to the press must have been caused by the Republicans copying Democratic memos.
So, I can assert that Howard Dean mugged my mom - do you believe me?
Clear, Dark Skies
As a libertarian, I'd like to say congratulations to the Republicans! My conservative fellows in right-as-in-true ideology know that it's a dog-eat-dog world out there and you've got to look out for Number One. We need fewer restrictions on liberty; the Democratic Party, socialist as it is, doesn't need to be keeping secrets, anyway.
I sincerely hope the Republicans searched the free marketplace to find the best computer crackers for the job, and I hope the crackers were paid no more than the market equilibrium prescribes for their services. Doing otherwise would be irrational bureaucratic nonsense.
Join me, won't you, in casting off the shackles of oppressive big libero-taxing government, decision-making centralization, anti-free-enterprise regulation, and coercive politically correct thinking!
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
Re: Drugs
I've been sober since January 26th, 1987. I would not support the legalization of drugs.
Re: Bush
Lying to the American people, and getting hundreds of our soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen killed when they lied about weapons of mass destruction should definately be impeachable. High crimes, indeed. Much more so than squirting on a blue dress. Yes, this was not the original topic, but the discussion was broadened to include the 'poo flinging' on both sides, so a flung a little more. I think it's important, and in the context of the discussion, goes to the patern of conduct.
Re: BM
Bill Maher - funny, but I agree with you 100% on him. I know what Libertarians are often accused of being like, and I'm not one of 'them'.
But this is slashdot. A slashdoter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber!
Who was wrong? Dems, GOP, MS, the admins? IT DOESN'T MATTER. You can prove a point here, slap the government in the face, show them what a bunch of idiots they are. Unauthorized access to a computer is a FELONY. Period. It is for you, it is for me. Jump up, scream loud and long. Demand prosecution. Maybe even get some of these stupid draconian laws repealed. Fax, write, post to bulletin boards....mobilize people....mobilize. Don't waste this opportunity please.
Blame the victim:
"As the extent to which Democratic communications were monitored came into sharper focus, Republicans yesterday offered a new defense. They said that in the summer of 2002, their computer technician informed his Democratic counterpart of the glitch, but Democrats did nothing to fix the problem."
Feign ignorance and indignation:
"Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, made a preliminary inquiry and described himself as "mortified that this improper, unethical and simply unacceptable breach of confidential files may have occurred on my watch."
Movie trivia:"I'm shocked, *shocked* to find cracking in this establishment." "Here are their memos." "Ah, thank you..." (Can anyone guess the movie? Answer: acnalbasaC)
So much for the integrity of our elected leaders. At least now I have a motivation to run for Senator.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
I think "authorization" is pretty self-explanatory. I don't think it means "authorization" in the computer sense, but in the normal sense where you have to get an "ok" from the owner or from a designated person who can give authorization. I'd say that in court this would be difficult to contest.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Do I have to spell EVERYTHING oput for you?
obviously not.
The Democratic core constituency is virulently anti-corporation, and Republicans control the White House, the Senate, and the House. If I controlled a corporation trying to survive in a capitalisitic society, I'd be damned if I'd give money to the Democrats, either. It's just self-interest.
let's remember the outrageous scandals that neo-conservatives used to ruin a great presidency.
ohhh, you mean the one where the President lied under oath, was impeached, and disbarred for doing so? That great Presidency?
Electronic Buggery in the Senate.
What? Can they do that remotely now?
This isn't another Watergate for the Republicans, this is a StupidGate for the Democrats. Not only were the Democrats using taxpayer funds to pay for the production and storage of their political documents, they were giving Republicans free access to them. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. The DNC's private servers would have been a better place to put these non-governmental documents, not on a taxpayer funded server. Everyone of those documents belong to the people of the United States which members of the Republican party in the Judiciary are...
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
"Ford's Defense Sect'y Rumsfeld lost Vietnam & spends his golden years reliving his youth."
...
Although too large for a (credited) sig, the original phrase --
"Rumsfeld was the Secretary of Defense who lost Vietnam. He's spending his golden years reliving his youth."
-- is much snappier.
Perhaps another compromise is in order? Something like
"Defense Secretary Rumsfeld loses Vietnam, relives youth as Bush man."
Naw, that's not it, either. But the phrase "Bush man" is pretty funny.
-kgj
-kgj
We can send in the RIAA to handle this one. Using the Republican AND Democrats DMCA-type rules, I'm sure a crime was committed. I can't wait until some tech fails to patch up the systems and someone manages to float the petty internal bickering out to the rest of the world for viewing...
man rtfm
Or even better, Evil Bit Error Detection Correction. That way, when a political opponent accesses your un-condom'd PC, the EBEDC closes the "hole".
It's called the Nazi Party!
mmmmmmh, babies...makes my mouth water.
It is more than possible to live on one income.
Also of note is that I don't have an iPod or a Tivo. There are no game consoles in my house, no XBox, no PS2, nothing. I have a PDA but it is an old Handspring visor that someone gave me for free. I'm typing this post on my "good" laptop which is a 350 mhz IBM thinkpad, my "good" desktop computer is a 1 ghz Athalon that I bought 4 years ago and during that time I have never payed more than $20 for a PC game. No, that doesn't mean that I pirate them all, that means that I wait till the price goes down, or I get them as gifts. I don't have cable TV or satalite. I get one local channel barely. My TV is a measly 19 inches and that was also a gift that we didn't pay for. It's so old that you have to use an adaptor to get a DVD player attached to it. We DO have a DVD player, that was a splurge a few Christmases ago, but hardly any DVD's. We like to get them from the Library. I didn't have a cell phone until work got me one and they pay the bill, I have never had a pager. We don't have a long distance plan. We use an internet-based calling card that gives us 2.9 cents per minute (it's called onesuite if you are interested). I do have to admit though, that I pay for broadband internet. That's my one splurge. I get DSL from Verizon for $35 per month, but hey, everyone has their vices right?
So, I'm not trying to say how great we are or anything, my only point is that people can afford a lot more than they realize if they take a good look at things. In my opinion there is nothing more important in my life than making sure that my children have a good home and to me that means that they have a mother that can be there for them. I'm willing to sacrifice anything that I have to meet that goal. Sure, it means that I may not have the latest geek toys when they come out, but it also means that when times come along like last year when I was out of work for three months, I've got the money to cover it with out going into debt or sending my wife back to work. Also please note that this is just what I want for MY family. I'm not passing any judgements against people in other situations, or single-parent families, or women that want to work. Just know that saying "I can't afford X" is a lot like saying "I don't have time for X". We make time for what we really want to do, just like we spend money on what we really want.
SCO.com uses Linux
Everything I say is pure speculation... so it's speculation answering speculation :)
:) ) that believe in time travel from a scientific point of view). Kip mentions how Lev Davidovich Landau made up the theory of neutron core to keep himself from being executed by Stalin (there was a purge to eliminate "enemies of the state" (which pretty much meant ANYONE that Stalin didn't like)). Just like how Landau made up the neutron core to save himself, Iraqi scientists would have made up stuff to keep themselves safe. Saddam in all likelihood never knew how far the programs really were.
:( ).
1) Saddam had a WMD development program, but it was all on computer, on the drawing board, as it were.
Iraq probably had a WMD program but it was probably concentrated on chemical weapons. I don't think they really had a program for nuclear weapons (at least nothing substantial or well developed).
2) Saddam lied to his military. Each general thought the next one over had CW, even though his own unit did not.
I think it would be the other way around. The Iraqi scietists lied to Saddam. Saddam wouldn't have known about the technology and the science behind it. He would just rely on this scientists. In situations like these (dictatorships), the scientists fabricate stuff to keep themselves alive. I'm reading Black Holes and Time Warps by Kip Thorne (THE definitive book on time travel for non-scientists--highly recommended to those (like me
On top of that, it should be noted that most of the "information" that USA used came from the Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress. Chalabi's goal was always to take over Iraq and run it by himself, which he seems to have done (although the proposed "democratic" elections might get in his way). Who knows how much of this was fabricated? It is quite plausible that a lot of the information was fabricated.
3) Saddam had made covert threats. This was meant to stave off both an Iranian invasion and a Shiite rebellion.
True but the threats weren't really directed against the Shiites or the Iranians. It was directed at other countries (particularly Saudi Arabia and Isreal). Iran has never had any intention to invade Iraq; the Shiites are not going to be scared by WMD (what diference would that make? He was already using chemical weapons and that was doing the "job" just fine
4) Interestingly, Iraq didn't lie very much in their arms assessment they gave to the UN.
They didn't lie because they had nothing to lie about. The UN destroyed nearly all of his weapons and various other techniques (like sanctions, boycotts by other governments, close minotoring of Iraqi money) meant that he couldn't get the equipment. To show you how badly Iraq was, it didn't even have a fully functioning airforce. They apparently couldn't get parts and repair their MIG planes. I don't think a single Iraqi jet did a sortie (i.e. bomb) or intercept US planes during the Iraqi War (aka Gulf War II). There was nothing to lie about because he didn't have anything.
5) Hans Blix said he could finish inspections in six months.
He never really said that. He said that inspections could uncover WMD. He never gave a time frame. THe UN generally doesn't give time frames on anything (including combating malaria, peacekeeping missions, eliminating poverty, etc--no time frames in any of these, other than stated hopeful goals).
6) Bush knew that if Blix didn't find WMD, there was no way in hell he'd get the votes for war. Considering how conservatives have been clamoring for the overthrow of Saddam for YEARS, I don't think this is surprising or unsubstantiated. O'Neill + PNAC make a pretty convincing argument on their own.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Or possibly something that will let me enter a blank message body.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Let's try applying RIAA rules. These guys are committing highway robbery!!
If Kevin Mitnick was a criminal mastermind then these guys are terrorists!
If Robert Morris can get a serious sentence for what he did, then so can these weasels.
That information didn't just sorta happen to leak all by itself. When this happens at the highest levels of our government, someone should be held accountable.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
Wilson didn't prove a damn thing. He went over to Niger, had some tea with government officials, they told him that the story was false, he wanted to believe it, he wrote a report saying it was false. End of matter. Given that kind of evidence standard, I could prove anything.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
Religion is the main cause of atheism.
Name calling won't get you the data I have, you'll just have to keep living in la-la-land or do your own damn research. Funny that you are the ONLY person to take offense and argument at my statement. At BEST Clinton was an Average president but the more data that comes out about what he knew when the worse he is going to look. I don't agree with GWB in a lot of areas, but he won't be fucking an intern or selling the Lincoln bedroom, or giving sensitive technology to Chinese Commies, or ignoring terrorists. Clinton was as much of a crook as Nixon. History is already starting to show that. Go away kid you bother me...
Err, the US invasion of Cuba and the Philippines was part of the Spanish-American War and is actually considered to be the beginning of the Imperial Era in the US (although it could be argued that it began in 1890, when the census revealed there was no frontier). The US invaded Cuba because the Spanish were basically herding them into concentration camps. Well, actually, it was because the US had a $100M annual trade with Cuba. I guess it would have been analogous to invading Iraq to "free the Iraqi people." And we invaded the Philippines because...well...we could.
Colson ... converted to Christianity
Maybe he genuinely converted. Or maybe the conversion was a ruse to help him win points with the parole board.
-kgj
-kgj
That is Des Moines. Pronounced like demean but with an 'oin' like in oink.
"Need we forget that he still LIED?"
The republicans were facinated with Bill Clintons cock. They kept asking him who stuck his cock into, when where and how. They dragged him in court and asked him wether he stuck his cock into monicas mouth or pussy. He lied and said that his cock did not enter into monicas mouth or pussy.
The repubicans then impeached him.
Bush lied and started a war. Killed tens of thousands of human beings in Iraq and Afghanistan many. But at least he only stuck his cock in his wife (at least as far as we know).
War is necrophilia.
Having clearly marked opponents gives them something to aim for and exert their energy upon.
Now your talking like R. Daneel Olivaw from the Foundation series. That's how he re-designed human societies to get those people with such tendencies into a place where they can't do much harm.
"Let me ask you this simple question: Would YOU rather be living in Iraq today, or before the invasion?"
Why is that only iraqis deserve freedom? How can Bush in good conscience let millions of people live in opression and poverty in saudi arabia, north korea, china, russia and the rest of the world. If letting the iraqis suffer under saddam was a sin how big of a sin is it to not help millions suffering all over the world.
Why Iraq? Why Iraq first? Weren't there people more deserving of our help? We could have helped millions of people in Africa for less money with no deaths of our own soldiers. We could have been saviors of the world. Instead we invaded and occupied a country whose citizens want us out. Even iraqis who supported the US action at first want us to leave so they can have their country back.
War is necrophilia.
Why ask him about his cock in the first place. What kind of freak asks the president whether he stuck his cock in the mouth of a woman? Why do you care so much who he fucked or didn't fuck?
War is necrophilia.
I submitted the article to Matt Drudge, and it looks like he's put it on the front page, so hopefully it'll get a little more exposure. (the site gets more hits per day than MSNBC, so this is a pretty big step.)
when Hillary and senior whitehouse officials were cleared of wrongdoing in filegate by yet another independant council 3.5 years ago.
"There was no substantial or credible evidence that Mrs. Clinton was involved in the hiring of Mr. Livingstone," Ray said in a two-page statement. "Accordingly, this office declined prosecution and has closed the Nussbaum matter" as well as its investigation into whether the files were misused.
And yet the right-wingers continue to parrot this lie as if it is news.
The law in question:
It doesn't matter if the security was easy to get through. The access was unauthorized and that is what makes it illegal.
A better example was when the Clinton administration, apparently as the result of a clerical error, requested FBI background files on some Republicans. There was a huge media uproar, even though there was never any indication that the administration so much as looked at the files, much less made any use of them.
ohhh, you mean the one where the President lied under oath
r -personal-life-till-you-lie entrapment? The jokes on you buddy, and on the hypocritical Republicans who impeached him.
Unprovable. He said something to the effect that "If I understand the courts definition of the term, I did not have 'sexual relations' with that woman." Alright, since one of the definitions of 'sexual relations' is intercourse, and as blow jobs are not intercourse, how do you prove he lied?
was impeached, and disbarred for doing so?
Impeached over something irrelevant to the case? Over something that was not a crime? Basically through we'll-ask-you-enough-personal-questions-about-you
That great Presidency?
Yes, *that* great presidency. You know, the one with the best economy we've ever seen, before we launched a baseless war and started acting as secret police (throw people in jail with no attorney and no trial).
Need we forget that he still LIED?
Oh, blow it out your ass. Lets put you under oath and start asking extremely personal questions of you that deal with your personal life but aren't remotely criminal. Then, after you tell a lie to one of those irrelevant questions, we'll prosecute you for purgery.
That isn't the stand of our legal system, either in theory or practice. The irony is that President Clinton ran afoul of sexual harassment law and precedent which strips away privacy.
Huh, too bad that the judge ruled that whatever happened with Lewinsky was irrelevant to the case at hand, and thus could not constitute impeachment. As for privacy, doesn't "innocent until proven guilty" apply? Oh wait, we're talking about Bill Clinton, where he was assumed to be guilty, so they went on fishing expeditions until they "found" something.
The special counsel acted within the law, found violations of the law, and prosecuted people. There are people that would not accept any judgment against President Clinton no matter what the evidence. As a practical matter President Clinton has a cult of personality.
If he were really so dirty, and they had found so many violations, then how come the worst thing they could come up with was asking him enough (irrelevant) questions about his personal life until he lied, then trying to impeach him for pergury?
The people who went to jail are there because they broke the law, such as for fraud, or other crimes. "Friendship with a Clinton" was not, and is not, a crime under US law. Nobody is in jail for that. Follow the link and you can see that for yourself.
No its not a crime. However, some of those were in jail for contempt of court, and as other people have pointed out, if you are president of the United States, you have A LOT of associates. I'll take the list of Clinton associates that belong in jail against those of either Bush or Reagan any day.
Unfortunately their behavior pales beside the level of vitriol and hate directed at the current president by a far larger number of people.
Uh, right. $500 billion deficit, throwing people in jail with no lawyer and no trial, hundereds of American soldiers lost in a bogus war...none of that vitrol is justified? As opposed to Republicans who hate Clinton just because he got a blow job and didn't immediatly tell everyone? I think we need a better sense of proportion here.
But he tarnished his own legacy by a lack of discipline, poor judgment, and an administration that at times showed lamentable judgment in policy making and behavior.
All of the above is the product of a witch hunt. Well thats what witch hunts are meant to do, destroy the targeted person. Take anyone you care to name, and spend a hundred million dollars or so trashing their reputation and making endless investigations, and see if they don't show "a lack of discipline" and "poor judgement".
A gentleman's duty aside (and I quite agree with you, there), it is ALSO the duty of an upstanding moral citizen to NOT LIE when he was UNDER OATH.
Its also the bedrock of our legal system THAT YOU ONLY INVESTIGATE WITH PROBABLE CAUSE. You also aren't supposed to GO ON FISHING EXPEDITIONS when you have no evidence that someone is guilty of anything BUT YOU REALLY REALLY WANT TO CONVICT HIM of something.
Since neither "innocent until proven guilty" nor "probable cause" applied to Clinton, I don't see any reason why he should have to tell the truth for a question about a non-criminal matter dealing with his private life. Hmm, maybe thats why the judge ruled that the entire matter was irrelevant, and thus could not constitute perjury.
Some would argue that the US is one big "real-live fuck-you-in-the-ass type prison". It's just that the people doing the pounding are the Republicans in Washington right now and the people getting pounded are the average citizens.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Would this be the same Rebuplican party under whose governance the NSA spied on UN diplomats before the vote on Gulf War II?
, 12 956,1125813,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Politics/iraq/story/0
Not surprised by this story.
In the early 1930s, Walter Duranty of the New York Times was in Moscow, covering Joe Stalin the way Joe Stalin wanted to be covered. To maintain favor and access, he expressly denied that there was famine in Ukraine even while millions of Ukrainian Christians were being starved into submission. For his work Duranty won the Pulitzer Prize for journalism.
To this day, the Times remains the most magisterial and respectable of American newspapers.
Now imagine that a major newspaper had had a correspondent in Berlin during roughly the same period who hobnobbed with Hitler, portrayed him in a flattering light, and denied that Jews were being mistreated -- thereby not only concealing, but materially assisting the regime's persecution. Would that paper's respectability have been unimpaired several decades later?
There you have an epitome of what is lamely called "media bias." The Western supporters of Stalin haven't just been excused; they have received the halo of victimhood for the campaign, in what liberals call the "McCarthy era," to get them out of the government, the education system, and respectable society itself.
Not only persecution of Jews but any critical mention of Jewish power in the media and politics is roundly condemned as "anti-Semitism." But there isn't even a term of opprobrium for participation in the mass murders of Christians. Liberals still don't censure the Communist attempt to extirpate Christianity from Soviet Russia and its empire, and for good reason -- liberals themselves, particularly Jewish liberals, are still trying to uproot Christianity from America.
It's permissible to discuss the power of every other group, from the Black Muslims to the Christian Right, but the much greater power of the Jewish Establishment is off-limits. That, in fact, is the chief measure of its power: its ability to impose its own taboos while tearing down the taboos of others -- you might almost say its prerogative of offending. You can read articles in Jewish-controlled publications from the Times to Commentary blaming Christianity for the Holocaust or accusing Pope Pius XII of indifference to it, but don't look for articles in any major publication that wants to stay in business examining the Jewish role in Communism and liberalism, however temperately.
Power openly acquired, openly exercised, and openly discussed is one thing. You may think organized labor or the Social Security lobby abuses its power, but you don't jeopardize your career by saying so. But a kind of power that forbids its own public mention, like the Holy Name in the Old Testament, is another matter entirely.
There is an important anomaly here. The word "Jewish," in this context, doesn't include Orthodox or otherwise religious Jews. The Jews who still maintain the Hebraic tradition of millennia are marginal, if they are included at all, in the Jewish establishment that wields journalistic, political, and cultural power. Morally and culturally, the Orthodox might be classed as virtual Christians, much like the descendants of Christians who still uphold the basic morality, if not the faith, of their ancestors. Many of these Jews are friendly to Christians and eager to make common cause against the moral decadence they see promoted by their apostate cousins. Above all, the Orthodox understand, better than almost anyone else in America today, the virtues -- the necessity -- of tribalism, patriarchal authority, the moral bonds of kinship.
The Jewish establishment, it hardly needs saying, is predominantly secularist and systematically anti-Christian. In fact, it is unified far more by its hostility to Christianity than by its support of Israel, on which it is somewhat divided. The more left-wing Jews are faintly critical of Israel, though never questioning its "right to exist" -- that is, its right to exist on terms forbidden to any Christian country; that is, its right to deny rights to non-Jews.
A state that treated Jews as Israel treats gentiles would be condemned outright as Nazi-lik
"Moms needing to work did not become a trend until the 1970's."
About the time feminsm became vogue. And men became out of style, as did letting one's offspring live.
Encrypted IRC: SSH to port 20 on cat2.ath.cx and choose server 2
The Republicans also wrote the recent Bagle virus (trojan?). :)
-Rich
"do your own damn research," the call of the Caught-Red-Handed bird.
Historians have never been polled on Clinton. You lied and have been caught lying. Now you're trying to back out of it with anger and explicatives - and more lies. Clinton did not do what you accused him of doing - neither the f word, nor selling the bedroom. He did not give sensitive technology to Chineese Communists or ignore terrorists. You, however, lied about something as trivial as a survey. Why should anyone believe your lies now?
I'm the best IRC client ever.
Oops, I didn't spend enough time reading this.
Bill was convicted of perjury: false.
Is there a single listed fact that isn't a deliberate lie?
I'm the best IRC client ever.
The reason we haven't invaded other countries is because either other possibilities like diplomacy have not been exhausted (unlike after 12 years in Iraq), the military situation is impossible (N. Korea), or the post-war occupation would be orders of magnitude more difficult than Iraq.
There are a few countries we could bring democracy to by force and the occupation would relatively easy, however in none of those are American security interests significant enough to warrant such a large investment in time, money, or lives.
So now I've answered your question. Now please answer mine instead of changing the subject.
Well the current systems are just _avoiding_ the problem. They don't deal with it. Current popular systems could put a candidate in office who would be net negative with my suggestion, it just doesn't show up with these systems and I don't see how that makes them better or more representative or a better reflection of the will of the people. In fact I think having negative votes would allow a better picture of the will of the people esp if they are feeling negative.
How do you show that the people don't like the candidates if only positive voting is allowed? No matter how you structure it - 2 stage, etc, if you don't have negative vote, people can never say "No". In most popular voting systems it is not easy to tell the difference between a "No" and a "Don't care" or "had better things to do than vote" or "don't know how to vote properly despite all the instructions and help" or "hardware problem".
Different powers: think of it as a stop gap till you find a leader that most people want. Or till people figure out that the current leader isn't so bad.
In the real world there are always a limited number of candidates. Whilst leaving a post empty is a possibility, sometimes you need things done even if they aren't done as well. You still need someone to do stuff - think of it as being "on probation" or "Acting President".
Fortunately, I do not run an entire country and am not a symbol of freedom and democracy. I am not in politics either.
Little thing called integrity. I would not lie, if I was placed under oath.
Sig it.
Oh, that sounds bad. Gonna run right out and vote for the Dems so they can open the gates for internet and electronic commerce taxes! Then maybe they will pigeon hole us into some great government run health care system! I mean look how good social security has been managed. Never mind that the politicians don't participate in it. Then maybe we will all have to recind our ancestry, race, color, sex, and opinions and we can be one big happy liberal clone family!
Honor, modesty, virtue, and wisdom.
Rumsfeld: "Bush Man", and their masters.
--
make install -not war
Wait, we exausted the diplomatic options before invading Iraq? I don't think issuing ultimatums counts. As far as American security interests are concerned, all I've seen are tenuous links to terrorism (some terrorists have been known to live in Iraq for part of their lives) and nonexistant weapons of mass destruction. Their army was reduced to a shell of it's former self and the food for oil dollars that Saddam was funnelling over to the military apparently wasn't enough to even keep them properly equipped.
I read the internet for the articles.
He was asked while under oath, and he lied about it. Simple as that. Perhaps it was irrelavent, but in the case his lawyers should have objected then, and gotten the questioned dismissed (not sure what the legal term is). Even if the objected was voerruled, he can still plead the fifth, which he declined to do.
I never liked him, who he slept with wouldn't change that. I've favored polititions who have slept around (I didn't like it, but everyone has flaws). However Clinton went a step further and lied about it while under oath, do you see the difference yet? Not so much that he did it, or lied about it (though I never like liers), but that he lied under oath.
You're right. 12 years of diplomacy isn't enough. Yeah right.
e ws/2003/04/27/walq27.xml
/ terrorism/raid_ansar_al-qaida.htm
i n551246.shtml
m l
l
/
3 /0430trrpt.htm
There were very many links to terrorists, you just refuse to believe them, not the least the fact he had for years been paying the families of suicide bombers $10K-$25K each. Also Saddam did have WMDs and programs, try reading the Kay report for a change.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/n
http://vikingphoenix.com/public/rongstad/military
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/27/iraq/ma
http://www.techcentralstation.com/092503F.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0402/p01s03-wome.ht
http://www.terrorismanswers.com/sponsors/iraq.htm
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2002/cfr/stories/iraq
http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/nea/iraq/text200
" The reason we haven't invaded other countries is because either other possibilities like diplomacy have not been exhausted (unlike after 12 years in Iraq), "
This statement is all kinds of false. There was not 12 years of negotiations or diplomacy with Iraq. We beat them back, imposed sanctions, imposed a no fly rule, and bombed them on a regular basis. None of that counts as diplomacy. GW kept saying that Saddam must disarm and he kept saying that he didn't have WMDs. I guess Saddam was right in this case. Saddam was given two choices. Disarm or be invaded. He submitted to the UN for inspections and let them do whatever they wanted.
Honestly I don't think anybody actually believes that GW was interested in a diplomatic solution. He wanted to get saddam from the getgo. Probably because Saddam wanted to kill his dad.
"the military situation is impossible (N. Korea),"
Why? What do you mean impossible? You mean the combined might of the US and coalition forces could not invade and occupy north Korea? That's just silly.
"or the post-war occupation would be orders of magnitude more difficult than Iraq."
Again why? The north koreans would probably welcome us more then the Iraqis did. They have a population of disarmed starving people.
"There are a few countries we could bring democracy to by force and the occupation would relatively easy, however in none of those are American security interests significant enough to warrant such a large investment in time, money, or lives."
That's an awfully vague justification. What American interests are you talking about?
"So now I've answered your question. Now please answer mine instead of changing the subject."
You have done no such thing. I'll ask again. There are hundreds of millions of people suffering all over the world. We could help many of them for less money then we spent in Iraq and with no loss of US soldiers. With a hundred billion or two we could end starvation and illeteracy in the entire world. We don't even have to invade or occupy countries. We could help them without using our military.
Why did George W choose to help the Iraqis first? Aren't there other more deserving people in the world? In africa, north korea and china, south america hell right here in our own country. How come the Iraqis deserve freedom before anybody else does? Why are they so special?
War is necrophilia.
There are no provedn ties between saddam and osama. Some papers were "found" but they have since been proved to be forgeries.
Saddam did pay the palestenians who are fighting their occupation by Israel but so what? Palestenians never attacked the US and we give Israel billions of dollars per year to keep the palestenians subjugated. Wasn't that enough money? Why do we have to spend another 100 billion to invade and occupy iraq just so saddam won't give a couple of thousand dollars to a palestenian. What kind of madness is that?
Israel has over 200 nuclear weapons, they have the best intelligence in the world, they have an exceptionally well trained army, they have been able to defeat every enemy that attacked them. Why do they need more help from us? Isn't the money we give them enough for gods sake? If Saddam was such a threat to Israel then Israel should have invaded Iraq and occupied them just like they are occupying palestine.
BTW the council of foreign relations and similar neocon organizations are borderline hate groups. They are right wing extremists who have called for invasion of many oil producing countries including iraq and saudi arabia for years now because they believe that oil should be under US control and they have no ethical or moral problems with killing people and taking their stuff. I certainly would not put any credence is anything the CoFR, RAND and other neocon "thinktanks". As I said there is little difference between them and the KKK.
Finally there have been many Al-Quida operatives caught in the US, Europe, Canada, and elsewhere. Just because an al-quida member was caught in a country that does not mean the country provides support for them.
War is necrophilia.
That's right - you need evidence to prove that someone did something. What evidence did the Globe provide that the charges being made are true?
Clear, Dark Skies
There were countless contacts w/ Saddam, including all the punative measures taken against him, which were also part of that diplomatic process. The U.N. pleaded with him for 12 years to come clean. You're just lying, or grossly misinformed.
w w.wdi.bus.umich.edu/news/MKAAnnArborNews10_26_02.d oc+diplomacy+with+saddam&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Here, I did a quick google search and here's just one url in thousands:
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:UedRn7Sg5C4J:w
Honestly I don't think anybody actually believes that GW was interested in a diplomatic solution. He wanted to get saddam from the getgo. Probably because Saddam wanted to kill his dad.
Regime change had been the policy for years, though I think most Americans, including Bush, had long since figured the only way Saddam was ever going to be removed was by force. In fact, according to O'Neill, Bush asked for all available Iraq options, including invasion a few months after taking office, though he refused to narrow them down until after 9/11.
"the military situation is impossible (N. Korea),"
Why? What do you mean impossible? You mean the combined might of the US and coalition forces could not invade and occupy north Korea? That's just silly.
OK, now I'm certain of it, you're clueless:
1. N. Korea has thousands of artillery pointed at Seoul, S. Korea, and could level that city killing hundreds of thousands in minutes.
2. N. Korea has a vast, modern, dedicated army with the ability to strike many of our allies very hard from afar.
3. N. Korea has NUKES, you IDIOT. The fact this is news to you is proof you prefer your own ignorance just so you can go on bashing Bush.
4. N. Korea's population has been very thoroughly cut off from the rest of the world for 50 years. They remain the only country in the world where it is impossible for to get internet access. The people revere their leaders as gods, and have had no opposing points of view presented to them. Invasion, much less occupation, would be orders of magnitude more difficult than Iraq.
What American interests are you talking about?
Ok, let's try having a megalomaniacal dictator and avowed enemy of the U.S. who has invaded his neighbors twice and is pursuing WMD so he can try again w impunity in the most unstable region of the world, who is both openly and covertyly funding and supporting terrorism
But let's be real here. Being an enemy of the U.S. makes any dictator more desirable to you.
You have done no such thing. I'll ask again. There are hundreds of millions of people suffering all over the world. We could help many of them for less money then we spent in Iraq and with no loss of US soldiers. With a hundred billion or two we could end starvation and illeteracy in the entire world. We don't even have to invade or occupy countries. We could help them without using our military.
How utterly naive and uninformed. A few hundred billion wouldn't make a scratch on the world's poverty situation, not simply because it would take in fact several trillion, but because the dictators and thugs in most of these countries wouldn't be so humanitarian. They would do just as Saddam did, demand the payment be made to himself alone, then use it to build massive palaces or fund his opression machinery or army.
In fact, you stated Iraq was worst off now than under Saddam. I then asked if you would rather live in Iraq now or then. It is a simple yes/no question. How about an answer? I've answered yours about as well as I know how.
Are you claiming that Niger was a source for Iraqi Uranium?
--
make install -not war
I gave you tons of links, and there are tons more than that. I know a few leads were incorrect, but the vast majority of them were not.
Try listing the articles, like I did, where they were all proven 'forgeries,' instead of just making a sweeping, baseless claim.
Saddam did pay the palestinians who are fighting their occupation by Israel but so what?
Hahaha, OK, now I see, terrorism isn't worth fighting when it's by stoked up by totalitarian societies against a democracy? The Palestenians are opressed by their own terrorist leaders, who refuse to allow economic development in their territory, steal and squander hundreds of millions intended for their people in terrorist enterprises, and blame the inevitable Irseali response on their victims. The Palestenian situation is the biggest propoganda tool of both of both the terrorists and the Arab dictators who use them to divert attention from the real cause of their woes. Paying terrorists $25,000 per attack to continue this cycle of opression is no 'small' thing, and the Isrealis should not be required to just take one for the team.
And where do you get the number '200' nukes??? It may be true, but how could you know such a thing? And what does it have to do with their ability to fight terrorism?
BTW the council of foreign relations and similar neocon organizations are borderline hate groups. They are right wing extremists who have called for invasion of many oil producing countries including iraq and saudi arabia for years now because they believe that oil should be under US control and they have no ethical or moral problems with killing people and taking their stuff. I certainly would not put any credence is anything the CoFR, RAND and other neocon "thinktanks". As I said there is little difference between them and the KKK.
Oh, Jesus! What a load of bullshit. Where do you get your information?
Finally there have been many Al-Quida operatives caught in the US, Europe, Canada, and elsewhere. Just because an al-quida member was caught in a country that does not mean the country provides support for them.
You and your distorted wack left wing idiocy. Did the fact that noone goes in or out of Iraq, much less lives in Iraq w/o the blessing of the regime, and in the case of outsiders, minders?
" I gave you tons of links, and there are tons more than that. I know a few leads were incorrect, but the vast majority of them were not."
You gave links to zealot propaganada and forged information. This administration is evil but not stupid. They know that if they release forged documents the press will eat it up and freepers like you will link to them perpetually while completely ignoring the fact that the information later turned out to be forgery.
"Hahaha, OK, now I see, terrorism isn't worth fighting when it's by stoked up by totalitarian societies against a democracy? "
I am concerned about terrorism directed against the US. Not terrorism directed against Israel. My tax dollars should be spent fighting osama not palestenians.
"The Palestenians are opressed by their own terrorist leaders, who refuse to allow economic development in their territory, steal and squander hundreds of millions intended for their people in terrorist enterprises, and blame the inevitable Irseali response on their victims."
The palestenians are also opressed by israel. You may choose to ignore that but it's true anyway. it's hard to have an economy when 700,000 people are under curfew and can't leave their houses. It's hard to have an economy when tanks regularly blow up your buildings, airplanes shoot missiles into your cities, and walls are built to keep your kids from going to school.
"The Palestenian situation is the biggest propoganda tool of both of both the terrorists and the Arab dictators who use them to divert attention from the real cause of their woes. "
Then it's in our interest to solve it once and for all. Why didn't we invade palestine and free them instead? That's what we should have done. The palestenians deserve freedom more then the iraqis and giving them freedom would have diffused other terrorists.
"Paying terrorists $25,000 per attack to continue this cycle of opression is no 'small' thing, and the Isrealis should not be required to just take one for the team."
No they should not. They should have invaded and occupied Iraq thenselves. It's not my job to pay to get rid of their fucking headache. We already pay them billions every year to kill arabs why don't they use that money to invade iraq instead of having us do it for them.
"Oh, Jesus! What a load of bullshit. Where do you get your information"
Just go their web site and read. They are a hate group. There is no real difference between the COFR and the KKK or al-quada. They all jihadists.
". Did the fact that noone goes in or out of Iraq, much less lives in Iraq w/o the blessing of the regime, and in the case of outsiders, minders?"
You are truly truly stupid if you think no person can leave or enter iraq without the govt knowing. Kurds, iranians, afghans syrians, and lebanese have been doing this for decades. Get educated.
War is necrophilia.
You gave links to zealot propaganada and forged information. This administration is evil but not stupid. They know that if they release forged documents the press will eat it up and freepers like you will link to them perpetually while completely ignoring the fact that the information later turned out to be forgery.
e ws/2003/04/27/walq27.xml [telegraph.co.uk]
/ terrorism/raid_ansar_al-qaida.htm [vikingphoenix.com]
i n551246.shtml [cbsnews.com]
m l [csmonitor.com]
l [terrorismanswers.com]
/
Here are my links again:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/n
http://vikingphoenix.com/public/rongstad/military
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/27/iraq/ma
http://www.techcentralstation.com/092503F.html [techcentralstation.com]
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0402/p01s03-wome.ht
http://www.terrorismanswers.com/sponsors/iraq.htm
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2002/cfr/stories/iraq
CBS, CNN, the London Telegraph, CSM, zealots??? It would take a zealot to call these anything but highly mainstream publications. I'll ask you again, where are your links backing up your assertion that these terrorist links have all, or even *most* been discredited?
I am concerned about terrorism directed against the US. Not terrorism directed against Israel. My tax dollars should be spent fighting osama not palestenians.
Interesting, that sounds just like the logic of the peaceniks before WWII that claimed we should not fight Hitler because he wasn't after us way over here in America, and like the prevailing logic in America before 9/11.
The palestenians are also opressed by israel. You may choose to ignore that but it's true anyway. it's hard to have an economy when 700,000 people are under curfew and can't leave their houses. It's hard to have an economy when tanks regularly blow up your buildings, airplanes shoot missiles into your cities, and walls are built to keep your kids from going to school.
And why do you think that is? Maybe it is a direct response to the mass murder directed explicitly against Isreali civilians by Arafat?
Then it's in our interest to solve it once and for all. Why didn't we invade palestine and free them instead? That's what we should have done. The palestenians deserve freedom more then the iraqis and giving them freedom would have diffused other terrorists.
I agree, but obviously invading Palestine would have been impossible. The second best option is to start somewhere else. The cycle is not going to stop until every dictator in the region is removed, including Arafat and the current terrorist leaders of the PLA.
Just go their web site and read. They are a hate group. There is no real difference between the COFR and the KKK or al-quada. They all jihadists.
Give me ONE quote, just ONE, from any one of their sites, you tiny little man. Back up one of your assertions one time, *please*.
You are truly truly stupid if you think no person can leave or enter iraq without the govt knowing. Kurds, iranians, afghans syrians, and lebanese have been doing this for decades. Get educated.
You are underestimating the level of fear and control by the regime in the last decade. Iraqis had become scared to even talk in *private* about the regime, and allowing an illegal in your house was unthinkable, and instant death scentence when your neighbors ratted you out. Spies were absolutely everywhere Saddam had control, in every building, even in most households.
BTW, I gave an explanation why N. Korea cannot be moved on militarily. Are you going to acknowledge it or respond at all?
Whoops, my BTW at the end was wrong, I thought I had made that explanation to you, when it was to another poster:
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;)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=93853&cid=807
So I guess you don't need to respond.
"CBS, CNN, the London Telegraph, CSM, zealots???"
CBS: Link to a story about an al-quada operative caught in iraq. Al quada operatives were caught in the US, canada, germany, france, england, malasia, philipines, yemen and many other countries. You posed a completely irrelevent link.
CNN: Link to an article written by a hate group (CFOR). COFR is a jihadist organization. CNN is not jihadist but the COFR is.
London Telegraph: Link to a story which has since been proved to be forgery.
CSM: A link to a story about how kurds are saying that the taliban are coming across the border from afghanistan. The Iraqi intelligence office story has already been debunked thouroughly. Once again you are pointing to fraudulent discredited stories.
Need I go on?
Your links are meaningless. They are old, discredited or written by jihadists. If there was a link between Saddam and Osama you don't think the president would say it?
"Interesting, that sounds just like the logic of the peaceniks before WWII that claimed we should not fight Hitler because he wasn't after us way over here in America, and like the prevailing logic in America before 9/11."
Not really. In fact it's the opposite. Bush sound a hell of a lot like hitler and the hate speech coming from republicans about liberals sounds awfully like the speeched hitler gave against gypsies and jews. In fact GW has already set up concentration camps in cuba, afghanistan, quatar and iraq where tens of thousands of arabs are locked up indefinately. Hitler at least gave his prisoners walls and a roof, GW puts them in chain link cages.
As I said Israel is perfectly capable of defending itself. They have won every war they have fought. they already hold millions of arabs under occupation very successfully and are capable of holding millions more without any more help then we already give them. Remember we give them lots of money and arms it's not like we are doing nothing.
"And why do you think that is? Maybe it is a direct response to the mass murder directed explicitly against Isreali civilians by Arafat?"
For every israeli killed two to three palestenians are killed. The numbers don't lie.
"I agree, but obviously invading Palestine would have been impossible."
What? Why? Put down the crack pipe. Invading palestine would have been a breeze. It's small, the people would welcome us, israel would shore up one border, mossad has tons of intelligence agents inside there. It would be a cakewalk. Where do you get off saying it would be impossible?
"The cycle is not going to stop until every dictator in the region is removed"
The cycle is never going to stop. Jihadists don't stop until their god tells them to.
"You are underestimating the level of fear and control by the regime in the last decade."
No you are insanely stupid. You have enver been to Iraq (I have). You have never been to Iran (I have), you have never been to turkey or afghanistan (I have). The borders are mountainous, sparsely populated and porous as all hell. Smuggling is a daily occurance and has been for ever. You really should go visit there and see for yourself. It's impossible to seal up the borders. the US military can't do it for gods sake.
"BTW, I gave an explanation why N. Korea cannot be moved on militarily. Are you going to acknowledge it or respond at all?"
You gave no explanation. You simply said that it would be impossible. Which of course is utter bullshit. We spend 400 billion on defense spending which is more then the next 14 countries combined. That includes russia, china and pretty much all of europe. We can invade any country we want, any time we want and take whatever we want whenever we want.
War is necrophilia.
"Regime change had been the policy for years,"
There is a difference between regime change and invasion and occupation.
'1. N. Korea has thousands of artillery pointed at Seoul, S. Korea, and could level that city killing hundreds of thousands in minutes.
We know where those positions are. We could knock them out with bombers and cruise missles. If a few get through then so what? So a few people die in south korea who the fuck cares.
2. N. Korea has a vast, modern, dedicated army with the ability to strike many of our allies very hard from afar.
Total and utter bullshit. Their military is neither vast nor modern. The only ally then can strike is south korea and maybe japan. BOth countries have ample defenses and we could certainly minimize any damage that may occur by hitting first. We flew over 300 sorties per day in the first month of desert storm. We knocked out almost everything they had in the first night.
3. N. Korea has NUKES, you IDIOT. The fact this is news to you is proof you prefer your own ignorance just so you can go on bashing Bush.
They have a few nukes. We know where they are. They don't yet have any real delivery device for their nukes and they certainly did not have anything at the time we invaded iraq. We could have invaded them first thereby preventing them from having nukes and held off iraq for a later time because saddam had nothing!.
4. N. Korea's population has been very thoroughly cut off from the rest of the world for 50 years. They remain the only country in the world where it is impossible for to get internet access. The people revere their leaders as gods, and have had no opposing points of view presented to them. Invasion, much less occupation, would be orders of magnitude more difficult than Iraq."
They are starving and opressed. They are weak. They would be easy to control.
It was much more logical to invade north korea who was close to having nukes then to invade iraq which was decades away from having nukes.
"Ok, let's try having a megalomaniacal dictator and avowed enemy of the U.S. who has invaded his neighbors twice and is pursuing WMD so he can try again w impunity in the most unstable region of the world, who is both openly and covertyly funding and supporting terrorism"
He did not have WMDs, he did not have WMD programs. Did you hear about Kay quitting and saying that? read about it. He hated the US but then again so do a lot of other people. He was fully contained. There was a no fly zone, there were thousands of weapons inspectors running all over the country, we bombed them at least once a month. He was no harm to anybody. So he funded a few palestenians big fucking whoop as I said before we give israel billions of dollars woth of funds a few thousand dollars from saddam wasn't doing anything. Israel is in firm control over west bank and gaza and a few hundred dead israelis is a pretty small price to pay for keeping 3.5 million people under occupation. Hell we lost 500 people in just a few months in Iraq.
"But let's be real here. Being an enemy of the U.S. makes any dictator more desirable to you."
I guess when you have nothing you can resort to name calling.
"A few hundred billion wouldn't make a scratch on the world's poverty situation"
It would make a huge impact. It would certainly make more of an impact then invading iraq.
"In fact, you stated Iraq was worst off now than under Saddam. I then asked if you would rather live in Iraq now or then."
Neither. I live in the US and have no desire to live in Iraq anytime. I visited there and that was enough for me. But you are asking the wrong question. the question is not whether iraq is better off it's whether we are better off. Whether spending 100 billion dollars in one year to invade and occupy iraq was a good idea and made us any safer and whether that money could have bee
War is necrophilia.
CBS: Link to a story about an al-quada operative caught in iraq. Al quada operatives were caught in the US, canada, germany, france, england, malasia, philipines, yemen and many other countries. You posed a completely irrelevent link.
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Dear god, you just don't get it. Those are all democracies, not police states. The presence of a notorious terrorist LIVING in a police state in BAGHDAD. He was no smuggler, he was no transient. He couldn't have lived in the capitol city w/o the secutiry apparatus' knowledge and blessing.
I acknowledge parts of northern Iraq are not under Saddam's control, but Baghdad was extremely tightly controlled. NOTHING happened in Iraq w/o the higher ups knowledge.
CNN: Link to an article written by a hate group (CFOR). COFR is a jihadist organization. CNN is not jihadist but the COFR is.
You're not going to back up that statement, are you?
London Telegraph: Link to a story which has since been proved to be forgery.
I have searched like crazy for an hour, and I just can't find any reference that this Telegraph story was based on forgeries.
CSM: A link to a story about how kurds are saying that the taliban are coming across the border from afghanistan. The Iraqi intelligence office story has already been debunked thouroughly. Once again you are pointing to fraudulent discredited stories.
OK, this time I've spent too much time w/ this post. This time you show me where this was debunked.
Not really. In fact it's the opposite. Bush sound a hell of a lot like hitler and the hate speech coming from republicans about liberals sounds awfully like the speeched hitler gave against gypsies and jews. In fact GW has already set up concentration camps in cuba, afghanistan, quatar and iraq where tens of thousands of arabs are locked up indefinately. Hitler at least gave his prisoners walls and a roof, GW puts them in chain link cages.
Ah, the inevitable Hitler comparison. Credibility? Gone!
For every israeli killed two to three palestenians are killed. The numbers don't lie.
Nor do they matter. The terrorists intentionally go after children and innocents, with the intention of killing as many as possible. The Isrealis have the upper hand and could wipe out every Palestinian tomorrow. Instead, they go after ONLY the terrorists, with the emphasis on reducing collateral damage; for the rest, they put in place restrictions on movement designed to protect themselves, not simply to kill innocent. Isreal has nukes - what do you think the Palestinian terrorists would do if they had them?
What? Why? Put down the crack pipe. Invading palestine would have been a breeze. It's small, the people would welcome us, israel would shore up one border, mossad has tons of intelligence agents inside there. It would be a cakewalk. Where do you get off saying it would be impossible?
I didn't say it wouldn't be possible to invade, of course we could do that in a day. What makes it impossible is the situation would be impossible to govern afterwards. The Palestinians want freedom like everyone, but they won't believe America has good intentions, at least not until we demonstrate them successfully in Iraq.
The cycle is never going to stop. Jihadists don't stop until their god tells them to.
Or they're or dead or lack the numbers or infrastructure.
You gave no explanation. You simply said that it would be impossible. Which of course is utter bullshit. We spend 400 billion on defense spending which is more then the next 14 countries combined. That includes russia, china and pretty much all of europe. We can invade any country we want, any time we want and take whatever we want whenever we want.
I admitted that last statement was a mistake in a second post earlier, which contained a link where I answered the N. Korea question, thinking I had answered it in this thread. Here is a link to the other post:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=93853&cid=807
I'm sorry but inheritance should not even exist. Why should anyone from birth get anything they did not earn?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Damn, so that's why the Republican controlled Congress is doing the traditionally Democratic "overspend" thing!
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I have reliable intelligence demonstrating that France is harboring nuclear WMD. England itself is also looking pretty WMD. Now that Iraq is pacified and democratic, let's get their army into our coalition and roll for the Channel!
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make install -not war
While others in this thread have debunked the lies about illegal Clinton leaks in that stinky NewsMax Republican PRwire, it's important to note that the crimes here are not merely the leaks to rightwing spinfactories. The most serious crime is the Republican organized crimes of ilegal entry to their Democrat colleagues' private messages and files. And their use of that espionage in the Senate to criminally attack the legitimate Democrat strategies in representing their constituents during the negotiation of top-rung federal judges.
Even with those secret weapons, the Republicans resorted to the unprecedented appointment of judge Pickering, a bigot, to a top bench, during the Congresional recess. Every step of the way, the Republicans gamed this system, breaking every ethic and law they could find. Their product is a rigged court. To make the entire sordid affair more disgusting than even the worst fiction their spinfactories produce for Fox and Drudge, this isn't just some criminal Young Fascists at Republican National Committee HQ. This is the Senate Judiciary Committee spying, stealing, lying and leaking secrets to stack the judiciary with crooks who owe them one. This is like some kind of softball question on a nightmare citizenship exam: if these crimes don't disgust you, you hate freedom, you hate justice, you hate America. If you have some kind of apology for these criminals, you better at least have a love of money, and have some kind of trustworthy agreement for getting your checks from the looters. Because otherwise, you've got nothing but hatred.
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make install -not war
I'd rather have my President banging different girls every night and lying about it than starting wars and lying about the reasons!
So what if he got head from an intern. Have you looked at the divorce rate / single mother numbers in this country lately? It's hardly abnormal now, people cheat and breakup with each other constantly. Sad but true. I hardly find it surprising that he tried to cover it up, and I doubt you'd act any different if it was your ass they were targeting.
No one is saying Clinton was perfect. He did some stupid things, he signed the DMCA for fucks-sake. Maybe he wasn't a good role model for sexual morals. But no one's perfect.
But GWB has lied to the American people and the world to make his friends another buck. He lied about Iraq. He sent our troops into war, on a false premise and some of those troops have not returned. Many of them will not return the same.
Who fucking died for Clintons blow job asshole?
"Regime change had been the policy for years,"
There is a difference between regime change and invasion and occupation.
I'll quote the rest of my response: [Regime change had been the policy for years, though I think most Americans, including Bush, had long since figured the only way Saddam was ever going to be removed was by force. In fact, according to O'Neill, Bush asked for all available Iraq options, including invasion a few months after taking office, though he refused to narrow them down until after 9/11.]
I'm not implying they are the same, only that Bush did not rule out one possible solution to that policy simply because it would be difficult.
'1. N. Korea has thousands of artillery pointed at Seoul, S. Korea, and could level that city killing hundreds of thousands in minutes.
We know where those positions are. We could knock them out with bombers and cruise missles. If a few get through then so what? So a few people die in south korea who the fuck cares.
You have absolutely zero grasp of the military situation. N. Korea's terrain is NOTHING like Iraq. Those artillery number in the THOUSANDS, and are very well fortified and camoflauged. It would take months to even locate half of them. On contrast, it would take just hours or so to completely level Seoul, killing hundreds of thousands "few people."
2. N. Korea has a vast, modern, dedicated army with the ability to strike many of our allies very hard from afar.
Total and utter bullshit. Their military is neither vast nor modern. The only ally then can strike is south korea and maybe japan. BOth countries have ample defenses and we could certainly minimize any damage that may occur by hitting first. We flew over 300 sorties per day in the first month of desert storm. We knocked out almost everything they had in the first night.
Iraq N. Korea. I guess your logic is Iraq was a militaristic third world country and we beat them easily, therefore N. Korea must be the same? How utterly simplistic.
They have a few nukes. We know where they are. They don't yet have any real delivery device for their nukes and they certainly did not have anything at the time we invaded iraq. We could have invaded them first thereby preventing them from having nukes and held off iraq for a later time because saddam had nothing!.
First, the CIA has suspected N. Korea has had one or two nukes for years. Second, it is idiotic to think 'we know where they are.' If that's true, the CIA is an incredibly effective organisation! Where do you get this assertion?
It would make a huge impact. It would certainly make more of an impact then invading iraq.
There you go again, ignoring political realities and the rest of my response altogether. I'll say it again: a. $100 billion would make little difference in the worldwide poverty situation, especially since the dictators of those countries would simply divert it to their own offshore accounts or use it to build their military. Look at Saddam; He diverted all those billions in the Oil-for-Food program to giant palaces!
"In fact, you stated Iraq was worst off now than under Saddam. I then asked if you would rather live in Iraq now or then."
Neither. I live in the US and have no desire to live in Iraq anytime. I visited there and that was enough for me. But you are asking the wrong question. the question is not whether iraq is better off it's whether we are better off. Whether spending 100 billion dollars in one year to invade and occupy iraq was a good idea and made us any safer and whether that money could have been used in better ways. Not just to make us safer but to make the world a better place for all opressed people.
That's it, dodge the question. Let me state it more clearly: IF YOU *HAD* TO CHOOSE, WOULD YOU CHOOSE LIFE UNDER SADDAM, OR LIFE AFTER THE LIBERATION, UNDER THE AMERICANS?
To show you it can be done, I'll answer
Scotty,
If you ever call yourself a Libertarian again, I will literally MURDER you.
Thanks,
A Real Libertarian