The World's Finest News Source http://www.spudland.com/ Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:41:44 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.1 http://www.spudland.com.nyud.net:8090/pics/sws88x31.png http://www.spudland.com/ Feed provided by SWS News. Click to visit! http://www.spudland.com/fullstory.php?iid=4532 For the time being, I've put the blog back up. After a debilitating database loss in November 2007 and the lack of enthusiasm from our readers, we took the site down in disgust. Other people get away with linking their personal sites on forums, why couldn't we? We'd get banned and people would holler "they are just trying to get traffic!" I guess we couldn't have a nice-looking news site without folks thinking we were going to scam them. Well, enjoy your history lesson... Lots of good stories here from the days of yore. Reverend Deuce Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:09:46 +0100 http://www.spudland.com/fullstory.php?iid=4501 Conservative commentator and best-selling author Ann Coulter neglected to answer Question #15 on her Palm Beach County, FL voter registration form, PageOneQ has learned. The question asks the registrant to indicate sex by checking \'M\' or \'F\' on the form. Bloggers and comment posts have speculated about Coulter\'s gender identity. Arthur Anderson, Jr., The Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections, confirmed to PageOneQ that Question 15 had not been answered on the original form. Coulter\'s registration form was first posted by BradBlog.com, the blog of voting rights activist and journalist Brad Friedman. Friedman reported Tuesday that Coulter\'s registration form raised questions about her decision to register and vote at an address where she did not live. Reverend Deuce Fri, 14 Apr 2006 08:21:27 +0100 http://www.spudland.com/fullstory.php?iid=4500 For a politician, the moment would seem too good to miss. Air Force One lands at your city\'s airport, the president steps onto your hometown soil and the sleek trappings of the White House snap into place as you\'re whisked away in a motorcade. All the while, local television cameras capture the moment. Yet for President Bush, the ritual he has performed again and again is no longer such a simple act of showmanship. These days, in the face of persistently low approval ratings, some Republicans suddenly seem to be unavailable when the president comes to town. In Ohio, Sen. Mike DeWine cited scheduling conflicts during three presidential visits this year. In Pennsylvania, Sen. Rick Santorum appeared briefly with Bush during a visit late last month, but held no public events together. And in Illinois, Judy Baar Topinka stood by as an aide said the Topinka campaign would like the president to raise money in the governor\'s race only \"late at night, in an undisclosed location.\" Reverend Deuce Fri, 14 Apr 2006 08:15:03 +0100 http://www.spudland.com/fullstory.php?iid=4499 From left, Major General Paul D. Eaton, General Anthony C. Zinni, Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold, Major General John Batiste, Major General John Riggs and Major General Charles H. Swannack Jr. The widening circle of retired generals who have stepped forward to call for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld\'s resignation is shaping up as an unusual outcry that could pose a significant challenge to Mr. Rumsfeld\'s leadership, current and former generals said on Thursday. Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., who led troops on the ground in Iraq as recently as 2004 as the commander of the Army\'s 82nd Airborne Division, on Thursday became the fifth retired senior general in recent days to call publicly for Mr. Rumsfeld\'s ouster. Also Thursday, another retired Army general, Maj. Gen. John Riggs, joined in the fray. \"We need to continue to fight the global war on terror and keep it off our shores,\" General Swannack said in a telephone interview. \"But I do not believe Secretary Rumsfeld is the right person to fight that war based on his absolute failures in managing the war against Saddam in Iraq.\" Reverend Deuce Fri, 14 Apr 2006 08:10:28 +0100 http://www.spudland.com/fullstory.php?iid=4498 Karl Rove. Senior White House advisor Karl Rove figures prominently in the government's indictment. He allegedly spoke both to Mr. Novak and Mr. Libby about Ms. Wilson's affiliation with the CIA. Accordingly, the government's statement that it does not presently intend to call Mr. Rove does not diminish his importance in this case. The defense is likely to call Mr. Rove to provide testimony regarding Mr. Libby's conversations with Mr. Rove concerning reporters' inquiries about Ms. Wilson, as expressly discussed in the indictment. (Indictment, Count One, at ¶ 21.) Documents from Mr. Rove's files about the subjects outlined in the indictment are discoverable pursuant to Rule 16 because without them the defense cannot effectively prepare for Mr. Rove's examination. As discussed above, Rule 16 compels disclosure of such documents even if Mr. Rove remains a subject of a continuing grand jury investigation. Reverend Deuce Fri, 14 Apr 2006 08:07:38 +0100 http://www.spudland.com/fullstory.php?iid=4497 AT&T is seeking the return of technical documents presented in a lawsuit that allegedly detail how the telecom giant helped the government set up a massive internet wiretap operation in its San Francisco facilities. In papers filed late Monday, AT&T argued that confidential technical documents provided by an ex-AT&T technician to the Electronic Frontier Foundation shouldn\'t be used as evidence in the case and should be returned. The documents, which the EFF filed under a temporary seal last Wednesday, purportedly detail how AT&T diverts internet traffic to the National Security Agency via a secret room in San Francisco and allege that such rooms exist in other AT&T switching centers. While AT&T\'s open filings did not confirm the details of Klein\'s statement, they did not dispute the legitimacy of his claims, and the company\'s filing included a sealed affidavit attesting to the sensitivity of the documents. JamesO Thu, 13 Apr 2006 12:08:18 +0100 http://www.spudland.com/fullstory.php?iid=4496 Apparently all this time I've been shoving my sexuality in your face and forcing it on you. I misunderstood. I didn't know. I am so sorry. I thought you were forcing your sexuality on me when you and your friends cornered me in the locker room after gym class in junior high school, called me a goddamn homo and beat the shit out of me. When you and your friends trashed my car and then afterwards ran me off the road as I was walking home from school, laughing and calling me a "Queer" I thought I was just walking home from school and not forcing my sexuality down your throat. When I was in the military, I thought one of my friends might be just trying to live a decent, honorable life with his partner of 10 years when you and your military police friends pulled him into an interrogation room and accused him of sodomy because he was living with a guy and not dating women. When you kicked him out of the service and dumped him 3500 miles from his home with no money and no job, I didn't realize that he was forcing his lifestyle on you. I'm sure he's sorry too. I didn't realize that you were offended by us when my best friend asked to be admitted to his partners' hospital room while he was dying. You see, he'd lived with him for 20 years and they had shared their life together but had the misfortune of living in a state where people like him had no "legal status" and so his sweet love of 20 years died alone surrounded by people who thought that God had given him AIDS as punishment for the sin of homosexuality. He didn't understand that your religious sensibilities were more important than his misguided need to be with his partner when he died. You'll excuse me please. All this time, all my life - I just thought you were trying to make me be something that I can never be. I just thought you were forcing me to conform to your idea of normality. I mistakenly thought you hated me. I was mistaken. Obviously, all this time I was forcing my lifestyle on you. Please accept my apologies. JamesO Wed, 12 Apr 2006 18:12:27 +0100 http://www.spudland.com/fullstory.php?iid=4495 Greeted with loud boos and some cheers, Vice President Dick Cheney threw out the ceremonial first pitch Tuesday at the Washington Nationals' home opener. JamesO Tue, 11 Apr 2006 23:56:40 +0100 http://www.spudland.com/fullstory.php?iid=4494 Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant. Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she\'s a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation. Malhotra sees that as an unacceptable infringement on her right to religious expression. So she\'s demanding that Georgia Tech revoke its tolerance policy. The legal argument is straightforward: Policies intended to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination end up discriminating against conservative Christians. Evangelicals have been suspended for wearing anti-gay T-shirts to high school, fired for denouncing Gay Pride Month at work, reprimanded for refusing to attend diversity training. When they protest tolerance codes, they\'re labeled intolerant. JamesO Tue, 11 Apr 2006 13:00:10 +0100 http://www.spudland.com/fullstory.php?iid=4493 Here\'s Bill Kristol, in a famous 1993 memo I\'m sure you\'re all familiar with: \"Health care is not, in fact, just another Democratic initiative . . . the plan should not be amended; it should be erased. . . . It will revive the reputation of the . . . Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests.\" I\'d say this memo is the skeleton key to understanding modern American politics, if it didn\'t make me yawn. There\'s nothing here that\'s unfamiliar to historians who\'ve read Republican secrets going back 25, 35, even 70 years. You can sum them up in 10 words: \"If the Democrats succeed in redistributing economic power, we\'re screwed.\" JamesO Tue, 11 Apr 2006 12:11:44 +0100 http://www.spudland.com/fullstory.php?iid=4492 Is this for real? Is President Bush or anyone else in a position of power truly, seriously thinking about dropping nuclear bombs on a country that poses no direct threat to the United States, possesses no nuclear weapons of its own, and isn\'t likely to for at least a few years? Pre-emptive war-attacking a country to keep it from attacking us or an ally-is sometimes justifiable. Preventive war-attacking a country to keep it from developing a capability to attack an ally sometime in the future-almost never is. And preventive war waged with nuclear weapons is (not to put too fine a spin on it) crazy. JamesO Tue, 11 Apr 2006 11:07:55 +0100 http://www.spudland.com/fullstory.php?iid=4491 President Bush has long railed against leaks of classified information as a threat to national security; his administration is vigorously investigating unauthorized revelations of classified material to the press about secret overseas prisons and warrantless wiretapping. Now, a revelation of grand jury testimony establishes Bush himself as a player in White House efforts to discredit an Iraq war critic through the use of classified information. The president is not accused of illegality. And no one questions his legal right to declassify information. But critics are now charging Mr. Bush with hypocrisy - a development that makes efforts to put his presidency back on track all the more daunting. \"Here\'s why this hurts: It reminds people again that the intelligence was bad and we\'re in Iraq without end for some of the wrong reasons, and that\'s at the heart of his 36 percent,\" says Larry Sabato, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, referring to Bush\'s job approval rating in recent polls. JamesO Mon, 10 Apr 2006 23:57:35 +0100 http://www.spudland.com/fullstory.php?iid=4490 All across the country, pro-immigrant rallies continue and many are drawing unprecedented crowds. Clearly a lot of people are concerned that America is moving in the wrong direction on immigration. But is this a movement spurred solely by the desire to preserve a porous border while guaranteeing that America's low-wage jobs and public assistance programs remain available to illegal immigrants? Or is this outpouring also a reaction to some of the xenophobic rhetoric that currently masquerades as "immigration reform?" For many principled opponents of illegal-immigration, the concern centers around the fact that illegal immigrants drive down wages for working-class Americans and overly burden our public education and assistance programs. But not every one who wants to stop illegal immigration is all that concerned with the very real economic costs. Instead, they're focused on what they see as cultural costs. Even some critics who start their argument with economic rationales, have a tendency to end up discussing illegal immigrants as if they were an imperialist army threatening to divide America. Certainly there are assimilation problems with the illegal immigrant community. But the kind of rhetoric spouted by groups like the Minuteman Project borders on the xenophobic. JamesO Mon, 10 Apr 2006 23:55:33 +0100 http://www.spudland.com/fullstory.php?iid=4489 The Bush administration is planning to use nuclear weapons against Iran, to prevent it acquiring its own atomic warheads, claims an investigative writer with high-level Pentagon and intelligence contacts. President George W Bush is said to be so alarmed by the threat of Iran\'s hard-line leader, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, that privately he refers to him as \"the new Hitler\", says Seymour Hersh, who broke the story of the Abu Ghraib Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal. Some US military chiefs have unsuccessfully urged the White House to drop the nuclear option from its war plans, Hersh writes in The New Yorker magazine. The conviction that Mr Ahmedinejad would attack Israel or US forces in the Middle East, if Iran obtains atomic weapons, is what drives American planning for the destruction of Teheran\'s nuclear programme. JamesO Mon, 10 Apr 2006 23:07:40 +0100 http://www.spudland.com/fullstory.php?iid=4488 Earlier today we found out that the EFF had sued AT&T over their secret work with the NSA on surveillance of millions of US citizens without wiretaps. We learned that paragraph 65 of this complaint shows EFF is trying to turn it into a nationwide Class Action suit covering all current and former customers (any after 9/2001) of AT&T. And we learned that a retired AT&T technician had stepped forward and disclosed the installation of secret NSA spy equipment in the San Francisco trunk facility. As well as the belief that similar equipment is in place in Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego. Specifically, this equipment was the Narus ST-6400, a machine that was capable of monitoring over 622 Mbits/second in real time in May, 2000, and capturing anything that hits its\' semantice (i.e. the meaning of the content) triggers. The latest generation is called NarusInsight, capable of monitoring 10 billion bits of data per second. And what does it monitor while looking at this 10 billion bits of IP data per second? First lets take a look at what the network model is, the OSI model of seven layers. NarusInsight focuses on two layers: number four, the transport layer, built on standards like TCP and UDP, the physical building blocks of internet data traffic, and number seven, the application layer, built on standards like HTTP and FTP, which are dependent on the application using them, i.e. Internet Explorer, Kazaa, Skype, etc. It monitors 10 billion bits per second at level four and 2500 million bits per second at level seven. For reference, the 256K DSL line I am using equals .24 million bits per second. So one NarusInsight machine can look at 10,000 million DSL lines at once in great detail. That is a pretty damn big number. This is some really serious hardware with equally serious software. JamesO Mon, 10 Apr 2006 10:31:25 +0100 http://www.spudland.com/fullstory.php?iid=4487 Reverend Deuce Sat, 08 Apr 2006 12:01:29 +0100 http://www.spudland.com/fullstory.php?iid=4486 Three Yemeni men allegedly abducted and mistreated by the US were probably held in eastern Europe, human rights group Amnesty International has said. The report, based on interviews with former detainees, also links the US practice of \"rendition\" to the torture or ill-treatment of terror suspects. JamesO Wed, 05 Apr 2006 15:23:11 +0100 http://www.spudland.com/fullstory.php?iid=4485 Covertly taken footage of a FEMA concentration camp under construction. JamesO Mon, 03 Apr 2006 01:49:31 +0100 http://www.spudland.com/fullstory.php?iid=4484 On Friday, December 16, the New York Times published a major scoop by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau: They reported that Bush authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on Americans without warrants, ignoring the procedures of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It was a long story loaded with astonishing information of lawbreaking at the White House. It reported that sometime in 2002, Bush issued an executive order authorizing NSA to track and intercept international telephone and/or email exchanges coming into, or out of, the U.S. - when one party was believed to have direct or indirect ties with al Qaeda. JamesO Sun, 02 Apr 2006 20:28:44 +0100 http://www.spudland.com/fullstory.php?iid=4483 President George W. Bush reassured Mexican President Vicente Fox on Thursday he was committed to getting the U.S. Congress to approve broad immigration reforms, and then embarked from the dock at Fat Tuesday\'s for a three-hour \"booze cruise.\" Speaking after talks with Fox on the outdoor deck at Senor Frog\'s in this Mexican resort town, Bush told reporters: \"I\'m confident we can get a bill done.\" He also said he was confident that a 19-year-old co-ed from the University of Alabama, Heather, would emerge victorious in a wet T-shirt contest slated for later in the evening. \"I\'m committed to having a comprehensive immigration bill on my desk, and by comprehensive I mean not only border security, but a bill that has a worker permit program in it,\" Bush said. He added that he was also committed to drinking 10 shots of tequila over the next 10 minutes. Reverend Deuce Fri, 31 Mar 2006 08:51:25 +0100