“Covering a wide array of hot-button, often polarizing subjects such as Zionism, Nazism, radical terrorists factions, and where each fits into this highly controversial picture. Livingstone has delivered an important, albeit highly subjective book that's part history, part ideology/theology and part conspiracy theory.”
RJ McGill - bloggernews.net
Holder put on hot-seat before Congress as Americans watch
Tens of thousands of Americans are tracking the allegations of a “cover-up” in the Department of Justice’s “Fast and Furious” scandal under Attorney General Eric Holder, according to members of Congress who have been holding hearings on the issue.
Members of the House committee that this week held a hearing for members to quiz Holder on the progress of the investigation say nearly 14,000 Americans logged online to watch the hearing live, nearly 18,000 followed up with visits to FastandFuriousInvestigation.com, and almost 8,500 viewed a diagram of what is suspected to have gone on.
Further, there were nearly 20,000 views of hearing-related videos.
The statements are getting testy, too.
“How many more Border Patrol agents would have had to die as part of Operation Fast and Furious for you to take responsibility,” U.S. Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle asked Holder during the hearing.
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Her questioning noted that someone needed to be held responsible, and she alone had gotten 30 questions from her district just that morning from constituents who wanted to know what happened and why – and who would be held liable.
The program had federal authorities telling gun dealers to sell weapons to individuals who then took them to Mexico to be used in that nation’s internal drug cartel war. The idea was that the weapons would be tracked and arrests made at the top levels.
However, from information that’s available, the government essentially lost track of most of the 2,000 or so weapons that were involved in the program. Some of them later were found at the site when Agent Brian Terry was murdered.
Buerkle noted that the agent’s family, testifying previously before Congress, had wanted to know if the search for those responsible would track them down – and then would they be charged with facilitating the murder of a federal agent.
Holder said it was an issue that was being addressed.
“We are endeavoring to find out who made the determinations to allow guns to walk,” he said. “We will hold accountable people who were involved in this flawed investigation.”
Part of the hearing:
Holder’s testimony failed to convince fully members of the committee, as they alleged he was continuing the cover-up of the problems.
Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, led by chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., pointed out that Holder and the Department of Justice were still withholding 93,000 documents. They suggested the committee may need to issue a subpoena to obtain the withheld records if the DOJ refuses to comply voluntarily.
In testimony, Holder admitted that no DOJ employee had been reprimanded or otherwise admonished for their participation in Fast and Furious some 13 months after Terry was killed in Arizona by Mexican drug-war operatives using guns that traced back to the gun operation.
Before the hearing, Issa released a majority report documenting that officials in DOJ headquarters in Washington “had much greater knowledge of, and involvement in, Fast and Furious than [DOJ] has previously acknowledged.”
In one particularly sharp exchange, Issa accused Holder of lying about when he and top officials in the DOJ in Washington first knew about the operation that evolved into Fast and Furious under Holder’s watch.
The majority report charged that for “months, the [DOJ] has stonewalled Committee document requests and refused to comply with committee subpoenas. The [DOJ] has produced scores of blacked-out pages containing no information and many duplicate documents in order to bolster its page count.”
The report asserted that the DOJ is still withholding 92 percent of the documents it has handed over to the Office of Inspector General. It objected as well to the DOJ decision not to hand over to the committee any documents created after Feb. 4, 2011.
Associated Press | Feb 2, 2012
The Obama administration has more than doubled, to about 21,000 names, its secret list of suspected terrorists who are banned from flying to or within the United States, including about 500 Americans, the Associated Press has learned. The government lowered the bar for being added to the list, even as it says it’s closer than ever to defeating al-Qaida.
The size of the government’s secret no-fly list has jumped from about 10,000 in the past year, according to government figures provided to the AP.
The surge comes as the government says it’s close to defeating al-Qaida, after killing many of its senior members. But senior officials said the threat does not stop there.
“As long as we sustain the pressure on it, we judge that core al-Qaida will be of largely symbolic importance to the global jihadist movement,” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress on Thursday. “But regional affiliates and, to a lesser extent, small cells and individuals will drive the global jihad agenda.”
Those are the people added to the no-fly list, current and former counterterrorism officials said. Most are from other countries; about 500 are Americans.
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Here’s The Other Worrying Thing About The FBI’s Expanding No-Fly List
“Both U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities and foreign services continue to identify people who want to cause us harm, particularly in the U.S. and particularly as it relates to aviation,” Transportation Security Administrator John Pistole said in an interview.
Affiliated terror groups in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Algeria and elsewhere, as well as individuals who ascribe to al-Qaida’s beliefs — “All are in the mix,” said Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center. “And no one is claiming that they are shrinking.”
The flood of new names began after the failed Christmas 2009 bombing of a Detroit-bound jetliner. The government lowered the standard for putting people on the list then scoured its files for anyone who qualified. The government will not disclose who is on its list or why someone might have been placed on it.
Among the most significant new standards is that now a person doesn’t have to be considered only a threat to aviation to be placed on the no-fly list. People who are considered a broader threat to domestic or international security or who attended a terror training camp also are included, said a U.S. counterterrorism official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters.
The Christmas attack led to other changes in how the U.S. assembles its watch list. Intelligence agencies across the government reviewed old files to find people who should have been on the government’s terror watch list all along, plus those who should be added because of the new standards put in place to close security gaps.
The Nigerian man who pleaded guilty in the Christmas 2009 attack over Detroit, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was listed in a large U.S. intelligence database that includes partial names and relatives of suspected terrorists. That database is a feeder to the broad terror watch list, of which the no-fly list is a component, but only when there is enough information linking the person to terrorism. Officials believe the U.S. had enough information about Abdulmutallab at the time to put him on the broader terror watch list, which would have helped the intelligence community catch him.
After the Christmas attack, “We learned a lot about the watch-listing process and made strong improvements, which continue to this day,” said Timothy Healy, director of the Terrorist Screening Center, which produces the no-fly list.
As agencies complete the reviews of their files, the pace of growth is expected to slow, the counterterrorism official said.
The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the government on behalf of Americans who believe they’re on the no-fly list and have not been able to travel by air for work or to see family.
“The news that the list is growing tells us that more people’s rights are being violated,” said Nusrat Choudhury, a staff attorney working for the ACLU’s national security project. “It’s a secret list, and the government puts people on it without any explanation. Citizens have been stranded abroad.”
The government will not tell people whether they’re on the list or why they’re on it, making it impossible for people to defend themselves, Choudhury said. People who complain that they’re unfairly on the no-fly list can submit a letter to the Homeland Security Department, but the only way they’ll know if they’re still on the list is to try to fly again, she said.
While the list is secret, it is subject to continuous review to ensure that the right people are on it and that the ones who shouldn’t be on it are removed, said Martin Reardon, former chief of the Terrorist Screening Operations center and now a vice president with the Soufan Group. If a person is nominated to be on the no-fly list, but there is insufficient information to justify it, the Terrorist Screening Center downgrades the person to a different list, he said.
“You can’t just say: ‘Here’s a name. Put him on the list.’ You’ve got to have articulable facts,” Reardon said.
On average, there are 1,000 changes to the government’s watch lists each day, most of which involve adding new information about someone on the list.
The no-fly list has swelled to 20,000 people before, such as in 2004. At the time, people like the late Sen. Ted Kennedy were getting stopped before flying — causing constant angst and aggravation for innocent travelers. But much has changed since then.
While thousands more people are on the list, instances of travelers being mistaken for terrorists are down significantly since the government — not the airlines — became responsible for checking the list, Pistole said. Travelers must now provide their full name, birthdate and gender when purchasing an airline ticket so the government can screen them against the terror watch list.
But with the nature of the terrorism threat, it’s not likely that the list will dwindle, even as al-Qaida’s core leadership is defeated, Reardon said.
“I would argue that even if (al-Qaida) as we know it ceased to exist as of tomorrow, other terrorist organizations or lone wolves with both the intent and capability of carrying out attacks against the U.S. would fill the void,” Reardon said. “The consolidated terrorist watch list exists for that very reason.”
Once they are identified and placed on the list, he said, “We have a much greater chance of keeping them from entering the country.”
NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg with his armed bodyguards. Reuters
By Emily Flitter
(Reuters) – Among the slick, million-dollar ads for the likes of Pepsi and Honda during the Super Bowl this Sunday, viewers in New York and Boston will see a far more modest spot. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino will be sitting on a couch touting an issue most politicians avoid like the plague: gun control.
The two mayors, whose local teams face off in the big game, are making the pitch for Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG), the organization they co-founded in 2006.
Murder has been on the decline in New York and other major American cities for years, but the mayors say they still see too many dead cops and teens. On Tuesday night, Bloomberg was at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan visiting a New York police officer who had just been shot in the face in Brooklyn.
“We have someone who’s dedicated his life to protecting all of us, who has had a much too close brush with death tonight because of what appears to be an illegal gun,” Bloomberg told a news conference. He added that more Americans have been killed by illegal guns since 1968 than were killed in World War II.
Candidates for local and national office in the U.S. have faced sharp backlashes for advocating restraints on gun ownership, such as assault weapons or guns on campus. Such pushes draw fire from the well-funded National Rifle Association (NRA) and its allies. For many defenders of the Constitution’s Second Amendment – the right to bear arms – guns are the single issue on which they vote.
“We have to face the fact that both Democrats and Republicans have for a while viewed this as the third rail of American politics,” said John Feinblatt, who helps run MAIG as Bloomberg’s chief advisor for policy and strategic planning. (Bloomberg is an independent; Menino is a Democrat.)
Democrats, who are more likely than Republicans to favor some restrictions on gun ownership, made a conscious decision to stay away from the gun issue in the 2010 midterm congressional elections. The aim: protect the so-called Blue Dog conservative Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, who didn’t toe the party line on gun control. Most were defeated anyway.
If the Democratic Party hoped to keep the gun issue off center stage in the 2012 presidential race, MAIG’s campaign makes that unlikely. So does the fact that the NRA and the gun industry’s trade group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), have announced they will have a combined war chest of $225 million .
“We are anticipating having a voter-education effort that will be our largest effort ever,” said Lawrence Keane, senior vice president and general counsel at the NSSF.
NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre echoed the sentiment.
“I don’t think this is going to be an apathetic year for American gun owners.”
NO MORE CANDLES
New York’s activist mayor cannot simply restrict handguns in his city – as he has done with smoking and transfats. Two Supreme Court decisions – District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago – have declared such local initiatives unconstitutional. Instead, Bloomberg launched MAIG, which now has 600 members nationwide. Although it has a handful of private donors, the bulk of MAIG’s $4 million budget comes out of the mayor’s own pocket.
“He’s putting his money where his mouth is,” said Carolyn McCarthy, a Democratic congresswoman from Long Island. She entered politics after a 1993 shooting spree on the Long Island Rail Road left her husband dead and her son severely injured.
Bloomberg, in his third and last term, is free from concerns about electability and can tap a personal fortune of $19.5 billion, according to a November estimate by Forbes. As for speculation that he might mount a presidential bid this round or next, his leadership on such a divisive issue makes that look less likely.
“There was a lot of political capital that was poured into this,” one person who worked closely with MAIG said.
In the past, advocates for stricter gun controls held marches, rallies and candlelight vigils. MAIG has taken a far more activist approach, conducting undercover investigations and sting operations that are then dramatically revealed to the press.
In 2009, New York City contracted the security firm Kroll Inc. to send undercover agents to gun shows in Ohio, Tennessee and Nevada to show how people who could not pass a background check easily bought guns.
MAIG also used undercover investigators to expose gun dealers who sold to “straw purchasers,” buyers intending to quickly resell the guns on the black market. Another investigation identified online gun sellers who did not require background checks.
Bloomberg launched another probe after the January 2011 shooting in Arizona that killed six people and wounded 13, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Using city money, he sent undercover investigators to Arizona to repeat the gun show sting and prove how easy it was for someone like Jared Lee Loughner, the shooter, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, to get a gun.
That move enraged supporters of unfettered gun rights.
“The ‘sting’ was a waste of money that misleads Americans and did nothing to reduce crime,” wrote John Lott Jr., an economist who writes about guns, in a column on FoxNews.com. “Talk about an aggressive publicity stunt.”
The NSSF’s Keane said there are serious problems with many MAIG actions. He cited another investigation in which MAIG used gun data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) to sue dealers found to be selling guns to straw buyers.
“The New York City police department went to the ATF, traced data, turned that traced data over to private investigators, violated federal law, and interfered in 18 ongoing criminal investigations,” he said. “The ATF had to pull agents out of the field because they were placed at risk.”
Marc Lavorgna, a spokesman for the New York City mayor’s office, said in response: “They can’t argue the substance, so they continue to make a false, tired claim that has been directly refuted by the ATF. And the courts have validated that our investigations were legal.”
The ATF did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Opponents of the mayors’ efforts have also seized on a Department of Justice program codenamed “Fast and Furious” to discredit sting operations. Beginning in 2009, the ATF, investigating a gun-trafficking network in Arizona and Mexico, supplied 2,000 illegal guns they hoped to trace through the system so they could catch the leaders. Instead, they lost track of hundreds of the guns – two of which were found near the murder scene of Brian Terry, a border patrol agent, in 2010.
Last Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder was called before a congressional committee for a second time to explain how the program went bad. He repeated that senior Justice Department and ATF officials had not known about the operation until it was over.
REAL CHANGE
Members of the MAIG say they are not trying to take guns away from their legal owners, just to close loopholes that allow criminals to get guns and move them around undetected.
“It’s a serious safety issue,” said Margaret Stock, the Democratic mayor of Butler, Pennsylvania, the town of 13,000 where Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum spent part of his childhood. “If an officer gets shot with an illegal gun I’m responsible.”
Butler is in a sparsely populated area of western Pennsylvania where the first day of deer hunting season is often a school holiday.
“We’re a big hunting community, but this is illegal handguns, it’s a totally different issue,” Stock said. “I had a little bit of backlash from local members of the NRA that I was somehow anti-gun. That was not the intent of the coalition.”
MAIG’s efforts have spurred some change. In 2008, Wal-Mart (WMT.N) signed the voluntary 10-point code of conduct MAIG developed for gun sellers. It includes videotaping the area of a store where guns are sold, setting up a computerized gun tracing and alert system, and performing background checks on its employees.
An Ohio gun show operator identified in MAIG’s 2009 sting began offering police and federal firearms agents a free booth at his shows to strengthen background checks and help dealers recognize straw buyers, according to the Dayton Daily News.
MAIG claims on its website that “four out of the seven gun shows and venues” fingered in the 2009 investigation “have changed their practices.”
ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
No one thinks gun control is going to be the most important issue in 2012, but there are specific races and constituencies where it certainly will matter.
One such race is northwestern Arkansas, where a 33-year-old Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran named Ken Aden is challenging his former battalion commander for a Congressional seat. Aden is running as a progressive Democrat; his Republican opponent, Steve Womack, is a freshman incumbent, part of the Tea Party sweep of the 2010 midterm elections.
Aden, who has already met with House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and other party officials in Washington, has strong views on guns. He collects them, and say he knows what damage they can do. When Aden was 16 his father was shot and killed by his stepmother, using his dad’s own 357 magnum and his shotgun.
“We’ve got to keep guns out of the wrong hands,” Aden said.
He supports the background checks mandated by the 1993 Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act and has pledged in his platform to “fight to make sure that dangerous assault rifles and ammunition with no practical purpose in hunting, self-protection, or sport shooting … stay off our streets.”
Womack, for his part has co-sponsored several pieces of legislation to reinforce Second Amendment rights, including a bill that would force states to honor other states’ concealed carry permits.
“New, more stringent gun laws will not keep guns out of the hands of criminals,” Womack told the Arkansas Democrat Gazette in January 2011, after the Tucson shootings. “Rather, proper enforcement of our current laws will provide the necessary mechanisms to ensure the well-being of the American people.”
The NRA is telling supporters that President Obama will outlaw guns in a second term by appointing Supreme Court justices to reverse the gains made in the Heller and McDonald decisions. The White House denies that it has any such aim.
“The real threat to the Second Amendment is the reelection of President Obama,” said LaPierre.
He believes that other Democratic candidates will stay away from gun issues so as not to draw attention to Obama’s ultimate game plan.
“Their strategy is to fog the issue through the 2012 election, because they don’t want the Second Amendment or guns to prevent the reelection of President Obama,” LaPierre said of the Democrats.
SWING VOTERS
Democratic strategist Celinda Lake, who has spent many years polling on gun issues, said her data suggest two audiences will be open to gun-control measures in the 2012 elections: Latinos and suburban women.
Her firm, Lake Research Partners, conducted a poll in late October for MAIG that found 76 percent of Latinos supported a new program requiring gun dealers in border states to report when someone attempts to buy more than one semi-automatic rifle within a five-day period.
Suburban women, Lake said, who are known to be swing voters, want guns kept out of their neighborhoods.
In addition to his work with MAIG, Mayor Bloomberg is keeping a close eye on elections all around the country. He has already backed six candidates for Virginia’s state senate with contributions of $25,000 each, and may give to more candidates.
MAIG’s Feinberg said the group had not yet identified congressional races it wanted to support, but, he added, “We’re always watching.”
A man touches an ice covered car on the iced waterside promenade at the Lake Geneva in Versoix, Switzerland, Saturday, Feb. 4, 2012. A cold spell has reached Europe with temperatures plummeting far below zero. AP Photo Feb 4, 2012
ROME: Hundreds of people were plucked to safety on Saturday after a ferry caught in a snow storm hit a breakwater off Italy, as a vicious cold snap that has claimed over 260 lives across Europe maintained its grip.
Ukraine has suffered the heaviest toll of 122 deaths, including many people who froze to death in the streets, as temperatures plunged to as low as minus 38.1°C in parts of the continent.
Bosnian authorities have declared state of emergency in the capital Sarajevo after it was paralysed by snow, while hundreds of people remain trapped in their homes and vehicles throughout the country.
Airports were shut, flights and trains delayed, and highways gridlocked as emergency services raced to clear the falling snow.
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But as Europe huddled indoors for warmth, Russian gas giant Gazprom said it could not satisfy western Europe’s demand for more energy.
In Italy, the ferry Sharden hit a mole shortly after setting off from the port of Civitavecchia near Rome, causing panic among the 262 passengers who feared a repeat of a cruise ship tragedy in the area last month which killed 32 people.
Coastguard spokesman Carnine Albano said the accident, which tore a 25-metre hole in the ship’s side above the waterline, happened after the vessel was buffeted by a violent snow storm from the north-east.
All passengers were evacuated to safety and no injuries were reported.
The heaviest snowfall in 27 years in Rome caused the capital better known for its warm sunshine to grind to a halt, with taxis and buses unable to navigate through the icy streets without snow chains. Parts of the Venice lagoon also froze over.
A 46-year-old woman died in Avellino, near Naples in southern Italy, after a greenhouse roof collapsed on top of her with the weight of snow and the ambulance failed to get through the blocked roads to her in time.
In Poland, the death toll rose to 45 as temperatures reached minus 27°C in the north-east. In Romania, four more victims were found, bringing the number of fatalities in the country to 28.
Roman roads: An aerial view showing the snow-covered Colosseum, which was closed to tourists today
Italian capital grinds to halt as severe weather halts traffic
Locals shiver in tiled homes thanks to city’s heating restrictions
By Emma Reynolds
The Colosseum and other ancient tourist sights closed to tourists as Rome saw snow for the first time in 26 years.
Traffic in the Italian capital ground to a halt as buses struggled to climb icy hills and authorities accustomed to a warm climate fought to cope.
Visitors were stopped from entering the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill, the former home of Rome’s ancient emperors, over fears they could slip on ice.
The news came as as the big freeze took hold of Europe, taking the continent’s death toll to more than 176.
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Rome struggles with more snow; govt shovels issued
The last substantial snowfalls in Rome were in 1985 and 1986, though there have been other cases of lighter snow since then, including in 2010.
Snow began falling on Friday morning, leaving a light dusting on trees and cars and forming slush on the roads.
After easing for a few hours, wind-driven snow started falling again heavily in the city before midnight and continued into this morning.
The authorities ordered cars without tyre chains off the road till at least noon as vehicles were trapped for hours on the ring road after many cars skidded and frustrated drivers abandoned their vehicles having waited hours for accidents to be cleared.
Since the capital rarely sees freezing temperatures, heating in homes is only legally allowed for 10 to 12 hours a day, to cut down on pollution. The cold snap, with temperatures hovering at or just below the freezing point, left Romans shivering in their homes, many of which have tile and marble floors.
Snow dusted pine and palm trees and changed into slush on the cobblestone streets in the centre. In many neighbourhoods, 6cm (2.5 inches) of snow accumulated.
After hearing the forecasts on Thursday night, Mayor Gianni Alemanno cancelled classes on Friday and Saturday, but said school buildings would stay open so working parents could drop off their children if they had no other place to leave them.
Buses were stuck at the bottom of the steep streets of the Monteverde neighbourhood near the ancient Janiculum Hill, and commuters and residents ascended the hill by foot. Balconies resembled skating rinks as overnight rain froze and snow covered the ripe fruit on orange trees growing on the Roman terraces.
North of Rome, a ferry that was just leaving the port of Civitavecchia for Sardinia slammed into a dock when the ship in the wind, Italian news agency ANSA reported early Saturday. The impact left a gash in the ferry’s side above the water line, and two tugs pulled the ferry back toward the dock so the 262 passengers and 53 crew members on board could be evacuated, the report said.
Authorities appealed to Italians to avoid unnecessary travel, as the cold spell was forecast to continue well into the next week.
As snow covered Italy, air travellers faced problems, as Alitalia said it was cancelling about 40 departures and landings as a precaution.
In several parts of the country, some passengers on commuter trains as well as high speed lines complained that they were left in the dark or cold for hours after snow and ice blocked tracks.
In the northern Italian town of Maranello, Ferrari unveiled its overhauled Formula One car in a low-key internet presentation after the full launch was cancelled because of the snowstorm.
The storm dumped 40 or more centimetres (more than 3 feet) of snow, with even higher drifts, across the central-north, which was hit even harder than Rome.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, with Texas Rep. Ron Paul during a GOP debate in October, said Wednesday he would vote for Paul over President Barack Obama if Paul were to win the GOP nomination. (AP File Photo)
By Amy Gardner
RENO, Nev. — The remaining candidates in the winnowed Republican presidential field are attacking one another with abandon, with each day bringing fresh headlines of accusations and outrage.
But Mitt Romney and Ron Paul haven’t laid a hand on each other.
They never do.
Despite deep differences on a range of issues, Romney and Paul became personal friends in 2008, the last time both ran for president. So did their wives, Ann and Carol. The former Massachusetts governor compliments the Texas congressman during debates — praising Paul’s religious faith during the last one, in Jacksonville. Immediately afterward, as is often the case, the Pauls and the Romneys gravitated toward each other to say hello.
The Romney-Paul alliance is more than a curious connection. It is now a strategic partnership: for Paul, an opportunity to gain a seat at the table if his long-shot bid for the presidency fails; and for Romney, a chance to gain support from one of the most vibrant subgroups within the Republican Party.
“It would be very foolish for anybody in the Republican Party to dismiss a very real constituency,” one senior Republican aide in Washington familiar with both camps said said. “Ron Paul plays a very valuable part in the process and brings a lot of voters toward the Republican Party and ultimately into the voting booth, and that’s something that can’t be ignored.”
To ensure they are heard — not just now but after election day — Paul and his followers are working to gain a permanent foothold in the Republican Party nationwide. One state at a time, Paul’s followers are seating themselves at county committee meetings, standing for election as state officers and convention delegates — all to make sure that Paul’s libertarian vision is taken into account. The goal is a lasting voice for an army of outsiders who have long felt ignored but see the nation headed to ruin if that doesn’t change.
That is just fine with the Romney campaign, which would be happy to bring Paul’s constituency — perhaps the most intense and loyal in the country — into the fold.
Romney aides are “quietly in touch with Ron Paul,” according to a Republican adviser who is in touch with the Romney campaign and requested anonymity to discuss the campaign’s internal thinking. The Paul and Romney campaigns have “coordinated” on minor things, the adviser said (even on small details, such as staggering the timing of each candidate’s appearance on television the night of the New Hampshire primary for maximum effect).
One advantage for Romney in Paul’s continued presence in the race is to keep the GOP field fractured. But there is also a growing recognition that Paul plans to stay in the race over the long term anyway — and that accommodating him and his supporters could help unify the Republican electorate in the fall election against President Obama.
“Ron Paul wants a presence at the convention,” the adviser said — and Romney, if he is the nominee, would grant it.
What Paul and his supporters would demand, and what Romney would offer, is the subject of some speculation. One Paul adviser who requested anonymity to speak freely said a prime-time speaking slot for Paul — and for his son, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) — are obvious goals. On the policy front, Paul’s top priorities are reforming the Federal Reserve and reducing federal spending. So a promise to audit the Fed, and to tackle deficit reduction seriously, could appease Paul and his supporters, the adviser said.
Less likely are concessions on foreign policy, where Paul’s non-interventionist stand is at odds with Romney and most other Republicans.
Infiltrating the party
For Paul’s campaign, playing the inside-outside game has required nudging activists into the party system even as he and they remain wary of it.
“I’ve been involved in politics for 20 or 30 years,” Paul told a cheering crowd in a Spartanburg, S.C., hotel ballroom in January. “One of the reasons I became frustrated with the whole process is that the rhetoric could be so different. Republicans would say one thing, but then, when they get into office, they haven’t done a heck of a lot.” Paul paused, and his audience cheered loudly as he added: “Have you ever noticed that?”
Paul’s crowd was characteristically scrappy and diverse that day: a man with a ponytail and a camouflage hunting jacket, a young mother with two small children, a doctor and his wife and a well-dressed young professional couple.
Yet the insurgents are executing a concerted strategy to infiltrate the Republican Party. Five Paul supporters, for instance, sit on the Iowa GOP’s state central committee, where Paul finished a strong third in the Jan. 3 caucuses. In Nevada, the state GOP’s vice chairman is a Paul supporter. In Virginia, Paul supporters are lining up to attend county and district conventions to influence the election of national delegates.
In Reno, regional coordinator Wayne Terhune used a slide show on a recent weeknight to teach volunteers how to participate in a Republican precinct meeting to help Paul win delegates during the state’s upcoming caucuses on Feb. 4. He has tutored packed rooms at Denny’s as well as smaller crowds of followers in the Paul campaign’s Reno headquarters in a low-slung office building alongside the airport.
In a tiny conference room with a water cooler and two dogs on the floor, Terhune instructed volunteers not to allow paper ballots out of their sight after caucus votes take place — but also to dress neatly and inconspicuously, so that fellow Republicans wouldn’t be disinclined to elect them as caucus delegates.
A common refrain is to “cover your tattoos and cut your hair,” said Paul’s campaign manager, Jesse Benton, who often tells coordinators to “dress for business, because we mean business.”
“You’ll nominate yourself,” Terhune told the room. “They’ll probably have you give your speech. Have a meeting a day ahead so all the Ron Paul people know who the other Ron Paul people are, so you can vote for them. Then you give a generic speech, and the non-Ron Paul people say, ‘Oh, he’s solid, I can vote for him.’ ”
Terhune also urged the volunteers to pull out their iPhones and videotape the proceedings on caucus night if party officials “don’t play by the rules.”
Joining the establishment
Paul’s infiltration strategy began in 2008, after his last presidential bid ended, when he saw the potential to continue building a movement by working within the party.
But the idea took off in 2010 when Paul’s son, Rand, ran for the Senate. On an outsider’s, small-government message very similar to his father’s, Rand Paul won the Republican primary that year against an opponent who was handpicked by Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader and senior senator from Kentucky.
Then, quite strangely, the establishment and the Pauls came together.
At McConnell’s request, the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent an adviser to Kentucky to watch over Rand Paul’s general-election campaign — “to be the grown-up in the room,” according to one Washington Republican who requested anonymity to speak candidly.
The adviser, Trygve Olson, developed a friendship with Rand Paul, and the two realized they could actually teach each other a lot to the benefit of both candidate and party. Olson showed Paul and his campaign traditional establishment tactics: working with the press, fine-tuning message; and Paul showed Olson — and McConnell, by extension — how many new people his message of fiscal responsibility was drawing to the party.
One day that year, at Rand Paul’s request, McConnell joined him for a tea party gathering in Kentucky, according to a Republican who was there. “Who are these people?” McConnell asked, bewildered by the dearth of familiar faces at a political event in his home state.
At Rand Paul’s suggestion, Olson joined his father’s presidential campaign this year — basically to continue doing what he did for Rand: help bring the Paul constituency into the Republican coalition without threatening the party. It’s probably no small coincidence that the partnership helps Rand’s burgeoning political career, too.
“You can dress in black and stand on the hill and smash the state and influence nobody, or you can realize the dynamics and the environment and get involved in the most pragmatic way to win minds and win votes and influence change,” said Benton, the campaign manager. “That’s what we’re trying to do.”
A man takes pictures of stones covered in ice as the water of the Black Sea freeze near the shore in Constanta, Romania, Wednesday, Feb.1, 2012. The death toll from Eastern Europe’s severe cold spell has risen to 79. Temperatures have dropped as low as minus 32.5 C (minus 26.5 F) in some regions, causing power outages, traffic chaos and the closure of schools and nurseries. The weather is so cold that some areas of the Black Sea have frozen near the Romanian coastline. AP Photo
by Simon McGregor-Wood
The severe cold weather currently gripping Eastern Europe has now spread to Italy and as far south as Turkey.
As many as 80 people have died, mainly in Ukraine and Poland, as the death freeze settles over the continent.
Dan Britton, a press officer at Britain’s Met Office, told ABC News the cold weather stems from “a large area of high pressure sitting over Eastern Europe, which has brought about cold temperatures over quite a large area.”
The Ukraine has suffered the most fatalities as emergency ministries confirmed 43 people had perished in minus-28 degree temperatures.
While hospitals in Ukraine have treated more than 600 people for frostbite and pneumonia, many of the dead were homeless people who were unable to find shelter at night.
As Poland experienced minus-22 degree conditions, seven more deaths have been confirmed. Five were said to be homeless people.
Several people have also died in the Baltic states — the Czech Republic, Serbia, Bosnia and Romania and Bulgaria — where until now temperatures had been well above normal for midwinter.
The heavy snow has caused transport chaos across Europe.
The German media reported the death of one woman was a result of her losing control of her car on the icy roads.
Heavy-goods vehicles have been barred from the freeways in Central Italy and cargo ships have been warned of ice floes on the Danube.
Even some areas of Romania’s Black sea coastline have reportedly frozen over.
Forecasters have confirmed that this area of high pressure has come from Siberia.
“These kind of weather conditions occur every 20 to 30 years, last time in 1986 and 1956,” Jurik Muller of the German Meteorological Service said.
With snow now falling in Istanbul and other parts of Turkey, the weather is likely to continue throughout the weekend.
Bosnians wave to a helicopter crew as they wait for food supplies near Sokolac, Bosnia, Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2012. (AP / Radul Radovanovic)
Helicopters pluck stranded Europeans from snowbound villages
Associated Press | Feb 1, 2012
Rescue helicopters evacuated dozens of people from snow-blocked villages in Serbia and Bosnia and air-lifted in emergency food and medicine as a severe cold spell kept Eastern Europe in its icy grip.
The death toll from the cold rose to 83 on Wednesday and emergency crews worked overtime as temperatures sank to minus 32.5 C (minus 26.5 F) in some areas.
Parts of the Black Sea froze near the Romanian coastline and the rare snow fell on Croatian islands in the Adriatic Sea. In Bulgaria, 16 towns recorded their lowest temperatures since records started 100 years ago as four more people were reported dead from hypothermia.
In central Serbia, choppers pulled out 12 people, including nine who went to a funeral but then could not get back over icy, snow-choked roads. Two more people froze to death in the snow and two others are missing, bringing that nation’s death toll to five.
“The situation is dramatic, the snow is up to five meters (16 1/2 feet) high in some areas, you can only see rooftops,” said Dr. Milorad Dramacanin, who participated in the helicopter evacuations.
One of the evacuees was an elderly woman who had fallen into a coma. She survived after being airlifted to a hospital.
Two helicopters were also used Wednesday to rescue people and supply remote villages in northern Bosnia.
“We are trying to get through to several small villages, with each just a few elderly residents,” said Bosnian rescue official Milimir Doder. “All together some 200-300 people are cut off. We are supplying them for the second day with food and medication.”
In the small Bosnian hamlet of Han Kran on Mt. Romanija, villagers waited for a helicopter at a flat spot which they cleared of snow to allow it to land.
“We are barely coping. I live on my own — it is a real struggle,” said Radenka Jeftovic, an elderly woman wrapped in woolen scarfs and hugging a food package she received.
Goran Milat, a younger resident, complained that “the minuses are killing us.”
“We are thankful for this help,” he said. “But, the snow did what it did and we are blocked here until spring.”
Some Bosnian villages have had no electricity for days and crews were working around-the-clock trying to fix power lines.
“The snow is about two meters high (6 feet) and we have cleared off paths that look more like tunnels,” Doder said. “It is going well but if there is more snow coming, then the situation may get critical.”
Ukraine alone reported 43 deaths, mostly of homeless people. The country’s Emergency Situations Ministry said 28 people had been found dead on the streets, eight died in hospitals and seven in their homes. Over 720 others were hospitalized with hypothermia and frostbite.
Ukraine’s 1+1 channel broadcast footage of a man being treated for frostbite in his toes, which had turned completely black.
Authorities have deployed over 1,730 heating shelters across the country, handing out hot tea, coffee, boiled potatoes and pork fat — a traditional Ukrainian dish — to the homeless. Hospitals were told not to discharge homeless patients even if their treatment was finished to protect them from the cold.
Prime Minister Mykola Azarov urged Ukrainians to stay vigilant, dress warmly and help each other in the face of the severe weather.
“I call on citizens, enterprises, organizations not to be indifferent, to support and protect those people who cannot help themselves in this difficult time,” Azarov said in a statement Wednesday. “We are one people.”
His comments after some experts suggested Ukraine’s high death toll was linked to authorities’ unwillingness and incompetence in dealing with the homeless.
Pavlo Rozenko, an expert on social policy with the Kyiv-based Razumkov Center, said Ukrainian authorities often suffer from the Soviet legacy of viewing the homeless as alcoholics, drug addicts and do-nothings who need to be punished instead of helped.
“The country doesn’t know yet how to take care of its homeless,” Rozenko said.
In Romania, temperatures plunged to minus 32.5 C (minus 26.5), and six homeless people died in the past 24 hours of hypothermia, the health ministry reported. Hundreds of other people were sent to shelters to protect them from the extreme cold.
Five people died of hypothermia in the last day in Poland, bringing its toll up to 20 since Friday.
Several schools across Hungary suspended classes, including one in the east that said it could not afford the high heating bills. The airport in Montenegro’s capital Podgorica was closed down for all flights late Wednesday because of heavy snowfall.
In Russia, temperatures fell to minus 21 C (minus 6 F) in Moscow but only one person was reported to have died of the cold.
Despite the freezing temperatures, Gyorgy Schirilla, a 50-year-old sportsman, said he would go ahead with his annual swim on Saturday with no protective gear cross the Danube River — a distance of 500 metres (yards) — in the northern Hungarian city of Vac.
“I’m not afraid of the challenge,” Schirilla said. “This will be my 15th crossing. Two years ago … I had to fend off ice floes weighing several tons.”
Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)
Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years
By David Rose
The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.
The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.
Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.
Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.
Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak.
We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call ‘Cycle 24’ – which is why last week’s solar storm resulted in sightings of the aurora borealis further south than usual. But sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th Century.
Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona – derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun’s surface – suggest that Cycle 25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still.
According to a paper issued last week by the Met Office, there is a 92 per cent chance that both Cycle 25 and those taking place in the following decades will be as weak as, or weaker than, the ‘Dalton minimum’ of 1790 to 1830. In this period, named after the meteorologist John Dalton, average temperatures in parts of Europe fell by 2C.
However, it is also possible that the new solar energy slump could be as deep as the ‘Maunder minimum’ (after astronomer Edward Maunder), between 1645 and 1715 in the coldest part of the ‘Little Ice Age’ when, as well as the Thames frost fairs, the canals of Holland froze solid.
Yet, in its paper, the Met Office claimed that the consequences now would be negligible – because the impact of the sun on climate is far less than man-made carbon dioxide. Although the sun’s output is likely to decrease until 2100, ‘This would only cause a reduction in global temperatures of 0.08C.’ Peter Stott, one of the authors, said: ‘Our findings suggest a reduction of solar activity to levels not seen in hundreds of years would be insufficient to offset the dominant influence of greenhouse gases.’
These findings are fiercely disputed by other solar experts.
‘World temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more,’ said Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space Institute. ‘It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.’
He pointed out that, in claiming the effect of the solar minimum would be small, the Met Office was relying on the same computer models that are being undermined by the current pause in global-warming.
CO2 levels have continued to rise without interruption and, in 2007, the Met Office claimed that global warming was about to ‘come roaring back’. It said that between 2004 and 2014 there would be an overall increase of 0.3C. In 2009, it predicted that at least three of the years 2009 to 2014 would break the previous temperature record set in 1998.
So far there is no sign of any of this happening. But yesterday a Met Office spokesman insisted its models were still valid.
‘The ten-year projection remains groundbreaking science. The period for the original projection is not over yet,’ he said.
Dr Nicola Scafetta, of Duke University in North Carolina, is the author of several papers that argue the Met Office climate models show there should have been ‘steady warming from 2000 until now’.
‘If temperatures continue to stay flat or start to cool again, the divergence between the models and recorded data will eventually become so great that the whole scientific community will question the current theories,’ he said.
He believes that as the Met Office model attaches much greater significance to CO2 than to the sun, it was bound to conclude that there would not be cooling. ‘The real issue is whether the model itself is accurate,’ Dr Scafetta said. Meanwhile, one of America’s most eminent climate experts, Professor Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology, said she found the Met Office’s confident prediction of a ‘negligible’ impact difficult to understand.
‘The responsible thing to do would be to accept the fact that the models may have severe shortcomings when it comes to the influence of the sun,’ said Professor Curry. As for the warming pause, she said that many scientists ‘are not surprised’.
She argued it is becoming evident that factors other than CO2 play an important role in rising or falling warmth, such as the 60-year water temperature cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
‘They have insufficiently been appreciated in terms of global climate,’ said Prof Curry. When both oceans were cold in the past, such as from 1940 to 1970, the climate cooled. The Pacific cycle ‘flipped’ back from warm to cold mode in 2008 and the Atlantic is also thought likely to flip in the next few years .
Pal Brekke, senior adviser at the Norwegian Space Centre, said some scientists found the importance of water cycles difficult to accept, because doing so means admitting that the oceans – not CO2 – caused much of the global warming between 1970 and 1997.
The same goes for the impact of the sun – which was highly active for much of the 20th Century.
‘Nature is about to carry out a very interesting experiment,’ he said. ‘Ten or 15 years from now, we will be able to determine much better whether the warming of the late 20th Century really was caused by man-made CO2, or by natural variability.’
Meanwhile, since the end of last year, world temperatures have fallen by more than half a degree, as the cold ‘La Nina’ effect has re-emerged in the South Pacific.
‘We’re now well into the second decade of the pause,’ said Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. ‘If we don’t see convincing evidence of global warming by 2015, it will start to become clear whether the models are bunk. And, if they are, the implications for some scientists could be very serious.’
gastongazette.com | Jan 25, 2012
by Michael Barrett
The Gaston County Board of Commissioners will consider a resolution condemning Agenda 21 during its regular meeting at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Gaston County Courthouse, 325 N. Marietta St., Gastonia.
When Gaston County commissioners sound an alarm tonight for Americans to wake up and guard against a subversive, sinister threat of global political control, they know many people will scratch their heads.
Others, said Commission Chairman Donnie Loftis, may consider their warning about the “insidious nature of Agenda 21” to be an overreaction.
“I realize there will be folks who say, ‘You guys are drinking the Kool-Aid,” he said.
But Loftis believes the county’s resolution “to heighten awareness of Agenda 21’s impact on communities in the United States” is necessary to shed light on a nefarious United Nations initiative.
On the surface, Agenda 21 is a 1992 blueprint for communities worldwide to use in achieving “sustainable development.” Critics, however, allege it’s a ploy to strangle the American way of life by reducing private property rights, and instilling harsh zoning restrictions and socialist philosophies into local government planning.
Related
“The point is, this is something people do need to know about because it’s happening in other parts of the country,” said Commissioner Tracy Philbeck, who referred to Agenda 21 as a “Marxist weapon.’”
“More people need to be aware of what could be implemented here if we’re not careful,” Philbeck said.
Commissioners are expected to vote on the resolution during their 6 p.m. meeting, as part of the consent agenda.
Roadmap for growth
The United Nations adopted Agenda 21 two decades ago as a global initiative to combat climate change. It endorses practices such as the preservation of green spaces, the availability of good transportation choices, and the prevention of urban sprawl.
President George H.W. Bush agreed to back the initiative in 1992, and President Bill Clinton signed an executive order in 1995 to create a council on sustainable development. But nothing about Agenda 21 is legally binding.
Today, a Google search on Agenda 21 will turn up any number of websites that broadcast the dangerous headway those philosophies are making into American society. Authors of that fear often come across as conspiracy theorists. But they warn that the nature of Agenda 21 as a dull topic is allowing it to fly under the radar and work its way into public policy, while raising minimal suspicion.
Members of the Greater Gaston Tea Party have become the most outspoken local critics of Agenda 21 in the last two years. They allege that its principles of extreme environmentalism are already showing up in Gastonia’s adopted plans for growth and development.
Philbeck, a Tea Party member, said Agenda 21’s influence can be seen in the concept of using eminent domain not for hospitals or highways, but for things such as greenways — something he opposes. His increasing familiarity with the subject led him to suggest that commissioners formally denounce Agenda 21 in a resolution.
Philbeck was spurred into action after hearing Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich warn that Agenda 21 could be used to seize the private property of American citizens.
“You know it’s huge when a presidential candidate is talking about it in a debate,” Philbeck said.
Valid fear or unfounded fantasy?
Agenda 21’s detractors have critics of their own, who say Gingrich and others are playing on conservative phobias.
Eric Heberlig, an associate professor of political science at UNC Charlotte, said he’s not thoroughly familiar with Agenda 21. But the objections to its principles are typical of conservatives who believe climate change is overblown, he said.
“The environmental movement represents the bad guys,” he said. “So anything they are for is seen as being suspicious, or a threat in terms of what their opponents want to see in public policy.”
To Agenda 21 opponents, terms like “sustainable growth,” “livable cities” and “green environments” seem to represent a shadowy, menacing threat, Heberlig said.
“We’re reacting to symbols here,” he said. “If the hippie environmentalists are for it and the United Nations is for it, it must be a bad thing.”
Philbeck points to websites such as democratsagainstunagenda21.com as evidence that conservative Republicans aren’t the only ones on alert.
“The folks who are pushing this thing want us to look fanatical,” he said. “That’s why I recommend people go and read Agenda 21 for themselves.”
Philbeck and Loftis said they aren’t against planning for growth and development in Gaston County, but doing so requires a delicate balance.
“It’s a fine line to balance growth without it being micromanaged by government,” Loftis said.
The resolution to be voted on Thursday decries Agenda 21 as “insidious” and having “underlying harmful implications, “destructive strategies” and “radical policies.” Its approval would put Gaston County on record and allow a copy to be sent to other county commissions across the state, and governors and agencies across the country.
“If there are not some checks and balances along the way, I think (Agenda 21) has the potential to involve a slow erosion of local control,” said Loftis. “We don’t want to give that authority away to someone away from here who has a bigger agenda.”
Up close: Jamie shocked American audiences by showing them the raw ‘pink slime’ produced in the ammonium hydroxide process used by producers named Beef Products Inc (BPI)
TV chef was disgusted to discover ammonium hydroxide was being used by McDonald’s to convert fatty beef offcuts into a beef filler for burgers
‘Why would any sensible human being want to put ammonia-filled meat into their children’s mouths? asked Jamie Oliver
By Jill Reilly
After years of trying to break America, Jamie Oliver has finally made his mark by persuading one of the biggest U.S fast food chains in the world to change their burger recipe.
McDonald’s have altered the ingredients after the Naked Chef forced them to remove a processed food type that he labelled ‘pink slime’.
The food activist was shocked when he learned that ammonium hydroxide was being used by McDonald’s to convert fatty beef offcuts into a beef filler for its burgers in the USA.
The filler product made headlines after he denounced it on his show, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.
‘Basically, we’re taking a product that would be sold at the cheapest form for dogs and after this process we can give it to humans’ said the TV chef.
Jamie showed American audiences the raw ‘pink slime’ produced in the ammonium hydroxide process used by producers named Beef Products Inc (BPI).
‘Pink slime’ has never been used in McDonald’s beef patties in the UK and Ireland which source their meat from farmers within the two countries.
Now after months of campaigning on his hit US television show McDonald’s have admitted defeat and the fast food giant has abandoned the beef filler from its burger patties.
US Department of Agriculture microbiologist Geral Zirnstein agreed with Jamie that ammonium hydroxide agent should be banned.
‘Pink slime’ has never been used in McDonald’s beef patties in the UK and Ireland which source their meat from farmers within the two countries.
Now after months of campaigning on his hit US television show McDonald’s have admitted defeat and the fast food giant has abandoned the beef filler from its burger patties.
US Department of Agriculture microbiologist Geral Zirnstein agreed with Jamie that ammonium hydroxide agent should be banned.
He said: ‘I do not consider the stuff to be ground beef and I consider allowing it in ground beef to be a form of fraudulent labelling.’
The defiant chef is pleased at the decision by McDonald’s stop using the ammonium hydroxide processes meat.
He said: ‘Why would any sensible human being want to put ammonia-filled meat into their children’s mouths?
‘The great American public needs to urgently understand what their food industry is doing.’
McDonald’s denied its hand had been forced by Jamie’s campaign.
Todd Bacon, Senior Director of U.S. Quality Systems and Supply Chain with the fast food chain, said: ‘At McDonald’s food safety has been and will continue to be a top priority.
‘The decision to remove BPI products from the McDonald’s system was not related to any particular event but rather to support our effort to align our global beef raw material standards.
‘McDonald’s complies with all government requirements and food safety regulations.
‘Furthermore, we have our own food safety measures and standards in place throughout the entire supply chain to ensure that we serve safe, high quality food to every customer, every time they visit our restaurants.’
Two other chains Burger King and Taco Bell have earlier bowed to pressure and removed ammonium hydroxide processed ingredients from their products.
Nobody from Beef products Inc was available for comment.
Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution: 70% of America’s Beef is Treated with Ammonia
Riders make more than 10 billion trips a year on U.S. public transit services, according to the American Public Transportation Association. New York City police sometimes screen passenger bags at subway stops. TSA officers may coordinate with police on these operations.
By Thom Patterson
(CNN) — Rick Vetter and his teen son got a pretty good look at the legal line between privacy and security last month, as they wrapped up a day trip to Charlotte, North Carolina.
After watching the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons beat the Carolina Panthers, they were looking forward to a three-hour train ride back home to Raleigh when they arrived at the train station.
Walking up a ramp toward the platform, they noticed what appeared to be a uniformed Transportation Security Administration officer holding a leashed police dog.
“He just loosened the leash on the dog, and the dog came over to check me out,” Vetter said. Standing on the platform above Vetter were three other officers who appeared to be wearing bullet-proof vests.
As the guard dog smelled him, Vetter — who has two dogs of his own — told the officer that it probably was reacting to the smell of Vetter’s pets.
“The TSA officer said ‘OK’ or something like that. Then it was clear that the dog had done what he needed to do, and we went on up the ramp to get on the train.”
“I’m sure somebody who wasn’t comfortable with dogs would have found it a lot more disconcerting than I did, but I sort of didn’t worry about it,” said Vetter, an attorney for the Environmental Protection Agency.
The Vetters had encountered VIPR — special TSA Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response teams that are tasked with performing random, unpredictable baggage and security checks at passenger train, subway and bus stations as well as trucking weigh stations across the nation.
TSA officials like to point out that the acronym stands for Transportation Security Administration, not the Airport Security Administration. And that’s where VIPR comes in.
Born after 2004′s Madrid railway bombings, VIPR suffered some embarrassing coordination struggles, transit officials say.
The program has 15 teams and is expanding to get access to 12 new teams to spot-check thousands of transportation depots across the nation.
VIPR teams conducted 3,895 operations in “surface modes” nationwide in 2010, according to the Department of Homeland Security (PDF).
The expansion comes after intelligence from Osama bin Laden’s Pakistan compound revealed al Qaeda plans to target U.S. rail systems on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.
At a time when TSA airport searches are unpopular among many air travelers, civil liberties groups say VIPR’s joint participation with local police in “warrantless” searches have been “flying under the radar” in violation of constitutional protections. Transit police say it helps them better guard against attacks like those that have hit Madrid, London and Moscow since 2004.
VIPR teams join local authorities for many of their operations aimed at searching passenger bags. Authorities say officers include plainclothes and uniformed team members — some of them armed — who arrive without telling passengers in advance.
Officers in the joint operations then randomly ask travelers for permission to search their bags for explosives. To prevent accusations of profiling, searchers choose a random number — eight for example — and then search the bags of every eighth passenger before they board.
Also, VIPR observers may be in the vicinity, keeping an eye out for suspicious behavior, police say.
Local and federal authorities insist the searches are not mandatory.
Down time: It would take about three weeks of heavy TV watching to earn a $5 gift card
Viggle listens to what’s on TV and gives approximately two points per minute watched
App collects demographic information such as age, gender, ZIP code, and email address
New iPhone and iPad app rewards couch potatoes for watching TV – with gift certificates to Burger King and Starbucks
Want to earn stuff by merely watching TV? There’s an app for that.
A new app slated to be released today for iPhones and iPads rewards viewers for watching shows – the more shows the better.
When you tap the screen, Viggle’s software for iPhones and iPads listens to what’s on, recognizes what you’re watching and gives you credit at roughly two points per minute.
It even works for shows you’ve saved on a digital video recorder.
Rack up 7,500 points, and you’ll be rewarded with a $5 gift card from retailers such as Burger King, Starbucks, Apple’s iTunes, Best Buy and CVS, which you can redeem directly from your device.
But the company plans to offer bonus points for checking into certain shows such as American Idol and 1,500 points for signing up.
You can also get extra points for watching an ad on your device. The beta version awarded 100 points for watching a 15-second ad from Verizon Wireless.
The venture was launched by American Idol backer Robert Sillerman, whose former company, CKX, owns the popular show.
‘Viggle is the first loyalty program for TV,’ said Chris Stephenson, president of the company behind Viggle, Function (X) Inc. ‘We’re basically allowing people to get rewards for doing something they’re doing already and that they love to do.’
The idea behind Viggle is that by giving people an added reason to watch TV, the size of the audience will increase, thereby allowing makers of shows to earn more money from advertisers.
Advertisers such as Burger King, Pepsi and Gatorade have also agreed to pay to have point-hungry users watch their ads on a mobile device.
In exchange, users earn points, which Viggle converts into real value by buying gift cards at a slight discount from retailers.
If the company gets the point-count economy right, it can end up making more money from advertisers and networks than it gives away in rewards.
The app will also give the company valuable insight into who is watching what, as redeeming rewards requires putting in your age, gender, email address and ZIP code.
‘It really shows what social TV is going to evolve into,’ said Michael Gartenberg, a technology analyst at research firm Gartner. ‘For folks behind the scenes, this is a great way of seeing who really is watching.’
The company hopes that user activity will grow by word of mouth, especially by offering a 200-point bonus to people who successfully get their friends to try out the service.
The app makes its debut in Apple Inc.’s app store on Wednesday. Versions for Android devices and computers are in the works.
The company has put in some safeguards. You must watch a show at least ten minutes to earn bonus points.
And you can’t watch the same ad over and over again to earn more points; there’s a one-ad-view-per-person rule.
Function (X) has brought in $100million in investment capital, and its stock trades on the Pink Sheets, a platform that allows people to buy shares but doesn’t require the company release its financial results.
Function (X) currently has a market value of about $1billion.
