H5N1 strain could start wave of bird flu outbreaks

Reuters
H5N1 strain could start wave of bird flu outbreaks
By Tan Ee Lyn

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Scientists in Hong Kong and the United States have detected a new strain of H5N1 bird flu virus in China and warned it might have started another wave of outbreaks in poultry in Southeast Asia and move deeper into Eurasia.

The strain, called the "Fujian-like virus" because it was first isolated in China's southern Fujian province in March 2005, has increasingly been detected since October 2005 in poultry in six provinces in China, displacing other H5N1 strains.

The strain might also have become resistant to vaccines, which China began using on a large scale from September 2005 to protect poultry from H5N1, said the scientists.

The researchers are from the University of Hong Kong, including virologists Guan Yi and Malik Peiris, and Rob Webster of St Jude Children's Research Hospital in the United States.

"The predominance of this Fujian-like virus appears to be responsible for the increased prevalence of H5N1 in poultry since October 2005 and recent human infection cases in China," they said in an article published in the U.S.-based Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (www.pnas.org).

"It has already caused poultry outbreaks in Laos, Malaysia and Thailand, and human disease in Thailand. It is likely that this variant has already initiated a third wave of transmission throughout Southeast Asia and may spread further in Eurasia."

The first wave of H5N1 outbreaks occurred in late 2003 and 2004 in many parts of Asia. The second wave started in China's Qinghai Lake in May 2005 and that strain has since been found in parts of Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

The virus has killed more than 150 people since late 2003 and remains largely a disease among birds. But experts fear it could trigger a flu pandemic and kill millions of people if it mutates into a strain that can pass from human to human.

SUPER STRAIN

The researchers collected 53,220 fecal samples from chickens, geese and ducks in poultry markets in six Chinese provinces between July 2005 and June 2006. Of these, 1,294 tested positive for H5N1.

But genetic sequencing of viruses collected from October 2005 onwards showed the Fujian strain was clearly becoming predominant over other H5N1 strains. Between April and June this year, 103 out of 108 H5N1-positive samples were of the Fujian type.

"That's pretty conclusive proof that this new variant is predominant," said Gavin Smith, one of the researchers in the Hong Kong team.

To test how well vaccinated poultry could stand up to various strains of H5N1, the researchers collected 1,113 blood samples from chickens from November 2005 to April 2006.

Only 180 samples, or 16 percent, tested positive for H5N1 antibodies. They were exposed to 3 strains of H5N1 -- namely the Yunnan, Guiyang and Fujian-like strains.

The antibodies managed to neutralize the Yunnan and Guiyang strains, but had little or no effect on the Fujian virus.

"The market poultry, many of them don't have antibodies against H5 virus and those that do are not well protected against the Fujian virus, which is why we think the Fujian-like virus has been able to grow because other (strains) have been suppressed," Smith told Reuters in an interview.

"What happens with vaccines is that you basically introduce something that kills off most of the viruses, but there are always going to be some viruses that can escape from it."

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Republican Mudslinging On An Industrial Scale

factcheck.org
Republican Mudslinging On An Industrial Scale
The NRCC attack-ad factory grinds out some smears we find to be misleading or false.

Summary

Both political parties are functioning in the 2006 House races as factories for attack ads, but the National Republican Campaign Committee's work stands out this year for the sheer volume of assaults on the personal character of Democratic House challengers.

The ads being aired by both the NRCC and its rival, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, are overwhelmingly negative. However, the DCCC ads generally attack Republican candidates on policy issues or their performance in office – accusing them of casting votes favorable to drug or oil companies, or of supporting President Bush's unpopular policies in Iraq or on Social Security. We've recently criticized factual inaccuracies we've seen in some of those, and we'll have more to say in a later article. Here we focus on the NRCC's ads, which are much more likely to demean an opponent's character. That's the very definition of political mudslinging.

The Republican ads variously accuse Democratic candidates of such things as charging an "adult fantasy" phone call to taxpayers, of being a "hypocrite," of being a "greedy trial lawyer," of being a "millionaire know-it-all," or of failing to pay local business taxes on time. One ad describes a Democrat's "ethical judgments" as "bad to bizarre" and claims he favored use of 50,000-volt Taser weapons on seven-year-olds.

A derogatory ad can be accurate, and when supported by facts can give voters information about a candidate that they may well find relevant. For example, one NRCC ad correctly states that a Democratic candidate wrote a letter asking a judge to go easy when sentencing a felon convicted of bank fraud in a scandal that bilked hundreds of homeowners. However, several of the NRCC's ads are smears that twist facts or ignore them. A sheriff running for the House is accused of having "fixed" a speeding ticket for his daughter, for example, when in fact the ticket was paid and the daughter got no special treatment. We found repeated examples of this sort of thing, and we detail them here.
Analysis

Attack-ad factories

First the numbers.
Spending by the two party committees tells part of the story. According to the Federal Election Commission, so far in this election cycle the NRCC has spent $41.9 million attacking Democratic opponents and $5 million supporting its own candidates, roughly an 8:1 negative-to-positive ratio. The DCCC has spent $18 million and $3.1 million, respectively, for a 5:1 ratio. Most of that money on both sides is spent on television advertising.

We zoomed in for a closer look, reviewing all ads by the DCCC and NRCC that appeared since Labor Day in any of the top 101 television markets, which reach 87 per cent of American TV viewers. Copies of the ads were supplied to us by the Campaign Media Analysis Group . Of the 115 NRCC ads, we judged 91 per cent to be purely negative. The DCCC's 104 ads included 81 per cent we found to be purely negative.We found very few on either side that were all positive, but the DCCC's contained more mixed or "comparative" ads –a mix of positive statements about the supported candidate and negative statements about the opponent.



What stood out in the NRCC's ads was a pronounced tendency to be petty and personal, and sometimes careless with the facts. We found 29 of the NRCC's ads to be assaults of a personal nature on a candidate's character or private professional dealings, rather than critiques of his or her views or votes while in federal, state or local office. Applying the same screen to the DCCC, we came up with 15 such ads, and several of those were comparative, rather than purely negative. We'd note, and leave for our readers to judge its relevance, that since there are more GOP incumbents than Democratic ones, the Republicans' opponents may be individuals who don't have voting records to attack.

We first noticed the NRCC's proclivity for hitting below the belt even before the fall campaign season kicked off, in the special election for convicted Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham's open seat in California last spring. Multiple NRCC attacks on Democrat Francine Busby included a mailer that likened her to "dangerous" and "irresponsible" teenage drunk drivers. She lost by 5 points in the June 6 special election and is currently the Democratic candidate in the Nov. 7 general election.

By late September, it was increasingly clear that this kind of attack was becoming a staple for the NRCC, and it was no accident. A New York Times story on Sept. 27 said that the Republicans' attacks were "the product of more than a year of research into the personal and professional backgrounds of Democratic challengers." Said Rep. Tom Reynolds, chair of the NRCC:

Reynolds: We haven't even begun to unload this freight train.

Well, the train is at the station, and the freight being unloaded isn't pretty, or necessarily true.

"Fantasy hotline"

New York Democrat Michael Acuri has learned that in spades. One of the NRCC's spots attacking him accuses him of billing taxpayers for a call to a "fantasy hotline." In fact, the evidence shows someone using the phone in Arcuri's hotel room misdialed and hung up in seconds, and the total charge to taxpayers was $1.25.

The ad is laden with sexual innuendo. A woman's voice says "Hi sexy, you've reached the live one on one fantasy line." Arcuri is pictured appearing to leer as the silhouette of a woman undulates suggestively in the background.

"The phone number to an adult fantasy hotline appeared on Michael Arcuri's New York City hotel room bill while he was there on official business," the announcer says. "Who calls a fantasy hotline and then bills taxpayers? Michael Arcuri."

The facts of this case paint a much different picture. The phone records indeed show a call to the number of an adult fantasy talk service at 3:26 p.m. on Jan. 28, 2004, but the very next minute – 3:27 p.m. – the records show another number was dialed. The second number was identical except for the three-digit area code, and was the number of the New York State Department of Criminal Justice Services. It was Sean Byrne, executive director of the New York Prosecutors Training Institute, who made both calls, according to Arcuri and Byrne. Both were attending a meeting of the New York State District Attorneys Association. The hotel's charge for the misdialed "fantasy" line call was $1.25.

Unindicted rapist

Another NRCC-produced ad hammers Arcuri with a claim that an accused rapist was freed after Arcuri's office "failed to indict him in time." Why? According to the local newspaper, the scheduled indictment hearing couldn't go forward because the 13-year-old victim didn't appear and a key witness had been admitted to a psychiatric facility. The ad doesn't mention that the accused man was indicted several days later. His freedom lasted eight days. Eventually he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge (Arcuri's case was weakened because the young victim was reluctant to cooperate) and was sentenced to 18 months to 3 years behind bars. The same ad says the "percentage of felony convictions" in Oneida County, where Arcuri is district attorney, "has fallen dramatically since 1998." That's false, according to our calculations from statistics available from New York State's Division of Criminal Justice Services. In 1998, 88.1 percent of felonies prosecuted in the county resulted in convictions. In 2005, it was 90.3. That's an increase of 2.2 percentage points, not a decrease, much less a dramatic one.

Name-calling

The NRCC ads show a tendency to turn policy differences into name-calling attacks on personal character. An NRCC ad in Arizona called Democratic candidate Gabrielle Giffords “a hypocrite on taxes.” The ad misrepresents her actual position on federal taxes, however. It says she falsely claims to favor tax cuts, when in fact she supports repealing some of the tax cuts Republicans gave to corporations and wealthy individuals. She does favor extending “middle class” tax breaks such as a deduction for college tuition.

In Iowa, another name-calling ad characterizes Democratic candidate Bruce Braley as a "greedy trial lawyer." The ad complains that he "supported the suit for a woman spilling hot coffee on her lap." But the famous lawsuit against McDonald's was actually more substantial than late-night comics made it out to be. Stella Leibeck, the 79-year-old plaintiff, suffered third-degree burns over 6 per cent of her body, spent eight days in the hospital and required skin grafts, and McDonald's served its coffee at a scalding 180 and 190 degrees Fahrenheit, much hotter than coffee served at home.

Still more name-calling NRCC ads refer to Wisconsin Democrat Steve Kagen as "Dr. Millionaire," and one even calls him "Dr. Millionaire Know-It-All." Kagen is certainly a prosperous physician. But if being a millionaire disqualifies somebody from serving in the House of Representatives a slew of members will have to resign – 136, to be precise, or almost one-third, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Eighty-seven of them are Republicans, versus 49 Democrats. The "know-it-all" line refers to Kagen's desire to scrap President Bush's Medicare prescription drug benefit for one of his own design.

More smears

Democrats are not innocent when it comes to making false or misleading attacks on personal character, as regular readers of this site are well aware. For one example see our Oct. 18 article on a DCCC ad accusing Florida Republican Clay Shaw of profiting from a "drug deal" by trading in a pharmaceutical company's stock, which we found to be based on flimsy evidence at best.

But the pattern of deceptive and unfounded personal allegations contained in this year's NRCC ads is one we judge to be truly remarkable. Other examples:

*
Sued his patients. NRCC ads say Dr. Kagen “took legal action against eighty former patients.” Misleading. It's true that Kagen hired a collection agency that took a total of 80 patients to small claims court for arbitration of unpaid bills, but that was over the course of a 25-year career in which Kagen estimates he has seen 50,000 patients. Kagen says the agency deemed them all able to pay.
*
"Not paying his taxes on time" A North Carolina ad says of Democratic candidate Heath Shuler, "He's been caught again not paying his taxes on time." False. The unpaid taxes weren't "his" and payment wasn't his responsibility. The delinquent taxes were the fault of businessmen who bought a real-estate brokerage from Shuler and his brother in 2003. It's true that The Associated Press found that the brokerage, which still bears Shuler's name, owed $69,000 and had been chronically behind in paying local taxes, but Shuler at that point retained only a minority interest and no management chores. The taxes and penalties were paid after Shuler's lawyer threatened to sue the current managers if they didn't, according to The AP .

*
"Seven-year olds, tased!" An NRCC ad in Ohio includes a charge that Democratic Challenger John Cranley "voted to allow children as young as seven to be tased. Seven-year-olds, tased! With 50,000 volts of electricity." Misleading. Cincinnati police regulations already permit use of the X26 Taser, designed as a non-lethal weapon to incapacitate rather than kill, to subdue resisting suspects between the ages of 7 and 70. The ad refers to Cranley's vote on the Cincinnati City Council against raising that age minimum to 10. The Council voted 5-4 against raising the age after opponents cited concerns that batons or pepper spray would be more likely to harm a resisting subject.

*
"Fixed ticket" An Indiana ad includes a claim by a local prosecutor that Democratic challenger Brad Ellsworth tried to get his daughter’s speeding ticket “dismissed” because of his “position” as sheriff of an adjoining town. The ad includes an on-screen graphic that says, "Fixed Ticket." False. The ticket was paid. The prosecutor alleging that Ellsworth sought special treatment is a Republican who broached the issue for the first time in mid-October, a year and a half after the fact, and who says he does not recall Ellsworth's exact words. Ellsworth says he was seeking to get his daughter into an existing program that allowed first-time offenders to keep their driving records clean in return for paying higher fines. In any event, the prosecutor said his daughter did not qualify and the ticket stood.


Attack ads work

Both the NRCC and the DCCC are running negative ads because they believe they work. When the New York Times asked the NRCC's Chairman Reynolds why he wasn't running more positive ads, he burst out laughing. "If they [positive ads] moved things to the extent that negative ads move things, there would be more of them," the Times quoted him as saying.

As we said earlier, negative ads can convey information that is useful to voters – provided they avoid distortion. Many of the NRCC's ads fall well short of that standard.

- by Brooks Jackson, Viveca Novak, Justin Bank, James Ficaro and Emi Kolawole


Sources

Gary Craig, "Fighting for Rochester's Future/Campaign 2003: DA foes grapple over ad on crime," Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 31 Oct 2003.

Mark Weiner, " Sex-Call Spot is Called a New Low ," The Post-Standard, 21 Oct 2006.

"Ad Watch: Arcuri 1995 Rape Prosecution ," Observer-Dispatch. 12 Oct. 2006.

Kagen 4 Congress, "The Kagen Public Health Policy: Steve Kagen - On the Problems We Face Together," Issue Brief, 2006 (PDF).
Nicole Duran, "Kagen, Target of NRCC Ad, Hits Back," Roll Call. 14 Sept 2006.

Director of State Courts, " Guide to Small Claims Court," Wisconsin Court System, July 2006. (PDF)

“Participating Physicians Directory,” US Department of Health & Human Services , Updated: 19 Oct. 2006.

Tim Whitmire, " Heath Shuler-Linked Firm Pays Back Taxes," The Associated Press , 22 Sep 2006.

Gavin Lesnick, "Prosecutor, Ellsworth Spar," Evansville Courier & Press, 15 Oct 2006.

Ryan Lenz, " GOP accuses Ellsworth of intervening in daughter's traffic ticket ," Associated Press, 15 Oct 2006.

Greg Korte, "Cincinnati Council defeats Teaser ban on kids a 3rd time," The Cincinatti Enquirer, 27 Jan 2005.

Kevin Osborne, "Council Locks 4-4 on Taser Limit," The Cincinnati Post, 6 Jan 2005.

McNair, James. "Erpenbeck Bankers Hope for Mercy," The Cincinnati Enquirer , 25 Jan. 2005.

Tom Duffy, "The enduring legend of McDonald's coffee," Lawyers Weekly USA , 22 Nov 2004.

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Documents Shed New Light on Pentagon Surveillance of Peace Activists; Defense Department Tracked Quakers, Student Groups

aclu.org
Documents Shed New Light on Pentagon Surveillance of Peace Activists
Defense Department Tracked Quakers, Student Groups

NEW YORK -- Documents released today (10/12/2006) by the American Civil Liberties Union reveal new details of Pentagon surveillance of Americans opposed to the Iraq war, including Quakers and student groups. The documents show that the Pentagon was keeping tabs on non-violent protesters by collecting information and storing it in a military anti-terrorism database.

"There is simply no reason why the United States military should be monitoring the peaceful activities of American citizens who oppose U.S. war policies," said ACLU attorney Ben Wizner. "When information about non-violent protest activity is included in a military anti-terrorism database, all Americans should be concerned about the unchecked authority this administration has seized in the name of fighting terrorism."

The documents come in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU earlier this year after evidence surfaced that the Pentagon was secretly conducting surveillance of protest activities, anti-war organizations and groups opposed to military recruitment policies. The Pentagon shared the information with other government agencies through the Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON) database.

The TALON database was intended to track groups or individuals with links to terrorism, but the documents released today show that the Pentagon gathered information on anti-war protesters using sources from the Department of Homeland Security, local police departments and FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces.

Among the documents are reports on protest activities across the country organized or supported by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker peace group. The source for the information is identified as "a special agent of the federal protective service, U.S. Department of Homeland Security," who is apparently on the AFSC e-mail list.

One document, which is labeled "potential terrorist activity," lists events such as a "Stop the War NOW!" rally in Akron, Ohio on March 19, 2005. The source noted that the rally "will have a March and Reading of Names of War Dead" and that marchers would pass a military recruitment station and the local FBI office along the way.

Also included in the documents is information on a series of protests mistakenly identified as taking place in Springfield, Illinois (the protests actually occurred in Springfield, Massachusetts). According to the document, "Source received an e-mail from the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), e-mail address: [REDACTED] that stated that on March 18-20, a series of protest actions were planned in the Springfield, IL area… to focus on actions at military recruitment offices with the goals to include: raising awareness, education, visibility in community, visibility to recruiters as part of a national day of action."

"Spying on citizens for merely executing their constitutional rights of free speech and peaceful assembly is chilling and marks a troubling trend," said Joyce Miller, AFSC Assistant General Secretary for Justice and Human Rights. "Our country is built upon a system of checks and balances. The Pentagon’s actions violate the rule of law and strike a severe blow against our Constitution."

Another document provides further details of surveillance of a protest planned by the Broward Anti-War Coalition during the Fort Lauderdale Air & Sea Show, which was previously revealed in an NBC news report. The document released today reveals that the Miami-Dade Police Department provided the Defense Department with information on the protest, and that the U.S. Army Recruiting Command and the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Miami were also briefed on the planned protest, which was intended to "counter military recruitment and the ‘pro-war’ message with ‘guerrilla theater and other forms of subversive propaganda.’"

The ACLU said it is concerned that the Defense Department cites acts of civil disobedience and vandalism as cause to label anti-war protests as "radical" and potential terrorist threats in some of the TALON reports. In a document listing upcoming Atlanta area protests by the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition, the Pentagon - citing the Department of Homeland Security as its source - states that the Students for Peace and Justice network poses a threat to DOD personnel.

To support that claim, the TALON report cites previous acts of civil disobedience in California and Texas, including sit-ins, disruptions at recruitment offices and street theater. Describing one protest in Austin, Texas, the document notes: "The protesters blocked the entrance to the recruitment office with two coffins, one draped with an American flag and the other covered with an Iraqi flag, taped posters on the window of the office and chanted, ‘No more war and occupation. You don’t have to die for an education.’"

"The Pentagon has gone too far in collecting information on Americans who pose no real threat to national security," said Wizner. "It is an abuse of power and an abuse of trust for the military to play any role in monitoring critics of administration policies."

The documents released today are online at:
www.aclu.org/safefree/spying/27047lgl20060828.html (Florida protests)
www.aclu.org/safefree/spying/27046lgl20060912.html (Georgia, California and Texas protests)
www.aclu.org/safefree/spying/27045lgl20060912.html (AFSC protests in Massachusetts and Ohio)

More information on government surveillance of Americans is online at: www.aclu.org/spyfiles.

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Military announces death of 97th GI

Military announces death of 97th GI
Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military said Friday a U.S. soldier had been killed northeast of the capital, raising to 97 the number of American forces killed in Iraq during October, now the fourth deadliest month since the war began.

The soldier was assigned to the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, was wounded in combat in Diyala province on Thursday, "and later died of wounds," the military statement said.

The soldier's name was not released pending notification of the family.

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House Investigators: Hastert's Office Hindered Corruption Probe

cq.com
Investigators Say Speaker’s Aide Hindered Inquiry of Hill Security Contracts
By Steven T. Dennis, CQ Staff

Two former House committee investigators who were examining Capitol Hill security upgrades said a senior aide to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert hindered their efforts before they were abruptly ordered to stop their probe last year.

The former Appropriations Committee investigators said Ted Van Der Meid, Hastert’s chief counsel, resisted from the start the inquiry, which began with concerns about mismanagement of a secret security office and later probed allegations of bid-rigging and kickbacks from contractors to a Defense Department employee.

Ronald Garant and a second Appropriations Committee investigator who asked not to be identified said Van Der Meid engaged in “screaming matches” with investigators and told at least one aide not to talk to them. Van Der Meid also prohibited investigators from visiting certain sites to check up on the effectiveness of the work, the investigators said.

Van Der Meid oversaw Capitol security upgrades for Hastert, R-Ill., and worked closely with the office that was charged with implementing them, the investigators said.

K. Lee Blalack, a lawyer for Van Der Meid, said Friday that neither he nor Van Der Meid would comment on the matter.

John Scofield, a spokesman for the Appropriations Committee, said the former investigators were taken off of the investigation, but denied that it was terminated.

“Nothing has been closed down on this study,” Scofield said. “It is a pending study.”

Scofield said it was a case of “sour grapes” because the investigators’ contracts were not renewed. He also said the case was assigned to more senior staff, whom he declined to identify.

The inquiry began in late 2003 or early 2004 and was authorized by former Appropriations Chairman C.W. Bill Young, R-Fla., and the panel’s top Democrat, David R. Obey of Wisconsin. The probe focused on the office entrusted with ensuring continuity of Congress in the event of a terrorist or other attack. That office had grown from a sleepy Cold War relic to one that was spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on numerous security upgrades on and off Capitol Hill in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strikes and anthrax attacks the following month.

The investigation was carried out by members of the Appropriations panel’s Surveys and Investigations team, which looks into charges of waste and abuse.

Robert Pearre, the team’s director, ordered the investigators to stop their work on the security contracts in the fall of 2005. Before that, the investigators said they were looking into allegations that security contractors had showered a Defense Department employee with kickbacks in the form of Redskins tickets, golf outings, a set of golf clubs and meals. The allegations of kickbacks did not implicate congressional aides.

The investigators also said they were looking into concerns expressed by contractors that some of the security upgrades would fail to work in the event of a terrorist attack.

The office in charge of the upgrades was funded through the Defense Department and overseen by the Capitol Police Board, but the Speaker’s office took a lead role because of Hastert’s status as third in line to the presidency, the investigators said.

According to the investigators, Van Der Meid sought to stop their investigation shortly after it began.

“We got called into his office,” said Garant, who served previously in the Defense Department’s Comptroller’s Office before becoming an investigator for the Appropriations Committee. Van Der Meid shouted at them, Garant said: “What the [expletive] are you looking at this for? . . . He wanted to shut the operation down right then and there.”

According to the investigators, Van Der Meid was reluctantly persuaded to allow the inquiry into the security upgrades to go forward but continually hindered the investigators’ work.

“They had resisted all along,” the other investigator said about the Speaker’s office. Nonetheless the investigator said he was “stunned” when the inquiry was shelved about a year ago. Pearre, a former FBI agent, had strongly backed the inquiry until shortly before he ordered them to stop their work on it.

The order was “get out of there by sundown,” Garant said, referring to the secure offices they had used for the probe because of its sensitive nature.

Garant said the investigators believed that the Speaker’s office had successfully pressured appropriators to stop their inquiry. “From our perspective it was obvious. . . . The only people who would give a [expletive] was the Speaker’s office because this was an organization very close to them.”

Scofield said that neither Van Der Meid nor the Speaker’s office had ordered that the investigation be shut down.

Rob Nabors, the committee Democratic staff director, declined through a spokeswoman to comment for this story.

Lisa C. Miller, a spokeswoman for Hastert’s office, would not comment directly on Van Der Meid’s role in the investigation. “What I can tell you is what John Scofield has told you is what I know to be true,” she said. “Beyond that, everything else is highly classified.”

The investigation was launched under Young, who had a rocky relationship with House leaders, after the secret continuity office failed to spend more than $100 million before the appropriations expired, prompting an urgent and tardy request to have the money re-appropriated just as another Defense spending bill was being finalized.

The committee and its staff had to scramble to find room in the budget, and launched its investigation of the office.

Young said he does not recall the details surrounding the start of the inquiry.

The former Appropriations chairman said that after the Sept. 11 attacks his panel initially oversaw improvements to the Capitol Hill campus, including protective coatings that were added to windows to reduce the potential damage from a truck bomb. At some point, oversight of upgrades was taken over by House leadership, Young said.

“We were in effect put out of the process by the leadership office,” Young said. “The last two years of my chairmanship they basically cut me out of the loop.”

By the time the investigators said they were ordered to drop their work, Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., had taken over as Appropriations chairman amid expectations by House GOP leaders that he would be more of a team player than Young.

Unsuccessful bidders were the source of some, but not all, of the allegations of problems with the security contracts.

One would-be vendor complained that bid requests drawn up by the Army Corps of Engineers were drafted in such a way that only one contractor would be eligible for the work, Garant said.

“You don’t know how much of it was sour grapes and how much of it was real, but there was enough of it that you started to think there was something here,” Garant said.

Investigators said that in addition to allegations of bid-rigging and kickbacks, they were looking into allegations that some security upgrades would fail to work.

“The word was that what they were trying to do was physically or technically impossible to do but that they were spending a heck of a lot of money trying to do it,” said Garant.

The other investigator said he was told that “people are going to die” because the upgrades would fail to do the job.

“That whole organization was very, very secret and very few people even knew that it existed, but it was a great dispenser of money,” said Garant, who was dismissed in March from his position as a contract investigator.

The Appropriations Committee’s investigation team, formed in 1943, has been in turmoil for several years. The upheaval culminated last week in Chairman Lewis’ decision to dismiss all 60 remaining contractors on the investigative staff, which included many retired investigators from the FBI, CIA and other government agencies. A permanent staff of 16 remains.

Scofield said last week that the contractors’ dismissals were part of a “bipartisan review” of the staff, and said the staff’s work recently “has not been that good.”

Committee Democrats have not commented on the dismissals.

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Lynne Cheney: LYING LIAR

Huffington Post
Martin Lewis
Lynne Cheney: LYING LIAR

"I have never written anything sexually explicit..." - Lynne Cheney on CNN "The Situation Room" - October 27th 2006.

Lynne Cheney - you are a liar. A lying liar. And as an author who is currently hyping a book targeted at children - you should be especially ashamed of the flagrant tissue of lies that spewed from your lips today.

Please explain the presence of the lesbian love affair, brothels and attempted rapes in your serious literary work "Sisters" (1981)

And what is the character of the Vice President in your book "The Body Politic" (1988) doing to his mistress at the precise moment when he has a heart attack? Playing mahjong perhaps?

Here's a link to "Sisters" - especially interesting to social conservatives and Virginia voters who wish to see how the Vice President's wife extols "family values":

Read the entire book online. (Kleenex not included)

Further Reading:

"Sisters" (1981) (ISBN 0-451-11204-0)
"The Body Politic" (1988) (ISBN 0-312-97963-0)

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Furor Over Cheney Remark on Tactics for Terror Suspects

The New York Times
Furor Over Cheney Remark on Tactics for Terror Suspects
By NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 — The White House found itself fending off questions on Friday about what Vice President Dick Cheney meant when he agreed with a talk-radio host that there was nothing wrong with dunking a terrorism suspect in water if it saved lives.

Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said Mr. Cheney was not endorsing water-boarding, a coercive interrogation technique that simulates drowning and that many have said qualifies as torture. Mr. Snow said Mr. Cheney was not, in fact, referring to any technique, whether it was torture or not, because administration officials do not discuss interrogation methods.

President Bush was also confronted by reporters about Mr. Cheney’s comments as he made a joint appearance with Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the secretary general of NATO. “This country does not torture; we’re not going to torture,” Mr. Bush said, without referring directly to Mr. Cheney or his comments.

The questioning was set off when Mr. Cheney was interviewed Tuesday by Scott Hennen, a conservative radio talk show host in Fargo, N.D. “Would you agree that a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?” Mr. Hennen asked.

“Well, it’s a no-brainer for me,” Mr. Cheney replied.

“But for a while there I was criticized as being the vice president for torture. We don’t torture. That’s not what we’re involved in.”

Mr. Snow, who spent much of his day dealing with questions about the comments, told reporters that none of them related to interrogation techniques, which are classified. “I’m telling you what the vice president’s view is, which is it wasn’t about waterboarding. Period,” he said.

The exchanges grew testy at times, especially when Mr. Snow said Mr. Cheney is not someone who slips up. One reporter noted that the vice president had once used a profanity on the Senate floor, and also shot a friend in the face during a hunting accident last February.

“That’s a great line,” Mr. Snow said, “but it’s not germane.”

Waterboarding is actually not a dunk in the water, but rather, covering a subject’s face with a constantly soaked cloth to make breathing difficult. It has been reported as having been used on some suspected members of Al Qaeda who were secretly held by the Central Intelligence Agency until their transfer last month to the United States detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch, said, “If Iran or Syria detained an American, Cheney is saying that it would be perfectly fine for them to hold that American’s head under water until he nearly drowns, if that’s what they need to do to save Iranian or Syrian lives.”

When Mr. Cheney’s wife, Lynne, was asked on CNN about the comments, she told Wolf Blitzer: “That is a mighty house you’re building on top of that mole hill there, a mighty mountain. This is complete distortion. He didn’t say anything of the kind.”

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Blackwater Hires Ken Starr to Defend Against Charges made in "Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers."

Huffington Post
Rick Jacobs
Blackwater Hires Ken Starr to Defend Against Charges made in "Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers."

As stated in the terrific blog post and Nation article by Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater Security Consulting, a company hardly on the lips of the American public, hired Ken Starr to try to use the Supreme Court as a blunt instrument to dismiss murder charges against it. As evocatively depicted in the film Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers, Blackwater sent four men to their deaths in Fallujah in March, 2004.

While few know Blackwater, we all remember the horrific picture of the charred hulks that were once people left dangling from a bridge. Blackwater sent these men into the most dangerous city on the planet (quite literally, although thanks to the Bush Administration's excellent work, several other cities in Iraq now compete for that title), without proper protection, support or even maps. The result was predictable, but no less horrifying. Not only were these fine men killed by a mob outraged at the US Government, but Marines had to enter the city to retrieve the bodies, thus beginning the spiral toward outright war against American troops that has become Iraq since then.

The families of some of those men sued Blackwater for as close a charge to murder as they could get, demanding recompense for the deaths at something greater than the standard $4,200 a month or so that the military pays out as survivor benefits. Since Blackwater is a private company, and since it acted recklessly at best, the families reason that they should be entitled to some reasonable monetary damages for the outrage. Blackwater's Eric Prince, one of the largest donors to the Republican Party and to right wing causes generally, has fought the families' rights to sue. As told clearly by the Nation, his lawyers have argued consistently that Blackwater is covered by the Military Base Act and is therefore in essence a part of the US Government, so it should not stand trial for the negligent and outrageous deaths.

Knowing that the last resort before having to stand trial is the Supreme Court, Mr. Prince used his millions and clout to hire Ken Starr, who so willingly squandered tens of millions of dollars to attack President Clinton, only to discover that no wrong had been done by him. The Nation quotes an expert who speculates that Mr. Starr's Republican credentials and close personal relationships to justices of the Supreme Court will not help him with this case, but rather his one intellect will. Who knows? My guess is that Mr. Prince hired Mr. Starr for another reason: to fend off the Congressional investigations and inevitable charges by a US Government not completely bought and sold by Mr. Prince. (Iraq for Sale and the web site show how his easy money bought insider lobbyists to keep his contracts after Fallujah.) Those charges eventually will likely be against Blackwater for conspiracy to defraud the taxpayers of the United States of America. Since Mr. Starr has considerable experience with wasting taxpayers' money, he'll know just what to do when defending Mr. Prince against the most serious charge of all: war profiteering, in his case literally over the dead bodies of his employees.

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Halliburton exploited federal regulations to hide details on its contract performance

Yahoo! News
Report: Halliburton unit exploited rules
By ANNE PLUMMER FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer

The Halliburton subsidiary that provides food, shelter and other logistics to U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan exploited federal regulations to hide details on its contract performance, according to a report released Friday.

The special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction found that Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown & Root Services routinely marked all information it gave to the government as proprietary, whether it was or not. The government promises not to disclose proprietary data so a company's most valuable information is not divulged to its competitors.

By marking all information proprietary — including such normally releasable data as labor rates — the company abused federal regulations, the report says.

In effect, Kellogg, Brown & Root turned the regulations "into a mechanism to prevent the government from releasing normally transparent information, thus potentially hindering competition and oversight."

Halliburton spokeswoman Cathy Mann said that since the current contract is being reviewed and may be divided among several contractors, "It is clearly appropriate to mark data as proprietary that could potentially be used for competitive purposes" as would be the case in any new contract.

She said such proprietary markings have been used on a majority of the data for at least the last decade, and the company will work with the military on matters outlined in the interim report as the final audit is completed.

The Iraq reconstruction audits have routinely found significant problems with contracting and rebuilding in the country, ranging from high costs for security and overhead to alleged fraud and lack of oversight.

Sen. Byron Dorgan (news, bio, voting record) of North Dakota, chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee, said that in 13 oversight hearings on the war in Iraq the committee found more than $1 billion in waste, fraud, abuse and what it called "shoddy work" by contractors.

"I'm convinced that this is the most significant waste, fraud and abuse in the history of this country," Dorgan said.

If the Democrats take control of the Senate, he said, they will launch oversight hearings on war matters ranging from faulty intelligence leading up to the war to wrongdoing by contractors.

___

AP Writer Laurie Kellman contributed to this report.

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Why do the Republicans Keep Telling Their Candidates to Run on the Economy?

Huffington Post
Jeff Madrick
Why do the Republicans Keep Telling Their Candidates to Run on the Economy?

You have to wonder why the Republicans keep telling their candidates to run on the economy. Bill Frist earlier this week talked about drawing attention away from the Iraq War and stressing the strong economy. President Bush keeps talking up a strong economy. Why do the surveys say people are worried about the economy when Gross Domestic Product is up and unemployment is down, they ask.
Must be the media. If anything, the media have been telling it the Republican way.

Well, one of those favorite headline stats came up bad today, reflecting long-simmering concerns among the allegedly misled public. GDP, the government estimates, grew at an annual pace of only 1.2 percent between July and September. It hasn't grown that slowly in a few years. A main reason was the big drop in home buying, which means less spending on construction and the sinking housing market may subdue consumer buying power a lot because so much spending depends on borrowing against the value of the house.

But the key point is that economy's problems started long before this. The two headline stats--GDP and the unemployment rate-- don't tell the real story. This five years expansion has been crummy for anyone but assorted business owners and hedge fund operators. The confusion is that we keep thinking the GDP is, well, the economy. In fact, GDP is a useful but arbitrary construction of economists, going back before Adam Smith but only formalized seventy or so years ago. It measures the final goods and service a nation produces. The flip side of GDP is that this production creates the nation's income: its salaries, wages, business profits, interest, rent.

So the economy in modern usage is the income the nation generates each year. A rising GDP, as America has enjoyed fairly consistently since 2002, means there's more income to go around. But this doesn't tell us anything about who gets the money.

Similarly, a low unemployment rate doesn't tell us anything about whether everyone who wants a job is really looking for one. And it sure doesn't tell us what wages they are getting when they get that job.

GDP has been expanding nicely, sure, but the income is going to business profits, not working Americans, who by the way includes almost all of us.

Nikolaos Papanikolaou, a grad student at our think tank at The New School, the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis, calculated the follow data on family incomes. In 2000, the typical family--the median family right in the middle of the pack-- earned $57,715 adjusted for inflation. In 2005, the median family earned less, $56,194. Meantime, business profits boomed, the stock market went back up, and hedge fund operators are spending their fortunes on the world's best art, biggest yachts, and fastest polo ponies.

So think what's happened to Americans during the Bush economy. Rising gas prices first scared Americans, who after all hadn't gotten a raise for five years. Gas price relief earlier this year wasn't going to mollify them. Add to this rising healthcare costs, college tuitions, rents, and mortgage rates--and a whole lot of talk about collapsing home prices. Meantime, many Americans are looking at a pile of debt, wondering how they can work even more hours than they do and take care of the kids, and scared that if they lose a job, they won't only lose a salary but also healthcare insurance for the family. The pride of the Bush administration, the tax cuts, largely went to the very rich, and weren't enough for middle income Americans to allay deeper concerns about their future standard of living.

One last point. Economists are mostly mystified about why family income and wages haven't been rising. No one puts much stock in the knowledge of economists, granted. But the collective confusion is offputting. Democrats are increasingly united around demanding an increase in the minimum wage. But if Democrats take a Congressional house or two in a couple of weeks, some much more serious thinking ought to be done about what's happened to an economy that economic theory maintains should lift all boats. Some subjects for discussion: a government-supported living wage; vigorously protecting the right to form unions; raising taxes on the well-off to support needed social programs; a renewed effort to end racial and gender discrimination on the job; and serious, courageous thinking about how to get healthcare costs under control and get everyone covered by insurance, whether or not they have a great job.

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Johnny Reb Allen's Swift Boating Of Jim Webb

Huffington Post
Bob Cesca
Johnny Reb Allen's Swift Boating Of Jim Webb

Bear with me as I try to figure out this Jim Webb situation. Senator Allen and the mighty GOP cabal is making a big deal about several historical novels written by Jim Webb and endorsed by Senator McCain which depict the horrors of the Vietnam war. The horrors include sexual references and acts which many veterans observed in the war. This somehow proves Jim Webb's lack of character.

Am I getting it so far?

Good. Let's continue.

Senator Allen and many of his fellow right wing parrots never served in Vietnam or in any war for that matter and one of the only Republicans who did in fact serve in Vietnam is actually on the record claiming the book is a vivid depiction of the some of the war's atrocities.

Got it. But wait...

Senator Allen, meanwhile, made a cameo appearance in the awful movie Gods and Generals (in the interest of fairness, Stephen Lang, who played Stonewall Jackson, was brilliant). Gods and Generals, apart from being a preachy love letter to the Confederacy with an editorial pace which made it seem only about two minutes shorter than the actual war, contained repeated instances of the word "darkies" to describe slaves while glorifying the generals who engaged in what technically amounted to an organized military and political insurrection against the United States. Senator Allen is seen in the movie singing the Bonnie Blue Flag lyric, "Hurrah! Hurrah! For Southern rights, hurrah!" implying, in part, the right to own slaves. Senator Allen, when you boil it right down, portrayed a traitor against the United States. An insurgent, if you will.
gag-allen.jpg

Yet few would be insane enough to indict Allen for this, other than his taste in writer/directors. It was a movie about actual events and actual behavior in Virginia during the American Civil War. He was involved in a production which fictionalized actual historical events -- events which included the ugliness of American war. Even after repeated allegations of racism, no-one I can think of has actually made an argument against Allen based on his Gods and Generals appearance. If anything, the Republicans could've made a gigantic hoohah over the fact that Allen appeared in the same scene as "far-left secular progressive" Ted Turner who, by the way, financed the movie and portrayed a Confederate officer.

That said, Senator Allen has again exposed his own lack of character and, more than anything, his myriad of political weaknesses in this latest desperate smear of his opponent. Allen dressed up in the mustache and the butternut uniform in a movie about the Southern rebellion. Webb actually served meritoriously in the Vietnam war. Allen literally pretended to be a soldier which is as close as he ever got to military service. What's more is he pretended to be a man who engaged in treason against the United States. Webb described ugly truths he witnessed in wartime and its aftermath.

Now tell me -- because maybe I'm missing it -- does Senator Allen and his chickenhawk supporters in the wingnut media have a leg to stand on? Does Lynn Cheney, who's written salacious books and whose husband received five deferments from the draft during Vietnam ("Dick did not"), have any right to impugn Jim Webb on CNN? Do the hypocrite roster. It's not too difficult. Check out some of Arnold's movies. Check out what the president and others did while members of Yale's Skull & Bones society.

At the end of the day, the Rove Republicans have once again highlighted how shameless they can truly be. Not only have they brazenly and without remorse attacked the patriotism of decorated veterans like Max Cleland and Senator McCain, but now they're attacking a decorated veteran who wrote about the war. They've ripped these passages out of context for the easily led masses and posted them on Drudge. Then, in the most ridiculous strategic move in this outrageous stratagem, they pooped out Lynn Cheney and dumped her in CNN's lap to perpetuate this trumped up outrage against a Vietnam war veteran.

Now Jim Webb, a well-vetted Reagan appointee, has been forced to defend his stories of the war. Likewise, Michael J. Fox has been forced to defend his Parkinson's symptoms. What kind of party is this which controls our entire government and most of our media right now? It's surely a party which hasn't deserved a single second of that kind of success. And the only reason why they've managed to attain this power is very simply because they're good at, as Karl Rove quoted from City Slickers this week, "one thing." That one thing is manipulation. They manipulate you and everyone they encounter through fear, deception and ignorance of the truth. They manipulate good people into defending themselves when no defense would otherwise have been required.

I think I've grasped this now. Thanks for your patience.

A final note to anyone who's written about the atrocities of the Iraq War and who plans to one day serve in politics. Delete now -- especially if there's a chapter about Abu Ghraib containing the phrase "naked men smeared with feces forming a human pyramid." Who knows what brand of futuristic cyberwingnut will try to nail you on it.

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Ex-Bush aide Safavian gets 18-month prison term

Reuters
Ex-Bush aide Safavian gets 18-month prison term
By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Bush administration official David Safavian was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Friday for lying and obstructing justice in connection with the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal that has ensnared Republicans.

Safavian, 39, a former chief of staff of the General Services Administration (GSA) and ex-White House budget office appointee, received the prison term less than two weeks before elections that will determine whether Republicans keep control of the U.S. Congress.

Besides the Iraq war, ethics breaches have dominated many Senate and House of Representatives campaigns, allowing Democrats to accuse Republicans of fostering a "culture of corruption" in Washington.

"I stand here contrite and ashamed," a tearful Safavian told U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman at his sentencing. He acknowledged he should not have given disgraced Washington lobbyist Abramoff information on the GSA, but did not admit to the four charges of concealing his dealings with Abramoff.

Safavian's lawyers are expected to appeal the conviction, during which time he could remain free.

Before sentencing Safavian, Friedman scolded, "The truth is he doesn't accept responsibility for the offenses" that the judge called "a classic case of abuse of trust."

But Friedman rejected the government's request for a tougher prison term for Safavian. "He did not give or receive bribes, he did not enrich himself ... he did not give away contracts."

Reflecting on the Abramoff lobbying scandal that has engulfed Washington, Friedman said Safavian had joined an "environment that frankly has become more and more corrupt."

In another Abramoff case, Ohio Republican Rep. Bob Ney pleaded guilty on October 13 to illegally accepting trips, meals and other items worth tens of thousands of dollars in return for doing favors for Abramoff and his clients.

Safavian was with Ney and others on a lavish golf trip to Scotland in 2002 that Abramoff arranged.

Prosecutors said Safavian lied about his involvement in Abramoff's attempts to do business with GSA, including a possible acquisition of a historic post office near the White House.

The White House has played down its relations with Abramoff. Safavian is the only former White House official convicted and sentenced to prison in the scandal.

But earlier this month, Susan Ralston, an aide to President George W. Bush's top political adviser Karl Rove, resigned after a congressional report said she had passed White House information to Abramoff while accepting tickets to sporting and entertainment events from the ex-lobbyist.

DOING FAVORS

Government lawyers said Safavian used his government positions to unfairly advantage Abramoff over three years. They said that when confronted, Safavian lied to protect himself.

Abramoff pleaded guilty in January to defrauding lenders in a Florida casino-ship deal and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors in the Washington influence-peddling probe.

On June 20, a federal jury convicted Safavian on four counts of lying and obstructing justice. He was acquitted on another charge of obstructing justice.

Safavian is the only person linked to Abramoff to have gone to trial. Others have pleaded guilty.

Safavian was chief of staff at the General Services Administration from 2002 to 2004. The agency manages government offices and procures material for the federal workforce. After leaving GSA, Safavian became chief procurement officer at the White House budget office.

The Abramoff scandal has touched several members of Congress, mostly Republicans. Two former aides to ex-Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, the former House majority leader, also have been convicted. DeLay resigned in June while fighting unrelated campaign-finance charges in Texas and being dogged by questions about relations with Abramoff.

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Senate campaign turns to seamy fiction in finale

Reuters
Senate campaign turns to seamy fiction in finale

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. congressional election campaigns, already dominated by negative advertising, took a seamy turn on Friday as a Republican incumbent seized on sexually explicit passages from a Democratic opponent's novel.

Virginia Republican Sen. George Allen, in a tight race for re-election with Democratic challenger and Vietnam veteran James Webb, issued a press release citing racy passages from five of Webb's military novels.

The excerpts included passages that detailed underage sex scenes and scenes that could be construed as demeaning to women.

Webb told The Washington Post Radio on Friday the release of the excerpts was "a Karl Rove campaign tactic" and a "classic example of the way this campaign has worked. It's smear after smear." Rove is the top White House political adviser.

Webb defended his fiction as "illuminative" and complained that the interviewer read the sexually charged passages from his books on the radio.

The Allen campaign's tactic came during a week in which the Republican National Committee released an advertisement aimed at a Democratic candidate for the Senate from Tennessee, Harold Ford.

That ad pointed out that Ford had attended a Playboy party and it included a bare-shouldered white woman urging the black Ford to give her a call sometime. Some complained the ad was racist before it was withdrawn.

In defense of his books, Webb referred to a novel written by Vice President Dick Cheney's wife Lynne, which the Democratic Senate campaign committee later said "featured brothels and attempted rapes."

In a CNN interview, Lynne Cheney refuted those claims. "I have never written anything sexually explicit," she said.

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Web site offers to 'fix' elections -- for a price

computerworld.com
Web site offers to 'fix' elections -- for a price
Robert McMillan

October 27, 2006 (IDG News Service) "Winning is everything."

That's the mantra of Election Partners Ltd., whose slick Fixavote.com Web site offers such services as "real-time voter correction," and "enhanced retrospective tallying." The site features attractive stock-photography models and inspirational New Age music.

"Using state of the art technology, we overcome the challenges of competition and ensure election results for our clients," the Web site states.

But according to electronic-voting experts the site is most likely satire.

The company's 800 number was answered by a man identifying himself as Darius Parker, who claimed to be a consultant, and then president of the company. He refused to say whether or not the Web site is satire, but said that he had been contacted by representatives of about 30 political campaigns to date. "They're asking me the details of a specific geographic location and what I can do to enhance the election for them," he said.

Parker declined to elaborate on exactly what kind of services he is offering. "If you're not an employee or a representative of a campaign, there's really not much I can tell you," he said.

The fixavote.com domain is registered by Domains by Proxy Inc., a Godaddy Inc. affiliate that can be used to conceal the name of the company or person who owns the Web site. Parker said he registered the domain about 45 days ago. Godaddy executives were not immediately available to comment.

With elections that may shift the balance of power in Congress less than two weeks away, the Web site seems designed to draw attention to the security concerns plaguing electronic voting.

Concerns have been mounting as the election nears. Last week, an anonymous source mailed copies of source code for Diebold Election Systems Inc.'s voting machines to a Mayland e-voting critic. And a month earlier, researchers at Princeton University disclosed that they had created vote-altering code that could be installed on Diebold hardware in less than a minute.

Ed Felten, a professor of computer science and one of the authors of the Princeton study said that fixavote.com "looks like satire to me. These services couldn't be provided lawfully."

However, what fixavote.com claims to offer may be technically feasible, he added. "If somebody were willing to break the law, it's within the realm of possibility."

Avi Rubin, a Johns Hopkins University computer science professor who has examined Diebold's source code, agreed that such offerings "might be possible," but said that he also believes the site is satire.

"I suppose it depends on whether they know something about the way the machines were programmed that I don't know," he said via e-mail. "The fact that it's impossible to know whether such a thing is possible is really the big problem."

The company, which also does business under the name Election Consultants, certainly seems confident.

"Election Consultants is so confident in our ability to secure a desirable outcome for your next election, that we guarantee complete satisfaction," the Web site says. "If any individual precinct covered by our services fails to deliver promised results, then all fees will be waived."

Then the fine print: "Guarantee does not include precincts that use non-electronic voting equipment."

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