This nighttime movie of the depths of the north pole of Saturn taken by the visual infrared mapping spectrometer onboard NASA's Cassini Orbiter reveals a dynamic, active planet lurking underneath the ubiquitous cover of upper-level hazes. The defining feature of Saturn's north polar regions--the six-sided hexagon feature--is clearly visible in the image.
House Democrats are set today to bring in private sector lawyers -- at a cost of up to $225,000 over the next nine months -- to help committee staff investigate the Bush administration.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr., Michigan Democrat, has drawn up a contract with Washington law firm Arnold & Porter for help in his investigation of the firing of eight federal prosecutors last year, according to an unsigned copy of the contract obtained by The Washington Times.
The contract specifies that Arnold & Porter will subcontract with another firm, Deloitte & Touche, to "assist Democratic members of the Committee on the Judiciary with issues related to the termination of U.S. attorneys by the Bush administration, possible misrepresentations to Congress, interfering with investigations and matter related thereto."
The five-hour hearing also focused on Doan's involvement last year in a contract dispute with Sun Microsystems, a technology firm that GSA auditors allege had overcharged the government.
Waxman's committee heard testimony from Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who has also been examining the Sun deal.
Grassley testified that his investigators found evidence that Doan and her senior aides urged the agency's contracting staff to renew the contract, despite questions about alleged fraud and overcharging.
By August last year, three contracting officers had balked at renewing Sun's contract with the GSA.
Grassley said that despite "repeated warnings" to senior GSA officials in 2006 about the contract, GSA renewed the contract with Doan's blessing and "with no conditions, strings, or precautions regarding the alleged fraud."
Doan said she had an obligation to keep a close eye on the Sun contract and did nothing wrong. She said she did not "even know" the contract officials involved in negotiations. She said she urged a solution to a negotiation impasse with an important government contractor but did not intervene.
Each day, thousands of pieces of intelligence information from around the world -- field reports, captured documents, news from foreign allies and sometimes idle gossip -- arrive in a computer-filled office in McLean, where analysts feed them into the nation's central list of terrorists and terrorism suspects.
Called TIDE, for Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, the list is a storehouse for data about individuals that the intelligence community believes might harm the United States. It is the wellspring for watch lists distributed to airlines, law enforcement, border posts and U.S. consulates, created to close one of the key intelligence gaps revealed after Sept. 11, 2001: the failure of federal agencies to share what they knew about al-Qaeda operatives.
Witnesses have told congressional investigators that the chief of the General Services Administration and a deputy in Karl Rove's political affairs office at the White House joined in a videoconference earlier this year with top GSA political appointees, who discussed ways to help Republican candidates.I can think of no reason for such a presentation to the Government Services Administration.
With GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan and up to 40 regional administrators on hand, J. Scott Jennings, the White House's deputy director of political affairs, gave a PowerPoint presentation on Jan. 26 of polling data about the 2006 elections. ...
..On Wednesday, Doan is scheduled to appear before Waxman's committee to answer questions about the videoconference and other issues. The committee is investigating whether remarks made during the videoconference violated the Hatch Act, a federal law that restricts executive-branch employees from using their positions for political purposes. Those found in violation of the act do not face criminal penalties but can be removed from their jobs. ...This blog intends to cover this hearing.
... Doan, a wealthy former government contractor who sold her company before taking over the GSA last May, has hired three law firms and two media relations companies at her own expense to handle inquiries from the federal investigators and the news media. ...I knew Waxman was going to make Crisis Communications a growth industry.
Doan Denies 'Improper' Use of Agency for GOPI wonder who is going to prepare Fraser for her appearance before the Waxman committee. Crisis Communications is going to make a lot of money out of this Congress; but our industry is going to look bad, really bad.
Waxman's investigation began in response to a Jan. 19 story in The Washington Post about a no-bid job Doan tried to give to firms run by Edie Fraser, a veteran Washington public relations executive who had served as a paid consultant to Doan. Waxman's investigators concluded that the two women had "a long-standing business relationship" that was not "previously disclosed," according to Waxman's letter.
Between 2003 and 2005, Fraser billed Doan as much as $20,000 a month in consulting fees to "generally promote attributes" of Doan and her company, New Technology Management Inc., according to invoices obtained by The Post. In all, Doan paid at least $417,500 to companies affiliated with Fraser before Doan took over the GSA, according to Waxman's investigators.
Last year, Fraser helped prepare Doan for her GSA confirmation and lined up political support for her, according to interviews and e-mails obtained by The Post.
The U.S. tech sector is expected to grow slowly, but steadily, this year, driven by expanding overseas sales, a market research firm said Wednesday.
The projection is based on last year's trends, which are expected to continue in 2007, Forrester Research said. In the fourth quarter of 2006, the firm's U.S. Tech Sector Index rose two points from the third quarter and 5.6 points year to year to 128.8. That number reflected an increase in seven of the 11 indicators.
Four-fifths of all Web 2.0 investment was focused on U.S. start-ups, with $682.7 million plowed into 126 firms.
It's a very simple experiment in social networking and will likely die a slow, lingering and cached death.... but sure you never know :-)
In a speech delivered to the New England Newspaper Association this afternoon, JK spoke out about a strengthened FOIA which includes support for bloggers.
WASHINGTON, DC - Senator John Kerry today announced his support for a legislative initiative designed to assist the freedom of the press. The bill would make the federal Freedom of Information Act more powerful, primarily by making it harder for the Administration to deny or delay the release of information. It does that by requiring that an agency respond to FOIA requests within 20 business days and establishes a publicly available tracking system for requests.
In addition, the legislation would help bloggers, because it would prevent agencies from denying them a waiver on fees just because they are independent or not affiliated with any institutional news organization. In the past, the need to pay fees for FOIA requests discouraged many bloggers or independent journalists from pursuing FOIA requests.
... *) Hire a PR firm that specializes in Crisis Management. They exist. They have been through it before. They have probably helped people who have been in more hot water than you can imagine. Exxon’s negligence killed cute baby animals. You got depantsed by a 20 year old with a disassembler. I think they can handle it. They can also help with the first bullet. ...
An email sent by U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., may violate federal law and House Rules.The email from Bachmann's press secretary, Heidi Frederickson, was published on the weblog Dump Michele Bachmann. It had been sent from Frederickson's government account.
U.S. Attorney Firings and Abramoff-Related Emails sent from RNC and Other Outside Addresses Circumvent Mandatory Record-Keeping System
If I hand you, I don’t know, a tuna fish sandwich and you run away screaming, I didn’t give you a hoax bomb, you’re just an idiot ...
The lawsuit represents the biggest face-off between old and new media since the Recording Industry Association of America forced Napster to shut down its song-trading system in 2001. And it could force changes in the delivery of the Internet's biggest draw, its free content, analysts say.
Or it could be a negotiating tactic: Media companies have watched with both fascination and fear as YouTube, which was purchased by search-engine giant Google in November for $1.76 billion, has exploded into a hugely popular online destination, where millions of people view and post videos and short films ranging from the mundane to the bizarre.
In the wake of Steve Jobs' call to eliminate anti-copying technology, are the music and movie industries poised to move from protection to monitoring?
The debate over digital-rights management is coming to a head. On the one hand, efforts to implement technology to prevent the copying of consumer-oriented entertainment is increasingly viewed as ineffective. Indeed, no less an industry figure than Apple CEO Steve Jobs has called for the elimination of DRM. At the same time, content providers continue to search for a magic technical elixir that'll protect their revenue streams against unauthorized copying.
Microsoft's new operating system hasn't revealed any gaping security holes, but some influential users are holding back for other reasons.
In 1996, Congress intended to keep government ahead of the curve by amending the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to require that agencies put more public information on their Web sites. Posting important and most-requested records online, the theory went, would burn through a raft of hard-copy FOIA requests, save money and eliminate waiting time.
The new federal rules do not specifically address an important aspect of the e-discovery battlefield, though: what to do about "metadata," the "data about data" that is part of every electronically stored document or file that, typically, went unnoticed in the age when producing hard copy documents was the norm. So when must metadata be produced? Recent case law illustrates that the new rules do not address the question directly.
Securities regulators yesterday halted trading in nearly three dozen companies -- the initial salvo in "Operation Spamalot," a campaign to block e-mails promoting stocks to unsuspecting investors.
The recording industry is dusting off an old tactic in its never-ending effort to crack down on pirated music: Target the college kids.
So far this year, the music industry's trade group has sent out hundreds of complaints to students, pressured school administrators to take tougher anti-piracy measures and tried shaming colleges into doing better by putting out a list of the top offending schools.
She graduated Phi Beta Kappa, has published in top legal journals and completed internships at leading institutions in her field. So when the Yale law student interviewed with 16 firms for a job this summer, she was concerned that she had only four call-backs. She was stunned when she had zero offers.
Though it is difficult to prove a direct link, the woman thinks she is a victim of a new form of reputation-maligning: online postings with offensive content and personal attacks that can be stored forever and are easily accessible through a Google search.
Asked by one of Libby's lawyers if he had talked about Plame with anybody else before outing her in his column, Novak said he'd discussed her with a lobbyist named Richard Hohlt. Who, the lawyer pressed, is Hohlt? "He's a very good source of mine" whom I talk to "every day," Novak replied. Indeed, Hohlt is such a good source that after Novak finished his column naming Plame, he testified, he did something most journalists rarely do: he gave the lobbyist an advance copy of his column. What Novak didn't tell the jury is what the lobbyist then did with it: Hohlt confirmed to NEWSWEEK that he faxed the forthcoming column to their mutual friend Karl Rove (one of Novak's sources for the Plame leak), thereby giving the White House a heads up on the bombshell to come.
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Marsh Inc., the world’s leading risk and insurance services firm, today announced that former Vice President Al Gore will be the keynote speaker at the firm’s client breakfast, May 1, during the annual conference of the Risk & Insurance Management Society (RIMS) in New Orleans.
During the past few months, the Federal Trade Commission has filed deceptive- advertising cases against two distributors of what is called adware or spyware. The insidious form of software subjects consumers and their computers to unwanted advertising and surveillance.
The five-member commission plans to escalate its attack by going after some of the big-name Internet advertisers that hire the online distributors.
"We need to stop the demand side of spyware," said Jon Leibowitz, one of the five commission members and a Democrat. "We will send letters to major corporations and entities that place the majority of these ads. This is a wake-up call to put them on notice.
(AP) A military correspondent for Russia's top business daily has died after falling out of a window, and some media alleged Monday that he might have been killed for his critical reporting.
Ivan Safronov, the military affairs writer for Kommersant, died Friday after falling from a fifth-story window in the stairwell of his apartment building in Moscow, officials said. His body was found by neighbors shortly after the fall.
Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl joined other Senate Republicans, a few Democrats and the business lobby in defeating a plan that would have required security scans of all imports at U.S. ports.
Business groups opposed a proposal favored by New York Sen. Charles Schumer that would have a required all shipping containers coming into U.S. ports be scanned. ...
... Obama, Clinton and other Democrats wrote to Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT - News), the world's largest retailer and Arizona's largest private employer, asking the chain not to oppose the scanning bill.
The government is about to start opening up the process of reviewing patents to the modern font of wisdom: the Internet.
The Patent and Trademark Office is starting a pilot project that will not only post patent applications on the Web and invite comments but also use a community rating system designed to push the most respected comments to the top of the file, for serious consideration by the agency's examiners. A first for the federal government, the system resembles the one used by Wikipedia, the popular user-created online encyclopedia. ...
... Last year, the agency's 4,000 examiners, headquartered in Alexandria, completed a record 332,000 applications. The tremendous workload has often left examiners with little time to conduct thorough reviews, according to sympathetic critics.
Under the pilot project, some companies submitting patent applications will agree to have them reviewed via the Internet. The list of volunteers already contains some of the most prominent names in computing, including Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Oracle, as well as IBM, though other applicants are welcome. ...
... "I'm sure there will be a degree of gaming. There always is," Kappos said.
Information Monopolies – Several states have internal brokering setups in place. These information brokerages are found most frequently in the areas of law and justice, financial transactions, and health information. I believe these areas represent the first of several information monopolies. These monopolies were driven by federal data exchange efforts in homeland security and bioterrorism and, in the case of financial data exchanges, system consolidations on common ERP platforms. Expect to see more of these natural information monopolies in the near future with efforts such as Real ID, the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM), Medicaid spend management, and the National Provider Identifier (NPI) taking hold. As these monopolies take shape, certain organizations within state government will be the logical choice as keepers of this data. These keepers should be building their systems in a service-oriented fashion to facilitate easy exchange of information amongst all systems requiring access to this data.
Why does the government do this? I’m not sure. Maybe in this particular case, the Vice President felt it would not be Vice Presidential to respond to this particular criticism personally. (Though I must say, the “senior administration official” quoted above goes on to make what seem to me to be newsworthy remarks about his recent meetings with Karzai and others in Afghanistan and Pakistan.)
But it is even harder for me to understand why the press willingly goes along with the whole ruse.
