THE FULCRUM

The leader of the attack, John O'Neill, a Swift boat veteran and Texas lawyer, has been a detractor of Mr. Kerry for decades, ever since the Nixon White House recruited him to rebut Mr. Kerry's criticism of Vietnam policy. And the chief donor to the Swift boat broadside is a Texas businessman, Bob Perry, who is known for giving millions to the campaigns of President Bush and other Republicans.

Voters should also know that the group is one of the new "shadow party" efforts of supposedly independent ( but, in truth, transparently partisan) activist groups that have been set up to evade campaign laws and take advantage of nonprofits' tax breaks. One of the more prominent of these groups, the leftist MoveOn.org, is running ads attacking President Bush's Air National Guard service.

"Knowing now what I know about the reliance on the tenuous or insufficiently corroborated intelligence used to conclude that Saddam maintained a substantial WMD (weapons of mass destruction) arsenal, I believe that launching the pre-emptive military action was not justified."

As a result of the war, he said, "our country's reputation around the world has never been lower and our alliances are weakened."

"I was shocked by the letter," said Rep. Ray LaHood (R., Ill.), who has served on the House intelligence panel where Mr. Bereuter has been vice chairman. "I never heard Doug express these doubts, but he is one of the most serious legislators I've ever met. This is a double-barrel shotgun blast for the Democrats."

"He's a very serious guy and cares deeply about these issues. He's a credible witness," said former Nebraska Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey of Mr. Bereuter

[snip]

But Mr. Bereuter is well-respected in both parties and, however surprised they were by his essay, Republicans uniformly praised him as a serious figure on foreign-policy issues.

The White House declined to comment on the letter, but campaigning in Wisconsin, President Bush said: "Knowing what I know today, I would have made the same decision. America and the world are safer because Saddam Hussein sits in a prison cell."

An Army investigation into the role that military-intelligence specialists played at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison will recommend that about two dozen soldiers be disciplined for alleged mistreatment of Iraqi detainees there last fall, but won't pass blame for the scandal to senior commanders, a Pentagon official said.

The scandal has proved an embarrassment for the Bush administration, especially after a number of memos leaked out showing that its lawyers spent more than a year seeking a legal definition of torture and debating the limits soldiers could go to when questioning prisoners of war.

Meanwhile, conditions at the prison continue to fester. U.S. military police shot and killed two detainees and wounded five others during a brawl yesterday, Pentagon officials said. Several detainees attacked an inmate with rocks and tent poles in a fight that soon encompassed 200 people, and military guards responded with force.

The average unpatched Windows PC lasts less than 20 minutes on the Internet before it's compromised, according to data from the Internet Storm Center.

[snip]

In June 2003, the "survival time" of an unpatched PC was approximately 40 minutes. As of Wednesday, the average was less than half that: only 16 minutes.

The under-20 minute period isn't long enough to pull down major updates, such as Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), acknowledged Joe Wilcox, an analyst with Jupiter Research, in an online posting.

Last week four screeners for the Transportation Security Administration were arrested at Kennedy and La Guardia airports for stealing money, jewelry and other valuables from checked bags. The agents were caught in a sting operation after a torrent of complaints about luggage thefts. These arrests likely represent only a fraction of the abuses nationwide.

[snip]


In some ways, the thefts are not surprising. The transportation agency has done an abysmal job of managing its workforce. In June 2003, the agency admitted that it had failed to screen its own screeners and fired more than 1,200 employees after they failed criminal background checks or other internal investigations.

[snip]

President Bush said in 2002 that the law that created the T.S.A. "greatly enhanced the protections for America's passengers.'' But it takes more than long lines and delays at airport checkpoints to defeat terrorist threats. Is it wise to trust the T.S.A. to make air travel safe when it has a hard time protecting Americans from its own agents?

"I think those who oppose this ballistic missile system don't understand the threats of the 21st century," the president told applauding workers at defense contractor Boeing Co. in Pennsylvania, a crucial state in President Bush's bid for re-election. "We say to those tyrants who believe they can blackmail America and the free world: 'You fire, we're going to shoot it down,'" President Bush said.
WSJ (subscription).

After the 9/11 Commission recommended major restructuring of U.S. intelligence-gathering, President Bush publicly embraced the plan's outlines. It turns out that his top advisers and key members of Congress haven't.

A month after the 9/11 Commission issued its report, the push for overhaul is being undercut, raising serious doubts about whether intelligence-gathering will change in more than a cosmetic way despite intense lobbying by commission members.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spent much of his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday explaining that Congress should be cautious about far-reaching changes to the current intelligence system. He and other top administration officials appear especially uncomfortable with the commission's main recommendation: creating the position of a national intelligence director with budget and personnel authority over Pentagon intelligence agencies that report largely to Mr. Rumsfeld.

"We need to remember that we are considering these important matters while we are waging a war. If we move unwisely and get it wrong, the penalty would be great," Mr. Rumsfeld warned the panel.

But it isn't just at the Pentagon that the 9/11 Commission's plan is running into determined opposition. Mr. Rumsfeld's call for restraint was echoed yesterday by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner of Virginia, a central figure in the overhaul debate. His committee has long been a fierce defender of the Pentagon's intelligence role and is loath to see that role curtailed. Mr. Warner, openly dubious about a national intelligence director, called for Congress to pass a small package of incremental changes instead.

"It's important we try to do what we can," Mr. Warner said. "But I'm of the opinion that we should not try to do the whole 9/11 [recommendations] in a single stroke."

Are you registered to vote? Are you sure you're registered? I am currently pissed off. Let me tell you why. Today, around lunchtime, I went with my parents to the polls to vote in our primary election. When I got there, I found that I had somehow been removed from the books, and hence could not vote. Frustrated, I took the day off work and my mom took me down to the Election Board at 18th and Walnut. When we got there, we found that the reason I was not on the books is that SOMEONE had sent in an address change card for me. I live near 76th and Troost, but the voting database now had me down as living at 52nd and Locust - I've NEVER lived there, and have in fact lived at this address all of my life (well, except for the year in England, and even then this was my "permanent address"). It took about two hours, but the elections commission director straightened it out and I was finally able to vote. However, she told me why this has been happening, and it's very worrisome. Apparently there are groups out there who buy copies of the voter registration rolls, then send in new registrations for registered voters giving them a new address.

President Bush's team exerts close control over admission to his campaign events. Dissenters and would-be hecklers are turned away, campaign officials say. On several occasions in recent weeks, Democrats who have gotten in have been ejected because they wore pro-Kerry T-shirts.

[snip]

Last month, some Democrats who signed up to hear Vice President Dick Cheney speak near Albuquerque, N.M., were refused tickets unless they signed a pledge to endorse Bush. The Bush campaign described the measure as a security step designed to avoid a disruption it contended had been planned.

[snip]

Bush's admission policy can leave the impression that the president has strong support wherever he goes.

Labor unions traditionally align with Democrats and have not been particularly friendly to Bush. So when Bush spoke at a Las Vegas union hall Thursday, the campaign used its usual ticket distribution policy to pack the hall with backers.

The crowd roared its approval throughout the speech. Some tickets were also given to union members. A few of them sat silently in the back rows.

Tuberculosis had sneaked up again, reappearing with alarming frequency across the United States. The government began writing rules to protect 5 million people whose jobs put them in special danger. Hospitals and homeless shelters, prisons and drug treatment centers -- all would be required to test their employees for TB, hand out breathing masks and quarantine those with the disease. These steps, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration predicted, could prevent 25,000 infections a year and 135 deaths.

By the time President Bush moved into the White House, the tuberculosis rules, first envisioned in 1993, were nearly complete. But the new administration did nothing on the issue for the next three years.

Then, on the last day of 2003, in an action so obscure it was not mentioned in any major newspaper in the country, the administration canceled the rules. Voluntary measures, federal officials said, were effective enough to make regulation unnecessary.

State police officers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando and interrogated them as part of an odd "investigation" that has frightened many voters, intimidated elderly volunteers and thrown a chill over efforts to get out the black vote in November.

[snip]

The long and ugly tradition of suppressing the black vote is alive and thriving in the Sunshine State.

President Bush's plan to call tens of thousands of U.S. troops home from Europe and Asia could gain him election-year applause from military families, but won't ease the strain on soldiers still battling violent factions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Law enforcement sources said that in recent weeks, federal agents have begun interviewing people in the New York City area they believe might know about any plots to cause mayhem at the convention, and have used surveillance against possible suspects.

The intelligence unit of the New York Police Department has been closely monitoring Web sites run by self-described anarchists. It also has sought to infiltrate protest groups with young, scruffy-looking officers posing as activists.