George W Bush backs Israeli plan for strike on Iran, giving the plan an amber light.
President George W Bush has told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a future military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Tehran break down, according to a senior Pentagon official.(BushCo wants the “negotiations” to breakdown, though.)
Google ORDERED to Turn Over User Data of YouTube
By MIGUEL HELFT
Published: July 4, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge has ordered Google to turn over to Viacom its records of which users watched which videos on YouTube, the Web’s largest video site by far.
The order raised concerns among YouTube users and privacy advocates that the video viewing habits of tens of millions of people could be exposed. But Google and Viacom said they were hoping to come up with a way to protect the anonymity of the site’s visitors.
Viacom also said that the information would be safeguarded by a protective order restricting access to the data to outside lawyers, who will use it solely to press Viacom’s $1 billion copyright suit against Google.
Still, the judge’s order, which was made public late Wednesday, renewed concerns among privacy advocates that Internet companies like Google are collecting unprecedented amounts of private information that could be misused or fall unexpectedly into the hands of third parties.
“These very large databases of transactional information become honey pots for law enforcement or for litigants,” said Chris Hoofnagle, a senior fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.
For every video on YouTube, the judge required Google to turn over to Viacom the login name of every user who had watched it, and the address of their computer, known as an I.P. or Internet protocol address.
Both companies have argued that I.P. addresses alone cannot be used to unmask the identities of individuals with certainty. But in many cases, technology experts and others have been able to link I.P. addresses to individuals using other records of their online activities.
The amount of data covered by the order is staggering, as it includes every video watched on YouTube since its founding in 2005. In April alone, 82 million people in the United States watched 4.1 billion clips there, according to comScore. Some experts say virtually every Internet user has visited YouTube.
Brad Haynes reports on the presidential race.
Citing a lack of interest, the Nevada Republican Party has called off its state convention and will instead pick its delegates to the national convention by private conference call.
The state party broke up its original convention in April when supporters of Ron Paul hijacked the proceedings and tried to elect delegates for their candidate to the national GOP convention in September. Party officials tried to reconvene on July 26, but they needed a quorum of 675 and received only 300 RSVPs, according to local reports.
JUST WHAT IS SO HARD FOR REPUGLICANS TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT TAKING THIS OATH?
The right-wing (mis)understanding of Government
Brad Blakeman is a former Deputy Assistant to President Bush and is currently the CEO of Freedom’s Watch, the group formed last year at the American Enterprise Institute by some of the nation’s largest GOP donors (and Ari Fleisher), devoted to advocating the neoconservative agenda. On Wednesday night, Blakeman was on the Dan Abrams Show discussing the White House’s refusal to turn over to Congress FBI interviews with Bush and Cheney in the Plame investigation, based on a brand new form of executive privilege invented by Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Here’s how Blakeman justified Mukasey’s obstructionist actions:
Look, what you have is a very smart attorney general who’s trying to protect his client and that’s the president of the United States, an executive privilege.
That is about as warped a view of how our Government is supposed to work as one can imagine. The core attribute of the Justice Department is independence, not allegiance to the President as “client.” The President has his own lawyers in the White House Counsel’s Office. The Attorney General is not and never was one of those lawyers.
Schwarzenegger: I’d be Obama’s Energy Czar
Mike Allen
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in an interview aired Sunday that he would be open to the idea of serving as energy czar in a Barack Obama administration.
Regardless of whether he takes that particular job, Schwarzenegger, a Republican, added on ABC’s “This Week” that he’s now committed to continuing public service even after he leaves Sacramento.
Schwarzenegger endorsed John McCain at the end of January, and McCain has appeared with “the Governator” to praise his efforts to deal with climate change.
McCain gets Social Security but criticizes system
By DAVID A. LIEB, Associated Press Writer
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Although Republican presidential candidate John McCain has called Social Security “a disgrace,” he still cashes his own retirement check every month.
By MATTHEW JAFFE
July 18, 2008
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., blasted a Bush administration proposal Friday that would change the definition of abortion and, she argues, limit women’s access to contraception.The draft proposal written by the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), which began circulating around Capitol Hill this week, would require hospitals receiving federal funds to hire medical personnel who oppose forms of contraception including birth control pills.
But Democratic critics including Clinton warn that the Bush administration changes would have “damaging” consequences on women’s ability to access birth control.
“The more I learn about these rules by the Bush administration, the more appalled I am and the more determined I am to stop them,” Clinton said.
“This is a gratuitous, unnecessary insult to the women of the United States of America. These rules pose a dire threat to women’s health, to health-care providers, and to uninsured and low-income Americans seeking care. It is a disgrace, but unfortunately it is not a surprise.”
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