A couple of "who knows" sources have claimed that OBL is not only dead, but has been dead for a few years.

Now now gc_wall, Osama will NEVER really die until his image is no longer useful for the regular "5 minute hate (and fear)" schtick. His visage, at this point, is still quite effective against the lessor Americans in the Congress.

Thanks again for your dedicated service to our country. Be safe today. I know that many people who are suffering today will be helped by your calm professionalism.

How to vote in yesterday's California Democratic primary was troubling me: I'll be more than ecstatic with either Hillary or Obama succeeding W, yet I'm not so certain between the two that I wanted to see either "decisively" in or out at this juncture. I have been viewing Bill Clinton as perhaps the one American who might restore some international good will and, thus, have given Hillary's campaign a nudge up on that basis, yet I've recently been coming around to the effect on international relations that a non-white "face of America" could bring as well. I've been concerned about whether Obama has "experience" but am now more impressed with his flat out smarts -- and fondly remember Carville's best line about the last Clinton presidency: "it was just always reassuring to know that the smartest person in the room, any room, was the President of the United States." It's been awhile on that one, to be sure.

So I entered the voting booth unsure of my ultimate prioritization between Clinton and Obama, sure I would support either in November and not wanting to contribute to a media "finalization" of their campaigns. What to do?

And there it was: the California ballot still named those who have dropped out. There was Senator Dodd -- the one person whose stand in favor of the United States Constitution has been the singularly best conduct by any US Senator this past year.

I voted for Senator Dodd. Anyone wondering why he didn't get zero since he dropped out, that's why.

Argue in a Conservative forum that the Federal Government is not trustworthy.....

http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/JacobSullum/2008/02/06/the_whys_of_spies

The comments are golden.

The only thing NSA can be doing is link analysis. Who is communicating with whom. If I'm Al-Qaida, I'm going to to use an intermediary between Pakistan and USA to foil any link analysis. A simple walk across the street in Amsterdam will foil link analysis.

The only possible use of this program is to catch amateurs, or to control society in general. The amateurs are in all likelihood domestic.

Indeed. It can only be for domestic use against those who dissent the corporate line. If I were a terrorist anywhere in the world, I would easily evade the NSA spying methods AND link analysis by running and using Tor. I would use Tor to sign up for a free email account (several, actually) so that I am a truly anonymous person with truly anonymous email accounts. I would then generate PGP keys for each of these anonymous accounts/identities and/or use steganography to hide encrypted messages inside other messages, documents, or pictures. Link analysis would be impossible because it would be impossible to trace where any access to one of these free and anonymous email accounts actually came from. No forensics could be conducted to back-trace the access to the source IP address.

Any decent or reasonably intelligent REAL terrorist would do these things. As for voice communications, one could use Gizmo or Linphone or Kphone or anything BUT Skype and either use the opensource encryption included in the app (Gizmo) or tack on zfone to encrypt your VOIP communications via other VOIP softwares (anything but Skype). Skype has its own encryption scheme which tests out to be quite good BUT (BIG BUT!) it is closed source/propriatory. There is NO WAY to ascertain whether or not there is a backdoor in the encryption scheme to allow Skype or the NSA/FBI to decrypt your messages. Zfone will not work with Skype.

Zfone is from the same guy that brought us PGP in the first place. It runs in addition to your VOIP program (Gizmo, linphone, kphone, or other except for Skype). It is available for the Mac, Linux, and windows. It encrypts on the fly without slowing or degrading the communications, uses a one-off encryption key scheme of great robustness.

Now, I am not a terrorist, just a free American citizen who demands my 4th Amendment rights without exception or reduction. I have used the above methods to create several 100% anonymous email accounts, make use of unbreakable (for all practical purposes) encryption (4096-bit) for these emails, and have zfone. By the by, ekiga is a wonderful VOIP app for linux. It doesn't currently work with zfone but...the developers of zfone are working with ekiga to place it into ekiga natively. W00T!

Any decent terra-ist would do some portion (or all) of what I mention above and the NSA spying scheme would fail miserably. Thus, only Americans here and abroad are the REAL targets.

On top of everything other bit of nonsense, all these references to the "Homeland" make me sick.

Why is "Homeland" figured to be more emotion-laden than "our country" and "The United States"?

I must admit the Spirit behind the words of that 'comment letter' brought tears to my eyes.

Someone I love...but I'll not express or give details on a public scroll is now training in the most elite Coast Guard Emergency Response Team. The Coast Guard is now under the new Homeland Security training.

The C.G. training is excellent.

The training in the Coast Guard is knowing the best a young 'troop' can...HOW to respond to the worst possible assault scenario's to 'our' nations homelands.

If America is ever attacked, he (the one I love and worry about each day) will be the first emergency trained-team called upon to Protect Americans civilians. His boss?

Mr. Chertoff. He use to be the White House's,

White Collar Criminal Investigator person.

O, during the past A.G. Ashcroft era tho.

But (o, a cover-up man) the one I care about, and love, scored the highest in his preliminary Coast Guard, first several weeks of what we use to call "basic" or Boot Camp.

When I was his age....drafted.... I look back now,

an 'elder' in society, now, and I HOPE a bit wiser.

O, 'it' was cannon-fodder then! Some of us went off

to war...

and the gop-mentality assumed we 'grunts' would die?

But we speak...We/me and others will never shush-up!

And QUIT threats from the White House, will never deter...