W losing his base?

When old, white guys in uniforms part company with a Republican president, you know he is really f-ing it up. For you oldsters who remember Watergate and the staunch anti-Nixon sentiment of the time, ponder this: gool ol' "Tricky Dick" was more loved then than the Shrub is now.

"Arrest me, I know the password"

Slipping sideways away from the Bush-bashing and looking once more to the state of society under the reign of Bush fils, brings us to Pennsylvania once again where a forward-thinking yet technologically-challenged Kutztown Area School District (KASD) issued hundreds of laptops to its students and then failed to perform due diligence to secure their own systems. But who is on the receiving end of the legal whammy? Why the students, of course, and only the students.

According to CNN, thirteen students are being charged with felony computer tresspass for using their school-issued laptops for various unauthorized purposes. The laptops came equipped with filtering and monitoring programs but the kids were able to turn the tables on their overseers and view the administors' computer screens remotely. How did they manage this nifty, little trick? Well, it helps to know the password. And it helps someone to figure out the password when it is something obvious like the school's street address. But what really helps is having that password taped to the back of the computers you give to the kids.

Sorry, folks, while I can grant you that these kids certainly wandered outside the bounds of their "Acceptable Use Agreement", its the chucklehead with no clue about computer security who is a far greater danger to the district and should be held accountable. Furthermore, the Kutztown 13 (as they've come to be known) have been charged with computer trespass, an offense state law defines as altering computer data, programs or software without permission. No where in the report do I see where such acts have taken place.

This has all the markings of a situation wherein the authorities have been thoroughly outwitted by folks smarter than they are. And, what sticks in their craw is that it they've been embarrased by kids and by using the very tools they provided. Once again we see the incompentant seeking to punish the clever. Remember when we used to laud and reward the smart ones, the creative ones?

Left Hand (FBI), please meet Right Hand (DoD)

You've no doubt seen the bumper sticker that proclaims, "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." Well, frankly Koko has not been paying attention and I'm still rather miffed at torent of crap spewing from the infected rectum that is this Administration. But this lack of focus on my part has hindered my usually pithy and pointed punditry and, more specifically, the due diligence and rapacious research one has come to associate with this blog.

Be that as it may, a casual stroll this morning by a cafeteria television tuned to CNN brought my attention to Rep. Curt Weldon, vice chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. I heard the words "Able Danger" and recalled that I had just heard Mark Maron of Morning Sedition refer to that this morning..."hmm, that's right," I thought, "something about domestic spying by the Department of Defense..." I made a mental note right then to verify that and firm up my understanding of posse comitatus and promptly forgot all about it until I heard Congressman Weldon. Representative Weldon, a Republican from Pennsylvania, has been asking some rather embarrassing questions about the fact that the DoD knew of an al Qaeda cell in New York City led by none other than Mohammed Atta of 9-11 infamy. This was back in September of 2000, a year before 9-11! But the info never got to the FBI because...well, that's really the story, isn't it?

What the hell happened? Atta had a green card so he was to be afforded the same treatment as an American citizen. However, a 1981 amendment to the Posse Comitatus Act allows for the military to provide survelliance and intelligence support to law enforcement--they just can't be there when the caca hits the occilating whirligig. In the interest of fairness let's poke the Clinton administration with a sharp stick and ask, "Hey, this was on your watch and shortly after this the USS Cole was bombed which you linked to Osama bin Ladin. WTF, guys?!" The line I've heard from ol' Bill himself is that by the time they connected bin Laden with the Cole, it was early January 2001 and W's inauguration was less than three weeks away. So, maybe they didn't realize how great a threat Atta et al truly were...? Anyway, Gentlemen Bill thought it bad form to saddle his successor with a war on his first day on the job. Oh, they did give the incoming administration dire warnings but the good ol' boys from Texas were too busy devising disinformation schemes like the "tale of the missing 'W' keyboards". So all this info just sat and stewed while VP Cheney/Palpatine headed the administration's task force on terrorism which met all of ZERO times in the 9 months before September 11 and Richard Clarke ran around with his "hair on fire" trying to warn them.

Best of luck, Congressman Weldon, from the other side of the aisle. We need to understand how badly we dropped the ball on this so that we might truly learn the lesson that our country and our people are far too precious to be sacrificed on the altar of partisan politics.