Time to go After Pirates

Early on in our history as a nation President Jefferson sent the fleet to take care of the Pirates. Time to do it again.

U.S. Navy snipers fatally shot three pirates holding an American cargo-ship captain hostage after seeing that one of the pirates "had an AK-47 leveled at the captain's back," a military official said Sunday.

U.S. forces moved to rescue Phillips after seeing him in imminent danger on the lifeboat, Gortney said. A fourth pirate was negotiating Phillips' fate aboard the nearby USS Bainbridge.

"While working through the negotiations process tonight, the on-scene commander from the Bainbridge made the decision that the captain's life was in immediate danger, and the three pirates were killed," Gortney said. "The pirate who surrendered earlier today is being treated humanely; his counterparts who continued to fight paid with their lives."

The three pirates, who were armed with AK-47 rifles, were killed by shooters who were aboard the Bainbridge, Gortney said.

The on-scene commander gave the shooters approval to open fire after seeing that "one of the pirates had an AK-47 leveled at the captain's back," Gortney said.

Seas in the area were getting rough at the time of the rescue, Gortney said, and the Bainbridge was towing the lifeboat presumably to calmer waters with a towline about 82 feet long.

A senior defense official told CNN that each pirate was shot in the head.

After the shooting, special operations personnel shimmied along the tow rope to ensure the pirates were dead and freed Phillips, the official said.

The official added that the pirates had become increasingly agitated over the past day, and negotiations were not going well.

It's time to go after the Pirates because other innocent people will suffer because of the rescue.

A great cry of anger, coupled with vows of vengeance, rose up from the pirate lairs hidden around the Horn of Africa after Capt. Richard Phillips' rescue.

"Our friends should have done more to kill the captain before they were killed. This will be a good lesson for us," Jamac Habeb, a 30-year-old pirate, told The Associated Press in the port of Eyl, a Somali pirate hub.

"From now on, if we capture foreign ships and their respective countries try to attack us, we will kill [the hostages]."

Somali pirates generally treat their hostages well to ensure they get their ransom. Some warned that would change after the U.S. Navy killed three Somali pirates and Friday’s French commando raid on a captured yacht killed two others.

"The French and the Americans will regret starting this killing," a pirate called Hussein told Reuters. "We shall do something to anyone we see as French or American from now on."

Some fear the pirates might retaliate against the more than 200 international mariners they hold.

In Harardhere, a major Somali pirate stronghold, residents gathered in the streets worrying about attacks by foreign navies.

This article in the Washington Post makes an effective argument for crushing the Somalis. The must be an operation with International support that seeks to destroy the Pirates while saving as many hostages, that are still being held.

With the rescue of American Richard Phillips from the hands of pirates yesterday, there was a blip of good news from the Indian Ocean, but it remains a scandal that Somali pirates continue to routinely defeat the world's naval powers. And worse than this ongoing demonstration of cowardice is the financing of terrorists that results from the huge ransom payments these pirates are allowed to collect.

It is naive to assume that the millions paid annually in ransom to pirates merely enables them to purchase villas and fancy automobiles. Somalia is a country without government, where anarchy is being exploited by terrorist organizations. Although the threat that pirates pose to commercial ships is increasingly known, little is being done to combat it. And we must consider the bigger picture: Terrorists are far more brutal than pirates and can easily force pirates -- petty thieves in comparison -- to share their ransom money.

We already know that Somalia is an ideal fortress and headquarters for global terrorist activity. The United States has learned the painful lesson that Somalia is not an easy place for our military to establish law and order; two of our interventions there became embarrassing defeats -- in 1993 and more recently in support of Ethiopian forces.

So why do we keep rewarding Somali pirates? How is this march of folly possible?

Washington Post: Lobbying Pays off Big on Capitol Hill

This article is a portrayal of how the lobbies have taken over Washington. It is they who dictate policy in America--not you. And until we wake up to that reality this country will die:

In a remarkable illustration of the power of lobbying in Washington, a study released last week found that a single tax break in 2004 earned companies $220 for every dollar they spent on the issue -- a 22,000 percent rate of return on their investment.

The study by researchers at the University of Kansas underscores the central reason that lobbying has become a $3 billion-a-year industry in Washington: It pays. The $787 billion stimulus act and major spending proposals have ratcheted up the lobbying frenzy further this year, even as President Obama and public-interest groups press for sharper restrictions on the practice.

The paper by three Kansas professors examined the impact of a one-time tax break approved by Congress in 2004 that allowed multinational corporations to "repatriate" profits earned overseas, effectively reducing their tax rate on the money from 35 percent to 5.25 percent. More than 800 companies took advantage of the legislation, saving an estimated $100 billion in the process, according to the study.

You want to know why you pay so much for medicine and healthcare?:

The largest recipients of tax breaks were concentrated in the pharmaceutical and technology fields, including Pfizer, Merck, Hewlett Packard, Johnson & Johnson and IBM. Pfizer alone repatriated $37 billion, representing 70 percent of its revenue in 2004, the study found. The now-beleaguered financial industry also benefited from the provision, including Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch, all of which have since received tens of billions of dollars in federal bailout money.

The researchers calculated an average rate of return of 22,000 percent for those companies that helped lobby for the tax break. Eli Lilly, for example, reported in disclosure documents that it spent $8.5 million in 2003 and 2004 to lobby for the provision -- and eventually gained tax savings of more than $2 billion.

"There's always been speculation that lobbying is a lucrative area," said Stephen W. Mazza, a Kansas tax-law professor who is one of the authors of the study. "We've been able to come up with quantifiable returns and show that it really is the case."

Mazza added that the results are "troubling" because they show how large companies can distort tax policy to benefit their bottom line.

The NRA is another example of a powerful lobby that is literally helping to kill Americans:

THE anguish in Joe Biden's voice sounded genuine when the US Vice-President responded on behalf of the White House to the shocking gun massacre of 14 people at the New York town of Binghamton on the weekend.

"We've got to find a way to deal with this senseless, senseless violence," Biden told the nation.

Arriving at Binghamton that evening, New York Governor David Paterson framed similar sentiments in a question: "When are we going to be able to curb the kind of violence that is so fraught and so rapid we can't even keep track of the incidents?"

But missing from the vocabulary of either leader was any reference to gun control - the words so many US politicians are afraid to utter, even in the face of mass murder.

The lack of political resolve to take action against the appalling level of gun violence in the US is what really makes Binghamton, and the slaughter yesterday of three policemen in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the great American tragedies they are.

According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, about 30,000 Americans a year die from a gun. That's about 80 a day, and of those an average of 32 are homicides.

In the past month alone, there have been five mass murders, claiming a total of 41 lives.

But confronted with such compelling evidence for tougher gun laws, the response of the US politicians is almost always along the lines of Biden and Paterson: words that share public grief and offer comfort when a tragedy strikes but which amount to platitudes and abdicate the public trust when read in the context of fixing the problem.

Such is the power of the gun lobby in US politics.

Brady campaign president Paul Helmke decided to go on the attack yesterday after friends of Pittsburgh's 23-year-old cop-killer Richard Poplawski revealed that he was angry over his belief the Obama administration was about to ban guns.

Describing the gun crisis as every bit as important as the economic crisis, Helmke accused the gun lobby of "stoking fear among gun owners with false claims about the Government".

"It is time for the gun industry to stop capitalising on those ginned-up fears to spread weapons of war among the public," Helmke said.

"The gun lobby's rhetoric has consequences. Today, we have seen how profound those consequences can be."

3 Children Shot Execution Style in Louisiana

This is madness. It looks like drug-gang related. This society has gone into the toilet. Louisiana is a gun state. We are starting to look like some third-world country with the sick violence that permeates our communities. We are breading sociopaths left and right. And then we are giving them guns.

A shooting at a Westbank apartment this morning has left three people dead, two of them children.

Police say that shortly before 4 a.m. Saturday, two gunmen entered the apartment at 945 East Monterey and killed a 19-year-old female , a 23-month-old baby boy, and a a six-year-old boy.

An 11-year-old girl was also shot and is in critical condition at a local hospital hospital.

Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Department Sgt Larry Dyess told WWL First News that the aparment complex is off Berman highway, between between Stumpf and Laffayette.

Dyess says that police are looking for two black males who entered the apartment and began shooting the victims.. He said that a witness describes one of the suspects as wearing a red bandana over his face and a hoodie type sweatshirt..

Authorities say the gunmen shot the toddler and the 6-year-old in the head. The 19-year-old was shot in the back, and the 11-year-old was shot "multiple times."

Homicide investigators say they located a number of shell casings throughout the apartment as well as crack cocaine and marijuana.

It's happening everywhere including at our universities:

Two people were shot and killed Friday at a community college in Dearborn, Michigan, in what police believe was a murder-suicide, an official said.

A man and woman were found dead in a classroom building on the campus of Henry Ford Community College, Dearborn Deputy Chief Gregg Brighton said.

Investigators believe the man shot the woman but would not provide further information, Brighton said.

A shotgun was involved in the incident, which occurred in a classroom that was not being used, he said.

"We're in the very preliminary stages," Brighton said. "We've just made the scene safe. The crime lab is on the scene with detectives." Video Watch Brighton describe the scene »

Police responding to a report of gunfire at the school had entered the south hallway of the Fine Arts Building when they heard another gunshot, Brighton said.

"We were in the building when we heard the shotgun blast, and when we finally got to that room, we had two deceased parties," he said at a news conference. "We believe this is a murder-suicide."

And Even Sunday school teachers are murdering. Now I've heard everything:

Police have arrested a Sunday-school teacher in the killing of California 8-year-old Sandra Cantu, authorities said early Saturday.

Melissa Huckaby was arrested on charges of kidnapping and murder, according to Tracy, California, police Sgt. Tony Sheneman.

Police would not reveal what led to Huckaby's arrest, but said it followed questioning. They did not offer a possible motive.

Huckaby lived in the same mobile home park as Sandra's family, and Sandra was friends with Huckaby's daughter, Sheneman said.

Sandra's body was found Monday, stuffed into a suitcase in a dairy-farm pond. The girl, from Tracy, had been missing since March 27. The suitcase that held Sandra's body belonged to Huckaby, Sheneman said.

Police have had contact with Huckaby before, but she does not have a record of violence

[...] On Tuesday, authorities searched a Baptist church near the mobile home park where Sandra lived.

The church's pastor, Lane Lawless, and his wife, Connie, spoke to KRON as they drove by the church Tuesday. Lawless said police had seized computers, phones and other items from his family's trailer, located in the same park as Sandra's family. He said his great-granddaughter regularly played with Sandra.

"We've been in the park for 13 years, and we've known her and her sister since before they were born," Connie Lawless told KRON. "So they're like children to us; they're like our children."

Why the Hypocrisy on President Obama's Bowing to the Saudi Prince

I usually don't quote Malkin but she gets it right here:

I have expressed my disgust many times over the years with the Bush administration’s kowtowing to Saudi Arabia. That notorious image of Bush holding hands with Saudi royalty in 2005 and doing sword dances with Wahabbists in 2008 sparked outrage on both the left and the right. The hand-holding has gotten us nowhere — and in fact, has made us less secure.

So I hope all the lefties who tore into Bush over his Saudi prostration will express equal disgust with President HopeAndChange’s literal bowing and scraping to King Abdullah. When JWF sent a link to the photo with Obama bent down like a serf (further than either he or Michelle dipped for Queen Elizabeth, by the way), I tried to give the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he dropped a contact lens or penny?

The same types of arguments were used at the time in criticism of the Bush hand holding incident as is used in referring to the Obama bowing event. This from a Texan:

I wonder if George W. Bush would have run for president if he'd known he'd have to hold hands with a hairy guy.

Holding hands with a hairy guy is part of the Bush economic stimulus package. So far, it's not working. Last week, Bush traveled to Saudi Arabia to beg the Saudis to increase oil production, the assumption being that if the Saudis started pumping more oil, gasoline prices would go down.

On Saturday, a photo showed Bush holding hands with Saudi King Abdullah. But it didn't do any good. The Saudis told Bush that they were already pumping enough oil.

This might have worked out better if Bush had sent King Abdullah a dozen roses. Like former NFL great and FTD pitchman Merlin Olsen always said, "Say it with flowers." Or how about chocolates? Maybe gas prices would drop if Bush had gone out to the mall and picked up some Godivas for the king. That is, until the Saudis found out Godiva was a chick who rode around nekkid on a horse.

This occurred to me Sunday morning when I took my Lexus to the Genie Car Wash on William Cannon Drive in South Austin to get it washed and filled up with $3.74-a-gallon gas. At those rates, I figure Bush should invite King Abdullah to dinner and a movie.

"He could probably go a little further," joked Kelly McDearmon, the Genie Car Wash worker who wiped down my car. "Flowers and a kiss, probably."

It's a daring gesture for a conservative family values politician such as Bush to be seen in public holding hands with a dude who could use a shave. Especially since the picture of those two clasping pinkies showed up in the paper the day after the story about California OK'ing gay weddings. That means Bush obviously cares about the American way of life being destroyed by gasoline prices.

One thing you could do to make ends meet is just quit buying groceries. Find out what stores have free samples and take the kids out to dinner there. Or you could just stay in the house with the air conditioner off. Or you could vacation in Pflugerville.

Now, I realize that it is supposedly an old Arab custom for men to hold hands. (Put another way, I'll bet you don't see Larry the Cable Guy on the Saudi comedy channel.) On the other hand, what if this is a practical joke and the Saudis are, as the kids say, punking Bush?

- Here is a picture of Bush bowing before a Saudi Prince.

This deference to a very bad country has been going on for decades; it didn’t start with Barack Obama, or with George W. Bush, or with John F. Kennedy for that matter.

Instead of impeaching Barack Obama, America needs to impeach its gas tanks.

And just imagine how much screaming there would be if Obama had let Abdullah hang a medal around his neck.

But the hysteria of the right is laughable. This was the editorial from the Washington Times.

In a shocking display of fealty to a foreign potentate, President Obama bowed to Saudi King Abdullah at the Group of 20 summit in London last week.

Mr. Obama later said in Strasbourg, France, "We have to change our behavior in showing the Muslim world greater respect." Symbolism is important in world affairs. By bending over to show greater respect to Islam, the U.S. president belittled the power and independence of the United States.

The bow was an extraordinary protocol violation. Such an act is a traditional obeisance befitting a king's subjects, not his peer. There is no precedent for U.S. presidents bowing to Saudi or any other royals. Former President Franklin D. Roosevelt shook hands with Saudi King Abdulaziz in February 1945. Granted, Mr. Roosevelt was wheelchair-bound, but former President Dwight D. Eisenhower shook hands when he first met King Saud in January 1957. Mr. Obama's bow to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques does not help his image with those who believe he is secretly a Muslim, and why he chose to bow only to the Saudi King and not to any other royals remains unexplained.

No Americans of any station are required to bow to royalty. It is one of the pillars of American exceptionalism that our country rejected traditional caste divisions. Article I Section 9 of the Constitution forbids titles of nobility and stipulates that no officeholder or government employee may "accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state" without the consent of Congress. Judith Martin wrote in her Miss Manners column in 2001 that bowing "is not an ordinary bit of foreign etiquette one might adopt out of courtesy when traveling. ... Americans do not properly bow to any royalty. We show respect for other countries' leaders the same way we do to our own."

Pirates Plague Sign of American Weakness

The pirates are plaguing us as they once did early on in our history. It is a sign of our impotence and that of the world community. It is also a sign of things to come. Meaning we will be less safe.

The family of hijacked ship captain Richard Phillips gathered in his Vermont farmhouse, anxiously watching news reports and taking telephone calls from the U.S. State Department to learn if he would be freed by Somali pirates off the Horn of Africa.The family of hijacked ship captain Richard Phillips gathered in his Vermont farmhouse, anxiously watching news reports and taking telephone calls from the U.S. State Department to learn if he would be freed by Somali pirates off the Horn of Africa. "We are on pins and needles," said Lea Coggio, half-sister of Phillips' wife, Andrea, as she stood on the porch of his one-story house on Wednesday in a light snow. "I know the crew has been in touch with their own family members, and we're hoping we'll hear from Richard soon." Phillips, 55, was taken hostage Wednesday after his unarmed U.S. crew wrested control of the Maersk Alabama from the pirates and sent them fleeing to a lifeboat - with Phillips as their bargaining chip. According to the family, Phillips offered himself up as a hostage in order to protect his crew. "That's Richard. . That's just what he's about," Coggio told CBS' The Early Show. Phillips and the pirates on the lifeboat have received food and water from the ship, Coggio said

Cyberspies Could Threaten our Electricity Supply

It's been known for sometime that hackers could bring America to it's knees if they knocked out our electrical grids. And since our government has spent all it's time concentrating on al Qaeda, other forms of terror could destroy our country. The problem is that we have a corrupt government that no longer protect us. We are on our own.

Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls, the newspaper said, citing current and former U.S. national security officials.

The intruders have not sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure but officials said they could try during a crisis or war, the paper said in a report on its website.

"The Chinese have attempted to map our infrastructure, such as the electrical grid," a senior intelligence official told the Journal. "So have the Russians."

The espionage appeared pervasive across the United States and does not target a particular company or region, said a former Department of Homeland Security official.

"There are intrusions, and they are growing," the former official told the paper, referring to electrical systems. "There were a lot last year."

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama was not immediately available for comment on the newspaper report.

Authorities investigating the intrusions have found software tools left behind that could be used to destroy infrastructure components, the senior intelligence official said. He added, "If we go to war with them, they will try to turn them on."

This was from May of last year:

Investigators have found numerous instances in which the nation's largest public power company, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVE), is "vulnerable to disruption" by cyberintrusions. The concern: Hackers could seize control of critical operations in TVA's many electric plants—including those that are nuclear powered—as well as its transmission grid, flood control, and water systems.

A report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), identified as 08-459SU and marked "for limited official use only," includes 73 specific recommendations for security fixes so sensitive they are to be withheld today when the GAO releases a public version with 19 general recommendations, all of which TVA agrees with.

The report's findings alarmed TVA's own executives. At a May 2 meeting with congressional investigators and U.S. Homeland Security Dept. officials, TVA urged GAO, the investigatory arm of Congress, to modify wording and make public few details rather than raise public concerns or risk providing a road map for hackers. The public version of the report, which was requested by Republicans and Democrats on congressional homeland security committees to follow up on previous concerns about cyberthreats, is to be released at a May 21 hearing at 2 p.m. ET.

TVA, which has 52 facilities, plays a significant underlying role in the economy of the southeastern U.S. Besides providing power in Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia, TVA manages one of the largest electricity transmission systems in North America and the fifth-largest river system in the U.S. Security experts say that, too, could be manipulated in ways that might cause flooding or affect water quality.

Cybersecurity specialists and government officials, speaking anonymously for fear of the impact on their careers, say the threat is far from theoretical or confined to small nations such as Estonia. They say owners and operators of other U.S. and Western European utilities also are vulnerable to network break-ins by a variety of hackers, including some who may be acting on behalf of other governments.

This from Time Magazine in 2005. The article is entitle, "The Invasion of the Chinese Cyberspies (And the Man Who Tried to Stop Them)":

It was another routine night for Shawn Carpenter. After a long day analyzing computer-network security for Sandia National Laboratories, where much of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is designed, Carpenter, 36, retreated to his ranch house in the hills overlooking Albuquerque, N.M., for a quick dinner and an early bedtime. He set his alarm for 2 a.m. Waking in the dark, he took a thermos of coffee and a pack of Nicorette gum to the cluster of computer terminals in his home office. As he had almost every night for the previous four months, he worked at his secret volunteer job until dawn, not as Shawn Carpenter, mid-level analyst, but as Spiderman--the apt nickname his military-intelligence handlers gave him--tirelessly pursuing a group of suspected Chinese cyberspies all over the world. Inside the machines, on a mission he believed the U.S. government supported, he clung unseen to the walls of their chat rooms and servers, secretly recording every move the snoopers made, passing the information to the Army and later to the FBI.

The hackers he was stalking, part of a cyberespionage ring that federal investigators code-named Titan Rain, first caught Carpenter's eye a year earlier when he helped investigate a network break-in at Lockheed Martin in September 2003. A strikingly similar attack hit Sandia several months later, but it wasn't until Carpenter compared notes with a counterpart in Army cyberintelligence that he suspected the scope of the threat. Methodical and voracious, these hackers wanted all the files they could find, and they were getting them by penetrating secure computer networks at the country's most sensitive military bases, defense contractors and aerospace companies.

Carpenter had never seen hackers work so quickly, with such a sense of purpose. They would commandeer a hidden section of a hard drive, zip up as many files as possible and immediately transmit the data to way stations in South Korea, Hong Kong or Taiwan before sending them to mainland China. They always made a silent escape, wiping their electronic fingerprints clean and leaving behind an almost undetectable beacon allowing them to re-enter the machine at will. An entire attack took 10 to 30 minutes. "Most hackers, if they actually get into a government network, get excited and make mistakes," says Carpenter. "Not these guys. They never hit a wrong key."

Goaded by curiosity and a sense that he could help the U.S. defend itself against a new breed of enemy, Carpenter gave chase to the attackers. He hopped just as stealthily from computer to computer across the globe, chasing the spies as they hijacked a web of far-flung computers. Eventually he followed the trail to its apparent end, in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. He found that the attacks emanated from just three Chinese routers that acted as the first connection point from a local network to the Internet.

It was a stunning breakthrough. In the world of cyberspying, locating the attackers' country of origin is rare. China, in particular, is known for having poorly defended servers that outsiders from around the world commandeer as their unwitting launchpads. Now Chinese computers appeared to be the aggressors.

More Mass Shootings: When Will We Ever Learn

As I've written in the past, mass shooting murders have become a sport in America. And after every incident we repeat the same game of trying to find a motive for the killings, as if any excuse could justify murder. We continue to miss the point. Not until we address the issue of too many guns in a culture that glorifies violence will we begin to climb out of this moral abyss.

The shooting has stunned Binghamton, just as mass shootings of civilians have stunned so many communities.

You remember Columbine ten years ago: 15 dead. And then Virginia Tech two years ago: 32 dead.

But you may not remember the shootings that left ten dead in southeastern Alabama, or the eight who died in a North Carolina nursing home … the six dead in Santa Clara, California … and now Binghamton.

Then there's yesterday morning's shooting of three police officers in Pittsburgh, and the five children apparently murdered by their father in Washington State before he killed himself.

Six mass shootings that have taken 47 lives in just four weeks' time.

It seems that no town, big or small, is immune. But why? Is there more violence - and is our reaction to it changing?

"Tragically, I think many Americans have become more desensitized, more numb to the mass murder, to the massacre, because it is no longer that unusual," said Howard Kurtz, a media critic for the Washington Post.

"It doesn't mean that everybody doesn't get a feeling in their gut when they hear that a bunch of innocent people have died at the hands of one crazy gunman, but it is no longer a story that we've never heard of before," said Kurtz. "So there's a certain ritual to it. We know what to expect."

Part of what we expect are expressions of condolences from our political leaders … but that is where it all seems to stop.

CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen says that, in this climate, more is not likely to happen.

"I just don't think [as] a political issue that folks care as much about gun control right now as they do about economics," he said.

"The hard reality is that people are more concerned about their jobs and their 401(k)s and how they're going to pay for their school tuition for their kids, than they are about trying to put additional restrictions on guns."

They do it because they know the media will seemingly portray a monster as someone with "troubles." The Columbine killers depicted almost sympathetically when their acts of evil were explained away as revenge for being "bullied" in school.

A man who fatally shot his five children and killed himself had just discovered his wife was leaving him for another man, authorities said Sunday.

The bodies of James Harrison's children, ages 7 to 16, were found with multiple gunshot wounds Saturday in the family's mobile home, most of them in their beds. Harrison's body had been found earlier in the day with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, behind the wheel of his idling car.

The night before, the father and his eldest daughter went in search of his wife, Angela Harrison. The daughter used a GPS feature in her mother's cell phone to find her with another man at a convenience store in nearby Auburn, said Ed Troyer, spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff.

The woman told her husband she was not coming home, and was leaving him for the man with her at the store. The father and the daughter left, distraught, Troyer said.

Sometime after the children went to sleep, he shot each of them multiple times. Four died in their beds. The fifth was found in the bathroom, surrounded by signs of violent struggle.

"He wanted the kids dead," Troyer said. "It wasn't like he shot a few rounds. He shot several rounds."

Investigators believe he then returned to the area near the convenience store looking for his wife. His body was found near the store, Troyer said.

"We think he was going to go back to kill the wife," Troyer said. "He probably didn't find her and realized the gravity of what he'd done and shot himself."

Several weapons were found in the home.

Any reason can trigger an individual to go berserk nowadays. There is something terrible wrong with our society. We've become one big violent video game or movie:

Three Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, police officers were shot to death while responding to a 911 call of a domestic argument triggered by a urinating dog, according to a criminal complaint filed in the case.

The officers were the first department fatalities since 1995, according to the department.

Police said following the shootings Saturday that Richard Poplawski, 22, would be charged with three counts of homicide, aggravated assault and other charges. Poplawski, who was shot in the leg during a four-hour standoff with police, was hospitalized at an undisclosed location, police said.

Details of the incident were included in the police complaint seeking an arrest warrant for Poplawski. The complaint says Margaret Poplawski called 911 about 7 a.m. Saturday to report that her son was "giving her a hard time." Video Watch officers respond at the scene »

She told police she awoke to discover that "the dog had urinated on the floor," and awakened her son "to confront him about it."

The two had an argument, and Margaret Poplawski told her son she was calling police to remove him from her home, according to the complaint. When officers Stephen Mayhle and Paul Sciullo III arrived, she opened the door and let them in.

"Mrs. Poplawski reported that as the officers entered approximately 10 feet into the residence, she heard gunshots, turned and saw her son about six feet away with a long rifle in his hands, at which point she fled downstairs after asking him, 'What the hell have you done?'" the complaint said.

Margaret Poplawski reported she stayed in the basement during the standoff, and heard her son yell, "Yeah, I've been shot," and "I'm standing down, come in and help me," according to the complaint.

Police Chief Nathan Harper identified the dead officers as Eric Kelly, Mayhle and Sciullo. Kelly was a 14-year veteran of the department; the other two had worked there for two years each.

Sounding the alarm of gun violence:

As the horrific gun violence continued in the United States, Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, issued the following statement:

"Today's mass shooting in Binghamton is just the latest wake-up call reminding us that we must do something to stop the gun violence in our country. In the past few weeks alone, in mass shootings, 10 were killed in Alabama, eight killed in a North Carolina nursing home, 10 killed in California, including four police officers, but the silence from many of our political leaders was deafening.

"About 30,000 people a year in this country die from gun violence, about 80 a day, 32 by homicide - the same number who died at Virginia Tech two years ago this month. In the space of four months, up to nine Americans died as a result of bacteria-laden peanut butter crackers, and the government quickly took action. Some of the top government officials in our country say we don't need to do anything different - that we should just 'enforce the laws on the books.' The laws on the books aren't getting the job done. Now is the time to take effective steps to prevent gun violence.

Not only are we suffering in the U.S. because of the easy availability of guns in this country:

Mexico has some of the toughest gun-control laws in the world, yet the country's drug cartels are armed to the teeth with high-powered illegal weapons because guns are so easy to buy in the United States and smuggle over the border.

"If the United States had a system like ours, we wouldn't have so many problems here in Mexico," Agustin Villordo, 27, of Puebla, Mexico, said Tuesday as he shopped for a hunting rifle.

On Thursday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will visit Mexico to discuss ways to stop gun smuggling. The meeting is part of an effort by the United States to help Mexico in an increasingly bloody war against the drug cartels. More than 6,300 people have died in the violence since 2006.

But Mexicans say little will change as long as the United States continues to make it easy to buy guns.

"It is necessary to reduce the sale of weapons, particularly of high-power weapons, in the United States," President Felipe Calderón said during a visit to Britain on Monday.

He said there was a "correlation" between Mexico's soaring drug violence and the end of the U.S. ban on sales of assault-style weapons. That ban, which expired in 2004, barred sales of semi-automatic rifles with certain combinations of military-style features, such as folding stocks, large magazines or flash suppressors.

Nothing will change unless we force the whore politicians in Washington to stand up to the NRA:

This weekend should prove to us that here in 2009, the MSM and our leaders do not care at all about gun violence. Seems like we have all given up and believe the NRA won the battle and we should all carry guns, without background checks, everywhere including national parks, churches, stores, airplanes, etc etc.

This is, of course, the NRA's dream come true. A national of wild west gun toters. Screw the liberal police. It's every man for themselves!

The shooter in Pittsburgh this weekend said he was desperate because he believed Obama was going to take his guns away. Sound familiar? That is EXACTLY the marketing campaign literature from the NRA and GOP to incite this sort of violence and gin-up hatred so as to garner a few more votes for the Repubs.

And the press? The press doesn't care. It is more important to find out what Michelle Obama is wearing or waht new gaffe they can drum-up during an Obama speech.

Susan Rice on 'This Week': Transcript (4-5-09)

UN Ambassador, Susan Rice, was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos. Read the complete transcript. Excerpt below:

STEPHANOPOULOS: So what will this international response be?

RICE: Well, George, we have been in close consultation with our allies in Asia, in particular, Japan and South Korea about the appropriate response. We have consulted over the last several days, including this morning as well with the Russians and the Chinese.

So the U.N. Security Council will meet this afternoon in emergency session. I'll be going up there straightaway. And we will be discussing the appropriate response. The United States believes that this action is best dealt with -- the most appropriate response would a United Nations Security Council resolution.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Japan wants sanctions, will the U.S. co-sponsor a sanctions resolution?

RICE: The U.S. is working very closely with Japan and we will be in consultation with our partners inside the council, trying to get the most appropriate and strong response we can possibly get.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But this is already a violation of U.N. resolutions -- two U.N. resolutions...

RICE: Yes, it is.

STEPHANOPOULOS: ... just to have this test. So what good does it do for the United Nations to come back and say, hey, we really mean it this time?

RICE: Now, well, the first resolution that is really the operative one was from 2006, when the North Koreans launched a missile and the United Nations Security Council demanded a halt to future missile-related activity and any future missile launches.

We feel very strongly that what occurred today was a violation of that resolution. So we will go back and work, George, to both toughen existing regimes, but to add to that resolution. In fact, that resolution did not...

STEPHANOPOULOS: So there will be new sanctions toughening...

RICE: George, we have 15 members of the Security Council and -- including the permanent five, so we all need to come together around this. But the United States' view is, this is serious, it's a violation, and it merits and appropriately strong United Nations response. We'll be… STEPHANOPOULOS: You mentioned...

RICE: ...working for that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You mentioned the 15 members. One of them, of course, as you mentioned, is China. China has made it pretty clear they don't want any sanctions. And because of that, your predecessor, John Bolton, says that any kind of U.N. resolution is going to be close to meaningless.

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BOLTON, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO U.N.: I think the real pressure has to be applied on China, which gives North Korea 80 to 90 percent of its energy and a substantial amount of its food and other humanitarian needs.

China has got the capability to stop this nuclear program, we've just never applied adequate pressure to them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Is the United States prepared to pressure China?

RICE: We're working very closely with China. China shares the same goal that we do, which is a de-nuclearized Korean Peninsula. China also is very proximate, on the border with North Korea, and shares our desire not to see this situation escalate, and to ensure that we can achieve, George, the long-term goal, which is de- nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula through the six-party talk process.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But because China is right on the border of North Korea, they've been reluctant to really pressure North Korea. They're afraid that if you turn the screws too hard on North Korea, the regime is going to collapse and there's going to be chaos.

And is that why they are not going along with tougher sanctions?

RICE: Well, I think they have multiple concerns. They are looking at the large long-term goal of ensuring that we don't have a nuclearized Korean Peninsula. There have been times when we have differed as to the best means of achieving that.

But we are unified with China and others in the six parties towards the goal, George, of ensuring that we roll back this nuclear program that North Korea is pursuing.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But is there any evidence at all that North Korea is going to respond to any of this? They've been steadily adding to their nuclear program, in fits and starts at times, but basically they've been able, over the last eight years or so, to develop a nuclear capability, to develop nuclear warheads, and they seem determined to keep going on that track. RICE: Well, George, it is fits and starts. I mean, there have been steps that have occurred over the last years that have been progress. For example, they did take steps to dismantle the facility at Yongbyon, which was the principal reactor.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But then they restarted it.

RICE: No. We have seen some serious dismantlement. The problem that we face now is ensuring that there is a verifiable regime to ensure de-nuclearization. And that's where the six-party talks have now stalled.

The challenge, George, is to convey with unity, as the president said today, on behalf of the international community that we will not stand for violations of international law which this launch today represented. That there will be consequences. And that, indeed, we will pursue together with resolve the goal of achieving a Korean Peninsula without nuclear weapons.

Transcript: President Obama News Conference at G-20 Summit

The complete transcript:

All right. Chuck Todd? Chuck?

QUESTION: What concrete items that you got out of this G-20 can you tell the American people back home who are hurting, the family struggling, seeing their retirement go down, or worrying about losing their job, what happened here today that helps that family back home in -- in the heartland?

OBAMA: Well, as I said before, we’ve got a global economy. And if we’re taking actions in isolation in the United States but those actions are contradicted overseas, then we’re only going to be halfway effective, maybe not even half.

You’ve seen, for example, a drastic decline in U.S. exports over the last several months. You look at a company like Caterpillar, in my home state of Illinois, which up until last year was doing extraordinarily well. In fact, export growth was what had sustained it even after the recession had begun.

As a consequence of the world recession, as a consequence of the contagion from the financial markets debilitating economies elsewhere, Caterpillar is now in very bad shape.

So if we want to get Caterpillar back on its feet, if we want to get all those export companies back on their feet so that they are hiring, putting people back to work, putting money in people’s pockets, we’ve got to make sure that the global economy as a whole is successful.

And this document, which affirms the need for all countries to take fiscal responses that increase demand, that encourages the openness of markets, those are all going to be helpful in us being able to fix what ails the economy back home.

All right. You know, let me -- let me mix in a -- Justin Webb, BBC. Where’s Justin? There he is. Go ahead.

QUESTION: Mr. President, in the -- the spirit of openness (OFF- MIKE)

OBAMA: Why don’t you get a microphone, so -- see, everybody’s complaining. I’m sure that’s all your fellow British journalists.

(LAUGHTER)

QUESTION: They’re extraordinarily well behaved, Mr. President. In the spirit of openness with which you say you’re going to run your administration, could you give us an insight into an area or areas where you came to London wanting something and didn’t get it, where you compromised, where you gave something away to achieve the wider breakthrough agreement?

OBAMA: Well, I think that, if you look at, you know, the language of the document, there are probably some areas where it wasn’t so much of a sacrifice as it might not have been our number-one priority, but it became clear that it was very important to certain other actors.

I’d rather not specify what those precise items would be, because this is a collective document. But there’s no doubt that, you know, each country has its own quirks and own particular issues that a leader may decide is really, really important, something that is non- negotiable for them.

OBAMA: And what we tried to do as much as possible was to accommodate those issues in a way that didn’t -- did not hamper the effectiveness of the overall document to address what I think are the core issues related to this crisis.

Now, keep in mind, I think that this kind of coordination really is historic. I said in the meeting that if you had imagined ten years ago or 20 years ago or 30 years ago that you’d have the leaders of Germany, France, China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, a president of the United States named Obama, former adversaries, in some cases, former mortal enemies negotiating this swiftly on behalf of fixing the global economy, you would have said that’s crazy. And yet it was happening, and it happened with relatively little -- relatively few hiccups. And I think that’s a testimony to the great work that Gordon Brown did and his team in organizing the summit, the collective work of our teams in doing some good preparation, some good groundwork. So I’m very proud of what’s been done. This alone is not enough. And, obviously, the actions that each of us take in our individual countries are still absolutely vital. So we have a set of principles, for example, around dealing with systemic risk that I think will be very important in preventing the kinds of financial crisis that we’ve seen. That does not entirely solve the problem of toxic assets that are still in U.S. banks and certain British banks and certain European banks. And how each individual nation acts to deal with that is still going to be vitally important. How well we execute the respective stimulus programs around the world is going to be very important. The quicker they are, the more effective they are at actually boosting demand, the more all of us will benefit. The more encumbered they are by bureaucracy, mismanagement, and corruption, that will hamper our development efforts as a whole. So this is not a panacea, but it is a critical step, and I think it lays the foundation so that should the actions that we’ve taken individually and collectively so far not succeed in boosting global demand and growth, should you continue to see a freezing of credit or a hemorrhaging of jobs around the world, I think we’ve created a good foundation for this leadership to come back together again and take additional steps until we get it right. OK. Michael Sheerer (ph)? Where’s Michael?

Congress Gives Large Bonuses to their Staffs while Condemning AIG

We have a government that has no shame. They merely thumb their noses at us because we won't do anything about it. They bail out profiteers that brought this country to it's knees, while allowing them to give out bonuses with our tax dollars. Then the politicians pretend to be outraged when word gets out. Meanwhile they feast themselves with out money to give themselves, and their staffs, bonuses and perks:

While Congress has been flaying companies for giving out bonuses while on the government dole, lawmakers have a longstanding tradition of rewarding their own employees with extra cash -- also courtesy of taxpayers.

Capitol Hill bonuses in 2008 were among the highest in years, according to LegiStorm, an organization that tracks payroll data. The average House aide earned 17% more in the fourth quarter of the year, when the bonuses were paid, than in previous quarters, according to the data. That was the highest jump in the eight years LegiStorm has compiled payroll information.

Total end-of-year bonuses paid to congressional staffers are tiny compared with the $165 million recently showered on executives of American International Group Inc., which is being propped up by billions of dollars of U.S. government subsidies. But Capitol Hill bonuses provide a notable counterpoint to the populist rhetoric and sound bites emanating from Washington these past weeks.

Last year alone, more than 200 House lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, awarded bonuses totaling $9.1 million to more than 2,000 staff members, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of office-disbursement forms. The money comes out of taxpayer-funded office budgets, and is surplus cash that would otherwise be forfeited if not spent.

Payments ranged from a few hundred dollars to $14,000. Lawmakers, at their own discretion, gave the money to chiefs of staff, assistants, computer technicians, and more than 100 aides who earned salaries of more than $100,000 a year.

This has gone on for many years. There is no prohibition against handing out excess cash. The lawmakers say it is a nice incentive to get staff to conserve budgets, and it rewards hard work and long hours.

"Most aides could make more money elsewhere, but choose to work on Capitol Hill because they believe in public service," said Brendan Daly, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat who along with other top House leaders awarded bonuses. (Senators also give bonuses, but documents showing those payments aren't yet available.) Mr. Daly said bonuses are a small perk for underpaid government employees.

Each House office receives between $1.3 million and $1.9 million annually in government funds to pay for office expenses, including salaries. In 2008, some lawmakers returned excess cash to the government, including Rep. Todd Akin, a Missouri Republican (who also gave some bonuses) and Rep. Tim Walz, a Minnesota Democrat. Meredith Salsbery, a spokeswoman for Mr. Walz, said aides are asked to be "thrifty and conscious of taxpayer dollars" and that Mr. Walz "knows the power of setting a good example."

The 435 House offices typically return a total of about $1 million or $2 million a year, or less that 0.5% of the overall budget for office expenses, but the amount can vary widely. In 2006, for example, lawmakers returned just $36,549.

Disbursement forms show that dozens of aides working for the Financial Services Committee got a bonus from panel Chairman Barney Frank. Spokesman Steven Adamske said the Massachusetts Democrat gives bonuses to staffers because "government workers are pretty low paid." He said several aides who got bonuses had worked long hours during 2008 on the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Top Financial Services Committee Republicans also gave their aides bonuses. "These were merit bonuses for people who had performed especially well," said Larry Lavender, an aide to Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the committee.

Overall in the House, disbursements were roughly evenly split between Republicans and Democrats.

Six lawmakers who lost their re-election races paid more than $300,000 in bonuses to 89 staffers. Thelma Drake, a Republican, gave about $40,000 in extra compensation to about a dozen aides after losing her Virginia seat. Mrs. Drake said the payments were a form of severance to "good staff members who worked their hearts out and who were about to lose their jobs."

A handful of lawmakers who retired handed out a total of $283,000 in bonuses. After Republican Heather Wilson gave up her New Mexico seat in the House to run unsuccessfully for the Senate, she gave 13 aides bonuses as high as $3,000. "My practice over 10 years in Congress was to give bonuses at the end of the year," she said.

Meanwhile, more revelations of large bailed-out corporations with executives getting bonuses with our money:

The chairman of a congressional oversight panel has opened an investigation into what federal officials knew about $3.6 billion in bonuses paid to Merrill Lynch employees after the government spent billions of dollars in bailout funds to help save the company from failure by arranging its sale to Bank of America.

Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio), chairman of the domestic policy subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform panel, said he was concerned about the payments because they were 22 times larger than bonuses to insurance giant American International Group, which created a political firestorm.

The government awarded Bank of America $10 billion to help it complete the acquisition and provided the bank a federal guarantee to limit its potential losses on about $118 billion of assets largely inherited from Merrill Lynch as part of the sale.

Kucinich questioned whether government officials knew about the bonuses while they were overseeing the sale of Merrill Lynch. He sent letters yesterday to Bank of America, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve requesting all documents and communication related to the bonuses.

"This raises important questions about what you knew about the Merrill bonuses, and what you did with your knowledge," Kucinich wrote to Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke. "If ordinary [Bank of America] shareholders were ignorant of the details of the Merrill bonus arrangement, was the U.S. government as well?"

Keith Olbermann: Why is Obama Favoring Wall St. Over the Car Industry

While Wall St. gets bailouts the U.S. industry gets strings attached with the aid they get. CEOs in the financial industry continue to get bonuses and American workers are told their contracts have to be torn up because they make too much money. Read the transcript of Olbermann's questioning of this double standard.

OLBERMANN: With us now, Dan Gross, senior editor at “Newsweek” magazine.

Much thanks for your time tonight, sir.

DAN GROSS, NEWSWEEK: Good to be here.

OLBERMANN: Obviously, the president did not forcibly take over either G.M. or Chrysler today. But to what extent does he now—in at least the political sense—own both of these car companies?

GROSS: He totally owns them, their short-term fate. And he really owns the workers as well—because what we saw today is a sense that these are going to be either broken up or severely shrunk and they‘re going to be tens—perhaps hundreds of thousands of people who will need to find other things to do. He got at that a little—toward the end of his remarks about what sorts of things the administration would be doing.

But I think we need to hear a lot more details about that.

OLBERMANN: Politico.com reported today that Mr. Obama has what they described as a more jaundiced view of the automakers than Wall Street. Given that G.M.‘s mistake was to keep feeding the American appetite for SUV, Wall Street‘s mistake was to, you know, cripple the entire global economy, how does Wall Street come out more favorably in this comparison in a view from any White House?

GROSS: Well, two reasons. One, you know, the genius of Wall Street was to screw thing up on such a massive, galactic scale that their demise would threaten western civilization as we know it and a lot of eastern civilization. Whereas, the car companies would just take down a lot of kind of blue collar people and dealerships in the Midwest.

The second reason is a kind of cultural fit. You know, there are a lot of people in the Democratic Party and this administration who are tight with people on Wall Street. These are their classmates from college.

When you are running for president you go to the Hamptons, you got to Upper East Side of Manhattan, you go to Martha‘s Vineyard, you rub elbows with these people. This is where you raise money from. It‘s one of the power bases. You are not in Birmingham and Southfield and the suburbs of Detroit. So, there‘s a kind of cultural fit here, too.

OLBERMANN: But—and exactly to that point. The same White House that argued it had to intervene and save the bonuses of AIG executives, because these are contractually obligated bonuses, is now telling middle-class union workers, not just these ones but ones essentially across the nation, they have to make some concessions even though those concessions might violate or render neutral their contracts.

I mean, how does the White House economic team which is—as you suggest—run by Wall Street veterans portray this as anything but, you know, another edition with new membership of the same rich boy‘s club in the same sort of action they‘ve taken for 70 or 150 years?

GROSS: Well, it will take some fancy footwork. But, you know, they might say in their defense that, yes, we are—you know, in AIG‘s case contracts were sacred. We‘re, you know, we are not a nation of laws without them. In this case, we have to look to rip up the union contracts but also the deals that the franchisees have, all the dealers, they have these laws. They want to rip those up as well.

And importantly, they are telling the bondholders, who are other rich people, that they might have to settle for less than they otherwise might expect to receive.

OLBERMANN: So, what next, Dan, for Detroit and for the White House?

GROSS: I think this is the beginning of a process rather than the end. I think you have to divide between Chrysler, which I think they have essentially given up on; and to be fair, Chrysler‘s owners, Cerberus, have probably come close to giving up on. We have Fiat coming in. They‘re going to get a big chunk of ownership for no money down basically. We‘re not sure if they‘re going to get the loans.

And truth be told, they are the fifth biggest automaker. Their departure would not be such a big deal. It‘s GM that we really have to worry about. Just as we have AIG and Citigroup problem, not a banking problem; we have a GM problem, not a car-making problem.

OLBERMANN: Dan Gross of “Newsweek,” author also of “Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation”—thank you, Dan.

GROSS: Thank you.

Taliban Leader Vows To Attack D.C. 'Soon'

Should we take this threat seriously. Remember: the last 2 al Qaeda terror attacks on the U.S. (WTC I and II) occurred early on in the tenure of the new President. And with the preoccupation with the economy maybe the government, and people, have ignored the terror threat as happened last time.

The top Taliban commander in Pakistan promised an assault on Washington "soon" - one he says will "amaze" the world.

"Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world," Baitullah Mehsud told The Associated Press by phone.

Mehsud also claimed responsibility for Monday's attack on a police academy outside the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, saying it was in retaliation for U.S. missile strikes against militants along the Afghan border.

Mehsud and other Pakistani Taliban militants are believed to be based in the country's lawless areas near the border with Afghanistan, where they have stepped up their attacks throughout Pakistan.

One year ago, CBS News security correspondent Bob Orr reported that U.S. intelligence officials were increasingly concerned that Mehsud could eclipse even Osama bin Laden as a threat to America.

The U.S. recently announced a $5 million bounty on Mehsud's head. Asked about it, he told the AP he would be happy to "embrace martyrdom."

Mehsud has made voluminous threats against the West for years, as he rose to his current stature as the head of the Taliban in Pakistan, and he gave no apparent specifics in his threat on the U.S. capital on Tuesday, notes CBS News' Sami Yousafzai in Peshawar.

The attack on the police academy outside Lahore left at least seven police officers and two civilians dead on Monday.

Determining who actually carried out Monday's brazen assault on the police may prove difficult, if not impossible, in a country where numerous militant groups and tribes overlap and cooperate - both in acts of terror and claims of responsibility.

Conflicting Mehsud's claim, Pakistani intelligence officials based in Lahore told CBS News' Farhan Bokhari on Tuesday that Mehsud and the Taliban may not have been directly involved in the siege, based on ongoing interrogations of militants apprehended after the incident.

Security agents have not ruled out the possibility that militants from the banned group Lashkar-e-Taiba may have carried out the attack with some support from Mehsud, but the extent of any such link remains unclear.

A Taliban source told Yousafzai on Monday, meanwhile, that a group of militants called the Fedayeen al-Islam have been trying for some time to stage high-profile hostage takings to demand the release of Taliban and other militants held by the Pakistani government.

And it could be a cyber attack. We are certainly vulnerable to such methods (read about non-Qaeda cyber threats, like Conficker).

The United States often cannot quickly or reliably trace a cyber attack back to its source, even as rival nations and extremists may be looking to wage virtual war, a top official warned Tuesday.

"It often takes weeks and sometimes months of subsequent investigation," said US intelligence director Dennis Blair, "and even at the end of very long investigations you're not quite sure" who carried out the offensive.

China, Russia and other countries already could be potent online foes and terrorists may find it easier in the future to hire hackers to target key systems, Blair told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"Terrorists are interested in using cyberweapons, just the way they're interested in using most any weapon they can use against us," notably to target systems critical to the high-tech driven US economy, he said.

"We currently assess that their capability does not match their ambitions in that area, although that's something we have to work on all the time because things become more widespread, terrorists can find hackers to work for them," he said.

The mess in Pakistan is the key to whether al Qaeda/Taliban will succeed against us:

Two high profile guerrilla attacks in Lahore in the space of a month have heightened fears of Islamist militancy engulfing Pakistan, despite U.S. promises of support for the year-old civilian government.

The assault by gunmen on a police academy in Lahore on Monday and another on the Sri Lankan cricket team in the city four weeks earlier brought home the depth of insecurity in Pakistan, while television channels carried the images worldwide.

"The government and the military are facing a crisis of credibility," said Ahmed Rashid, author of "Descent into Chaos", a book chronicling Pakistan's slide into the grip of militant religious extremists.

"There is no strategic plan or vision over how to deal with extremism and terrorism."

Nuclear-armed, and a hiding place for al Qaeda, Pakistan has become a foreign policy nightmare for the United States and other allies in the West.

U.S. President Barack Obama unveiled last Friday results of a strategy review for Pakistan and Afghanistan that made the annihilation of al Qaeda the principle objective.

A centrepiece of Obama's approach to Pakistan was the promise of billions of dollars in aid to help build state institutions, and improve the social and economic welfare to give people faith in President Asif Ali Zardari's civilian government.

The Pakistanis need all the help they can get.

"This incident definitely raises very serious questions about the capacity of our intelligence agencies and security apparatus to deal with these groups," Lahore-based security analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi said after the attack on the police academy.

60 Minutes on the Conficker Worm Threat: Transcript (3-29-09)

How serious a threat is the Conficker Worm. Or just computer hackers in general. Read the 60 Minutes transcript.

The Internet is infected. Malicious computer hackers have been creating more and more weapons that they plant on the Internet. They call their weapons viruses and worms - they're creepy, crawly toxic software that contaminate our computers without our ever knowing it. You can be infected by simply visiting your favorite Web site, or just by leaving your computer on, overnight while you're asleep.

And the problem is growing, exponentially. Last year the number of infections tripled. And an entire industry of computer security professionals is in a race to keep the hackers from their goal, which is usually to steal your money.

One of the most dangerous threats ever, a computer worm known as "Conficker," is spreading through the Internet right now. By some estimates, 10 million computers have been infected worldwide.
CNET Conficker FAQ
At Symantec, the company that makes Norton anti-virus software, engineers have been tracking Conficker since last November as it worms its way across the globe.

"This map is showing a visual representation of where all of the known infections of Conficker are across the world," explained Steve Trilling, a Symantec vice president who says the worm is now living on millions of computers, mainly in corporations.

So far, the bad guys who created it haven't triggered Conficker. It's just sitting out there like a sleeper cell.

"Imagine a network of spies that has infiltrated a country. And every day, all of the spies are calling in for their instructions on what to do next," Trilling explained.

Asked what the worm is being asked to do, Trilling told Stahl, "That's the interesting thing. The only thing the worm is being asked to do is to ask for further instructions."

For several months, Trilling says the worm has just been sitting there, awaiting instructions.

It's that ominous, because once the hackers issue instructions, Conficker could turn menacing in an instant.

With one click, the worm's creator can instruct it to suck sensitive data, like bank passwords and account numbers, out of millions of computers, or launch a massive spam attack to clog up the works.

The newest targets of worms are social networking sites. Trilling demonstrated to Stahl how it might work.

Looking at a real Facebook page, Trilling explained, "We added your friend and colleague Morley Safer, you can see down there on the left."

He says a worm can crack into a Facebook account, like Morley's, and send a message to anyone on his friends list.

It's a message a friend or colleague, like Stahl, would be sure to open since it comes from a trusted friend. Stahl took the bait and clicked on what looked like Morley's video link.

"Something looks a little off," Trilling remarked. "You're already infected."

As Trilling demonstrated on a second screen, the hacker "owned" Stahl's online movements. "From here on out, everything you do, gonna show up on the hacker's machine," he explained.

So when Stahl typed her username and password into a bank Web site, it appeared instantaneously on the hacker’s screen, along with her bank account details.

"Every single keystroke you hit, in fact, if you make a mistake and hit a backspace, that shows up in the window," Trilling explained.

The hacker then followed her around, as she browsed the Internet from CBS News to Amazon.com.

"So, if I buy something, they’re gonna have my credit card," Stahl remarked.

"Everything you type in, your address, your credit card, it’s all gonna show up in that window," Trilling warned.

- Related Link:

• FAQ: Conficker time bomb ticks, but don't expect boom

Obama Statement on the Auto Industry: Transcript (3-30-09)

Read the full transcript. Excerpt below:

One of the challenges we've confronted from the beginning of this administration is what to do with the state of the struggling auto industry. In recent months, my Auto Task Force has been reviewing requests by General Motors and Chrysler for additional government assistance, as well as plans developed by each of these companies to restructure, to modernize, and to make themselves more competitive. Our evaluation is now complete. But before I lay out what needs to be done going forward, I want to say a few words about where we are and what led us to this point.

It will come as no surprise that some Americans who have suffered most during this recession have been those in the auto industry and those working for companies that support it. Over the past year, our auto industry has shed over 400,000 jobs, not only at plants that produce cars, but at the businesses that produce the parts that go into them and the dealers that sell and repair them. More than one in 10 Michigan residents is out of work -- the most of any state. And towns and cities across the great Midwest have watched unemployment climb higher than it's been in decades.

The pain being felt in places that rely on our auto industry is not the fault of our workers; they labor tirelessly and desperately want to see their companies succeed. It's not the fault of all the families and communities that supported manufacturing plants throughout the generations. Rather, it's a failure of leadership -- from Washington to Detroit -- that led our auto companies to this point.

Year after year, decade after decade, we've seen problems papered over and tough choices kicked down the road, even as foreign competitors outpaced us. Well, we've reached the end of that road. And we, as a nation, cannot afford to shirk responsibility any longer. Now is the time to confront our problems head-on and do what's necessary to solve them.

We cannot, and must not, and we will not let our auto industry simply vanish. This industry is like no other -- it's an emblem of the American spirit; a once and future symbol of America's success. It's what helped build the middle class and sustained it throughout the 20th century. It's a source of deep pride for the generations of American workers whose hard work and imagination led to some of the finest cars the world has ever known. It's a pillar of our economy that has held up the dreams of millions of our people. And we cannot continue to excuse poor decisions. We cannot make the survival of our auto industry dependent on an unending flow of taxpayer dollars. These companies -- and this industry -- must ultimately stand on their own, not as wards of the state.

And that's why the federal government provided General Motors and Chrysler with emergency loans to prevent their sudden collapse at the end of last year -- only on the condition that they would develop plans to restructure. In keeping with that agreement, each company has submitted a plan to restructure. But after careful analysis, we've determined that neither goes far enough to warrant the substantial new investments that these companies are requesting.

And so today I'm announcing that my administration will offer GM and Chrysler a limited additional period of time to work with creditors, unions, and other stakeholders to fundamentally restructure in a way that would justify an investment of additional taxpayer dollars. During this period they must produce plans that would give the American people confidence in their long-term prospects for success.

Geithner, McCain on Meet the Press: Transcript (3-29-09)

John McCain refused to get on the Palin bandwagon. Read the transcript. Excerpt below:

MR. GREGORY: All right, we've defined our terms a little bit, now let's talk about the big news this week, your plan to help save the banks. The bank stabilization plan. We've come up with an example here and we'll role-play a little bit, because I think this is the easiest way to explain this. So here's how a transaction would work. Bank USA, we're calling it, has a loan, a toxic asset, and it's valued on their books for $100 million. And it's for sale, right? So there's going to be an auction here and investors like me could come in, and I'm going to come in and I've got--my highest bid is for $70 million, OK? That's the price for the $100 million loan that I'm actually going to pay. Now, here's how the transaction actually works, right? I'm the investor, I put in $5 million. You, the Treasury Department--you're really the taxpayer--put in $5 million, and then the government in the form of the FDIC is going to provide 60 million at very good terms, going to guarantee that loan. So the government's on a hook for a lot of this. That's called leverage, right? How does it work and what's the upside?

SEC'Y GEITHNER: David, let me just step back for one second. Part of what's, what's causing this problem in our financial system is banks made a bunch of bad loans, many of them backed by real estate; residential, commercial real estate. Those loans are now sitting on the books of the financial system and they're taking up room, preventing banks from extending new credit on the scale they need. And we have two choices in this context. We can leave it as it is, hope banks will earn their way out of this process over time, and I am certain that will create the risk of a deeper, longer recession. Again, the classic lesson in financial crises, if governments wait to act, they wait too late and that means more damage to the economy, higher deficit in the future, greater cost to the taxpayer. We're not prepared to take that approach.

Another approach many people advocate is that the government itself come in...

MR. GREGORY: Right.

SEC'Y GEITHNER: ...and buy these assets, take on all the risk itself. The government would set a price for the assets and bear all the losses and all the costs in that context. Our judgment is that would be much more expensive for the taxpayer, create much greater risk for the taxpayer, and we're not prepared to take that approach.

MR. GREGORY: And the point in our model, if we can just put that slide up again, where you see investor puts in five million, Treasury puts in five million, the FDIC guarantees it at $60 million in terms of providing the loan. There's upside there. In other words, if the value of that loan goes up, the taxpayer wins, the investor wins.

SEC'Y GEITHNER: Right. The investors are taking risk. Their money is at risk and at stake. They're the ones that set the price for which this transactions will take place. So using their self-interest to get the price better, better than what the government would do in that context.

MR. GREGORY: Right.

SEC'Y GEITHNER: We're using their expertise to help manage these assets. And the--and as you said, the taxpayer will share in the upside. This is a relatively conservative structure. It's not very different from when your family buys a house. It's a more conservative structure than a bank typically operates. But the key thing is it allows the government to work with the private investor to help get through this crisis.

MR. GREGORY: Hm.

SEC'Y GEITHNER: That we don't want the government taking on all the risk and all the losses.

MR. GREGORY: Right.

SEC'Y GEITHNER: We need to work with the private sector to help get this, get this recovery going again.

MR. GREGORY: All right, but here's the key point. The investor presumably is on board because, you know, they stand to gain a lot. The government wants to get all of these toxic assets off the banks' balance sheets. It's been estimated between $1.5 and $3 trillion of bad stuff out there. But will the banks participate? And here's my question based on our example. Hundred million dollar loan, but the auction price is $70 million. Well, if you're the bank and you say, "Hey, wait a minute. This is really worth $90 million or $80 million. I'm not going to sell that for $70 million and take that loss on my books." Are you going make them sell?

SEC'Y GEITHNER: Banks already hold reserves against that $100 million. So the gap is not between 100 and 70, for example, it's a narrower gap. Now, banks are going to have an incentive because they want to raise, go raise private capital from the markets. And it's going to be easier for them to do that if they can show their investors a cleaner balance sheet. And that'll help improve the incentive for banks to participate.

MR. GREGORY: But you can't make them sell, can you?

SEC'Y GEITHNER: Well, you can make it compelling and economic for them to sell. And again, if you think about the markets today, if you had to sell your house tomorrow, in a market where no one can get a mortgage, then the price you would get if you sold in that market would be a tiny fraction of its basic value in a more normal. And our markets are not working today. People, in effect, in these securities markets, can't raise financing. And there is a very good case in that context for the government to provide financing on appropriate terms to help provide a market for these assets. And by doing that, we're going to make it more likely that interest rates come down and, and the financial system has the capacity to provide the credit, the oxygen.

[...]MR. GREGORY: Do you think that the banks will need more government money, and would you be willing to support that?

SEN. McCAIN: I would not unless I certainly saw a way that it would not be used the--as the first TARP money was. I think that's the general opinion throughout the Congress on both sides of the aisle. There's got to be more transparency. You didn't ask him, but the secretary of Treasury I understand will not reveal is how much money is left in TARP 1. Don't you think the American people should know that? There--we still don't have the transparency and oversight.

One other thing we need, we do need a select committee in Congress to look at what happened so people can--this train hit them without any knowledge. They still don't know what happened. Why did it happen? So then they would have some more confidence on, in what actions we might take in the future to prevent it from happening again.

MR. GREGORY: And what is your take on the anger, the populist anger in the country? Do you think it's justified, or do you think it's been overblown? Has the president showed leadership in standing up to it?

SEN. McCAIN: I think the president was trying to walk a careful line between reflecting public anger--which is all justified. It's all justified, ranging from the extreme of Madoff to just outright greed and people who knew better. So I think he was trying to walk a fine line between rechanneling and reflecting anger, at the same time not bashing people that are innocent. I think that, that what we need to do here is understand, too, that sometimes Congress overreacts. I share all that anger. My constituents share that anger. It's, it's real, it's palpable and it's justified. But bills of attainder, basically going back and taxing people for what they've already by contract earned or are going to earn, I think is a dangerous course of action as well.

Transcript: Obama On "Face The Nation" (3-29-09)

Read the full transcript. Excerpt below:

Schieffer: This has really now become your war, hasn't it?

President Obama: I think it's America's war. And it's the same war that we initiated after 9/11 as a consequence of those attacks on 3,000 Americans who were just going about their daily round. And the focus over the last seven years I think has been lost.

What we want to do is to refocus attention on al Qaeda. We are going to root out their networks, their bases. We are gonna make sure that they cannot attack U.S. citizens, U.S. soil, U.S. interests, and our allies' interests around the world.

In order for us to do that, we have to ensure that neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan can serve as a safe haven for al Qaeda. And, unfortunately, over the last several years what we've seen is, essentially, al Qaeda moving several miles from Afghanistan to Pakistan but effectively still able to project their violence and, and hateful ideologies out into the world.

[...]Schieffer: Are you giving our commanders now in Afghanistan a green light to go after these people even if they're in what used to be safe havens in Pakistan?

President Obama: Well, I haven't changed my approach. If we have a high-value target within our sights, after consulting with Pakistan, we're going after them. But our main thrust has to be to help Pakistan defeat these extremists.

Now, one of the concerns that we've had building up over the last several years is a notion I think among the average Pakistani that this is somehow America's war and that they are not invested. And that attitude I think has led to a steady creep of extremism in Pakistan that is the greatest threat to the stability of the Pakistan government - and ultimately the greatest threat to the Pakistani people.

What we want do is say to the Pakistani people, you are our friends, you are our allies. We are going to give you the tools to defeat al Qaeda and to root out these safe havens. But we also expect some accountability. And we expect that you understand the severity and the nature of the threat.

In addition, what we want do is to help Pakistan grow its economy, to be able to provide basic services to its people, and that I think will help strengthen those efforts. If the Pakistan government doesn't have credibility, if they are weakened, then it's gonna be much more difficult for them to deal with the extremism within their borders.

Schieffer: But you're talking about going after them. Are you talking about with American boots on the ground -

President Obama: No.

Schieffer: - pursuing these people into these so-called safe havens?

President Obama: No. Our plan does not change the recognition of Pakistan as a sovereign government. We need to work with them and through them to deal with al Qaeda. But we have to hold them much more accountable. And we have to recognize that part of our task in working with Pakistan is not just military. It's also our capacity to build their capacity through civilian interventions, through development, through aid assistance. And that's part of what you're seeing - both in Afghanistan and Pakistan I think is fully resourcing a comprehensive strategy that doesn't just rely on bullets or bombs but also relies on agricultural specialists on doctors, on engineers, to help create an environment in which people recognize that they have much more at stake in partnering with us and the international community than giving into some of these -

Schieffer: Help me out here -

President Obama: - extremist ideologies.

Schieffer: How do you - what if they can't do it? What if they won't do it? I mean, we have reports now about members of Pakistan's intelligence service actually actively helping the Taliban and al Qaeda.

President Obama: Well, some -

Schieffer: What if they don't do it?

President Obama: Some of those reports aren't new. There are a whole host of contingencies that we've gotta deal with. I mean, this is gonna be hard, Bob. I'm under no illusions. If it was easy, it would have already been completed. And so we're gonna have to go with a strategy that is focused, that is narrowly targeted on defeating al Qaeda. We think that if you combine military, civilian, diplomatic, development approaches, if we are doing a much better job of coordinating with our allies, then we can be successful.

But we recognize there are gonna be a lot of hurdles between now and us finally having weakened al Qaeda or destroyed al Qaeda to the point there - it cannot, it doesn't pose a danger to us. And we will continue to monitor and adjust our strategies to make sure that we're not just going down blind alleys.

8-Year-Old Girl Missing in Tracy

Let's hope for the best. But let's find her. I'm sick of hearing these stories. Time to execute child molesters:

Tracy Police Department along with the FBI are conducting a large scale search for an eight year old girl who went missing on Friday afternoon.

Sandra Cantu left a friend's house at Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park but never returned home on Friday. A security camera recorded her image about 4. p.m. according Tracy Police. Authorities and volunteers searched the mobile home park with dogs and by helicopter with no luck. They have also contacted all of Cantu's friends and no one has seen her.

On Saturday, FBI agents checked all vehicles entering and leaving the mobile home park which is less than a half a mile from Highway 580.

Some facts:

Here are some of the realities of child abduction:

• Most kids who are reported missing have run away or there has been a misunderstanding with their parents about where they were supposed to be.
• Of the kids and teens who are truly abducted, most are taken by a family member or an acquaintance; 25% of kids are taken by strangers.
• Almost all kids kidnapped by strangers are taken by men, and about two thirds of stranger abductions involve female children.
• Most abducted kids are in their teens.
• Kids are rarely abducted from school grounds.

Strategies for Preventing Abductions

About 2,100 missing-children reports are filed each day. Many cases might be solved more easily if parents can provide a few key pieces of information about their kids, like: height, weight, eye color, and a clear recent photo. And make sure your kids have the safety information that could help prevent an abduction.

These strategies may help:

* Make sure custody documents are in order.
* Have ID-like photos taken of your kids every 6 months and have them fingerprinted. Many local police departments sponsor fingerprinting programs.
* Keep your kids' medical and dental records up to date.
* Make online safety a priority. The Internet is a great tool, but it's also a place for predators to stalk kids. Be aware of your kids' Internet activities and chat room "friends," and remind them never to give out personal information. Avoid posting identifying information or photos of your kids online.
* Set boundaries about the places your kids go. Supervise them in places like malls, movie theaters, parks, public bathrooms, or while fundraising door to door.
* Never leave kids alone in a car or stroller, even for a minute.
* Choose caregivers — babysitters, childcare providers, and nannies — carefully and check their references. If you've arranged for someone to pick up your kids from school or day care, discuss the arrangements beforehand with your kids and with the school or childcare center.
* Avoid dressing your kids in clothing with their names on it — children tend to trust adults who know their names.

Spain to Prosecute Bush Torture Facilitators

If the United States government won't prosecute the criminal Bush gang, then the World will do it. Someday you could see Cheney or George W. before the World Court being tried on war crimes charges.

Two years ago, former Bush Administration Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld hurriedly fled France, fearing he would be arrested by French authorities for "ordering and authorizing" the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the U.S. facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In Spain, prosecutors are taking steps toward opening criminal investigations of six Bush-era officials to determine whether they violated international law by authorizing torture at Guantanamo Bay, reports the New York Times. The Spanish prosecutors' case is strong, say NYT's sources—especially since "crusading investigative judge" Baltasar Garzon (famous issuing an outstanding order for the arrest of Chilean tyrant Augusto Pinochet) is on the case. Bushies under review include former Attorney General Alberto Gonzelez, former Justice Dept. lawyer John Yoo, and former under-secretary of defense Douglas Feith. Spain's claim of jurisdiction arises from five Spanish Gitmo prisoners who say they were tortured there.

And no doubt that Cheney was the architect:

[article from 2005] A former top State Department official said Sunday that Vice President Dick Cheney provided the "philosophical guidance" and "flexibility" that led to the torture of detainees in U.S. facilities.

Retired U.S. Army Col. Larry Wilkerson, who served as former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, told CNN that the practice of torture may be continuing in U.S.-run facilities.

"There's no question in my mind that we did. There's no question in my mind that we may be still doing it," Wilkerson said on CNN's "Late Edition."

"There's no question in my mind where the philosophical guidance and the flexibility in order to do so originated -- in the vice president of the United States' office," he said. "His implementer in this case was [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld and the Defense Department."

At another point in the interview, Wilkerson said "the vice president had to cover this in order for it to happen and in order for Secretary Rumsfeld to feel as though he had freedom of action."

And does anybody doubt the testimony of the Red Cross:

The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report that the Bush administration's treatment of al-Qaeda captives "constituted torture," a finding that strongly implied that CIA interrogation methods violated international law, according to newly published excerpts from the long-concealed 2007 document.

The report, an account alleging physical and psychological brutality inside CIA "black site" prisons, also states that some U.S. practices amounted to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." Such maltreatment of detainees is expressly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

The findings were based on an investigation by ICRC officials, who were granted exclusive access to the CIA's "high-value" detainees after they were transferred in 2006 to the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The 14 detainees, who had been kept in isolation in CIA prisons overseas, gave remarkably uniform accounts of abuse that included beatings, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures and, in some cases, waterboarding, or simulating drowning.

At least five copies of the report were shared with the CIA and top White House officials in 2007 but barred from public release by ICRC guidelines intended to preserve the humanitarian group's strict policy of neutrality in conflicts. A copy of the report was obtained by Mark Danner, a journalism professor and author who published extensive excerpts in the April 9 edition of the New York Review of Books, released yesterday. He did not say how he obtained the report.

NorCal Plant Pulls Spices In Salmonella Scare

We still need to worry about our food supply. Although this President is a major departure from his amoral predecessor:

California public health officials are warning people not to eat a dozen spices packaged at a Union City plant under the Lian How brand name.

A salmonella outbreak that has sickened 33 people in California and nine people in three other states caused the Union International Food Company to voluntarily recall of its pepper, paprika, curry, onion powder and other products.

The state health department said Saturday that most of the people who got sick appeared to have been exposed to salmonella white eating at Asian restaurants that used the company's white and black peppers.

Exclusive Report: The GOP is the Party of Big Government

Despite all the propaganda about the Republicans being the party of small government. Government has actually grown under Republican Presidents:

• Federal government expenditures, as a percentage of the economy (source) were the highest of any President since WWII during the Reagan/Bush I administrations (22.2%). During that same period the budget deficit grew to an average -4.1% of GDP. It had only been -2.4% under Jimmy Carter. We went from near budget surpluses (-.8) under Clinton to massive budget deficits under George W. Bush (-2.1).
  
• Under Bill Clinton expenditures were only slightly higher than under George W. Bush (19.9 to 19.6). This is still higher than under the Kennedy/Johnson administrations (18.9).
  
• How is this being paid for (or not being paid for)? Not with corporate taxes. Corporate taxes as percent of total Federal expenditures are lower today (source) than there were under every President since the Great Depression. It began with the Reagan administration when it was 9%. Corporate taxes went up under Clinton (11%). Before it went back down again under W. Bush (9.5%)

Bottom line: Republicans might be the party of big business but they are certainly not the party of less government. They prefer to borrow and spend as opposed to Democrats that seem to tax and spend. Either solution is no solution.