How Republicans Ruined the Intelligence Community

Karen De Young of the Washington Post informs us that the reforms to America's intelligence community initiated by President Bush and the Republicans in Congress in 2004, the legislation which created the National Counterterrorism Center, were the primary factor in the failure of the Intelligence Community to identify and deter the "underwear bomber."

That can't be true, can it? After all, everyone knows (or at least Republicans do) that it was Obama who made us less safe by de-prioritizing the "War on Terror."

Still, Ms. De Young does cite some damning evidence that suggests the all consuming desire to collect any and all intelligence on everyone may have made it extremely difficult to, in the jargon of the counterterrorism experts, "connect the dots" to legitimate threats to our security:

The failure of U.S. authorities to detect a plot to bomb a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day has reignited long-simmering concerns that intelligence reforms implemented five years ago remain inadequate to prevent terrorist attacks. [...]

Ihe most intense scrutiny has been directed toward the centerpiece of the 2004 intelligence reorganization: the National Counterterrorism Center. [...]

As the central repository for "all-source" intelligence on international terrorism, the NCTC is tasked with connecting the dots and advising the government on threats. [...]

Several officials and experts said the failure to uncover the plot confirmed fears that the massive amounts of terrorism-related information being gathered since the 2001 attacks might outgrow the capacity to manage it. The CIA, the FBI, the military, and numerous Cabinet departments and independent agencies are flooded every day with new data from the field that is available to the NCTC.

"The single biggest worry that I have is long-term quality control," Russell E. Travers, in charge of the NCTC database of terrorism "entities," said in a 2007 interview as his list topped 400,000 and continued to expand. "Where am I going to be, where is my successor going to be, five years down the road?"

Travers is still there, and the database has grown to about 550,000. Beyond connecting the dots, "the challenge we now face is that we are collecting so much information," Rep. Peter Hoekstra (Mich.) said last week of the system he helped devise as the top Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Yes, you heard that right. A senior Republican in Congress actually admitted that the reforms to our intelligence community which he "helped devise" may have made things worse. Of course back in 2004, Hoekstra wasn't just the "top Republican" on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, he was its Chairman. He rubber stamped whatever the Bush/Cheney White House wanted back then. Now he's having buyer's remorse apparently.

Well, I guess his statement is one small step toward accountability. Not much of one, but with Republicans, you take what you can get.

Some of the finger-pointing centers on claims and counterclaims about who should have flagged what for others to pay attention to and who should have looked where without being prompted. Travers, the TIDE chief who also serves as deputy director of the NCTC, predicted the problem even earlier than his 2007 expression of concern about the volume of terrorist information.

"If an organization posts something to its webpage, it can claim to have shared information,"he wrote in the forward to a 2005 book published by the Joint Military Intelligence College."Whether the right people know the information/analysis is there, and actually make use of it, is entirely another matter.

"Indeed, we'll almost certainly be dealing with precisely this problem in the post mortems of our next intelligence failure; the relevant intelligence will have been posted, but the right analysts never found it among the terabytes of available information."

That's correct folks, he said "terabytes" of information has been collected on God knows who about God knows what. So much information that the Intelligence community can't handle it all. I don't know how big a terabyte is, but these people do:

A terabyte is a SI-multiple (see prefix tera) of the unit byte for digital information storage and is equal to 10¹² (1 trillion short scale) bytes or 1000 gigabytes. [...]

In standard SI usage, 1 terabyte (TB) equals 1000000000000bytes = 1000⁴ or 10¹² bytes.

To give you an example, the entire Library of Congress has collected 100 terabytes of data for its digital archive of Internet websites.

I'm just guessing here, but I bet the number of terabytes of data the NSA, CIA, DIA, ad nauseam , have collected far more than 100 terabytes of information. Indeed, according to this article, the NSA alone is constructing a facility in Nevade to store Yottabytes of surveillance information!

[T]he NSA is constructing a datacenter in the Utah desert that they project will be storing yottabytes of surveillance data. And what is a yottabyte? I’m glad you asked.

There are a thousand gigabytes in a terabyte, a thousand terabytes in a petabyte, a thousand petabytes in an exabyte, a thousand exabytes in a zettabyte, and a thousand zettabytes in a yottabyte. In other words, a yottabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000GB. Are you paranoid yet?

Heck, we know that AT&T alone was sued for allegedly collecting at least 312 terabytes of information for the NSA between 2001 and 2005 as part of the NSA's warrantless surveillance program. And that was just one tele-communications company.

The Salt Lake City Tribune ran an article back in October 2009 in which it openly questioned whether the information already collected by the various US intelligence communities was simply too extensive to be of any real benefit in identifying critical information in time to prevent threats to our security:

The enormity of information being collected by American spy agencies is staggering -- and there simply aren't enough human analysts to go around. [...]

[O]nly a very small slice of the information stored at the center in southern Salt Lake County will ever be scanned by human eyes. And that's the reality for most of what is collected by the nation's other spy agencies as well.

In a report commissioned by the Department of Defense last year, the Jason defense advisory group warned that the millions of terabytes of data coming into U.S. spy agencies through ever-improving sensors are being wasted.

"As the amount of data captured by these sensors grows, the difficulty in storing, analyzing, and fusing the sensor data becomes increasingly significant," the report concluded. It cited Massachusetts Institute of technology defense expert Pete Rustan, who complained that "70 percent of the data we collect is falling on the floor." [...]

That's a problem that Utah Guard commander Brian Tarbet is all too familiar with. [...]

"We simply vacuum up more information today," Tarbet said. "That's more information from which you have to separate the wheat from the chaff. But how much of that is good intelligence? That's the trick."

When your own experts are telling you that 70% of everything you collect is never going to be processed, read, understood, or examined, doesn't that suggest to you that our vast intelligence community is engaged in the greatest exercise in the theater of the absurd humankind has ever attempted?

So, in other words we (i.e., our Government) collect so much information that there is no way to discern what reliable, important data on terrorist threats is and what is merely random noise or garbage. To put it in blunter, less polite, terms, it’s hard to find a few valuable pearls when you spend all your time looking for them in an ocean of bullshit.

This is the system that Dick Cheney and his fellow Republican paranoids put in place. I don't think it takes a genius to realize that not only were these immense stores of often unconstitutionally information a dangerous violation of American civil liberties, but, in addition, they have made it more difficult to protect our nation from terrorist threats. So, the truth of the matter is that it isn't President Obama who is to blame for the failure of our intelligence community to identify one crazed jihadi recruit who attempted to down a plane by using a concoction of chemical explosives concealed in his pants. No, the fault lies with the very same Republican critics (most prominently Dick Cheney himself) who have been so quick to point the finger at a Democratic President rather than accept any responsibility for their own mad cap schemes to collect more and more data at the expense of taking advantage of the greatest resource we have available to quickly detect real threats to our national security: a human mind trained to know what is relevant information and what is not.

You can collect all the information you want these days thanks to technological advances in computer and telecommunications, but all that information is useless unless you have a process in place where trained individuals can have the means to both control what data gets collected (so that we don't simply amass a huge store of information that is primarily irrelevant) and the analytical skills necessary to effectively "connect the dots" in a timely manner to prevent terrorist threats. It's about time someone in the media pointed that fact out.

Keith Olbermann: "Ruined Senate Bill Is Unsupportable"

Obama's Most Creative Speech Yet

One of the greatest things about being president is the ability to paint broad strokes. The man in charge can usually get by with expounding large themes like “vision” or “hope” or the “challenge of humanity.” Less visible executive staffers are the ones who sort out particulars of a new policy or diplomatic agreement after the motorcade departs.

But that won’t cut it for President Obama when he speaks to delegates Friday at the U.N.-sponsored climate conference in Copenhagen. When Obama agreed to attend the negotiations last month, he planned his speech to be the icing on an otherwise bland cake. Or, at the most, give one final push to an agreement hammered out by delegates. That, however, was before talks nearly deteriorated this week, hitting a stalemate just days before finishing. (Large countries have agreed only to small steps, while small countries refuse to accept anything less than giant leaps.) The result is an Obama forced to transform rather dramatically from America’s grand orator to its top negotiator.

Developing countries and the hordes of demonstrators at the talks have wanted to know one thing from the U.S. since the conference began: will it agree to sweeping emissions-reduction targets? The answer until now has been no, not without further economic analysis and assurance that other large countries like China and India will also play ball. The U.S. has, for good measure, thrown a bone to critics at the talks. Early Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton agreed to a $100 billion transfer of mitigation funding to poorer countries to deal with local effects of climate change. That's a drop in the bucket for those small countries, which have asked for at least a trillion. And so the bickering has continued.

So when Obama arrives in Denmark on Friday, the American president will be forced to deliver his most creative speech yet. At the risk of the negotiations utterly collapsing, he’ll have to agree to further emissions cuts without overpromising what the Senate may agree upon next year. He’ll have to offer large sums for deforestation mitigation and adaptation for small countries without knowing exactly how much Congress will authorize. And he’ll have to make a repeated case for urgency in the face of the world’s environmental challenges while admitting that his country has, in fact, been one of the biggest foot-draggers of them all.

Obama’s no amateur when it comes to polished speaking, and his speechwriters will undoubtedly draft some shiny lines. But in the open plenary session that will follow, he’ll be asked for specifics. He’ll be asked to offer firm numbers on exactly what the U.S. will put in writing by a conference full of international delegates who won’t know or care just how slow the U.S. Senate actually works.

Never unprepared, the president will have some numbers in his pocket. Last month the White House announced that Obama would propose cutting emissions 83 percent by 2050, which would entail a 30 percent reduction below 2005 levels by 2025. But still, that's not nearly enough for the other frustrated parties around the table. One of Obama’s most valuable weapons will be the EPA findings released last week that too much carbon in the atmosphere can cause unhealthy lungs, essentially authorizing his administration to cut domestic emissions on its own.

But if Obama goes out on a limb, so as to say “If Congress doesn’t take up this issue, I will,” the delegation of senators and congresspeople in the audience may remind him that they don’t have to fund the effort.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Sign the Petition

Did 20 pro-choice Democrats forget what happens when women are denied access to abortion?

Why did pro-choice Democrats vote to approve the Stupak amendment, the most serious assault on abortion rights in a generation?

According to FiveThirtyEight.com, 20 of the 64 Democrats who joined Republicans to pass the measure are nominally pro-choice. We're telling these 20 Democrats -- all of them men -- to reconsider their vote and urge Congressional leadership to do everything they can to ensure the health care bill that comes out of committee does not take us back to an era of coat hangers and back alley abortions.

Sign our petition and we'll send a coat hanger to the 20 formerly pro-choice Democrats who voted to take away women's rights.

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Rep. Joe Baca (CA-41)
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Sign this petition and send a coat hanger to the 20 formerly pro-choice Democrats -- all men -- who voted to pass the Stupak Amendment.

"We know what happens when women are denied access to reproductive health care including abortion. And we can't go back to an era of coat hangers and back alley abortions. Reconsider your vote on the Stupak amendment. Tell House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that the final health care bill that emerges from the conference committee can't turn the clock back on women's rights."

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The Phantom Menace

By PAUL KRUGMAN

A funny thing happened on the way to a new New Deal. A year ago, the only thing we had to fear was fear itself; today, the reigning doctrine in Washington appears to be “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

What happened? To be sure, “centrists” in the Senate have hobbled efforts to rescue the economy. But the evidence suggests that in addition to facing political opposition, President Obama and his inner circle have been intimidated by scare stories from Wall Street.

Consider the contrast between what Mr. Obama’s advisers were saying on the eve of his inauguration, and what he himself is saying now.

In December 2008 Lawrence Summers, soon to become the administration’s highest-ranking economist, called for decisive action. “Many experts,” he warned, “believe that unemployment could reach 10 percent by the end of next year.” In the face of that prospect, he continued, “doing too little poses a greater threat than doing too much.”

Ten months later unemployment reached 10.2 percent, suggesting that despite his warning the administration hadn’t done enough to create jobs. You might have expected, then, a determination to do more.

But in a recent interview with Fox News, the president sounded diffident and nervous about his economic policy. He spoke vaguely about possible tax incentives for job creation. But “it is important though to recognize,” he went on, “that if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession.”

What? Huh?

Most economists I talk to believe that the big risk to recovery comes from the inadequacy of government efforts: the stimulus was too small, and it will fade out next year, while high unemployment is undermining both consumer and business confidence.

Now, it’s politically difficult for the Obama administration to enact a full-scale second stimulus. Still, he should be trying to push through as much aid to the economy as possible. And remember, Mr. Obama has the bully pulpit; it’s his job to persuade America to do what needs to be done.

Instead, however, Mr. Obama is lending his voice to those who say that we can’t create more jobs. And a report on Politico.com suggests that deficit reduction, not job creation, will be the centerpiece of his first State of the Union address. What happened?

It took me a while to puzzle this out. But the concerns Mr. Obama expressed become comprehensible if you suppose that he’s getting his views, directly or indirectly, from Wall Street.

Ever since the Great Recession began economic analysts at some (not all) major Wall Street firms have warned that efforts to fight the slump will produce even worse economic evils. In particular, they say, never mind the current ability of the U.S. government to borrow long term at remarkably low interest rates — any day now, budget deficits will lead to a collapse in investor confidence, and rates will soar.

And it’s this latter claim that Mr. Obama echoed in that Fox News interview. Is he right to be worried?

Well, spikes in long-term interest rates have happened in the past, most famously in 1994. But in 1994 the U.S. economy was adding 300,000 jobs a month, and the Fed was steadily raising short-term rates. It’s hard to see why anything similar should happen now, with the economy still bleeding jobs and the Fed showing no desire to raise rates anytime soon.

A better model, I’d argue, is Japan in the 1990s, which ran persistent large budget deficits, but also had a persistently depressed economy — and saw long-term interest rates fall almost steadily. There’s a good chance that officials are being terrorized by a phantom menace — a threat that exists only in their minds.

And shouldn’t we consider the source? As far as I can tell, the analysts now warning about soaring interest rates tend to be the same people who insisted, months after the Great Recession began, that the biggest threat facing the economy was inflation. And let’s not forget that Wall Street — which somehow failed to recognize the biggest housing bubble in history — has a less than stellar record at predicting market behavior.

Still, let’s grant that there is some risk that doing more about double-digit unemployment would undermine confidence in the bond markets. This risk must be set against the certainty of mass suffering if we don’t do more — and the possibility, as I said, of a collapse of confidence among ordinary workers and businesses.

And Mr. Summers was right the first time: in the face of the greatest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression, it’s much riskier to do too little than it is to do too much. It’s sad, and unfortunate, that the administration appears to have lost sight of that truth.

The White House's Difficult Position On Climate Change

It's been a bad few weeks for the Obama administration when it comes to climate change, as the White House has found itself trapped between a stalled Senate and constant hammering from world leaders on a lack of leadership on global warming.

On Monday, the administration hit back.
"It would be a mistake to conclude that the international community's failure to reach a final treaty in Copenhagen is due to a lack of domestic legislation in the United States," said a senior White House official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity.
The United States, said officials, plans to propose a near-term emissions reduction target as part of a "meaningful submission" the country will present at the talks.
Just what that meaningful submission will be remains unclear. But the White House on Monday was clearly reaching out trying to change the negative narrative on the climate debate, making senior administration officials available to insist the U.S. will head to the climate change conference in Copenhagen next month with a real plan.

Until now, the United States has resisted setting a specific goal for greenhouse gas reduction, arguing that the international negotiators cannot preempt Congress. And expectations for the talks have fallen over the past few months, a change some blame on the inability of Congress to commit to a concrete target.
"That strategy is untenable," Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, on an EU website, wrote of the failure of the United States and China to deliver specific targets. "It provides no global answer. It does not solve the threat of climate change."
But administration officials said that the White House heads into the talks with confidence.
"I think we go into Copenhagen with a very, very strong hand," said one of the officials. "We have done I think more than anyone could have expected us to do in a short time."
The targets, said Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Ed Markey, will demonstrate U.S. leadership on the climate issue and encourage other nations to make firm commitments.
"The Obama administration will be able to say to the world we are no longer going to preach temperance from a bar stool. We are now ready to begin to make a commitment," he told POLITICO.
Administration officials rattled off a long list of achievements, like new fuel economy standards, a House cap and trade bill, and a joint statement on climate change issued by the United States and China last week.
But White House officials also acknowledged that the international negotiators would have a stronger position had Congress already passed a climate bill.
"We would have preferred that health care be done a long time ago, and we'd be having an energy debate today," the official said.
The goals presented at Copenhagen, said officials, will "take cognizance" of Capitol Hill proposals.
The House passed legislation that would cut greenhouse gases 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. A Senate bill that passed the Environmental and Public Works committee last month called for a 20 percent target, but that version of the bill is expected to be significantly changed by other committees.
U.S. negotiators are holding out hope that a bipartisan effort by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) will give them some momentum heading into the climate talks. The trio of senators is expected to release a framework laying out broad principles of their bipartisan proposal before the conference.
Aides and experts suggested that the White House could introduce a provisional target that would be subject to congressional approval.
But environmental advocates say the targets alone will not be enough to get a deal without presidential assurances that the legislation will eventually become law.
International negotiations learned the power of Congress after lawmakers failed to ratify the 1997 Kyoto climate treaty — an international climate treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions that had been negotiated but not finalized.
"They're looking for that assurance from the president himself that this is going to get done," said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Administration officials said Obama would decide over the next few days whether he would travel to the conference. More than 60 world leaders plan to appear at the conference. Obama will be in the region during the talks to receive his Nobel peace prices in Oslo on Dec. 10.
"Why should they negotiate with us when it's not really clear that this is a huge priority and we are going to put all our political might into making sure we ratify the treaty," said Keya Chatterjee, director of the United States Climate Change Program at the World Wildlife Fund. "It's really really dependent on whether they have the confidence on whether there will be some political support on ratifying the treaty."

One Step Ahead

Tonight we have the opportunity, the historic opportunity to reform health care once and for all,” said Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, and a chief architect of the legislation. “History is knocking on the door. Let’s open it. Let’s begin the debate.”

The 60-to-39 vote, along party lines, clears the way for weeks of rowdy floor proceedings that will begin after Thanksgiving and last through much of December.

The Senate bill seeks to extend health benefits to roughly 31 million Americans who are now uninsured, at a cost of $848 billion over 10 years.

The House earlier this month approved its health care bill by 220 to 215, with just one Republican voting in favor. That measure is broadly similar to the Senate legislation, but there are some major differences that would have to be resolved before a bill could reach Mr. Obama, and that would almost surely push the process into next year.

As the Democrats succeeded Saturday in uniting their caucus by winning over the last two holdouts, big disagreements remained, making final approval of the bill far from certain.

Two reluctant Democratic senators, Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, warned that their support for a motion to open debate did not guarantee that they would ultimately vote for the bill. Their remarks echoed previous comments by several other senators, including Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, and Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut.

Those comments made clear that more horse-trading lies ahead and that major changes might be required if the bill is to be approved. And it suggested that the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, who relied only on members aligned with his party to bring the bill to the floor, may yet have to sway one or more Republicans to his side to get the bill adopted.

Interactive Graphic

Hate Crime Legislation Expanded

Obama's signing today of expanded hate-crimes legislation named after her son Matthew means "everything" to her family.
"It's great. It's great," Shepard said as she, her husband Dennis and her son Logan left the East Room following a signing ceremony. "This is just the first step. We have a lot to do that's left. We need to be grateful for this and move on."
Shepard said she was "trying really hard not to cry," but she broke down when asked what this day means to her family.
"Everything," she replied. She said her hope is that under the new law "what happened maybe won't happen again."
"I just can’t even tell you how great it feels," she said.

Grandma Unplugged

Another Wild Conspiracy Theory
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has attempted to clarify his comments on end-of-life care meaning the government could "pull the plug on grandma." He says he never used the phrase "death panel," but that there is the "possibility of unintended consequences" from the health care bill.

His full statement:

"I've said for a long time and repeated last week that we all ought to consider how we want to be treated if we are struck by an incapacitating illness, and that advanced care planning is a good thing to do. As far as legislation goes, it's not the case that provisions in the Pelosi health care reform bill this year are just like provisions Congress passed in the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. I've never called the Pelosi provisions a 'death panel.' The issue is whether end-of-life provisions should be part of legislation that's about controlling health care spending, and which also creates a government-run health care program, as the Pelosi bill does. Doing so escalates concerns about the rationing of health care, since government-run plans in other countries ration to control spending. Putting end-of-life consultations alongside cost containment and government-run health care causes legitimate concern. This context and the details of this year's proposal are different than the 2003 legislation, which covers advice from specialized physicians outside of any larger effort to control spending on health care. It's not fair to Americans who are asking questions to gloss over those facts and, in fact, end-of-life provisions haven't been part of ongoing Senate Finance Committee discussions as a result of those realities and the possibility of unintended consequences. On this subject and others, it's important that the debate is fair-minded and based on an accurate representation of the issues involved."

But Greg Sargent points out that Grassley's spokesperson walked back the whole claim in a comment to the Washington Post.

Grassley says he opposes that counseling as written in the House version of the bill, but a spokesman said the senator does not think the House provision would in fact give the government such authority in deciding when and how people die. The House bill allows patients to decide for themselves if they would like such counseling.

Obama's aunt against birthers

Well, you see, one doctor per two hundred thousand citizens in a third world country is more experienced than one doctor per five hundred Americans. That's why it is very wise to give birth in a miserable Kenyan hospital in 1961 and so you can understand that a young white woman goes to that country to give birth to a new POTUS to be elected in 2008. You want he best for your baby, isn't it?
So, she came to spend her student's loan especially all the way to Kenya, where she couldn't contact the family of her husband, because he was without her knowledge already married and not divorced in his fatherland, the English colony under English law, before. Thus, she had nothing else to do than give birth in Africa, alone, far away from family and friends in Hawaii.
Perhaps you will consider that she had a strong motive doing so. Well let's look at the original claim from Philip J. Berg:

Pennsylvania's former deputy attorney general and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter Philip J. Berg has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Pennsylvania accusing presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama of lying about his U.S. citizenship, which would make him ineligible to be president.
Mr. Berg is one of a faction of Clinton supporters who haven't heeded the party's call for unity, filing the suit just days before the opening of the Democratic National Convention, which will nominate Mr. Obama as the party's presidential candidate.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia last week, also names the Democratic National Committee and the Federal Election Commission and says Mr. Obama´s mother went to Kenya late in her pregnancy and ended up giving birth there. It also claims that later in life, Mr. Obama declared himself a citizen of Indonesia.

The Obama campaign has firmly said the Illinois Democrat is a natural-born citizen. Last month, the campaign posted on Mr. Obama's Web site a copy of his "certification of live birth." It says he was born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961, two years after Hawaii was named the 50th state.
Mr. Berg said he was contacted about filing the lawsuit by a member or associate of the group PUMA, which was formed to support Mrs. Clinton shortly after she withdrew from the race. Its mission includes denouncing the Democratic Party and Mr. Obama's nomination. "I really do not believe he is a natural-born citizen," said Mr. Berg, adding that he is not connected with Mrs. Clinton or her campaign.

Just over one-quarter of Clinton supporters say they're now backing Mr. McCain, up from 16 percent in late June, according to a CNN poll conducted after Mr. Obama announced Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., of Delaware, as his running mate. Two-thirds of Clinton supporters are now backing Mr. Obama.
Mrs. Clinton, for her part, encouraged her supporters this week to back Mr. Obama.
"Whether you voted for me, or voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose. We are on the same team, and none of us can sit on the sidelines," she said during her address to the convention Tuesday.
Mr. Berg, who says he donated about $200 to Mrs. Clinton's campaign, may represent the fringe of the pro-Hillary faction that hasn't warmed to Mr. Obama.

He has filed suits for clients against President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, claiming they knew about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks before they happened. He also publicly asked Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Sandra Day O'Connor to disbar themselves for their decision in the controversial 2001 case Bush v. Gore.

Mr. Berg has posted documents on his Web site, ObamaCrimes.com, he says back up his claims. But he said he doesn't know where they originated.

Backers of the idea that Mr. Obama isn't a natural-born citizen say Mr. Obama's certification of live birth doesn't quell the issue. They say a certification can be obtained after birth. But the Hawaii State Department of Health said Monday that there is no difference between a certificate and a certification of live birth in the eyes of the state. For instance, either can be used to confirm U.S. citizenship to obtain a passport or state ID, said Alvin Onaka, a research and statistics officer at the Department of Health.
In Hawaii, only the person named on the certificate or his family can request the certificate of live birth.

Several fact-checking groups, such as FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.com have determined that the certification posted on Mr. Obama's Web site is authentic.

Mr. Obama's opponent, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, has faced questions about his qualification as a "natural-born citizen" as well.
Mr. McCain was born on a military installation in the Panama Canal Zone, where his father, a Navy officer, was stationed.
Theodore Olson, a former solicitor general who is advising the McCain campaign, said in February that he's confident Mr. McCain meets the constitutional requirement. Legal scholars say there is no precedent on the subject because all previous presidents have been born within the 50 states or territories that became states.

President Obama Hosts a Health Reform Town Hall in Ohio

President Obama Hosts a Health Reform Town Hall in Ohio from White House on Vimeo.

CDC Tops Agency Ratings; Federal Reserve Board Lowest

NASA ratings remain high, while Federal Reserve has lost ground

by Lydia Saad

PRINCETON, NJ -- At a time when Americans are discouraged about the direction of the country and hesitant about the scope of President Barack Obama's federal budget plans, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NASA, and the FBI earn credit for a job well done from a majority of Americans. The 61% who say the CDC is doing an excellent or good job can be contrasted with the 30% who say this of the Federal Reserve Board, making the latter the worst reviewed of nine agencies and departments rated in the July 10-12 Gallup Poll.

The two national security-oriented groups included in the recent poll -- the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security -- receive moderate performance ratings, with just under half of Americans saying each is doing an excellent or good job.

The Environmental Protection Agency, Internal Revenue Service, and Food and Drug Administration fall a notch lower in the rankings, as close to 40% of Americans give each of them credit for doing an excellent or good job. The relatively low ranking of the FDA is of particular note with regard to the scrutiny the agency has been under, given recent attention to U.S. food safety.

The new poll, conducted just prior to the 40th anniversary of the July 20, 1969, moon landing by Apollo 11 -- perhaps the most celebrated of all NASA achievements -- finds NASA's rating about where it has been in recent years. While not nearly as high as it was in late 1998 (a month after John Glenn's successful return to space), NASA's current excellent/good score falls within the upper half of ratings it has received over the past two decades.

Today's rating of the FDA is the first measured by Gallup, but all other agencies on the list were previously rated in September 2003 (NASA, as shown, has been rated multiple times). The only significant changes since that time are a sharp deterioration in perceptions about the Federal Reserve, and a decline in highly positive views toward the CDC.

In 2003, the slight majority of Americans, 53%, said the Federal Reserve was doing an excellent or good job and 5% called it poor. Today, 30% of Americans praise the job the Fed is doing, while nearly as many, 22%, call it poor. While this ratings downturn coincides with a substantial drop in consumer confidence toward the U.S. economy over the same period, it is unclear how much of the Fed's image decline is due to the general decline in the country's economic climate, as opposed to specific perceptions about the agency's performance in carrying out its monetary responsibilities and possibly its role in the crisis surrounding U.S. financial markets. The Fed's low excellent/good rating may also reflect the higher-than-average percentage of Americans having "no opinion" about this arm of the government, relative to the other agencies rated.

The CDC has had a particularly high public profile since April, when cases of the H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu, were first detected in the United States. Whether its role in tracking the disease and informing Americans about the illness has elevated or hurt the agency's image is not clear. However, compared with six years ago, fewer Americans believe the agency is doing an "excellent" job -- now 11%, down from 18%. Overall, the percentage saying it is doing an excellent or good job is now 61%, down from 66%.

Bottom Line

Americans are broadly satisfied with the work the CDC, NASA, and the FBI are doing. The CIA and the Department of Homeland Security are also fairly well reviewed; however, the current job ratings of the EPA, IRS, FDA, and Federal Reserve Board all have significant room for improvement.

Survey Methods

Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,018 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted July 10-12, 2009. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

CDC Tops Agency Ratings; Federal Reserve Board Lowest

NASA ratings remain high, while Federal Reserve has lost ground

by Lydia Saad

PRINCETON, NJ -- At a time when Americans are discouraged about the direction of the country and hesitant about the scope of President Barack Obama's federal budget plans, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NASA, and the FBI earn credit for a job well done from a majority of Americans. The 61% who say the CDC is doing an excellent or good job can be contrasted with the 30% who say this of the Federal Reserve Board, making the latter the worst reviewed of nine agencies and departments rated in the July 10-12 Gallup Poll.

The two national security-oriented groups included in the recent poll -- the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security -- receive moderate performance ratings, with just under half of Americans saying each is doing an excellent or good job.

The Environmental Protection Agency, Internal Revenue Service, and Food and Drug Administration fall a notch lower in the rankings, as close to 40% of Americans give each of them credit for doing an excellent or good job. The relatively low ranking of the FDA is of particular note with regard to the scrutiny the agency has been under, given recent attention to U.S. food safety.

The new poll, conducted just prior to the 40th anniversary of the July 20, 1969, moon landing by Apollo 11 -- perhaps the most celebrated of all NASA achievements -- finds NASA's rating about where it has been in recent years. While not nearly as high as it was in late 1998 (a month after John Glenn's successful return to space), NASA's current excellent/good score falls within the upper half of ratings it has received over the past two decades.

Today's rating of the FDA is the first measured by Gallup, but all other agencies on the list were previously rated in September 2003 (NASA, as shown, has been rated multiple times). The only significant changes since that time are a sharp deterioration in perceptions about the Federal Reserve, and a decline in highly positive views toward the CDC.

In 2003, the slight majority of Americans, 53%, said the Federal Reserve was doing an excellent or good job and 5% called it poor. Today, 30% of Americans praise the job the Fed is doing, while nearly as many, 22%, call it poor. While this ratings downturn coincides with a substantial drop in consumer confidence toward the U.S. economy over the same period, it is unclear how much of the Fed's image decline is due to the general decline in the country's economic climate, as opposed to specific perceptions about the agency's performance in carrying out its monetary responsibilities and possibly its role in the crisis surrounding U.S. financial markets. The Fed's low excellent/good rating may also reflect the higher-than-average percentage of Americans having "no opinion" about this arm of the government, relative to the other agencies rated.

The CDC has had a particularly high public profile since April, when cases of the H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu, were first detected in the United States. Whether its role in tracking the disease and informing Americans about the illness has elevated or hurt the agency's image is not clear. However, compared with six years ago, fewer Americans believe the agency is doing an "excellent" job -- now 11%, down from 18%. Overall, the percentage saying it is doing an excellent or good job is now 61%, down from 66%.

Bottom Line

Americans are broadly satisfied with the work the CDC, NASA, and the FBI are doing. The CIA and the Department of Homeland Security are also fairly well reviewed; however, the current job ratings of the EPA, IRS, FDA, and Federal Reserve Board all have significant room for improvement.

Survey Methods

Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,018 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted July 10-12, 2009. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

Nancy Pelosi: Make millionaires pay

Trying to sell a historic health bill to a balky caucus, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told POLITICO in an interview that she wants to soften a proposed surcharge on the wealthy so that it applies only to families that make $1 million or more.

The change could help mollify the conservative Democrats who expect to have a tough time selling the package back home. Their support is the single biggest key to meeting the speaker’s goal of having health care reform pass the House by the August recess.

The bill now moving through the House would raise taxes for individuals with annual adjusted gross incomes of $280,000, or families that make $350,000 or more.

“I’d like it to go higher than it is,” Pelosi said Friday.

The speaker would like the trigger raised to $500,000 for individuals and $1 million for families, “so it’s a millionaire’s tax,” she said. “When someone hears, ‘2,’ they think, ‘Oh, I could be there,’ because they don’t know the $280,000 is for one person.

“It sounds like you’re in the neighborhood. So I just want to remove all doubt. You hear ‘$500,000 a year,’ you think, ‘My God, that’s not me.’”

Pelosi also told POLITICO she will push to “drain” more savings from the medical industry — hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and health insurers — than they have given up under current health-reform agreements with the Senate and White House.

Asked whether she believes the industry players will wind up contributing more to the package, Pelosi replied: “I don’t know. I know they can, to the extent that the special interests are willing to cooperate. ... They could do much better. ... Frankly, I think all the money [to pay for health reform] could be drained from the system, if they were willing to do that.”

The speaker said she will try to wring more concessions, setting up a potential battle with health care players who torpedoed President Bill Clinton’s health-reform efforts but have been eager participants in the negotiations this time around.

Pelosi said she is open to other changes — that she is taking an “agnostic” approach to getting a bill, rather than working from a “theology” of reform: “You have to just judge it for: Does it lower costs, improve quality?”

Pelosi now faces more pressure than she ever has in her career — obligated to repeatedly deliver tough votes for an ambitious and popular president, but anxious to minimize the midterm election losses that traditionally befall the party holding the White House.

The speaker professed bemusement at the persistent question she gets about whether it was better to be speaker with a Republican president or a Democratic president.

“Oh, please!” she replied. “Why do people ask that question? Do you have any idea? Like night and day. When people ask it, I think: Would you think that it would be easier to have a Republican president who doesn’t share your values? No, no, no.

“Nothing is easy. It’s challenging to get the job done and live up to the expectations and the hopes of the American people, as the president has taken them all to a new height. ... But ... it’s like having a 1,000-ton anvil lifted off your shoulders.

“People would ask, ‘Now, you’re not going to be the No. 1.’ And I say, ‘This is what I’ve hoped, prayed, dreamed and worked for.’ And it absolutely goes beyond my expectations of what it could be.”





Some House members are concerned that they’re being asked to take a tough vote that may be for nothing if the Senate doesn’t follow through. Some Pelosi advisers had considered keeping the House in session into August so that leaders could be sure the Senate was going to vote before House members take the risk themselves.

But Pelosi is plunging ahead. “We’re just staying on our own course, and we hope that the Senate will stay on a parallel course, to have this done by [early August]. Whatever it is, we will be ready. ... As I always say, we’re going forward when we’re ready. And I’m sure we’ll be ready.”

Pelosi said she has felt a certain “serenity” ever since she became speaker and says she’s “ready for all of this.” Ticking off the year’s remarkable agenda, she praised the stamina of her members, chairs and leaders, calling the Democratic team a “partnership.”

“I have the confidence when I go down a path that we are going down that path together,” she said. “It is a heavy lift, sometimes. But it one based on respect for the members. So we’ll take the time, have the conversations, do what needs to be done. ... It’s such a tremendous honor to be speaker of the House. To be able to serve with Barack Obama is really a joy. He’s a great leader ... with a vision, a strategic approach to it and the eloquence to take it to the American people.”

Pelosi said White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, a former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee who has tight relationships throughout the House, is “doing an excellent job.”

“He’s great, and I knew he would be,” she said. “The only thing is, I certainly would still like to have him here. There’s no question about that. But I’m so proud of him. I take some level of pride in his success, having appointed him to the DCCC, only in his second term, and as a member of the Ways and Means Committee.”

POLITICO spoke with Pelosi on Friday afternoon in her suite of offices on the West Front of the Capitol, overlooking the National Mall. She spoke proudly of that morning’s two committee votes on health care, starting in the wee hours with the Ways and Means Committee and continuing after breakfast with the Education and Labor Committee.

“It’s such a big day for us,” she said. “I don’t’ think anybody would have ever thought that would be happening on schedule, the way it is. So it’s pretty exciting. It’s historic.”

Her challenge now is to keep making history, against ever harsher odds. Despite the onus on her to turn President Barack Obama’s promises into legislation, Pelosi is relishing the pinnacle of a lifetime in and around politics.

Now, she’s arguably the second most powerful person in government, yet obliged to court fickle members, vote by vote. Some friends said the nail-biter vote for Obama’s climate-change plan was the most difficult thing she’d ever done. But she said health care would probably be “the most exciting.”

“Every single person in America is an expert on his or her health care,” she said. “The differences among members are regional, they’re generational, they’re ethnic — concerns that are really not necessarily political, partisan. We want this to work for the country. So we have to listen to everybody.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25144_Page2.html#ixzz0LwIFEqaw

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Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Weekly Address: Recovery and the Jobs of the Future

President Barack Obama on Saturday touted his administration’s economic stimulus spending, saying that it pulled "our financial system and our economy back from the brink."

His remarks in an unusually long edition of his weekly radio and internet address came after a week in which unemployment hit 9.5 percent and Republicans increasingly denounced the stimulus as a failure.

After beginning with a recap of his "progress on these challenges abroad" during his trip overseas this week, Obama quickly pivoted to the stimulus and offered a direct challenge to right-wing critics of the government spending, saying they "have yet to offer a plausible alternative."

First, he sought to reframe the public’s expectations for the spending program. “The Recovery Act wasn’t designed to restore the economy to full health on its own, but to provide the boost necessary to stop the free fall,” Obama said. “It was designed to spur demand and get people spending again and cushion those who had borne the brunt of the crisis.”

And then he pronounced the stimulus plan a success: “In a little over one hundred days, this Recovery Act has worked as intended. It has already extended unemployment insurance and health insurance to those who have lost their jobs in this recession. It has delivered $43 billion in tax relief to American working families and businesses. Without the help the Recovery Act has provided to struggling states, its estimated that state deficits would be nearly twice as large as they are now, resulting in tens of thousands of additional layoffs – layoffs that would affect police officers, teachers, and firefighters.”

That’s in part a rebuke of GOP lawmakers like House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) who pounced on rumblings in Washington of a second stimulus package. “All of this talk of a second stimulus bill, I think, is an admission on the part of the administration that their stimulus plan is not working,” Boehner said earlier in the week.

The president, though, said it’s too soon to label the stimulus a failure, and offered a response to both "those who felt that doing nothing was somehow an answer" and also those who wanted a bigger stimulus and "are already calling for a second recovery plan":

“As I made clear at the time it was passed, the Recovery Act was not designed to work in four months – it was designed to work over two years,” Obama said. “We also knew that it would take some time for the money to get out the door, because we are committed to spending it in a way that is effective and transparent.”

What's So Scary About Offering People the Option of a Public Health Plan?

By Dean Baker, AlterNet Independence Day is a time to reflect on the United States and to ask what it is that we really value about our country. Most people would probably list the freedoms that it has usually guaranteed to most members of society. The opportunities for economic success, while not as great as often touted, are nonetheless impressive.

However, some members of Congress were apparently celebrating our system of employer-provided health insurance last weekend. Or, at least that is what they want us to believe.

As Congress starts to delve into the dirt of a health care reform package, the clearest point of conflict is over the existence and structure of a public health care plan. Some members of Congress have thrown down the gauntlet, insisting that they could never allow the public to have the option of buying into a government-run plan.

These members tell us that a government-run plan will be like having the post office manage our health care. While the post office actually does a pretty good job where I live, if the point is that a government-run plan is going to be bureaucratic and inefficient, then why are opponents of a public plan so worried about giving people the choice to buy into it? If the public plan is bad, then people will just stay with the options currently available in the private sector. As those of who believe in the free markets like to say: "what's wrong with giving people a choice?"

In addition to the members who just say "no" when it comes to a public plan, there are also members who are willing to allow a public plan, but only if they can be sure that it will not provide real competition with existing private plans. This route involves crippling the public plan in various ways to make it less competitive.

For example, one proposal is to establish a series of health insurance cooperatives, which would be prohibited from acting jointly to maximize their bargaining power. The idea is that a newly formed Nebraska health insurance cooperative, insuring a few thousand people, will not be able to put too much pressure on Pfizer or the American Medical Associations when negotiating prices. It also will not be able to provide much competition for Aetna, Cigna, and the other major insurers.

Several members of Congress have made protecting these insurers and the current system of employer-provided health insurance into a basic principle. Max Baucus, the head of the Senate Finance Committee, who will probably have more to say in the final bill than anyone else in the Senate, falls into this camp. Senator Baucus has explicitly said that he would not support a bill that jeopardized our system of employer-provided health insurance.

This is truly bizarre. The United States has employer-provided health care insurance as an accident -- it came about as a way to evade wage controls during World War II -- it was not some grand principle.

It is almost impossible to imagine why someone would consider employer-provided insurance as an end in itself. I say this both as an economist and as an employer. I am going to waste several hours tomorrow discussing my center's health insurance plan with an insurance broker.

It is very difficult to compare the merits of the different insurance plans that we are considering. There is an endless list of conditions that are or are not covered (which can change after the fact). There are also issues about how quickly and consistently the insurer will pay bills. We can ask people with other insurers about their experience, but there is no guarantee that our experience will be comparable.

Of course, our broker is of little use. She will only get paid if she persuades us to change insurers. How much can we trust her?

I am trying to do research and run a think tank. Senator Baucus might think that it is a good idea that I have to waste my time dealing with insurance brokers, but I don't, and I suspect that millions of other small employers feel the same way.

So, why not give us a choice of a good, simple, public plan? Employers that want to read through insurance contracts will still have that option. The rest of us can get back to our work.

Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

A blow for Illinois’s Blagojevich in corruption case

John Harris,Blagojevich's former chief of staff, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and pledged cooporation with prosecutors in exchange for a lighter sentence if convicted.
Chicago

Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s campaign to clear his name of corruption charges suffered a major blow Wednesday when John Harris, his former chief of staff, entered a plea agreement with the US Attorney’s Office in Chicago.

Mr. Harris pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, and he pledged cooporation with prosecutors in exchange for a lighter sentence if convicted.

Mr. Blagojevich is charged with 16 counts of corruption including racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud, extortion conspiracy, attempted extortion, and making false statements to federal agents. He has insisted he is innocent of all charges.

Harris served as Blagojevich’s chief of staff from late 2005 until last December. He and the governor are among six people charged in April with 19 counts of “pervasive fraud.”

The plea agreement is the first in this case, although political insiders say that between now and the trial’s opening day in June 2010 there probably will be more.

“[Blagojevich] will soon be the last man standing,” says Andy Shaw, executive director of the Better Government Association, a watchdog group in Chicago. Mr. Shaw, who was a long-time political reporter for WLS-TV, says “this case is over” due to a growing number of cooperating witnesses who were close to Blagojevich when he was governor.

Last month, Christopher Kelly, Blagojevich’s former adviser and chief fundraiser, was sentenced to 37 months in prison on federal tax fraud charges for concealing the use of corporate funds from a roofing company he owned to cover gambling debts. Mr. Kelly is also involved in a second case in which he is charged in a kickback scheme against United Airlines and American Airlines at O’Hare International Airport. The trial for that case starts in September.

Those cases were not connected to the Blagojevich indictments because they did not involve the misuse of public funds.

Rod Blagojevich

Prosecutors also have access to the possible cooperation of Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a top Blagojevich adviser and fundraiser who was convicted in June 2008 on 16 federal corruption charges for trading his clout.

Shaw says prosecutors “now have a litany of cooperating witnesses, people who were right there in the room as Senate seats were being bartered and contracts traded for contributions, and jobs and positions on boards were sold off for cash.”

“They’re all going to stand up, one by one, and paint a picture of the worst pay-to-play corruption this state has ever seen,” says Shaw.

Under the plea deal, Harris faces a maximum of 35 months in prison, providing the testimony he offers proves accurate. Without the plea arrangement, the maximum for the charge is 20 years. Randall Samborn, spokesman with the US Attorney’s Office, says as of Wednesday Harris “is the only one to plead guilty at this point.”

The plea agreement states that in 2008 Harris aided Blagojevich’s attempts to sell the US Senate seat vacated by President Obama. Harris also was alleged to have threatened the Chicago Tribune with the withholding of state funds if the newspaper did not fire editorial staffers critical of the governor. He also was charged with pressuring financial institutions that did business with the state to give his wife a job.

Messages left for Harris’s attorney and Blagojevich’s spokesperson were not returned at time of writing.

Pastor Asks God to Smite President Obama

As if President Obama doesn’t have enough to deal with - what with civil unrest in Iran, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and economic malaise at home - now he’s also got a Southern Baptist minister praying for his death.

The Rev. Wiley Drake, pastor of the First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., told Fox News Radio earlier this month that he was practicing “imprecatory prayer” – a divine curse – that would bring about Obama’s death.

“So you’re praying for his death?” asked the show’s host, Alan Colmes.

“Yes.”

“So you’re praying for the death of the president of the United States?”

“Yes.”

The pugnacious pastor later elaborated: “If he does not turn to God and does not turn his life around, I am asking God to enforce imprecatory prayers that are throughout the Scripture that would cause him death, that’s correct.”

A spokesman for the Southern Baptist Association, where Drake was second vice president in 2006-2007, responded to Drake’s comments by saying that he believes most Southern Baptists are praying for the president’s well-being.

Obama isn’t the first person for whom Drake has prayed for an untimely demise. In 2007, when Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed a formal complaint with the Internal Revenue Service maintaining that Drake’s endorsement of Mike Huckabee for president violated tax laws, Drake called on his followers to pray for the deaths of the nonprofit’s staff.

And after Kansas physician George Tiller, a prominent provider of abortions, was murdered in church on May 31, Drake said his death was the answer to his imprecatory prayers. He called Tiller “a brutal, murdering monster” on his radio program. “This man, George Tiller, was far greater in his atrocities than Adolf Hitler.”

Drake is none too fond of homosexuals, either. He wrote the resolution at the Southern Baptist Convention in 1996 calling for a boycott of the Walt Disney Corporation after it afforded health benefits to gay and lesbian partners of employees. He urged followers to join him last year in praying for rain to fall on the Democratic National Convention in Denver. “I too am still against killing babies and allowing sodomites to marry,” he explained. [The weather was beautiful when Obama made his acceptance speech before 84,000 people in a football stadium].

Drake also is chaplain to the Minuteman Project, a group that President George W. Bush called “vigilantes.” He was Alan Keyes’ vice-presidential running mate on the America’s Independent Party ticket in 2008. They were plaintiffs in one of several unsuccessful lawsuits filed last year claiming that Obama could not be sworn in as president because he supposedly wasn’t born in the United States.

Neo-Nazi Hal Turner Arrested Again

Hal Turner, a neo-Nazi talk radio host known for his threats against public
figures, was denied bail during an appearance in federal court Thursday
afternoon on charges of threatening to assault and murder three federal
judges. Also at the hearing, FBI officials revealed that they’d found 200
rounds of ammunition and 150 illegal hollow point bullets in Turner’s home during a search on Wednesday, according to the Jersey Journal.

Turner’s arrest comes three weeks after he was taken into custody in New Jersey on charges that he incited violence against two Connecticut legislators. He had been freed on $25,000 bond and wasn’t scheduled to return to court until July.

But the FBI — an agency for which he once may have worked as a paid informant — arrested Turner on Wednesday after going to his home in North Bergen, N.J., to execute a search warrant. The charges stem from Internet postings earlier this month in which he blasted a June 2 decision by the 7^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago that essentially upheld local handgun bans.

The blog posts named Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook, who wrote the unanimous decision, along with Judges Richard Posner and William Bauer. “Let me be the first to say this plainly: These Judges deserve to be killed,” Turner allegedly wrote on June 2. He later posted the photographs, phone numbers, work address and room numbers of the three judges, as well as a modified photo of the Dirksen Federal Courthouse where they work that reveals the locations of “anti-truck bomb barriers.” He also posted a map showing how to get to the building, according to the FBI.

In the June 2 blog post titled in part “OUTRAGE: Chicago Gun Ban UPHELD,” Turner states that the same federal appeals court that made the handgun decision also upheld the 2004 conviction of Matt Hale, a white supremacist now serving a 40-year sentence for soliciting the murder of U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow. Turner also noted that a gunman killed Lefkow’s mother and husband in her home. “Apparently, the 7^th U.S. Circuit Court didn’t get the hint after those killings,” he allegedly wrote. “It appears another lesson is needed.”

Turner, 47, isn’t the only neo-Nazi whose cyberspace comments on the Hale case have helped lead to criminal charges in Chicago. Bill White of Roanoke, Va., the leader of the American National Socialist Workers Party, is scheduled for trial next month in federal court in Chicago on obstructing justice charges related to his alleged encouragement of violence against the foreman of the Chicago jury that convicted Hale. White posted the name, home address, phone numbers and other personal information of the “Gay, Jewish, anti-racist” juror last September. White wrote that the juror “played a key role in convicting Hale.”

If Turner is convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. “We take threats to federal judges very seriously. Period,” said Patrick J. Fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.

Turner has made numerous racist and violent threats. In 2007, he railed against President George W. Bush, saying that “a well-placed bullet can solve a lot of problems.” He has written that “we need to start SHOOTING AND KILLING Mexicans as they cross the border.” In 2006, he published an attack on New Jersey Supreme Court justices that included several of their home addresses. Just before President Obama’s inauguration, he suggested that the mass murder of those attending the event “would be a public service.” Most recently, he was charged on June 3 with inciting injury to persons or property after he posted a blog entry that encouraged readers to “take up arms” against two Connecticut lawmakers, Sen. Andrew McDonald and Rep. Michael Lawlor. Turner was upset about state legislation that would give more power to the laity in the Roman Catholic Church.

In January 2008, unidentified hackers posted E-mail correspondence between Turner and an FBI agent who appeared to be his handler in the forum of Turner’s website for his radio program, “The Hal Turner Show.” The FBI last year declined to comment about Turner’s relationship with the agency.