WASHINGTON (AP) - Several members of a government board appointed to guard privacy and civil liberties during the war on terror say they're impressed with the protections built into the Bush administration's electronic eavesdropping program.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board received a long-awaited briefing on the secret program last week by senior members of the National Security Agency.

Two of the five board members told The Associated Press on Monday they were impressed by the safeguards the government has built into the NSA's monitoring of phone calls and computer transmissions and wished the administration could tell the public more about them to ease distrust.

``If the American public, especially civil libertarians like myself, could be more informed about how careful the government is to protect our privacy while still protecting us from attacks, we'd be more reassured,'' said Lanny Davis, a former Clinton White House lawyer.

Alan Raul, a former Reagan White House lawyer and the board's vice chairman, said the group ``found there was a great appreciation inside government, both at the political and career levels, for protections on privacy and civil liberties.''

``In fact, I think the public may have an underappreciation for the degree of seriousness the government is giving these protections.'' said Raul, author of a book on privacy and civil liberties in the digital age.

The briefing had been delayed for over a year because President Bush was concerned - after several press leaks - about widening the circle of people who knew the exact details of the eavesdropping program.

A breakthrough was reached in recent days and the five board members were briefed during Thanksgiving week.

The board members are prohibited from discussing any specific protections or tactics because the NSA program remains classified.

But Davis said he believes the administration could tell the public more about the program's protections without compromising national security.

The board was created as a compromise between Congress and the White House amid growing public and congressional concerns about the government's tactics in the war on terror and their impact on civil rights.

Those concerns were fueled in part by news leaks that divulged the existence of the NSA's eavesdropping program, a similar terrorist finance tracking system and secret CIA prisons where high-value targets have been interrogated.

Democrats, who are about to take over Congress in January, have been concerned the board doesn't have enough independence because the political compromise struck in late 2004 left the board under the authority of the president.

Some have discussed elevating the board to an independent body like the Sept. 11 review commission.

After meeting in private 16 times over the last year to discuss classified matters and to be briefed by every major U.S. intelligence agency, the board has scheduled its first public hearing Dec. 5 to solicit testimony from nongovernment privacy experts.

The forum, to be held at Georgetown University, will hear from some of the administration's privacy critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, as well as conservative and academic voices.

Here's a photo of a Nuclear Power Plant to offend you...

MELBOURNE, Australia —&nb sp; A meeting of top financial officials from around the globe opened Saturday against a backdrop of 3,000 marching protesters, some of whom turned violent, pelting police with stones, bottles and smoke grenades.

Some 3,000 protesters marched on a downtown hotel where the Group of 20 meeting of finance ministers and central bankers opened, but most of the violence appeared to center around a group of about 200 demonstrators dressed in white coveralls with red bandanas tied around their faces.

I wonder how many of them were part of the "peace" movement? Michael Moore's Minutemen kill 52. Does this mean Republicans are going to start playing backstabbing hardbal l like Democrats?:

Republican strategists plotting their party's comeback after it lost control of Congress have identified the "first lady" of Democrat politics as a key target in the 2008 White House campaign — even though she will not be running.Senior party operatives told The Sunday Telegraph that they are already co-ordinating plans to attack Nancy Pelosi, the liberal Californian congresswoman and Speaker-in-waiting who suffered a damaging rebuff from her own party caucus last week.The Republican strategy is not only to undermine Mrs Pelosi's control of the House but also to associate her in voters' minds with Senator Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the 2008 Democrat presidential nomination.

...not likely. Bill O'Reilly mortally wounded in Playstation 3 fracas.  
 
Pukefest in Italy.


They'll be divorced in 3 years, bank on it.

KGB poisons man at sushi bar.

Scotland Yard is investigating the attempted murder of a top Russian defector poisoned by political enemies in London. Alexander Litvinenko, an ex-KGB colonel who fled the current Russian regime to claim asylum in Britain, is under armed police guard in hospital.

Could it have been the sushi?Maybe it was a Scientology Sushi Bar and he tried the Placenta.

Quote of the Day, Neal Boortz:

With George W. Bush visiting Vietnam, the media is loving comparing the war in Iraq to the Vietnam War.  But the mainstream media seems to have left their history books at home...because once again, the Vietnam War has nothing in common with the war in Iraq.  Let's break down their reasoning.

The Vietnam War lasted for decades...with its beginnings going all the way back to the 1940's and the 1950's.  We've been in Iraq just under 4 years.  The enemy in Vietnam was being supplied by a superpower...the Soviet Union.  The enemy in Iraq is being supplied by Iran and Syria and assorted Islamic thugs from various terrorist organizations.

It's just not the same.  Comparing Iraq to Vietnam would be like comparing World War II to the invasion of Panama.  There is no comparison.  But don't tell that to the media and the Democrats.  They know Vietnam is considered our greatest military failure of the 20th century.  And just like with the Vietnam War, Democrats want to cut off the funding for Iraq too.

Oh..and it goes without saying:  we lost the Vietnam War, but we won in Iraq.  The only problem in Iraq right now is getting things to the point where they are stable enough that we can leave.  However, such is the mainstream media's hatred of George Bush and the United States Military...they can't help but live out their Vietnam fantasy as much as possible.  The fact that Bush is in Vietnam itself this week only serves to feed the flames.

If Bush were a Democrat he would be hailed for going to Vietnam. Have you ever taken one of those Political Quizzes? The one where they ask you 20 questions and at the end place you on a graph in one of 4 categories, Authoritarian Left, Libertarian Left, Authoritarian Right, Libertarian Right and they would place a few historical figures on the graph to show you who in history you fall in line with? Well, I always fall firmly into the Libertarian Right Category, right next to this guy, his ideas should be required reading in school textbooks instead of Karl Marx, Che and other redistributionist drivel.

Milton Friedman, one of the most influential economists of the past century and winner of a 1976 Nobel Prize, died on Thursday morning of heart failure at a San Francisco area hospital, a spokeswoman for his family said. He was 94. A free-market economist, Friedman preached free enterprise in the face of government regulation and advocated a monetary policy that called for steady growth in money supplies. His ideas played a pivotal role in informing the governing philosophies of world leaders like former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former U.S. President Ronald "The Benevolent" Rea gan.


Milt

Minimum Wage Debate: Why not make it $20.00 an hour?  How can you raise a family of 4 on $7.25 an hour? Let's crush small businesses so that all we're left with is giant Meglo-Mart Corporations.

Good Point Charles:

 Charles: He's not so sure that the Iraqis can keep their own country from imploding anymore.  He says mistakes were made following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, but the real problem lies with the Iraqis.

"A republic, if you can keep it."-- Benjamin Franklin, upon leaving the Constitutional Convention, in answer to "What have we got?"

WASHINGTON -- We have given the Iraqis a republic and they do not appear able to keep it.Americans flatter themselves that they are the root of all planetary evil. Nukes in North Korea? Poverty in Bolivia? Sectarian violence in Iraq? Breasts are beaten and fingers pointed as we try to somehow locate the root cause in America.

 Does Al Gore really believe in catastrophic global warming? Since Al Gore was offered the opportunity (in person) to facilitate serious debate on the underlying science of global climate change, 10 months, 2 weeks, 21 hours, 2 minutes, and 18 seconds have elapsed.Despite milking lucrative speaking engagements and book deals with his global warming shtick he declines any such debate.Perhaps he's afraid of the Real Inconvenient Truth?

Brilliant. (HT Montana Politics)

HOUSTON - Crime victim advocates are upset that at least 30 Texas death row inmates have had pages on the popular Internet site MySpace created for them."I think you ought to draw the line somewhere," said Andy Kahan, director of the crime victims office for Houston Mayor Bill White.Kahan recently sent an e-mail to MySpace, asking the site to reconsider having pages created and maintained for convicted criminals, particularly murderers.

"Is it within your policy to allow the glorification of killers by giving them a platform to influence young minds?" Kahan wrote. "Are there specific guidelines within MySpace that would prohibit giving convicted felons a platform for all the world to see?"

MySpace officials did not respond to Kahan's e-mail and did not immediately return a telephone call from The Associated Press on Saturday.The inmates detail their personalities, likes and dislikes, just as others do on the Web site.

"I think I'm a pretty funny guy. I have a wacked sense of humor," writes Randy Halprin, who was convicted in the 2000 shooting death of an Irving police officer. "I can be a big kid at heart. I'm a hopeless (and I mean HOPELESS) romatic (sic)."

Sounds as if he's looking for a date...he should've thrown in something about rainbows.

Since no Texas inmate has Internet access, they send letters, journal entries or blog postings to friends and families who create the pages and post their writings for them.Death row inmates being able to express themselves on the Internet is not new as they've used isolated anti-death penalty Internet pages to publicize their cases.

"The reality is that for many years death row inmates have had family and friends on their case, on the Internet, oftentimes to get pen pals and in some cases raise money for the defense," said Michelle Lyons, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.Sites devoted to inmates on MySpace or anywhere else on the Web are out of TDCJ's jurisdiction."We cannot police what a person who is not in our custody puts on a Web site on behalf of an inmate," Lyons said.Danielle Allen, of All Life Is Precious Ministries in Livingston, home to Texas' death row, maintains the pages for four death row inmates."The way I look at it, if we can't forgive, we can't be forgiven," she said. "These are my personal friends."

They should call it "Life in Prison Row" many of them are on Death Row longer than their victims lived. I didn't know there were Crime Victim advocates.. Elton would ban religion completly:

Sir Elton John wants religion banned completely -- because he believes it promotes hatred of gays. Speaking to the Observer Music Monthly Magazine the singer said religion lacked compassion and turned people into "hateful lemmings".

The PRESS ASSOCIATION reports: In a candid interview for a dedicated Gay issue of the magazine he shared his views on topics as varied as being a pop icon to Tony Blair's stance on the war in Iraq.He said there was a lack of religious leadership, particularly in world politics, and complained that people do not take to the streets to protest any more.Sir Elton said: "I think religion has always tried to turn hatred towards gay people. Religion promotes the hatred and spite against gays.
"But there are so many people I know who are gay and love their religion. From my point of view I would ban religion completely.

I wonder how Stalin (an atheist) treated gays in his country? Probably not very well, they probably couldn't speak out to the extent that "Sir" Elton can and I know they sure as hell wouldn't have been Knighted, or given the Communist equivalent of Knighthood, Comradehood or whatever. Further proving that after his 1980 album "Blue Moves" Sir Elton has been nothing but a flouncing dork...I would ban bad hair tranplants completely, if I may engage in a little "Straight Eye for the Queer Guy" Elton looked better bald, now he looks like Arte Johnson from "Love American Style."

George McGovern, 'nuff said. Iraqi president says Democrats told him they will not pull out quickly:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - President Jalal Talabani said Thursday that he had been assured by Democrat congressional leaders during a recent visit to Washington that they had no plans for a quick withdrawal of U.S. forces.

Well Mr. Talabani, if the previous story about McGovern is true, you were just lied to...have a nice day. Dweezy little punk outs Ken Mehlman:

As NewsBuster Brad Wilmouth reported, comedian Bill Maher was on with CNN’s Larry King Wednesday night saying some rather outrageous things. Beyond his derogatory comments about President Bush, Maher told King: “A lot of the chiefs of staff, the people who really run the underpinnings of the Republican Party, are gay.” When King pressed Maher for names, Maher said, “Ken Mehlman”


Not only are Islamic Terrorists and their State Sponsors thrilled with the Democratic victory of Tuesday last so are Socialists, Radicals and Malcontents:

In an extraordinary joint statement, more than 200 Socialist members of the European Parliament hailed the American election results as "the beginning of the end of a six-year nightmare for the world" and gloated that they left the Bush administration "seriously weakened."

In Paris, expatriates and French citizens alike packed the city's main American haunts to watch results, with some standing to cheer or boo as vote tabulations came in.

One Frenchman, teacher Jean-Pierre Charpemtrat, 53, said it was about time U.S. voters figured out what much of the rest of the world already knew.

"Americans are realizing that you can't found the politics of a country on patriotic passion and reflexes," he said. "You can't fool everybody all the time — and I think that's what Bush and his administration are learning today."

Alien Invasion Imminent:

UFO sightings and alien visitors tend to be solely the reserve of sci-fi movies. So when a former MoD chief warns that the country could be attacked by extraterrestrials at any time, you may be forgiven for feeling a little alarmed.



No word on anyone's exscaped uteruses....Enveloping. Maybe now we can get some decent cigars.. Speaking of Aliens:

Fidel nearing toast status.

Bush has accused Iran of trying to make a nuclear bomb, being a state sponsor of terrorism and stoking sectarian conflict in Iraq, all charges Tehran denies.

The Rev. Ted Haggard resigned as president of the 30 million-member association Thursday after being accused of paying the man for monthly trysts over the past three years.

Haggard, a married father of five, denied the allegations, but also stepped aside as head of his 14,000-member New Life Church pending an investigation.

This can only mean one thing, if you're a religious conservative (or just a conservative period,) you are a closeted, gay, meth freak who likes massages from bodybuilders. Good thing this came out before the election, this changes everything. Could someone tell me exactly what "an evangelist" is and how they differ from the regular church going conglomerate? Is it because they gesticulate wildly and holler a lot?


Hello Sailor.

I will now vote Democrat and support the wishes of terrorists:

Vote Democrat! Terrorists want us to be safe?