Still flush with a yet unreturned $41,000 from Tom Delay and Randy Cunningham, Kentucky’s over-his-head 4th Congressional single term Congressman Geoff Davis will, this afternoon in the Florence Hilton, host a fundraising event for area developers, er, supporters starring the President of the United States.
According to a report in yesterday’s Kentucky Post:

"Certainly, there is a political risk of attaching yourself to the president right now," said Amy Walter, who handicaps House races…"But the financial payoff is much stronger than the risk."

Interestingly, Mr. Davis’ complete and total subservience to the Bush agenda and the cash flow end of elective office should give sweating developers (already pressed by Bushian immigration waffles) pause as they reach for already well-fleeced wallets at the minimum $500 a plate event.


The President and Mr. Davis not only didn’t deliver on expanding the promise of post Katrina fair wage suspensions for local cash-pressed, wage-poor McMansion mortgage holders, they seemed to foment voter dissatisfaction within their own ranks by their own inept execution of their offices.
Well worth forking over another couple a thousand, huh?

Modified Image: House.gov, Reuters
- posted by Sean @ 11:20 AM 1 comments  

 
The Claws That Catch...



"I would expect more from... the Department of Defense...in terms of the quality of their tradecraft... I would emphasize simply getting it right more often."
--General Michael Hayden, Opening Statement

Modified Image: AP
- posted by Sean @ 6:39 PM 0 comments  

 
For Whom the Bell Tapped?


Curiously, six days after Gannett’s USA Today published their exclusive report on the collection of phone call records by the National Security Agency, no one in the metropolitan Cincinnati media has thought to ask our local phone company, Cincinnati Bell, if they had received any governmental request for telephone records.
According to Cincinnati Bell’s online Code of Conduct:

No employee of Cincinnati Bell…shall engage in, cause, or permit any unauthorized intrusion into the secrecy or privacy of communications, or furnish to anyone any advice, assistance, or equipment for use in connection with any eavesdropping or the interception of telephone or data communications…unless such conduct is specifically approved in advance by a Company official legally authorized to do so. If a law enforcement authority, governmental official, or anyone else asks for information [sic] which must be kept private because of the law or Company regulations, immediately refer their request through proper channels to the Office of the General Counsel.

Saturday, I left a message concerning Cincinnati Bell and the NSA with the Metro editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer.
As of this posting, that Gannett-owned daily’s editor has not returned my call.
I also talked with representatives of two of the more reputable TV newsrooms.
Both newsrooms initially told me they had not aired a local follow to the national NSA story.
I called Cincinnati Bell.
After 20 minutes of waiting and after having been transferred to several representatives, I found myself speaking to a young woman who identified herself as Tiffany.
I asked Tiffany if Cincinnati Bell had received any request from the NSA similar to those outlined in last Thursday’s USA Today story and if any local media had asked the company questions similar to mine
Tiffany asked if I could hold and disappeared for 12 minutes.
Returning Tiffany said, without preamble, “Cincinnati Bell does not divulge information relating to National Security and strictly adheres to Federal, State and Local laws in order to insure customer privacy”.
I, again, asked Tiffany is she was aware of any local media asking the question I had just raised.
Tiffany said, “No, I’m not aware of any.”
Thanking her, I hung up and redialed one of the local TV newsrooms.
The young woman I spoke to this time insisted that her station had asked Cincinnati Bell about the NSA and that the story was on their website.
I asked if she recalled if Cincinnati Bell’s statement and if it was the same “does not divulge” response I’d just been given.
She said that it was.
Repeated searches, within and without the site, failed to locate the alleged local TV report.

Internet search engine attempts conducted since last Friday have not uncovered any reports about possible Cincinnati Bell involvement with the NSA although those same Internet searches have curiously confirmed my own personal knowledge that Cincinnati Bell from 1972 to 1984 set more than 1, 200 wiretaps “at the request of their supervisors at the Telco and the local police” on “past and present members of Congress, federal judges, scores of the city's most prominent politicians, business executives, lawyers and media personalities” even tapping “the hotel room where then-President Gerald Ford stayed during two visits to Cincinnati, a tale substantially corroborated by the hotel's retired security chief.”

While I realize that most employees of local news operations are very young and likely only partially aware of regional history, surely some wizened old newsroom curmudgeon has a memory of the Bell’s past indiscretion and the importance of a present day local follow-up question.
Surely some young hotshot in the local paper owned by the company that also owns USA Today must realize that this kind of local follow-up question might be appreciated by corporate and those embattled USA Today investigative reporters.
Yeah?
Well not yet, anyway.

For your information, Cincinnati Bell started out three years before the invention of the telephone as the City and Suburban Telegraph Company in 1873.
It was one of two old Bell system companies to be independently owned and survived the Bell break-up, escaping inclusion in a regional operating company like Bell South.
While small, Cincinnati Bell now offers its 2 million regional customers full dial-up and ASDL internet services and its own fully owned wireless division all operating roughly within the same 25 mile radius around Cincinnati that it first established in 1878.
Following the completion of Bell South’s purchase by AT&T, Cincinnati Bell will be the only surviving Bell to still use the original encircled Bell logo.

NOTE-A Josh Marshall reader has an enlightening 1st person thumbnail sketch of certain Telco employees.

Image: Google, BellSystemMemorial.com
- posted by Sean @ 1:59 PM 0 comments  

 
"Get some new cell phones, quick!"
--Senior Law Enforcement Official to ABC News



Well, kiddies, it seems the Bush Spying Scandal "Ah ha!" moment has arrived with fresh context leaked just moments ago in an ABC blog posting by Brian Ross:

Phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined [by the NSA].

I would assume the "senior law enforcement official" could have just easily added the names of the cable news nets, other print media, a few troublesome DJs, a smattering of bloggers and every Strom, Dick and Harriet across the United States to an Enemies' List that will in all likelyhood make Nixon's seem quaint and trifling.
NSA supercomputers, such as the ASCII Option Red supercomputer discussed here in a Saturday post, would be highly capable, with the correct programming, of performing a variety of amazing feats with the raw data amassed from all calls in and out of a certain building or to and from specific people.
These "models", like National Weather Service satellite animations of storms and hurricanes, can display the present, past and project the possible future courses of the modeled scenarios.
Benign when one thinks of TV weather coverage but highly questionable and certainly very illegal when maliciously and politically applied to ordinary American citizens (yes even media celebrities) engaged in the tranquil and everyday welfare of society.

Late Day Update:
Ed Schultz interviews Brian Ross via this link.
I don't know how long the link to this index will remain valid.
The Ross interview begins 2:48 into the audio file.

Even Later Update:
The story gets no "play" on the ABC homepage.
World News Tonight (I only watched the first 15 tedious minutes), also, didn't seem concerned with all the echos and clicks on all ABC telephones.
Jeez, are you guys over at Disney mice or men?
Er, uh, oh wait...yeah.

Image: EmergenceMarketing.com, NSA.gov
- posted by Sean @ 1:11 PM 0 comments