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According to David Schulz, a lawyer for the AP, the Justice Department may have violated Watergate-era regulations that require the Attorney General to sign off on subpoenas directed at members of the media. In a phone interview, Schulz told me that the government’s broad request interferes with the basic ability of a free press to report on the government.
While the national security aspects of the story are not entirely clear, some media outlets are framing the phone record seizures as further evidence of the Obama Administration’s hardline attitude towards press leaks, which has resulted in several high profile prosecutions in the past five years.
Leaks have become easier to trace in recent years given that so much communication involves technology that leaves virtual fingerprints of one kind or another. At the same time, national security letters and other legal trappings of the post 9/11 era mean it’s become easier for a wide variety of government and law enforcement agencies to obtain phone records without a warrant.
Government seizures of reporters’ communications also appear at cross-purposes with calls for a federal shield law to protect journalists from having to disclose their sources; if such a law were passed, the AP episode shows the government could try and determine sources by looking at reporters’ phone records.
Maybe reporters should just be employed by the government. That would keep tight control on the “spin machine”…worked in USSR.
As a result, I do not buy anything with the name AT&T on it.
RobPaulGru, i’d hardly say it was “unsurpassed” but I would say the media’s lack of integrity on digging for the truth in matters like these has been pathetic.
The criminality of the Obama administration is truly unsurpassed. Fast and Furious, Benghazi, spying on AP reporters, sending arms to the Muslim Brotherhood, etc., etc… It is remarkable. Even more so, that the media has just now caught on.
Read your history book. Reagan’s administration sold arms to Iran, to give the proceeds to the Contras (Fast and Furious, “sending arms to the Muslim Brotherhood” pale in comparison). Reagan’s response to the Beruit bombing was to pull out of Lebanon (yet today, conservatives ignore that because their blinded by their rally cry of war). Reagan raised taxes (yet Obama is tantamount to being Evil for the same reason).
What’s so remarkable is that is just one administration. Try looking back at the atrocites that Andrew Jackson committed against the forced removal of Native Americans during his terms in office. Try looking at how people idolize the Southern Confederacy when all they did was seceed to maintain their state’s right to have slavery, the worst blight on the history of the United States.
Look at how LBJ over blew the Gulf of Tonkin incident so he could fully engage in Vietnam. Look at how FDR opened up internment camps for Germans and Japanese people during WWII. Look at how Jefferson argued for an agrarian society, yet governed like a strong Federalist. Look at how a member of the House beat up a member of the Senate, and then didn’t get in any trouble for it.
The “criminality” of the Obama administration is remotely unsurpassed. I don’t think you know what the word “truly” actually means.
Just because one can find a more egregious offender does not exonerate the bad acts of another. This “relative moral outrage” is the daily mantra of well-meaning liberals. That said, there’s something very satisfying to see the main stream press being violated by the very person they sacrificed their integrity and objectivity to protect. Like a battered wife crying because her abusive husband read her text messages, she’ll cry herself to sleep but never leave. And we’ll soon forget this violation of trust – because we all know he meant well.
iPhone apps, new gadgets and a TV controlled by gesture alone: just some of the technology on show at last week's La Collection event in Paris.
Twice per year, Orange stages La Collection to reveal its up and coming kit and silicon.com went along to check out what's on the mobile operator's drawing board.
First up is a system for live TV viewing on the iPhone. At the moment, the system is only available in France, where Orange is the exclusive carrier of the device.
The iPhone's inspiration is also evident in this application - Visual Voicemail.
Instead of listening to a number of voicemails to find the right one, messages are displayed on the screen, allowing the user to go straight to the relevant message.
At the moment, the app is only available for a handful of Windows Mobile and Symbian phones but the operator has also developed a system for standard phones where voicemails can be accessed straight from a text alert.
The smartphone system will get its debut in France this year, while Belgium will get its hands on the non-smartphone option this autumn.
Both the iPhone TV player and Visual Voicemail can be downloaded from Orange's Application Shop.
The shop is expected to hit the UK later this year.
Shown here is a piece of hardware on show at La Collection called Tabbee, a portable tablet designed for home entertainment use.
Tabbee can show web-based information including weather forecasts through a series of widgets as well as photos, films and other content from the user's home network.
The device will be on sale in France first and can run independently of Orange's network.
Another piece of hardware on show at La Collection is Orange's Hi-Fi Adapter, shown here.
The device, coming to France later this year, allows users to play MP3 and web radio through an average hi-fi.
The adapter connects to traditional hi-fis by means of a cable and to Orange's broadband hub Livebox over wi-fi.
The Livebox itself turns five this year, with eight million of the hubs now out in the wild.
To celebrate the anniversary, Orange got a number of artists to give the kit a makeover - shown here is the result of their work.
The standard version has also been redesigned and now has a newly launched partner: the Orange set-top box, shown together here.
The box, which has a 160GB hard drive, and is compatible with ADSL, HD terrestrial and satellite TV channels.
The device will debut at the end of this year and will be given away free to new Orange TV customers.
For those that don't fancy using a remote to control the telly, Orange is working on a gesture controlled system known as Project Keanu.
A camera attached to the top of the TV is used to record and interpret gestures made by a user standing in front of it.
Here, the direction of the cursor, shown in white, is governed by a user moving their arm.
Business tech was also given an airing at La Collection.
Orange demoed a telepresence system by linking up with its Slough office, shown here. While the systems - which can cost in the region of $300,000 for multiscreen set ups and $60,000 for a monoscreen - won't be provided by Orange itself, the operator does provide a concierge service to arrange meetings and ensure interoperability between different customers, as well as the IP VPN networks telepresence systems run over.
Medical Office, shown here, allows doctors to securely access their records using a smartcard system, while messages sent through the set-up are encrypted in an effort to prevent data leaks.
The system - set up here to scan the French health professionals card - also means that doctors can access their home desktops from any other location equipped with the card reader.
So called 'legal highs' are more dangerous than illegal drugs - that's the warning from one of Wales' leading drug experts.
Yaina Samuels, from the social enterprise Nu Hi Training who educate people about substance misuse, told ITV News that it is a huge problem in Wales, that is set to get worse.
"I would say in my personal opinion yes they are as much of a concern and in fact we need to be even more worried because we don't know what's in the drugs, we don't know what's in each packet that comes along, we don't know the strength of it, we don't know the chemicals in there and we don't know the lasting effects and the danger that's being done."
ITV News tried to contact several stockists of these so-called 'legal highs' but none were available for comment.
Scientists in Cardiff responsible for testing legal highs are warning of the dangers that can be caused by unidentified substances.
It should be noted that the Hoover’s mission statement focuses upon supporting “the Constitution of the United States, its Bill of Rights and our method of representative government in the U.S.” Hoover’s methodologies include using its research to show America “the road to peace, to personal freedom and to the safeguards of the American system.” The professors provide no evidence that the quality of Hoover’s work has been negatively impacted by following their mission statement. The lens through which others see and define truth and knowledge is to some extent always constrained. Such criticism reflects an unwillingness on the part of the professors to recognize their own ideologies and how it might affect what they define as truth. Their statements suggest that among Stanford students and professors there is a profound misunderstanding of how the Hoover Institution benefits Stanford and its students. These professors’ comments betray a surprising lack of tolerance towards a well-regarded and intellectual foundation with a conservative label.
While Provost Drell thankfully came to the defense of the Hoover Institution, calling it an “asset to the Stanford community” that “has benefited the community and the country,” the uninformed criticisms of Hoover demonstrate how troublingly little the Stanford community knows about the Hoover Institution. It is incredulous that the intellectual weight and prestige that the Hoover brings to Stanford University can be simply dismissed. Not only does the Hoover add ideological diversity to Stanford, it also strengthens Stanford’s prowess in economics, political science and international relations. Influential scholars in these fields, such as John Taylor, Michael Boskin, Condoleezza Rice, Amy Zegart, Thomas Sowell and HR McMaster are all fellows at Hoover and participate in the Hoover National Security mentorship program benefitting undergraduates at Stanford. Indeed, Hoover affiliations within Stanford include the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) fellows, such as former Ambassador Michael McFaul.
Lastly, an ideological lean should not render a research institution irredeemable. Even if Hoover’s mission of supporting the U.S. Constitution, free markets and peace is exclusively conservative, nearly all think tanks have an ideological lean. Other research institutions at Stanford demonstrate opposing political beliefs and co-exist on campus peacefully with Hoover. For example, both the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and the GSB direct an average of 96 percent of their campaign donations to Democratic candidates. No one would suggest that the liberal inclinations of the CISAC and GSB taints all of their research.
Hoover’s presence at Stanford maintains the intellectual integrity of our campus and compels Stanford’s students and professors to go beyond present-day academia’s confining intellectual bubble. The research of Hoover Fellows reminds us that there is often more than one side to public policy issues. The title of this op-ed, then, poses the question of whether or not conservatives belong at Stanford. The existence of the Hoover Institution on campus and Provost Drell’s defense of it makes it seem so; it is worrisome that some Stanford professors seem to believe that a single center-right institution on campus is one too many.
Contact Ben Esposito at bespo ‘at’ stanford.edu.
In baseball, as in life, there always is time for redemption. Faith can be rewarded in the midsummer stifle, the warmth of autumn's bow and even in an early-November freeze, thanks to the modern schedule.
For Pablo Sandoval, it arrived in the 157th game of an awful personal season, and he hardly could have picked a better time. With two outs in the sixth inning of a tie game Tuesday night, Sandoval blasted a Rodrigo Lopez fastball off the bricks in right-center for a double, then scored on a pinch-hit single by Nate Schierholtz.
Sandoval slammed his hands together three times as he crossed the plate for the go-ahead run in a 4-2 victory against the Diamondbacks, which elevated the Giants to a season-best two-game lead in the National League West over San Diego with five to play.
Sandoval also singled and made a diving stop of a Tony Abreu smash to end the top of the sixth, showing range that was missing for much of the year.
"When you score a run to get ahead it's exciting, especially at this moment, when you're fighting to win the division," Sandoval said.
Mike Fontenot is greeted by Pablo Sandoval after he scored on a Pat Burrell single in the seventh inning to make it 4-2 Giants on Tuesday.
Though the Giants hesitate to say they can taste the franchise's first division title in seven years, at least they can see it clearly on the menu.
"We're close," Sandoval said. "We've got five more games here. We're trying to play hard and need to play hard every game. Don't get comfortable."
Nothing has been comfortable for the Giants in 2010. They even needed a five-out save from Brian Wilson, his 46th, to take the series opener against an Arizona team that is spoiling to spoil.
Jonathan Sanchez earned his 12th win, which seemed like a fantasy when he was throwing ball four to everyone but Diamondbacks manager Kirk Gibson in the first two innings. In the second, Sanchez could see Chris Ray getting loose in the bullpen. Manager Bruce Bochy said he took the hook out of its case.
"This is (like a) playoff game," Sanchez said. "We can't lose this game. I know what's going on, but I just kept battling out there."
Despite four walks in the span of eight batters, Sanchez held the Diamondbacks to one run over the first two innings, on a sacrifice fly by pitcher Rodrigo Lopez. A Kelly Johnson homer in the third upped Arizona's lead to 2-0.
Sanchez saved himself and the team with three shutout innings to finish. He also struck out six to become the fourth left-hander in Giants history, and the first since Ray Sadecki in 1968, to reach 200 strikeouts.
The Giants tied the game on a leadoff triple by Andres Torres in the third, followed by Mike Fontenot's single, and Juan Uribe's 23rd homer to start the fourth. That tied his career high.
Lopez retired the first two Giants in the eighth before Sandoval, batting eighth, hit his double and scored on the Schierholtz single. Pat Burrell added an RBI single for insurance in the seventh.
Sandoval had been benched and might not have started had Freddy Sanchez been healthy. Bochy sheepishly declined to confirm that. Sandoval started to hit some balls hard on the road as a reserve and, in Bochy's words, seemed "more relaxed and comfortable."
Sandoval said he opened his stance a bit after watching some 2009 video with batting coach Hensley Meulens, which helps him see the ball longer. Good friend Torres provided the moral support.
"He's doing a great job," Torres said. "I told him to be positive. Every day we're going to battle to win. Forget about concentrating on what happened before. We've got to go out and play every game hard. That's the key for us."
D'backs at Giants, 7:15 p.m.
Cubs at Padres, 7:05 p.m.
Marlins at Braves, 1:35 p.m.
Paul Auerbach, MD, clinical professor of emergency medicine, has been named a "Hero of Emergency Medicine" by the American College of Emergency Physicians. The campaign, which is part of the college's 40th anniversary, recognizes emergency physicians who have made significant contributions to emergency medicine, their communities and their patients. Auerbach has been involved in textbook and journal editorship, formation of the Wilderness Medical Society and other activities that have added depth to the practice, teaching and research of emergency medicine.
David Fetterman, PhD, has been selected as the recipient of the Outstanding Higher Education Professional Award for 2008 by the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut. The annual award is based on Fetterman's scholarship, teaching and administrative contributions to higher education. He serves as director of evaluation in the Office of Medical Education in the School of Medicine. Fetterman has published 10 books and more than 100 articles, chapters and reports.
Kelly Ormond, MS, has been appointed associate professor (teaching) of genetics, as of Feb. 1. Her research and education interests focus on the impact of genetics on perceptions of disabilities, ethical issues in genetics (specifically informed consent) and integrating genetics into internal medicine practice. Ormond joined the faculty in September 2007 as the inaugural director for the master's degree program in human genetics and genetic counseling, and she will oversee all aspects of the program's development.
Jennifer Raymond, PhD, has been promoted to associate professor of neurobiology, as of Jan. 1. Her laboratory studies the neural mechanisms of learning. Raymond's research focuses on the cerebellum, a brain structure that plays a key role in motor learning, the process by which movements become smooth and accurate through practice. Her work examines the changes that occur during learning at each of the different levels of organization in the brain—genes, neurons and synapses, neural circuits and behavior.
Kevin Tabb, MD, chief of quality and medical information officer at Stanford Hospital & Clinics, has been appointed vice president for medical affairs. In this newly created role, Tabb will lead clinical quality and patient safety initiatives, assure regulatory compliance, support medical staff affairs in conjunction with the chief of staff and provide medical leadership for clinical information technology initiatives. His role includes contributing to development of new programs and policies to advance medical quality, growth and efficiency, working collaboratively with the School of Medicine, community physicians and clinical program leaders at SHC.
When the Swiss Catholic charity Caritas offered to put up temporary housing for some of the Armenians left without shelter after the devastating earthquake here last year, Soviet officials said they would rather have a factory that manufactured water faucets.
"The Swiss were flabbergasted," Yuri S. Mkhitarian, a senior official of the Armenian State Building Committee, recalled. "They had a vision in their minds of these poor, homeless people being sheltered in prefabricated chalets and living happily in a little Swiss village in the hills of northern Armenia. Yet here we were talking about plumbing--pipes and faucets and that sort of thing."
But the Armenian officials' reasoning was very straightforward: With more than 520,000 people to rehouse, Armenia needs foreign assistance--help on a scale that vastly exceeds the resources of individual donors, such as Caritas. Foreign donors, they say, must consequently shift from prestigious but small relief projects to those that speed the broader reconstruction effort here.
"Everybody wants to build us a hospital, but we need the wherewithal to rebuild the whole of the earthquake zone," Mkhitarian said. "We do need dozens of new hospitals, clinics and other medical facilities, but the whole Armenian population did not take sick after the earthquake. We have other needs, too, and they are equally urgent.
"What we need most of all now, in fact, is assistance in re-establishing our construction industry, which itself was largely destroyed in the earthquake, and assistance in redeveloping our economy.
About $500 million in international aid poured into Armenia from 113 countries after the Dec. 7 earthquake that killed more than 25,000 people, officials said. But most went into immediate relief work, medical care for the injured and the preliminary phase of reconstruction. The total damage in the earthquake zone has been estimated by the government at the equivalent of $16 billion.
"The acute crisis is over," Mkhitarian said, "but the situation here remains very grave. The drama of those terrible days in December has passed, thank God, but look at the situation we now face.
"Half a million people have lost their homes, 21 towns have been destroyed, 342 villages have suffered heavy damage and 58 were destroyed. The economy of that area is in shambles, 130 factories were destroyed, we have 170,000 people without work and the rest of the republic is straining to support them. We have tens of thousands of families divided, spread around the country, because there is no housing here.
"We need to rebuild our Armenia, and we need help from the world to do it. This is our plea to our friends who came so generously in December: Please do not forget us now."
Foreign donors continue to propose projects, officials here said, but not on the same scale of the original emergency aid and not on the scale they believe is required now.
Half a year into the reconstruction of the earthquake area, a massive undertaking that Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev pledged would be completed within two years, Armenian officials acknowledge that the effort might take five years--and perhaps even longer without international assistance.
The special commission established by the Communist Party's ruling Politburo to coordinate relief efforts here recently criticized the slowness in reconstruction, saying there had been "no substantial progress" in rebuilding and describing as "particularly alarming" the lack of progress in the earthquake zone's major towns.
"Coordination is a major, major problem," Boris Karapetyan, director of earthquake studies at the Yerevan Polytechnical Institute, said of the reconstruction. "This is a massive undertaking, and foreign involvement is both a necessary and a complicating factor. We need foreign assistance--and there is no doubt about that--but our friends do not know the local conditions and propose things that cannot or should not be built in an earthquake-prone region."
A coordinating center has been established, but its powers are still unclear, and reconstruction is proceeding slowly.
"We will rebuild, of course, and we can rely on our own resources and those of the whole Soviet Union," said Laura Vartanyan, deputy chairman of the Armenian Children's Fund. "But it is a question of cost--not so much the money cost, but the cost in additional human suffering if we cannot speed the reconstruction."
Dr. Armen Goenjian, a California psychiatrist who helped organize a mental health program to assist victims in dealing with the psychological trauma of the earthquake, strongly endorsed this plea.
"What people need now is housing, immediate housing, and they won't have that at the pace reconstruction is going," Goenjian said in an interview here. "New housing is essential if the families, so many of which are separated now, are to be brought back together. Homes will give people the hope and security they need to recover. . . .
"The Armenian community in the United States rushed to help in December, and we should not let go now. But we also need to understand what the greatest needs are, and the housing issue is the main concern. The question will soon be where are we Armenian-Americans on this key issue."
And there are also some complaints, spoken softly and with concern that they not reflect ingratitude, about promises made in December that, seven months later, are not fulfilled.
"When President Bush's son (Jeb) came (last Dec. 25), he talked about a donation of perhaps $1 million for the Armenian Children's Fund, but we had to set up a special account to receive it," Vartanyan said. "Now the account is established, but we have not received the donations we had hoped for. We wanted to use the money to purchase equipment for invalids, to put up a children's park in Leninakan, to buy warm clothing for winter and to help those families here who are taking care of our orphans.
"The Americans, particularly the Armenian community there, were of great help to us in our darkest hours, but we hear very little from the United States now. The crisis is not over--we have so many families without homes, so many people without jobs--and our children still need help."
The continuing international assistance is, in fact, extensive, and the walls of Mkhitarian's office are filling up with architects' sketches, construction diagrams and town plans that have been approved.
In Spitak, a town of about 25,000 at the epicenter of the quake, an Italian-built village--complete with a hospital, school, clinic and children's center--is going up at a new site several miles from the ruins of the old town, which was located over the convergence of several seismic faults.
Norway is building a 250-bed hospital there as well. Czechoslovakia is erecting a school for 750 children, and Finland and Italy together will build and equip a 300-bed rehabilitation center for those with spinal injuries from the earthquake.

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