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Going To Hell In A Very Stylish Handbasket.

"El diablo sabes mas por viejo que por diablo" - old Mexican proverb

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Achtung! Das machine ist nicht fur gerfingerpoken und mittengraben. Ist easy schnappen der pringenwerk, blowenfusen, und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by das dumkopfen, das rubbernecken sightseeren keepen hands in der pockets, relaxen und watchen der blinkenlights.

links:
Tom Paine
The Nation
Think Progress
Bush or Chimp?
Landover Baptist Church
The White House
The Onion
Ernie's House of Whoop Ass
Project for the New American Century
Project for the Old American Century
Project for the New American Empire
All Hat, No Cattle
Unfairly Balanced
Buck Fush

A more serious question is, how come we only get this kind of unvarnished reporting from OUTSIDE the United States? All the media focus here is "oh, its bad but not too bad, nobody panic, the feds will fix it, there's no recession, no sir, just keep buying stuff..."

Even unemployed shills like Alan Greenspan are still parroting the company line: things are not that bad, keep spending...

Steepest fall in US house prices in 16 years fuels fears of recession

The Independent, UK - Words almost failed observers on both sides of the Atlantic yesterday as they reacted to the worst American economic data to emerge for some considerable time.

Consumer confidence slumped to the lowest level in almost two years and home prices scored their worst performance in 16 years, threatening US household spending, spurring talk of recession and prompting calls for the Federal Reserve to keep cutting interest rates. The Conference Board's index of consumer confidence fell more than forecast in September, to 99.8 from 105.6.

Meanwhile, the American National Association of Realtors said August sales of previously owned houses dropped 4.3 per cent, with inventories at exceptionally high levels, indicating that house sellers are not yet willing to reduce prices by as much as the collapse in demand would warrant.

Even so, the average US existing home sales price also fell in August, to $224,500 from $228,700 in July. The fall of $4,200 is equivalent to a 1.8 per cent month-on-month decline. This is the steepest drop in house prices for 16 years. Prices have risen by a mere 0.2 per cent since August 2006.

Confidence about employment prospects is also at a low ebb. The share of consumers who said jobs are plentiful decreased to 25.7 per cent from 27.5 per cent in August. The proportion of people who said jobs are hard to get increased to 22.1 per cent from 19.7 per cent.

Economists were uniformly gloomy about the numbers. "Hope of stabilization in US existing home sales has been blown to bits by terrible August data," Dimitry Fleming, of ING in London, remarked. "We doubt the recent Fed rate cut will manage to revitalize home demand any time soon. As long as prices remain in negative territory, buyers will continue playing the waiting game. At the current sales rate, it now takes a massive 10 months to clear the market.

"Hopes of a bounceback in employment after the shocking fall last month may prove misplaced. The expectations index, which is perhaps a more reliable indicator for future consumer spending, fell to only 85.2 from 89.2. We should not look for the consumer to bail out growth as they did at the end of 2006."

Richard Iley of BNP Paribas said: "A dismal report although it could have been worse. But worse is surely to come. The existing home sales data reflect demand/sales agreed 4-6 weeks previously. As a result, this report is firmly 'pre-turmoil'. Housing demand fell off a cliff in August and September. Existing homes sales could easily have fallen 25 to 30 per cent which would leave inventories in unprecedented territory."

Modern Humans Retain Caveman's Survival Instincts

LiveScience - Like hunter-gatherers in the jungle, modern humans are still experts at spotting predators and prey, despite the developed world's safe suburbs and indoor lifestyle, a new study suggests.

The research, published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals that humans today are hard-wired to pay attention to other people and animals much more so than non-living things, even if inanimate objects are the primary hazards for modern, urbanized folks.

The researchers say the finding supports the idea that natural selection molded mechanisms into our ancestors' brains that were specialized for paying attention to humans and other animals. These adaptive traits were then passed on to us.

How easy would it be to convert the payload in a NAV to deliver a bioagent? Where does all this fingerprint and retinal scanning-at-a-distance information get stored? How is it used? By whom? Are there, somewhere in the bowels of some DHS database, satellite closeup pics of me sunbathing naked on my deck? Big fucking brother, we are here...

Tech wonders on homeland security horizon

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Americans are facing a brave new world of post-September 11 technology marvels that could soon find their way into billions of dollars of projected homeland security spending.

Gee-whiz know-how -- from swarms of tiny airborne sensors to ever-sharper satellite imagery -- is being developed by companies chasing potentially lucrative federal, state and local deals to address 21st-century security threats.

Already in use are such things as infrared cameras with built-in brains that capture license plate images and match them in milliseconds to police records of vehicles of interest to the authorities.

Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, says unless all nations take action, global climate change will be the end of civilization in our children's lifetime.

(Link below opens a video browser)

Ban Ki-Moon talks to ABC News

Dude, that is just sooo not right - we have simply GOT to quit shitting where we sleep! George FUCKING Bush, stop letting your buddies crap in our bed!

---------------------------------

UN chief urges immediate climate action

UNITED NATIONS, Associated Press - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told an unprecedented summit on climate change Monday that "the time for doubt has passed" and a breakthrough is needed in global talks to sharply reduce emissions of global-warming gases.

"The U.N. climate process is the appropriate forum for negotiating global action," Ban told assembled presidents and premiers, an apparent caution against what some see as a U.S. effort to open a separate negotiating track.

The U.N. chief also addressed a chief U.S. objection to negotiated limits on greenhouse-gas emissions, that it will be too damaging to the American economy.

"Inaction now will prove the costliest action of all in the long term," Ban said.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in another summit-opening speech, told the international delegates U.S. states are taking action.

While the Bush administration has resisted emissions caps, California's Republican governor and Democrat-led legislature have approved a law requiring the state's industries to reduce greenhouse gases by an estimated 25 percent by 2020. Other U.S. states, in various ways, are moving to follow California's lead.

This bozo totally deserves the jail years he's gonna get this time around. Can you believe how lame all this is? What a fucking criminal mastermind, right. It wouldn't even make a decent half-hour "Hollywood Heat" episode.

O.J. Vegas caper quickly unraveled

LAS VEGAS, Associated Press - Standing in a casino hotel room, a fallen football hero played out the final scene of a sting operation to seize prized possessions from his glory days.

But his plan, plotted against the backdrop of a quickie Las Vegas wedding, was suddenly going bad.

There was a gunman impersonating a police officer. Men were screaming at each other. And the prized possessions were being stuffed into pillow cases and cardboard boxes.

In a city where casino heists and celebrity spawn images of Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack and George Clooney flicks, the caper allegedly orchestrated by O.J. Simpson has the glint of Sin City's seedy underside — with shadowy figures and deals gone bad.

Famed French mime Marcel Marceau dies

PARIS, Associated Press - Marcel Marceau, whose lithe gestures and pliant facial expressions revived the art of mime and brought poetry to silence, died Saturday. He was 84.

Wearing white face paint, soft shoes and a battered hat topped with a red flower, Marceau — notably through his famed personnage Bip — played the entire range of human emotions onstage for more than 50 years, never uttering a word. Offstage, however, he was famously chatty. "Never get a mime talking. He won't stop," he once said.

A French Jew, Marceau escaped deportation during World War II — unlike his father, who died as Auschwitz — and worked with the French Resistance to protect Jewish children.

His biggest inspiration was Charlie Chaplin. Marceau, in turn, inspired countless young performers — Michael Jackson borrowed his famous "moonwalk" from a Marceau sketch, "Walking Against the Wind."

Marceau performed tirelessly around the world until late in life, never losing his agility, never going out of style. In one of his most poignant and philosophical acts, "Youth, Maturity, Old Age, Death," he wordlessly showed the passing of an entire life in just minutes.

"Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us without words?" he once said.

Actress Alice Ghostley dies at 81

LOS ANGELES, Associated Press - Alice Ghostley, the Tony Award-winning actress best known on television for playing Esmeralda on "Bewitched" and Bernice on "Designing Women," has died. She was 81.

Ghostley died Friday at her home in Studio City after a long battle with colon cancer and a series of strokes, longtime friend Jim Pinkston said.

Ghostley made her Broadway debut in "Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1952." She received critical acclaim for singing "The Boston Beguine," which became her signature song.

Miles Kreuger, president of the Los Angeles-based Institute of the American Musical, said part of Ghostley's charm was that she was not glamorous.

"She was rather plain and had a splendid singing voice, and the combination of the well-trained, splendid singing voice and this kind of dowdy homemaker character was so incongruous and so charming," Kreuger said.

In the 1960s, Ghostley received a Tony nomination for various characterizations in the Broadway comedy "The Beauty Part" and eventually won for best featured actress in "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window."

From 1969 to 1972, she played the good witch and ditzy housekeeper Esmeralda on TV's "Bewitched." She played Bernice Clifton on "Designing Women" from 1987 to 1993, for which she earned an Emmy nomination in 1992.

Parking Lots Outnumber People, Add to Pollution

LiveScience.com - Sprawling suburban parking spaces outnumber drivers by three to one in a Midwestern county, a finding that typifies a troubling trend nationwide that increases urban heating and pollution, researchers say.

Digitalized aerial surveys taken in 2005 were used to calculate the total area devoted to parking lots in Indiana's Tippecanoe County and revealed the paved lots covered an area larger than 1,000 football fields and that there were three times as many parking spaces as drivers who lived in the county, said study leader Bryan Pijanowski of Purdue University.

Pijanowski said that his study was relevant across the country because generally Americans are paving an increasing amount of land each year on which to park when they go to the store, work, school or other places.

The results of the Tippecanoe study—355,000 parking spaces in a county that is home to 155,000 residents—are cause for concern because parking lots are a major source of water pollution, contributing 1,000 pounds of heavy metals into water runoff every year, he said.

Now, that's what I'm talking about - dropping 20-50% in price is more in my league. Buy me that nice little hacienda I keep jabbering about.

Housing slump may produce a recession

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - An economist who has long predicted this decade's housing market bubble would deflate said the residential real estate downturn could spiral into "the most severe since the Great Depression" and could lead to a recession.

Yale University economist Robert Shiller's written comments to lawmakers came a day after the Federal Reserve responded to credit market turmoil by slashing the target federal funds rate by a half point to 4.75 percent.

Shiller, in testimony prepared for a hearing of the Joint Economic Committee said the loss of a boom mentality among the public may bring on a drop in consumer confidence that poses a "significant risk" of a recession within the next year.

Meanwhile, Peter Orszag, director of the Congressional Budget Office, gave a more tempered forecast, saying that financial market turmoil and weakened consumer confidence pose economic threats but are not likely to send the economy into a recession.

A hypothetical 20 percent drop in home prices over two years would reduce U.S. economic growth by one half of a percentage point annually to 1 1/2 percentage points annually after three years, the Congressional Budget Office calculates.

"The risk of recession is elevated but the most likely scenario at this point seems to be continued economic growth," Orszag said.

The hearing came as the government said Wednesday it would slightly raise the investment portfolio cap for government-sponsored mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as a way to pump cash into the stretched mortgage market.

Since mortgages made to people with weak credit are concentrated among low-priced homes, Shiller said "low income people will be especially hard hit by the correction." He advocated the creation of a new federal commission, modeled after the Consumer Product Safety Commission, to detect abusive lending practices that critics say were common in the market for loans made to people with weak credit.

Recent readings of the housing market suggest a rebound isn't coming anytime soon.

The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that construction of new homes fell by 2.6 percent in August to the slowest pace in 12 years as troubles. On Tuesday, the National Association of Home Builders reported that its index of builder confidence fell in September to equal the lowest level on record.

Less water means water wars. I'm moving to where the water starts, not where it (hopefully) ends up.

Scientist warns of climate change impact

LAS CRUCES, N.M. Associated Press - Climate change could mean higher temperatures, less winter precipitation and less spring runoff for the Southwest, a climatologist says.

Temperatures in New Mexico could increase by a few degrees by the end of this century, said Gregg Garfin, project manager of the Climate Assessment Project for the Southwest at the University of Arizona.

"It seems very likely that temperatures will continue to increase and probably more rapidly than we've seen in the past," he said Monday.

The warmer weather will cause snowpack to melt earlier each year, and there is a chance less snow will fall, Garfin said. Earlier snowpack melts will mean water supplies will be more vulnerable to evaporation because water will sit longer in reservoirs before it is used, he said during a global warming workshop forum in Las Cruces.

The White House makes up whatever lies it wants, and its stooges and tools can bleat all they like. The truth is plain for all to see, and has been so since day 1: Iraq is a war for oil, nothing more or less.

The Republicans are hypocrites, hiding behind words like 'honor' and 'patriotism', and the Democrats are cowards, since they stop the war cold at any time simply by cutting off funding.

Gates rejects Greenspan claim war is about oil

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday rejected former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's statement that the Iraq war "is largely about oil."

With Democratic lawmakers apparently short of the votes needed to force President George W. Bush to change course, Gates defended the war, now in its fifth year, and said it's being driven by the need to stabilize the Gulf and put down hostile forces.

Gates's defense came a day after thousands of anti-war protesters marched in Washington. A spokeswoman for one of the groups who organized the march said more than 200 protesters were taken into custody, including at least 10 Iraq war veterans, when they attempted to cross a police barrier near the U.S. Capitol.

Greenspan, in his new book, "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," echoed long-held complaints of many critics that a key motivating force in the war is to maintain U.S. access to the rich oil supplies in Iraq.

"Whatever their publicized angst over Saddam Hussein's 'weapons of mass destruction,' American and British authorities were also concerned about violence in an area that harbors a resource indispensable for the functioning of the world economy," Greenspan wrote.

"I'm saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil," added Greenspan, who for decades had been one of the most respected U.S. voices on fiscal policies.

[This photo, released by the European Space Agency (ESA), shows an Envisat ASAR mosaic of images of the Arctic Ocean for early September 2007, clearly showing the most direct route of the Northwest Passage open (orange line) and the Northeast passage only partially blocked (blue line).(AFP/ESA-HO)]

PARIS (AFP) - The Northwest Passage, the dreamed-of yet historically impassable maritime shortcut between Europe and Asia, has now fully opened up due to record shrinkage of Arctic sea ice, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Friday.

It released a mosaic of images, taken in early September by a radar aboard its Envisat satellite, which showed that ice retreat in the Arctic had reached record levels since satellite monitoring began in 1978.

"We have seen the ice-covered area drop to just around three million square kilometres (1.158 million square miles), which is about one million square kilometres (386,000 sq. miles) less than the previous minima of 2005 and 2006," said Leif Toudal Pedersen of the Danish National Space Centre.

"There has been a reduction of the ice cover over the last 10 years of about 100 000 sq. km. (38,600 sq. miles) per year on average, so a drop of one million sq. km. (386,000 sq. miles) in just one year is extreme."

... and slim down your amazingly huge ass, and lower your risk of horrible diseases, and slaughter less animals, and...

Eating less meat may slow climate change

LONDON, Associated Press - Eating less meat could help slow global warming by reducing the number of livestock and thereby decreasing the amount of methane flatulence from the animals, scientists said on Thursday.

In a special energy and health series of the medical journal The Lancet, experts said people should eat fewer steaks and hamburgers. Reducing global red meat consumption by 10 percent, they said, would cut the gases emitted by cows, sheep and goats that contribute to global warming.

"We are at a significant tipping point," said Geri Brewster, a nutritionist at Northern Westchester Hospital in New York, who was not connected to the study.

"If people knew that they were threatening the environment by eating more meat, they might think twice before ordering a burger," Brewster said.

Call me cynical, but burning water, which covers 70% our planet, would quickly put the oil and gas people out of business. So I'm thinking, this will be the last we hear about this, just like we have heard nothing more about the easily farmable biofuel algae discovered last year...

Did I mention the oil companies made mind-bogglingly huge record-breaking profits *again* this year?

Radio frequencies help burn salt water

ERIE, Pa. Associated Press - An Erie cancer researcher has found a way to burn salt water, a novel invention that is being touted by one chemist as the "most remarkable" water science discovery in a century.

John Kanzius happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies, it would burn.

The discovery has scientists excited by the prospect of using salt water, the most abundant resource on earth, as a fuel.

Just like the oil companies, these clowns are making record profits, raising their prices, and not providing a spec of better service. In fact, service is getting worse. Kind of like the watered-down gas they sell you during peak consumption periods, so you pay more for less.

Health insurance premiums rise 6.1 pct.

Associated Press - Health insurance premiums paid by workers and their employers rose an average of 6.1 percent this year, outpacing inflation and pay increases and taking a bigger chunk out of families' budgets, according to a new survey.

Premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance for the average family topped $12,000 — with employees picking up about one-fourth of that cost — although the increase in premiums slowed for a fourth straight year.

Insurance costs probably will rise again next year, according to the survey released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health care research organization that annually tracks the cost of health insurance. Many of the more than 3,000 companies surveyed said they planned to make significant changes to their health plans and benefits, and nearly half said they were very or somewhat likely to raise premiums.

Our view on income inequality: Decoy on tax fairness

USA Today - When we last checked in on the beleaguered billionaires who manage hedge funds and private equity firms, they were fighting the good fight on behalf of the American worker. The money managers were arguing that if they are forced to pay income taxes as others do, the real loser would be the pension funds that finance the retirements of teachers, firefighters and such.

Now they'd have you believe they are also fighting for women- and minority-owned businesses. Everyone will benefit, the managers assert, if only Congress rejects a plan to tax their compensation at the top income tax rate of 35%, rather than at the 15% capital gains rate that now benefits them, thanks to a loophole in tax law.

Never mind that last year, the income of the top 25 hedge fund managers averaged $560 million. Or that their plea for tax relief proves that greed knows no bounds.

You'd think this would be an easy call — a pain-free revenue raiser at a time of massive federal deficits. But in Washington, where well-financed lobbyists hold sway, it is not.

It takes literally decades for drugs to be approved for public use. That means that for folks to start getting sick from crappy drugs in the late 90's, the FDA approval process for those drugs has to have started in, oh, say, the early 80's...

Help me out here - who was in charge of the FDA and its standards and practices back then? Who slid happily into bed with Big Pharma? Anybody? Reagan? Bush Sr? Bueller? Anybody?....

U.S. reports of drug reactions triple

CHICAGO, Associated Press - Reports of dangerous side effects and deaths from widely used medicines almost tripled between 1998 and 2005, an analysis of U.S. drug data found.

The number of deaths and serious injuries from prescription and over-the-counter drugs climbed from 34,966 to 89,842 during the study of reports to the Food and Drug Administration.

Potent narcotic painkillers including Oxycontin, sold generically as oxycodone, were among 15 drugs most often linked with deaths in the study. Drugs frequently linked with serious nonfatal complications included insulin, the arthritis drugs Vioxx and Remicade, and the antidepressant Paxil.

The report adds to recent criticism of FDA oversight on drug safety, including its handling of serious problems connected with Vioxx, which was removed from the market in 2004.

Mah paw voted repuglican, and mah grandpaw voted repuglican, and mah greatgranpaw voted repuglican - oh no, wait, that don't count on accounta granpaw and greatgranpaw is the same feller...

Homo politicus: brain function of liberals, conservatives differs

PARIS (AFP) - The brain neurons of liberals and conservatives fire differently when confronted with tough choices, suggesting that some political divides may be hard-wired, according a study released Sunday.

Aristotle may have been more on the mark than he realized when he said that man is by nature a political animal.

Dozens of previous studies have established a strong link between political persuasion and certain personality traits.

Conservatives tend to crave order and structure in their lives, and are more consistent in the way they make decisions. Liberals, by contrast, show a higher tolerance for ambiguity and complexity, and adapt more easily to unexpected circumstances.

The affinity between political views and "cognitive style" has also been shown to be heritable, handed down from parents to children, said the study, published in the British journal Nature Neuroscience.

..or at least a recession. Definitely bad times for lots of folks ahead. I better batten down the hatches in the next couple of years...

Doesn't matter what they wear or profess to believe - it's really all just about inner rage directed explosively outward. Put the rabid dogs down. Although there is a certain irony to this bunch of sickos.

Police: Israeli neo-Nazi ring busted

JERUSALEM, Associated Press - In a case that would seem unthinkable in the Jewish state, police said Sunday they have cracked a cell of young Israeli neo-Nazis accused in a string of attacks on foreign workers, religious Jews, drug addicts and gays.

Eight immigrants from the former Soviet Union have been arrested in recent days in connection with at least 15 attacks, and a ninth fled the country, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said, in the first such known cell to be discovered in Israel.

All the suspects are in their late teens or early 20s and have Israeli citizenship, Rosenfeld said.

"The level of violence was outrageous," Maj. Revital Almog, who investigated the case, told Israel's Army Radio.

A court decided Sunday to keep the young men in custody. They covered their faces with their shirts during the hearing, revealing their tattooed arms, and did not comment.

News of the arrests came as a shock in Israel, which was founded nearly 60 years ago as a refuge for Jews in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust and remains a most sensitive subject. Any forms of anti-Semitism around the world outrage Israelis, and the discovery of such violence in the country's midst made the front pages of newspapers and dominated talk on morning radio shows.

The gang documented its activities on film and in photographs. Israeli TV stations showed grainy footage of people lying helpless on floors while several people kicked them, and of a man getting hit from behind on the head with an empty bottle.

Police found knives, spiked balls, explosives and other weapons in the suspects' possession, Rosenfeld said. One photo that was seized showed one suspect holding an M16 rifle in one hand and in the other, a sign reading "Heil Hitler," he added.

Reunited with Meg and Charles Wallace at last? I hope so. "A Wrinkle In Time" was one of the seminal books of my youth, a story that made me question for the first time if perhaps time and space and thought are not the separate things I was being taught to believe they were...

Author Madeleine L'Engle dies at 88

HARTFORD, Conn., Associated Press - Author Madeleine L'Engle, whose novel "A Wrinkle in Time" has been enjoyed by generations of schoolchildren and adults since the 1960s, has died, her publicist said Friday. She was 88.

L'Engle died Thursday at a nursing home in Litchfield of natural causes, according to Jennifer Doerr, publicity manager for publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

The Newbery Medal winner wrote more than 60 books, including fantasies, poetry and memoirs, often highlighting spiritual themes and her Christian faith.

Although L'Engle was often labeled a children's author, she disliked that classification. In a 1993 Associated Press interview, she said she did not write down to children.

"In my dreams, I never have an age," she said. "I never write for any age group in mind. When people do, they tend to be tolerant and condescending and they don't write as well as they can write.

"When you underestimate your audience, you're cutting yourself off from your best work."

"A Wrinkle in Time" — which L'Engle said was rejected repeatedly before it found a publisher in 1962 — won the American Library Association's 1963 Newbery Medal for best American children's book. Her "A Ring of Endless Light" was a Newbery Honor Book, or medal runner-up, in 1981.

In 2004, President Bush awarded her a National Humanities Medal.

"Wrinkle" tells the story of adolescent Meg Murry, her genius little brother Charles Wallace, and their battle against evil as they search across the universe for their missing father, a scientist.

Uneven-Stevens

USA Today - Senate Republican leaders were relieved when Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, announced Saturday that he intended to resign this month after pleading guilty in a Minneapolis airport sex sting.

Oops, not so fast. Craig un-announced Wednesday, declaring that if he could undo the guilty plea, he just might stick around. That left a pained-looking Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, allowing that he thought Craig had made the right decision the first time.

No matter how this strange story ends — Craig's reversals have left him in an untenable position — it won't make the Senate's ethics problems go away. McConnell's unforgiving treatment of Craig has thrown a harsh light on his far looser treatment of other Republican senators.

Particularly troubling is the case of Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who has been swept up in a major corruption investigation. Associates, including an Alaska businessman who oversaw the renovation of a home Stevens owns in Alaska, have been convicted or pleaded guilty. The FBI searched Stevens' home in July.

Stevens hasn't been charged and is, of course, entitled to a presumption of innocence. Even so, his senior position on the Senate Appropriations Committee means that he helps set the budget for the Justice Department, the FBI and the IRS — all of which are investigating him. Despite this obvious conflict of interest, Stevens has declined to step aside from his committee post, and McConnell won't push him.

Newest spy gadget: social networking

CHICAGO, Associated Press - As spy gear goes, a social-networking Web site doesn't quite have the same cachet as some of James Bond's high-tech gadgets.

But the U.S. intelligence community is taking a page from popular online hangouts like Facebook and News Corp.'s MySpace to help encourage operatives to share information. In December, agency leaders are launching a social-networking site just for spooks.

The classified "A-Space" ultimately will grow to include blogs, searchable databases, libraries of reports, collaborative word processing and other tools to help analysts quickly trade, update and edit information.

It comes on the heels of the year-old Intellipedia, a Web site modeled after the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Intellipedia has been gaining traction among the intelligence agencies and already has nearly 30,000 posted articles and 4,800 edits added every workday.