Mood:
surprisedTopic: Odd Stuff
Homeland Security Deputy Press Secretary arrested
Deputy Press Secretary for U.S. Department of Homeland Security Arrested on Polk County Charges
BARTOW, Florida - Brian J. Doyle, DOB 4/7/50, the Deputy Press Secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Office of Public Affairs in Washington, D.C., was arrested this evening at his residence in Silver Springs, Maryland, on 23 Polk County charges related to the use of a computer to seduce a child and transmitting harmful materials to a minor.
Doyle's arrest is the result of a joint investigation by the Polk County Sheriff s Office, working with Florida's 10th Judicial Circuit State Attorney Jerry Hill's office, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Inspector General's Office.
The InvestigationOn March 12, 2006, Doyle contacted a 14-year-old girl whose profile was posted on the Internet, and initiated a sexually explicit conversation with her. The girl was actually an undercover Polk County Sheriff's Computer Crimes detective. Doyle knew that the girl was 14 years old, and he told her who he was and that he worked for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. During future online chats, Doyle gave the undercover detective posing as a 14-year-old girl his office phone number and his government-issued cell phone number, so that they could have telephone conversations, in addition to their online chatting. Doyle used the Internet to send hard-core pornographic movie clips to the girl and used the AOL Instant Messenger chat service to have explicit sexual conversations with her. The investigation revealed that the phone numbers given to the detective were in fact Doyle's, and that the AOL account used was registered to Doyle. Doyle also sent photos of himself to the detective, which were not sexually explicit but did serve to further positively identify him. The Conversations
On many occasions, Doyle instructed the victim, whom he believed to be a 14-year-old girl, to perform a sexual act while thinking of him, and described explicit and perverse sexual acts he wished to have with her, in addition to sending her numerous obscene .mpg files (digital movies). He also had sexually explicit telephone conversations with a detective posing as a child on his office line and cell phone.
He attempted to seduce the girl during their online chats, encouraging her to purchase a web cam so that she could send graphic images of herself to him, and promised her that he would likewise send nude photos of himself. Many of the conversations he initiated with the victim are too extraordinary and graphic for public release.
The ChargesOn March 27, 2006, Tenth Judicial Circuit (FL) Judge Neil Rodenberry viewed the pornographic movies in question and found probable cause to believe the material sent over the Internet by Doyle was Harmful to Minors, as defined by Florida State Statute 847.001(6). The next day, March 28th, 23 felony charges were direct-filed by Assistant State Attorney Brad Copley and a warrant for the arrest of Brian Doyle was signed by Judge J. Dale Durrance. The charges are as follows: 7 counts Use of a Computer to Seduce a Child, and 16 counts of Transmission of Harmful Material to a Minor. The Arrest
Brian Doyle was taken into custody at 7:45 p.m. this evening at his residence by the Montgomery County Police Department and booked into the Montgomery County Jail on the Polk County charges, where he will await extradition to Polk County. Agents with the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General's Office, the U.S. Secret Service, the Montgomery County Police, and the Polk County Sheriff's Office also served a search warrant at his residence, during which they seized his home computer and other materials relative to this case. "We will go after child predators, no matter where they live, to protect our innocent children," says Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd. "This investigation shows that the long arm of the law can reach anyone, anywhere, anytime, who tries to harm our youth. There is no question that Doyle believed that he was having these disgusting, obscene discussions, on-line and on the phone, with a young girl. His conduct is vile and inexcusable." WTSP 10 Tampa Bay ~ Associated Press - Polk County Sheriff's Office ** Homeland Security Deputy Press Secretary arrested
Posted by yaahoo_2006iest
at 11:11 PM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, 4 April 2006 11:21 PM EDT
spacey
Tensions Change Dress Code At Local Middle School
to wear anything that's patriotic, including camouflage pants, because they have become a political symbol for a version of patriotism.
"It upsets me that we cannot support our troops, the military," said Kirsten Golgart, an eighth grader who was told she'd be suspended if she didn't change her clothes. "We can't support our country. If we're American, I think we should be proud to be an American."
A letter went home to parents last week that explained for student safety, no clothes were allowed with political messages or flags of any sort.
Myla Shepherd, the principal, said that tensions over the immigration issue were apparent when more than 20 students came to school wearing camouflage jackets and pants, apparently to show what they call their patriotism and American pride.
"We started seeing name calling," Shepherd said. "Safety is my first concern so I'm going to do things to keep us from getting to a point where anybody is hurt or being suspended for fighting."
She said the dress code diffused the tension immediately.
"I don't think that's a solution though because you're punishing 400 students because the action of 100," said Eric Golgart, Kirsten's father.
He gathered signatures against the dress code, but the principal said for safety, freedom of speech can be limited in schools, even as students get involved in the national immigration discussion.
In Longmont, the principal of Skyline High School banned all flags, including the American flag, because of tensions related to immigration reform.
Related: 
d'oh
Hillary Clinton in Senate Poll Plunge
But in a Zogby poll released Monday, her lead had suddenly plummeted to 21 points, showing her with 54 percent to Spencer's 33 percent.
While Clinton's lead remains daunting - the dramatic erosion of support is sure to encourage the Spencer camp, which announced a national fund-raising tour on Tuesday.
According to The New York Times, Spencer's message is that Clinton has already begun her "presidential march" toward the White House - and that by damaging or defeating her now, the GOP would improve its chances of retaining the White House in 2008.
GOP presidential hopeful George Allen has already "signaled support" for the Vietnam combat veteran along with influential House Republican Tom Feeney, chairman of the House Conservatives Fund political action committee, the paper said.
Spencer is also said to be courting 2008 presidential contenders John McCain, Bill Frist, Rudy Giuliani and Sam Brownback.
In February, Spencer had a White House meeting with an aide to top presidential advisor Karl Rove. Shortly afterwards, Rove and Republican National Committee chief, Ken Mehlman, began publicly criticizing the former first lady as too "angry" and "brittle" to be elected president.
While Clinton's 21-point lead still makes her the odds on favorite for re-election, some New Yorkers recall the case of another Empire State Democrat whose 24-point lead seemed even more daunting just six months away from Election Day.
Despite the staggering poll deficit, little known upstate "farmer" George Pataki went on to defeat Mario Cuomo that November.
silly
Liberals Would Let Dogs Vote
But to hear some liberal groups, any rules and restrictions on the franchise are intolerable.
One liberal group seems to think that everyone should get to register to vote no matter whether they're legally entitled to vote. The only disqualifying factor might be if the prospective voter doesn't support the group's radical agenda.
That group is ACORN,
also known as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. As revealed by research from the Evergreen Freedom Foundation's Jonathan Bechtle, ACORN pays its employees by the number of voters they register. In Ohio in 2004, state election officials started to receive voter registration cards from ACORN that were filled out in identical handwriting for names with false addresses.
In Minnesota, police found hundreds of signed registration cards in the trunk of a worker who was suspected of registering voters twice to double his fees. In Colorado, a woman reportedly helped her boyfriend forge names on registration forms to help him make $50.
Nowhere is the problem more evident than in the state of Washington, where in 2004 Republican Dino Rossi won the governor's race by 261 votes. Then after a judicial recount, he won by 42 votes. Then, after a hand recount funded in part by George Soros, he lost by 133 votes to Democrat Christine Gregoire.
But any American should object to any attempt to put left-wing party politics ahead of democracy. In Georgia, Indiana and Pennsylvania supporters of voting reform are supporting new laws to require that a citizen present a photo ID before voting. In Georgia the state legislature made sure that the identification cards are free of charge so the poor and elderly aren't excluded from voting. But that hasn't stopped hysterical voices on the left from comparing proof of identity to a vile, racist poll tax.
chatty
There have been 2,327 U.S. military deaths in the war, and another 17,381 troops have been wounded in action, the 
Defense analysts said the recent decline in U.S. deaths is not evidence of an overall improving security environment.
"It still does not fundamentally alter the deteriorating security situation in the country, given the rise in sectarian violence," said Ted Carpenter of the Cato Institute think tank.
Asked to explain the dropping U.S. fatalities, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. James Thurman, responsible for security operations in the Baghdad area, cited the growing capabilities of Iraqi security forces, who number around 242,000.
"I just returned today from being out in one of the toughest spots in Baghdad, where we've had numerous drive-by shootings, IEDs (improved explosive devices), kidnappings and intimidation from terrorists," Thurman, commander of the Army's 4th Infantry Division, told reporters at the Pentagon by teleconference from Baghdad.
"And what I saw today was a true Iraqi force in the lead with Iraqi army, Iraqi national police and Iraqi police, with coalition assistance, performing a great job out there."
Questions remain about the ability of these forces to act independently of U.S. troops, to whom they are loyal, and how much they have been infiltrated by insurgents.
"What we're seeing is the reflection of two developments -- first of all, the U.S. military being more and more into a force-protection mode, keeping its military personnel as unexposed as possible to fighting," Carpenter said.
"Secondly, the nature of the violence has changed. The U.S. military is not the primary target any more. Rather, what we've seen is the upsurge of sectarian violence, so the targets are now Sunnis and Shi'ites going after each other."
Asked about the recent U.S. casualty rates, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch told reporters in Baghdad on Thursday the enemy in Iraq had turned its focus particularly in the past three months "to the softest target he can find: and that's the innocent men, women and children of Iraq."
"And he's also turned his attacks against the Iraqi security forces, because he sees them as his primary threat, to derail a democratic process," Lynch added.
More than 200 other foreign troops have been killed in the war, along with an estimated tens of thousands of Iraqis.
New Orleans Business Leaders Sour on Nagin as Mayor
New Orleans business leaders who helped bankroll Mayor Ray Nagin's political career before Hurricane Katrina have given at least $279,600 to his two strongest opponents in this month's election.
"He gets mired in things that are not productive for the city," said David Voelker, a principal in Frantzen/Voelker Investments Ltd. "I don't think he's what the future needs."
At stake is who will guide New Orleans's recovery from the worst natural disaster in modern U.S. history and set rebuilding priorities. Well-financed challenges by businessman Ron Forman and Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu increase chances that the city, with a legacy of racial division, will have its first white mayor in almost 30 years.
Voelker and his companies, with energy, shipping and restaurant interests, gave $15,000 to Forman in February. Through 2004, Voelker steered $5,000 to Nagin's re-election drive, according to an analysis of the latest campaign data at the Louisiana Board of Ethics.
Forman, a former chamber of commerce chairman who heads the Audubon Nature Institute, raised $1.59 million through March 13. Landrieu collected $820,000. Neither entered the race until this year. Nagin, with $1.31 million before the hurricane last August, listed $500 in post-Katrina donations through March 13. He has since stepped up fundraising.
The open primary is April 22, with earlier voting for displaced residents at polling stations throughout Louisiana. Out-of-state evacuees can mail absentee ballots. If no candidate wins a majority, the top two go to a May 20 runoff.
Bollinger Defects
Damaged
Totals
Landrieu's finance chairman is venture capitalist Gary Solomon, an ex-Nagin donor on the Bring New Orleans Back panel.
Race Issue
"The underlying issue is going to be race," said Susan Howell, a University of New Orleans political science professor. "Nagin has become the symbol for, 'Let's not go back to a white mayor.'" It's a turnabout from 2002, when 90 percent of whites and 40 percent of blacks voted for Nagin.
Black registered voters outnumbered whites 2-1 before Katrina. Now, blacks are a disproportionate number of the evacuees, and much depends on how many will vote from afar.
As of this morning, 11,489 absentee ballots had been requested, according to the Louisiana Secretary of State's office.
To contact the reporters for this story:
McKinney Admits Misusing Taxpayer Money
Those rules state that taxpayer money can only be used for "travel by Members, Members' employees and vendors. A vendor is an employee of a private company that provides maintenance and support for equipment and software..."
Watchdog groups call taxpayer-funded celebrity travel a blatant waste of taxpayer money.
McKinney staffers say they will reimburse the congressional fund for the cost of Hayes' flight and hotel room.
Related:
We need to make sure that libtard Demented-crats don't try to steal elections like they tried in 2000 and 2004. Dems do it all the time around the country, especially in 2004 when they stuffed ballots and committed fraud. The more they lose, the more despirate they have become (and kooky). But the Democrat election corruption machine needs anonymity to work...
Sarandon wants monitoring for U.S. elections 
Susan Sarandon wants the U.S. presidential elections to be monitored by outside interests. The "Bull Durham" star says that the 2004 vote was so fraudulent that we need international oversight - like troubled third-world countries do.
"I believe our next election should be monitored by international entities, just like it happened in Haiti and Iraq," Sarandon told Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo, according to our translator. "The last one was an embarrassment. Everybody knew there was fraud, but nothing was done about it. In some states there were more votes than people able to vote."
Sarandon, who recently made headlines when she expressed her disappointment with Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton - who is widely considered to be a possible presidential candidate - and isn't terribly optimistic about other Dems. "I honestly hope that the Democratic Party finds a candidate for the presidency, but I recognize that the scenario isn't inspiring."
Her assessment of President Bush's administration isn't upbeat either. "I think we've never been as close to George Orwell's '1984' as before," she said. "We live in a society where individual rights and legality are definitely threatened and that's scary."
Democrats' Narrow Vision
President Bush believes that the United States "is in the early years of a long struggle," according to his own national security strategy released last month, against "a new totalitarian ideology." To combat radical Islamist terrorism, he says, the United States must first and foremost offer better values, promoting democracy and opposing tyranny. It must be ready to take the fight to the enemy, including with preemptive action, because the nation can never be made safe only by guarding the homeland. And it must seek to ease the poverty that breeds hopelessness through "dramatically expanded" development aid and an emphasis on free markets and trade.
An opposition party could accept the goals but decry the administration's failure to reach them: the broken alliances, the screw-ups in Iraq, the lack of readiness illustrated by the pitiful response to Hurricane Katrina, the gulf between the rhetoric of human dignity and the record of torture and infringed liberty.
The Democrats do indeed attack the failures and promise an end to incompetence. But they also reveal a different world view, one that is far more cramped and inward-looking. While reassuring voters that they will keep "foreign interests" out of "our national security infrastructure" -- including "mass transit" -- the Democrats do not find space to mention democracy even once.
They promise to "destroy terrorist networks like al Qaeda," but there is no discussion of a broader threat, of a "global war" or a long Cold War-like struggle. They devote more space to homeland security than to anything else. There is no mention of preemptive action.
can be made that there is no "global war" -- that the administration, whether from shock at the 2001 attacks or out of political cynicism, exaggerated the threat and distorted American priorities. There is an equally respectable argument that Bush's promise to end tyranny is dangerously romantic.
But then what is the vision? What does bring security? Bill Clinton and Al Gore, by the time they left office, had formed a view. The United States was the "indispensable nation," as Clinton said, that should lead international coalitions to combat transnational threats: not only failed states and terror but also genocide and ethnic cleansing, AIDS, human trafficking, climate change, and more.
The Democrats, led by Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), seem to have reverted to the it's-the-economy-stupid Clinton of 1992. A section of their plan focuses on alternative energy and conservation, for example, but the goal is only "to free America from dependence on foreign oil"; climate change isn't mentioned. Pandemics such as avian flu are to be combated by spending more on public health at home; the rest of the world doesn't figure in.
Throughout the plan, in fact, there is no discussion of values, of liberty or generosity, of free markets or foreign aid -- of any purpose for American leadership larger than self-protection. The pollsters may be satisfied, but John F. Kennedy would not recognize his party.
bright
Entire Squad Reenlists in Iraq
I found the story below but don't have a non-subscription link for it. I'll post one later if I find it. I thought it interesting - especially, amidst the doom and gloom being reported. While I've posted about huge re-enlistments in Iraq before (I think the Idaho National Guard has the record), this seemingly small act is very important because you win wars with small units like 3rd Squad/2nd Platoon of Bravo Company, 5th Engineers
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Entire Squad From Co. B, 5th Eng. Bn.
and I'm very proud to be a participant in reenlisting this fine 'Beast' squad of the 'Fighting 5th' Engineer Battalion," said Brig. Gen. Robin Timmons, commander, 16th Eng. Bde., who conducted the reenlistment ceremony.
"This simultaneous reenlistment shows your unique cohesiveness, respect and confidence in each other and to the military," he told the squad.
1st Sgt. Douglas Gault, Co. B, 5th Eng. Bn., credited the squad's leader, Staff Sgt. Ramon Martinez on his leadership for the team's unique commitment.
"This squad reenlisting together shows the loyalty and confidence in their squad leader and the mission - that's what leadership is about, 100 percent loyalty," said Gault.
Staff Sgt. Martinez, a combat engineer from Yuma, Ariz., has 12 years of military service and has been assigned to the squad for the past year. He attributed his Soldiers' commitment, pride in their mission and a bit of luck as real factors in his squad's rare reenlistment opportunity.
"We are part of the Castle Iron Claw team, and removing improvised-explosive devices from the routes gives us an enormous sense of pride - pride in knowing that there's one less IED on the road and we can ensure our comrades are safe," he said.
Lt. Col. Michael McGuire, commander, 5th Eng. Bn., said Martinez' guidance played a great role in his squad's accomplishment.
"These Soldiers reenlisted because they believe in themselves and their mission, and have the utmost confidence in their leadership," he added.
Captain James Booth, commander, Co. B, 5th Eng. Bn., echoed McGuire's remarks and also emphasized the importance of small unit leadership to his Soldiers' mission success.
"Great small-unit leadership is why we are successful over here. Staff Sgt. Martinez has provided the kind of leadership that Soldiers thrive on. Soldiers want to stay in the Army when they follow men like him. That is why you see all of them standing up as a squad - together - committing to serve our nation for six more years," he said
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