Quickies

Spot a pattern? Navy exposes the personal information of 28,000 personnel. The FTC exposes the personal information of 110 citizens. The USDA is offering free credit monitoring for the 26,000 citizens who had their data exposed. In a similar effort, the VA is preparing to do the same for the millions of vets who had their personal information possibly exposed and Congress says the initial estimate of such costs is $160 million.

Common Cause says 17 states are at risk for voter fraud in November. Note to CC - your effort is noble, but the implementation of the paper back up is the key here. Depending upon how it's done, a clever programmer could hack the program so that both the electronic count and the paper confirmation are frauds.

The U.S. government has been caught tracking bank records. This is yet another example of the Bush administration attempting to expand presidential authority at the expense of citizen rights. (You still remember that they work for us, don't you?) Daniel Solove presents a template for news stories on government data gathering (and it's amazingly accurate). Oh, and Cheney and Bush are feigning being pissed at this revelation while I really think that it was a well planned leak to bolster the upcoming elections.

How's that war in Iraq going, boys? If only they'd report the "good" news.

Anyone else skeptical about the news about the Miami Seven? No money. No guns. No boots. No bombs. Sounds like they were playing GI Joe or paint guns on the weekends. It's still early, but I wonder if the case against these guys will fall apart like most of the domestic terrorism cases.

In lighter news, a woman in England was convicted of murder after claiming that the death was accidental. She claimed that she shot the man after a gun went off while she was dancing to a Shania Twain song.

Want to play a really tough game? Take this quiz and determine whether or not the quote was from Hitler or Coulter.