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Politics : Actual left/right wing discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas M. who wrote (1425)	9/21/2006 10:51:30 AM
From: DMaA	Respond to of 10087

Get rid of the income tax and then nobody can abuse it again.

To: Thomas M. who wrote (1425)	9/21/2006 12:40:36 PM
From: one_less	Respond to of 10087

I bet PETA wasn't consulted: Fish Used to Detect Terror Attacks By MARCUS WOHLSEN Associated Press Writer SAN FRANCISCO -- A type of fish so common that practically every American kid who ever dropped a fishing line and a bobber into a pond has probably caught one is being enlisted in the fight against terrorism. San Francisco, New York, Washington and other big cities are using bluegills -- also known as sunfish or bream -- as a sort of canary in a coal mine to safeguard their drinking water. Small numbers of the fish are kept in tanks constantly replenished with water from the municipal supply, and sensors in each tank work around the clock to register changes in the breathing, heartbeat and swimming patterns of the bluegills that occur in the presence of toxins. "Nature's given us pretty much the most powerful and reliable early warning center out there," said Bill Lawler, co-founder of Intelligent Automation Corporation, a Southern California company that makes and sells the bluegill monitoring system. "There's no known manmade sensor that can do the same job as the bluegill." Since Sept. 11, the government has taken very seriously the threat of attacks on the U.S. water supply. Federal law requires nearly all community water systems to assess their vulnerability to terrorism. Big cities employ a range of safeguards against chemical and biological agents, constantly monitoring, testing and treating the water. But electronic protection systems can trace only the toxins they are programmed to detect, Lawler said. Bluegills -- a hardy species about the size of a human hand -- are considered more versatile. They are highly attuned to chemical disturbances in their environment, and when exposed to toxins, they experience the fish version of coughing, flexing their gills to expel unwanted particles. The computerized system in use in San Francisco and elsewhere is designed to detect even slight changes in the bluegills' vital signs and send an e-mail alert when something is wrong. San Francisco's bluegills went to work about a month ago, guarding the drinking water of more than 1 million people from substances such as cyanide, diesel fuel, mercury and pesticides. Eight bluegills swim in a tank deep in the basement of a water treatment plant south of the city. "It gave us the best of both worlds, which is basically all the benefits that come from nature and the best of high-tech," said Susan Leal, general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. New York City has been testing its system since 2002 and is seeking to expand it. The New York City Department of Environmental Protection reported at least one instance in which the system caught a toxin before it made it into the water supply: The fish noticed a diesel spill two hours earlier than any of the agency's other detection devices. They do have limitations. While the bluegills have successfully detected at least 30 toxic chemicals, they cannot reliably detect germs. And they are no use against other sorts of attacks -- say, the bombing of a water main, or an attack by computer hackers on the systems that control the flow of water. Still, Lawler said more than a dozen other cities have ordered the anti-terror apparatus, called the Intelligent Aquatic BioMonitoring System, which was originally developed for the Army and starts at around $45,000. San Francisco plans to install two more bluegill tanks. "It provides us an added level of detection of the unknown," said Tony Winnicker, a spokesman for the city's Public Utilities Commission. "There's no computer that's as sophisticated as a living being."

To: Thomas M. who wrote (1425)	9/21/2006 1:05:45 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10087

Bill Clinton warns against wide torture approval Thu Sep 21, 2006 12:51pm ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton joined a chorus of critics of Bush administration proposals for treating suspected terrorists, saying it would be unnecessary and wrong to give broad approval to torture. In an interview with National Public Radio aired on Thursday, Clinton said any decision to use harsh treatment in interrogating suspects should be subject to court review. "You don't need blanket advance approval for blanket torture," Clinton said. Clinton was president during the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and attacks on U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and on the USS Cole, all linked to al Qaeda. Critics accused him of doing too little to contain a growing threat of terrorism. His successor, President George W. Bush, wants Congress to narrowly define prisoner protections under the Geneva Conventions and allow a program of CIA interrogations and detentions that critics have said amount to torture. The White House denies its interrogation program involves torture. The U.S. Supreme Court in June struck down Bush's original plan. Clinton warned against circumventing international standards on prisoner treatment, citing U.S. abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, criticism of treatment at the Guantanamo Bay prison for suspected terrorists and a secret CIA prison system outside the United States. "The president says he's just trying to get the rules clear about how far the CIA can go when they're when they whacking these people around in these secret prisons," Clinton said in NPR's "Morning Edition" interview, recorded on Wednesday. If you go around passing laws that legitimize a violation of the Geneva Convention and institutionalize what happened at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo, we're going to be in real trouble," he said. Clinton was the second former U.S. president to criticize the Bush policy this week. On Monday, former President Jimmy Carter told Reuters the Bush administration was condoning the torture of suspects and had tried to redefine torture "to make it convenient for them." Carter praised Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and John Warner of Virginia for trying to block the Bush policy on treatment of suspected terrorists. Bush's former secretary of state, Colin Powell, and William S. Cohen, who was secretary of defense under Clinton, also backed the stand of McCain, Warner and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. "I think it's important to support Senators McCain and Warner in this," Cohen said on Thursday. "We don't want to be seen as sanctioning torture. We're held to a higher standard and we don't want to put our troops at a higher risk." Clinton said that, even if there were circumstances where such treatment is necessary to prevent an imminent attack: "You don't make laws based on that. You don't sit there and say in general torture's fine if you're a terrorist suspect. For one thing, we know we have erred in who was a real suspect."