Tag: corruption
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air force: nuclear missile crew fell asleep on duty
from raw replay: CNN’s Barbara Starr reported that the Air Force said that a crew in charge of outdated nuclear missile launch codes fell asleep while on duty. Air Force Times reported: “Three missile officers with the 91st Space Wing at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., fell asleep July 12 while holding a classified launch…
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offline generators caused power outage at cdc germ lab
from atlanta journal-constitution: A critical germ lab at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lost power last week because the agency had taken two backup generators out of service for upgrades, CDC officials said Friday. Their absence from a complex, centralized backup generator system created a power fluctuation when the system was activated during…
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saic investigated for conflict of interest in topoff5
from ap: Federal officials are investigating whether millions of dollars are being steered improperly toward a government contractor to run the country’s largest counterterrorism exercise. At issue is a written request for companies to compete for the TOPOFF 5 exercise contract and whether an employee of Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) wrote parts of the…
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feds say comcast violates internet rules
from ap: The head of the Federal Communications Commission said Thursday he will recommend that the nation’s largest cable company be punished for violating agency principles that guarantee customers open access to the Internet. The potentially precedent-setting move stems from a complaint against Comcast Corp. that the company had blocked Internet traffic among users of…
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50% of sequoia voting machines in ny are flawed
from threat level: New York state is in the process of replacing its lever voting machines with new voting equipment, but the state revealed recently that it has found problems with 50 percent of the roughly 1,500 ImageCast optical-scan machines (shown [here]) that Sequoia Voting Systems has delivered to the state so far – machines…
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bush aide caught offering access for donations
from raw replay: The Times of London reports: “A lobbyist with close ties to the White House is offering access to key figures in George W Bush’s administration in return for six-figure donations to the private library being set up to commemorate Bush’s presidency.” Stephen Payne is a Bush pioneer and a political appointee to…
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fisa ‘compromise’ completes police state transformation
from larry chin: On Wednesday, the US Congress overwhelmingly passed legislation permitting government spying, including giving immunity to telecommunications companies involved in secret domestic surveillance programs. With the stroke of George W. Bush’s pen, the US is now a police state by definition. The extent of the spying program, and its larger implications, have been…
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karl rove avoids subpoena by fleeing the country
from thinkprogress: This morning, Karl Rove refused to appear before the House Judiciary Committee to testify about the politicization of the Justice Department, despite a subpoena. During the hearing, Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) revealed that Rove had not only skipped out of the hearing, but had skipped out of the entire country. Watch it: When…
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jfk, 9/11 & the designated suspects in both cases
from peter dale scott: I wish to summarize again the first striking similarity between 11/22/63 and of 9/11/01: the dubious detective work on those two days. Less than fifteen minutes after the President’s assassination, the height and weight of Kennedy’s alleged killer was posted. Before the last of the hijacked planes crashed on 9/11, the…
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1000s in southwestern china riot over alleged coverup
from washington post: Thousands of people thronged a police station in southwestern China to protest the alleged coverup of a teenage girl’s rape and murder, witnesses and officials reported Sunday. The crowd set fire to a government building complex and several police vehicles. The violence, which began Saturday, was brought under control by authorities around…
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new wiretapping bill a ‘repugnant’ ‘capitulation’
from thinkprogress: Under a “compromise” wiretapping bill the House is expected to approve tomorrow, U.S. phone companies that cooperated with President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program after Sept. 11 “could be shielded from lawsuits” as long as “there is written certification that the White House asked a phone company to participate and assured it” of the…
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puppy-killing marine to be booted
from ap: The Marine Corps is expelling one Marine and disciplining another for their roles in a video showing a Marine throwing a puppy off a cliff while on patrol in Iraq. The 17-second video posted on YouTube drew sharp condemnation from animal rights groups when it came to light in March. The clip shows…
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software update brings down nuclear power plant
from spectrum: The Washington Post reported in an interesting story over the weekend that the Hatch nuclear power plant near Baxley, Georgia was forced on the 7th of March into an emergency shutdown for 48 hours after a company engineer installed a software update on a computer operating on the plant’s business network… The company…
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polygamist case cost texas $7m as kids go home
from orange punch: As AP reports, “More than 400 children taken from a polygamist sect’s ranch two months ago began returning to the arms of their tearful parents Monday, hours after a judge bowed to a state Supreme Court ruling that the seizure was not justified.” It’s one thing for Child Protective Services to remove…
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badcops, $oldiers, drugs & crime
2 miami officers charged in fbi corruption probefrom ap: Two veteran police officers were charged Friday with providing protection for purported shipments of cocaine and stolen goods in what was actually an undercover FBI operation. Officer Geovani Nunez and Detective Jorge Hernandez are accused in court documents of helping protect shipments of what they thought…