Domestic Affairs

Here’s the full list, via Daily Kos. Yes, and Mr. Seven-term Pombo (R-CA) from the 11th Congressional District of California lost! And the Macaca race is still up in the air, but Webb is barely ahead for now. And finally, in the most meaningless ballot measure of the night: San Francisco was one of two Bay Area cities in which voters could call for Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to be impeached. Neither San Francisco voters nor their counterparts…

Ok, I’ll admit it. I’m an Obama fanboy. I haven’t been this excited about any political candidate in my entire voting life. I *really* want him to run in 2008. He’s smart, well-spoken and has a very good chance at winning the White House. I was just reminded at why this guy is so freakin’ amazing after reading this Slate article. 2. John McCain can beat anyone the Democrats put up.“Our sense right now is that McCain would beat any…

Foreign Policy; November/December 2006: By Cyrus Farivar For Commander Sid Heal of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, one of the most frightening aspects of responding to a future terrorist attack is knowing how to respond correctly. In an era of increasingly sophisticated terrorist plots, the proper response may require a Ph.D. in chemistry or biology. “We don’t have anyone who is as capable as a chemical or biological engineer,” says Heal. So he teamed up with British Columbia-based Argon…

For those of you keeping score at home, I’ve been on an informal quest for the last few years to figure out how many Americans have passports. Last I blogged about it, I discovered a Slate article, which said there were 44 million passports in existence. Howver, before that, I saw in a Computerworld article from 2005 that said that there are 57 milion passports in circulation. Today, I read in The New York Times that “The State Department estimates…

The New York Review of Books; October 5, 2006: Cheney leaves no paper trail. He has not always felt the necessity to discuss what he plans to say in public with the usual offices, including that of the President. Nor, we learned from Ron Suskind, has he always felt the necessity, say if the Saudis send information to the President in preparation for a meeting, to bother sending that information on to Bush. Only on the evening of September 11,…

Before you head out to buy your next tank of gas, go read this incredible series of articles from two-time Pulitzer-winning Chicago Tribune reporter Paul Salopek: Oil Safari What does it take to quench America’s mighty thirst for gasoline? Pulitzer-winning correspondent Paul Salopek traced gas pumped at a suburban Chicago station to the fuel’s sources around the globe. In doing so, he reveals how our oil addiction binds us to some of the most hostile corners of the planet—and to…

LA Weekly: Another day, and what sounds like another arrest on the Arizona border. Naco is a city where “The Border” is no abstraction. It is the painfully real corrugated-steel barrier — rusted in spots, barbed in others — that slices the town neatly in two. One half for the United States, one half for Mexico. In Naco, the border is where illegal immigrants and the Border Patrol come to perform their intricate ballet of catch-and-release. But Helen is no…

Forbes.com: T-Mobile, the fourth-largest U.S. wireless provider, also said it has not worked with the government: “T-Mobile is not a participant in any NSA program for warrant-less surveillance and acquisition of call records,” a spokesman for the Deutsche Telekom company said in an e-mail. “T-Mobile has not provided any such access to communications or customer records.”

NYT, Today, fifth graf: One senior government official, who was granted anonymity to speak publicly about the classified program, confirmed that the N.S.A. had access to records of most telephone calls in the United States. MOST !?!?

So, after Paul posted about how to easily FOIA yourself, I went ahead and did it. Here was my result: Federal Bureau of Investigation Washington, D.C. 20535 March 22, 2006 Dear Mr. Farivar, This is in response to your Freedom of Information-Privacy Acts (FOIPA) request above. A search of the automated indices to our central records system files at FBI headquarters located no records responsive to your FOIPA request. Although no records responsive to your FOIPA request were located in…