'Choice Select' for Maureen Dowd

"Judy told The Times that she plans to write a book and intends to return to the newsroom, hoping to cover 'the same thing I've always covered - threats to our country.' If that were to happen, the institution most in danger would be the newspaper in your hands."

-- Maureen Dowd, New York Times

The New York Times began hiding its regular opinion columnists behind a subscription-only screen called 'Times Select' a couple of weeks ago. Many think it's a strategy destined to fail in these times of unregulated, chaotic blogging. Someone at the Times, obviously, disagrees.

The argument against is that most people, to borrow from the name given one new blog Never Pay Retail. Full text copies leak onto 'the internets' faster than you can say "bootleg."

'But that's not legal' the argument for rejoins.

'Impossible to police,' comes the answer.

Today, as all days, offers a typical example. So, let's have an experiment. You, dear reader, are the subject under the microscope.

If you want to read Maureen Dowd's entertainingly snarky reminiscence about her fellow Times journalist, Judith ("Miss Run Amok") Miller, here's your choice: Pay the Times $49.95 for an annual subscription... or, chuckle over the unflattering, gossipy portrait for free at any number of blogs, like this one run by Tennesee Guerilla Woman... or this one at Oak Park Girl... or another version with preface at Cyphering... or Donkey O.D. ... or Nashville News ... etc. etc. etc. etc.

What're you going to do? Pay to read or read for free?

Special Counsel Fitzgerald's Web Site

www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/index.html

The U.S. Justice Department has inaugurated today an official web site for the Hon. Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney and Special Counsel to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Included, for now, are letters of appointment ("independent of the supervision or control of any officer of the Department"), memoranda, appellate court briefs, and court opinions related to the Grand Jury investigation of the unauthorized public disclosure of the identity and affiliation of Valerie (nee: Plame) Wilson as an undercover employee of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Welcome to Pizza Hut Fort Pickens Park

(Semi-fake photo free for the taking)

Today, the New York Times editorializes against renewed Bush administration efforts to commercialize and politicize the National Park system.

If you haven't been following the controversy, the National Parks Conservation Association has a quick summary of major areas where the Bush administration has been assaulting the U.S. National Park system by tossing out air quality standards, privatizing public parks, inviting the timber industry to build new roads and clear-cut our wild forests, encouraging minerals mining and drilling in protected wildlife habitats, allowing obnoxious off-road vehicles throughout all national parks, and starving the Park Service of public funding.

For more details, you can read the NPCA's "mid-term report." Although it covers only the first two years of the Bush administration, much of what was foreseen in those pages is now coming to pass. The Sierra Club also provides more detailed information about many of these issues.

Just two months ago, as the Times notes, Paul Hoffman -- another Bush administration crony of questionable competence who was appointed to be Assistant Secretary of the Interior -- proposed "a genuinely scandalous rewriting" of Park Service regulations "that would have destroyed the national park system." The outcry was so ferocious that the proposal was quickly withdrawn.

The latest draft to be released is only marginally better. And, warns the Times, two more initiatives are about to be released. One would allow aggressive solitation of corporate funding for national parks. The other would subject Parks Service employees to "political screening" for promotions.

Says the Times, "What we are witnessing, in essence, is an effort to ... steer [the U.S. National Park system] away from its long-term mission of preserving much-loved national treasures and make it echo the same political mind-set that turned Mr. Hoffman, a former Congressional aide to Dick Cheney... into an architect of national park policy."

Shorter John Dean

Shorter John Dean. (Yes, that John Dean):

Fitzgerald won't indict anyone unless they tried to cover-up by perjuring themselves or obstructing justice.

Citizens' Lawyer Resigns

Lots of Florida newspapers are reporting that attorney Michael Colodny suddenly "resigned" his $1 million a year contract as head counsel for Florida Citizens Property.

Joni James, with an assist from Jeff Harrington, has the essence of the story in the St. Petersburg Times, pointing out that the 'abrupt' resignation comes "amid an ongoing probe into ethical lapses and operational concerns at the state-run insurer." In a companion piece, James details how Colodny is only one in a string of high-ranking Citizens personnel to resign or disappear from the job under a cloud of ethical charges.

Mary Ellen Klas of the Miami Herald [free registration required] points out that the resignation came a day after the Florida state legislature's Banking and Insurance Committee "grilled [Citizens] board chairman G. Bruce Douglas and general counsel Mike Colodny" during the second consecutive day of "inquiries into operations of the state-run property insurance company." The Miami reporter explains:

Citizens has been plagued recently with concerns about self-dealing and conflicts of interest among its employees, while Hurricane Wilma's imminent arrival raised fresh concerns about Citizens' financial health.

Lawmakers focused hard on the practices of Colodny, whose law firm also has represented nine insurers who did business with Citizens. They asked Douglas to explain why he asked Colodny to choose between representing those insurers and representing the board; it [sic] asked Colodny to explain why he hired one of his accountant clients to conduct an internal investigation of Citizens.

The Associated Press adds that the private company clients Colodny's law firm represented were generally "small startup insurance companies seeking to do business with Citizens."

Only Paige St. John identifies what might have been the real trigggering event. In the Ft. Myers News-Press, she adds this nugget: Colodny resigned "after he was grilled by the Senate Insurance Committee on Wednesday and then had a private meeting with its chairman Rudy Garcia." (Emphasis added)

Public legislative scoldings like we've witnessed this week make for great theater. The politicians get to bloviate for the cameras and pose as consumer advocates. Citizens' slippery Executive Director, Bob Ricker, gets to keep his job a little longer merely by crawling on the floor, licking a few boots, and promising he'll start doing a better job of running Citizens, starting any day now.

But the real work, as St. John knows, is done behind closed doors. What do you suppose Garcia said to Colodny inside that room?

Related Articles

Citizens Exec Resigns Amid Corruption Allegations

Ethics Lesson

An Independent Investigation Is Needed

Depopulated to a Dog?

FEMA Face Feeding - Updated

(Free fake graphic)

Marty Bahamonde, the FEMA regional director who was first on the scene in New Orleans, testified today before a Senate panel that former FEMA director Michael Brown ignored his "frantic" and "regular" email messages "confirming the worst-case scenario that everyone had always talked about regarding New Orleans."

"I think there was a systematic failure at all levels of government to understand the magnitude of the situation," Bahamonde said.

One incident related to the hearing panel dramatically illustrates the rank incompetence of Brown and his aides:

[O]n Aug. 31, Bahamonde frantically e-mailed Brown to tell him that thousands of evacuees were gathering in the streets with no food or water and that "estimates are many will die within hours."

"Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical," Bahamonde wrote.

Less than three hours later, however, Brown's press secretary wrote colleagues to complain that the FEMA director needed more time to eat dinner at a Baton Rouge restaurant that evening. "He needs much more that (sic) 20 or 30 minutes," wrote Brown aide Sharon Worthy.

"We now have traffic to encounter to go to and from a location of his choise (sic), followed by wait service from the restaurant staff, eating, etc. Thank you."

Meanwhile, before a House committee it is being reported that Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff testified "he expected that Brown would understand that the priorities were to save lives, rescue people, get them food, water, medical assistance and shelter and would 'execute those priorities in an urgent fashion.'"

Chertoff didn't exactly overwhelm anyone with his own competence. While testifying, he manifested a fundamental misunderstanding of the breadth of his own powers as Secretary of Homeland Security to handle natural disasters. Only after a law professor who happened to be present "directly approached Chertoff at the witness table" and showed him the "National Response Plan" and a 2003 Presidential Directive did Chertoff admit that "he was the principal federal official" designated to handle catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina.

Chertoff's confusion and Brown's boundless Baton Rouge appetite left Connecticut congressman Christopher Shays "very uneasy that the Department of Homeland Security is dysfunctional."

Update
10-21-05

The incomparable Billmon has a bitterly funny line about all this: "Would it have killed him to order take out?"

Florida Buys Time as Wilma Slows

From Key West, the Keynoter says:

Monroe County emergency management officials have revised their call for a mandatory evacuation due to Hurricane Wilma based upon the storm slowing in the southwestern Caribbean.

The mandatory resident evacuation is now planned for Friday, not Thursday as it had been. Evacuation of tourists and non-residents began Wednesday and continues.

As of the 8 a.m. Thursday advisory from the National Hurricane Center, Wilma was 175 miles southeast of Cozumel, Mexico, or at 18.3 north latitude, 85.2 west longitude. It was moving west-northwest at 7 mph and models continued to show a likely turn to the northeast and South Florida, likely Saturday or Sunday.

There's more.

Wilma Weakening - Slightly

Current 5-day projected path
The 11 a.m. National Hurricane Center discussion reports that Wilma has weakened slightly as it undergoes eyewall replacement but it is currently still a highly dangerous Category 4:

"THE MOST SIGNIFICANT CHANGE TO THE MODEL GUIDANCE IS A GENERALLY SLOWER RECURVATURE AND ACCELERATION.

"AS FAR AS THE FLORIDA THREAT IS CONCERNED...THE MAIN FOCUS OF THE THREAT REMAINS FROM CENTRAL FLORIDA SOUTHWARD THROUGH THE KEYS...AND IT IS STILL TOO EARLY TO NARROW THAT DOWN ANY FURTHER.

"ALTHOUGH SOME ADDITIONAL WEAKENING MAY OCCUR THIS AFTERNOON... RE-STRENGTHENING IS POSSIBLE OVER THE NEXT 24 HOURS AS THE EYEWALL REPLACEMENT CYCLE PROGRESSES...AND WILMA COULD REGAIN CATEGORY FIVE STATUS BEFORE IT REACHES THE YUCATAN."

NHC's 'Emily Litella' Moment

The News Journal's Derek Ortt explains that the National Hurricane Center must have had an Emily Litella moment late Wednesday afternoon. Never mind.

The most recent confusion over forecast models "likely was a bad run," he says:

"There were no GPS dropsondes used in the initialization of the model, leading the model to guess as to what the atmosphere was doing at the initial time. Therefore, one should not make any decision based upon that model."

Back to Plan A:

The latest GFS appears more realistic in bringing the hurricane across south Florida on Sunday without stalling it over the Yucatan.

* * *
Continue to comply with all orders given by local emergency management officials.

* * *
The effects in Pensacola should be limited to high waves on the beaches.

Wilma Forecasts Scrapped - Gulf Coast on Alert

It appears those earlier forecast tracks that had Wilma making a sharp right turn to cross the southern Florida peninsula and miss the Gulf Coast are "inoperative."

The 5 pm EDT forecast discussion for Hurricane Wilma should be very worrisome for Gulf Coast residents. A lot has changed for this mercurial storm -- once again in just a few hours.

That weird earlier prediction, about noon today, that Wilma might threaten New England if it were to be steered by a low pressure front "has completely collapsed," the NHC says. And with it, the Hurricane Center's confidence in all of its previous forecats seems to have collapsed, too.

It appears those earlier forecast tracks that had Wilma making a sharp right turn to cross the southern Florida peninsula and miss the Gulf Coast are "inoperative."

The latest expert discussion points out that --

[T]his illustrates ... the extreme sensitivity of Wilma's future track to its interaction with the Great Lakes Low. Over the past couple of days... Wilma has been moving slightly to the left or South of the model guidance... and the left-most of the guidance solutions are now showing Wilma delaying or missing the connection with the low. ... If Wilma continues to move more to the left [i.e. West] than expected... substantial changes to the official forecast may have to be made down the line. [italics added]

In other words, there is now a substantially heightened chance that Northwest Florida may yet again face a catastrophic hurricane within the next several days.

Insurers Report Record Profits

Florida Consumer Network, a statewide affiliate of the Consumer Federation of America reported today that "Property/casualty insurers are on track to enjoy the third most profitable year in their history despite the negative impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on their bottom lines . . . ."

According to CFA:

The property/casualty insurance industry saw after-tax profits of $30.9 billion in the first six months of 2005, according to data recently released by the insurance industry ratemaking organization, the Insurance Services Office (ISO). “Had Hurricanes Katrina and Rita not occurred, that figure would have doubled to $61.8 billion in after-tax profits for the full year.

CFA also has estimates that hurricanes Katrina and Rita likely will require payouts for insured losses along the Gulf Coast of $ 34.4 billion. This will be reduced by corporate-rate tax savings of $26.4 billion for the industry as a whole, according to CFA.

Projecting current trends forward through the last two and a half months of the year, analyst J. Robert Hunter said after paying all hurricane claims, stockholder dividends, and taxes, the property/casualty industry as a whole will enjoy near-record profits of $34.9 billion for the entire year of 2005.

Refresher Course: The 25th Amendment

The usually reliable, although not invariably correct, Raw Story is reporting late Wednesday that ...

A second aide to Vice President Dick Cheney is cooperating with the special prosecutor's probe into the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, those close to the investigation say.

Late Monday, several sources familiar with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s probe said John Hannah, a key aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and one of the architects of the Iraq war, was cooperating with Fitzgerald after being told that he was identified by witnesses as a co-conspirator in the leak. Sources said Hannah was not given immunity, but was likely offered a “deal” in exchange for information that could result in indictments of key White House officials.

Also today, the New York Times reported that...

The special counsel in the C.I.A. leak case has told associates he has no plans to issue a final report about the results of the investigation, heightening the expectation that he intends to bring indictments, lawyers in the case and law enforcement officials said yesterday.

Separately, veteran Washington D.C. reporter Thomas M. DeFrank, co-author of James Baker's memoirs, reported for the New York Daily News that multiple White House insiders have told him Karl Rove confessed to George Bush "two years ago" that he played a role in smearing CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame in an attempt...

to discredit Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, the ex-diplomat who criticized Bush's claim that Saddam Hussen tried to buy weapons-grade uranium in Niger.

* * *
Bush did not feel misled so much by Karl and others as believing that they handled it in a ham-handed and bush-league way," the source said.

"Sparked" by that story, U.S. News & World Report reports today ...

government officials and advisers passed around rumors that the vice president might step aside and that President Bush would elevate Secretary of State Condoleezza.

With all of this, it's time for a refresher course in --

Amendment XXV of the U.S. Constitution

* * *
Section 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

Wilma Threatens New England?!

There's bad news about Wilma and, if you have relatives or friends in New England, some reason to fantasize about 'good' news -- in an ugly, get-off-my-back sort of way.

According the National Hurricane Center, "The five-day official forecast point has been adjusted to the left and faster than the previous advisory."

That's the bad news. It means the Gulf Coast still has no assurance that Wilma will give us a miss. More anxious waiting and watching is in store for everyone in Florida, including Northwest panhandle residents.

Some locals, however, may take bitter satisfaction in another, quite unexpected warning from the NHC. It seems that at least two (although hardly all) tropical forecast models this morning "are suggesting the possibility of a threat to New England." As the NHC explains:

"Recent runs of the GPS and NOGAPS [computerized forecast models] are suggesting the possibility of a threat to New England. In this scenario... Wilma becomes captured by a large mid- to upper-level low [which is] forecast to move into the Great Lakes region in four days."

How could this be 'good' in any way? Well, it really couldn't. Such a track likely would wreak havoc and unimaginable devastation on densely populated New England states like Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, etc.

But there is this: for over a year, now, with each new hurricane that enters the Gulf a lot of us have been fielding calls from our hard-headed, oh-so-practical New England friends and family. As regularly as tropical storms in Hurricane Season, they scornfully say things like, "Why on Earth would you continue living down there? C'mon! Move up here where it's safe!"

Well, it's a grim and ugly thought. But there might be a small measure of sweet pay-back if we could return those calls and say, "Hey, you guys! Why would you live up there? Move on down to Florida, where it's safe and warm the year 'round."

(We really, really don't mean this terrible thought of ours. Honest! What we're actually hoping is that the upper-level low the Hurricane Center is watching somehow sucks Wilma directly into the stratopshere, carries her harmlessly over the Great Lakes, and then drowns her like a rat in the frigid waters of Lake Superior.)

That isn't going to happen. But we can dream, can't we?

A Tale Of Two Citizens

Gannett Corporation's superb reporter, Tallahassee-based Paige St. John, reports today that state legislators are beginning to fashion "major proposals" for overhauling Florida's state-owned insurer, Citizens Property Insurance.

Due to whimsical editing, however, different versions of St. John's report can be found in different Gannett news outlets in Florida. It's like A Tale of Two Citizens -- or do we mean Two Tales of One Citizens?

To get the whole story, you have to read both newspapers.

"What to do about Citizens Property Insurance?" St. John asks. In the Ft. Myers News-Press she says, "Increasingly, the answer is to do away with much of it." For Pensacola readers, the News Journal version says the answer can be found only "in some circles."

Both newspapers include the reporter's observation that today statehouse Democrats will "put forth their proposal to get out of the business of selling hurricane policies directly to homeowners and have Florida cover insurance companies instead."

In Rep. Anne Gannon's plan, no matter where you live, storm coverage for homes under $1 million would be folded into the general policy bought from private insurers.

Companies in turn would pay into a newly created Hurricane Insurance Fund — and draw money out of it to pay hurricane claims.

For the homeowner, "it would be like conventional insurance," said Gannon, D-Delray Beach, and a co-sponsor of the Hurricane Insurance Fund idea."

What the Pensacola paper doesn't say is that Gannon's plan "mirrors similar private meetings among Florida's most powerful business lobbies." The Florida Association of Insurance Agents -- that is, a consortium of local agents who sell you insurance, not the companies who provide it -- earlier advanced a proposal "to model storm coverage after federal flood insurance, guaranteed by government but managed by private insurers and their agents."

Moreover, St. John's report includes for the benefit of Ft. Myers readers news that, "Leaders of the state's banking, building and insurance industries have been gathering for a month to discuss the fate of Citizens."

On the other hand, Pensacola readers are told what the Ft. Myers version doesn't mention:

Citizens' own executives like the idea of dismantling much of their company.

Hurricane exposure is "an uninsurable risk" in Florida, Citizens Executive Director Bob Ricker said. The state is better served if it gives up trying to convince insurers to take on a gamble that could kill a company, he said.

"I personally believe the core issue is the risk of ruin that private insurers face for the hurricane exposure. If you can address that in a facility other than Citizens, we could get rid of a majority of our policies."

Other than caprice, it's not readily apparent why two different Gannett editors felt compelled to truncate St. John's article as each did.

Paige St. John is one of the state's best investigative reporters, as shown by her sterling work over the past year exposing the insurance industry's myriad problems. (It's probably that Midwestern upbringing.) Gannett is fortunate to have her.

But instead of one good reporter and two editors, wouldn't it make more sense to pay just one editor and use the rest of the money to clone a second Paige St. John?

Is Your Printer Spying On You?

"Someone in the government has managed to have
a lot of influence in printing technology... ."

-- Seth Schoen,
Electronic Frontier Foundation

The Washington Post reports today that "nearly every major printer manufacturer" over the last ten years has secretly encoded color printers with microscopic dots that enable 'sleuths' to track any printed page back to the individual machine source.

"Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco consumer privacy group, said it had cracked the code used in a widely used line of Xerox printers, an invisible bar code of sorts that contains the serial number of the printer as well as the date and time a document was printed.

With the Xerox printers, the information appears as a pattern of yellow dots, each only a millimeter wide and visible only with a magnifying glass and a blue light. The EFF said it has identified similar coding on pages printed from nearly every major printer manufacturer, including Hewlett-Packard Co., though its team has so far cracked the codes for only one type of Xerox printer."

A spokesman for Xerox confirmed EFF's information. He told the Post the secret encoding "was part of a cooperation with government agencies, competing manufacturers and a 'consortium of banks' to defeat counterfeiting."

Consumer privacy advocates at EFF, however, counter that people under the rule of "repressive governments or those who have a legitimate need for privacy" could be threatened by the secret encoding program. One pointed out that "after months collecting samples from printers around the world" it took an intern only "about a week" to break the code.

If you own a Xerox color printer, you can go to a special section on the EFF web site to test your machine. Other consumers are being invited to help EFF as it continues to research other printers. Go to this EFF page for instructions on how to make and send to EFF a test page for free analysis.

So far as it appears, black and white printers are unaffected.