“McConnell’s not dangerous because he knows anything about SQL injection hacks, but because he knows about social engineering. He’s the nice-seeming guy who’s willing and able to use fear-mongering to manipulate the federal bureaucracy for his own ends, while coming off like a straight shooter to those who are not in the know.”

“When he was head of the country’s national intelligence, he scared President Bush with visions of e-doom, prompting the president to sign a comprehensive secret order that unleashed tens of billions of dollars into the military’s black budget so they could start making firewalls and building malware into military equipment.”

“And now McConnell is back in civilian life as a vice president at the secretive defense contracting giant Booz Allen Hamilton. He’s out in front of Congress and the media, peddling the same Cybaremaggedon! gloom.”

Ryan Singel exposes the real threat to internet freedom @ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/cyber-war-hype/

“The explosive FBI surveillance tape, obtained using hidden cameras, was made public on Sunday for the first time by CBS’ 60 Minutes. It showed Pentagon analyst Gregg Bergersen with the Defense Security Cooperation Agency traveling in a rental car with a spy for the People’s Republic of China, Tai Shen Kuo.”

Alex Newman reports on a new China spy scandal @ http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/crime/3073-communists-caught-spying-on-us-again

Chris Edwards has 5 more reasons to downsize the federal government @ http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/03/03/six-reasons-to-downsize-the-federal-government/

The Cato Institute has dedicated a new  website to Downsizing the Federal Government:  http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/

“Our mandate must cover the full range of macroeconomic and financial sector policies that bear on global stability in the modern world,” Strauss-Kahn told the annual gathering of the Bretton Woods Committee on Friday. “And that, in many ways, is the bottom line: to strengthen the fund’s role as the guardian of systemic stability.”

Declaring the need for a new “multilateral surveillance” system, the French managing director said what the IMF wants “is a new focus and capacity to deal with systemic risks.”

If approved, the new surveillance procedures “would allow — indeed require — the fund to assess the broader and systemic effects of country-level policies, and the associated risks, in a fundamentally different way,”

Alex Newman exposes new attempts to empower the IMF to deal with the financial crisis @ http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/economy/economics-mainmenu-44/3052-imf-seeks-new-mandate-global-currency

Nicole Gelinas examines New York City’s Brooklyn Yards project  @ http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_1_eminent-domain-abuse.html

“In recent decades, most immigrants have been Hispanic; Asians, who constitute the other large portion of the inflow, are generally regarded as economically successful and law-abiding. Although many Hispanics are American-born, the vast majority still comes from a relatively recent immigrant background. So to a considerable extent, popular concerns about immigrant crime and popular concerns about Hispanic crime amount to the same thing. While fears of perceived racial insensitivity may force many critics to choose their words carefully, widespread belief that Hispanics have high or perhaps very high crime rates seems to exist.”

“But is this correct? Or are these concerns rooted in the same excitable and ideological mindset that produced endless stories of Saddam’s notorious WMD, with activists and their media accomplices passing along rumors and personal beliefs in pursuit of a political agenda rather than bothering to determine the facts? Does America face a Hispanic crime problem or merely a Hispanic crime hoax?”

Ron Unz looks at how ideologues  promoted a myth of Hispanic lawlessness @ http://www.amconmag.com/article/2010/mar/01/00022/

“For the last two weeks of December 2009 and throughout all of January 2010 the headline story at the top of the home page of the Socialist International’s website boasted of the organization’s prominent influence and clout at the recently concluded United Nations Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, Denmark. However, the brief article, entitled “SI at COP15 in Copenhagen: reaffirming social democratic priorities,” does not begin to do justice to the Socialist International’s central role, not only in pushing the current alarmism over global warming, but also in building a global militant environmental lobby from 1970 to the present.”

William Jasper exposes the Socialist push for world government @ http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/world-mainmenu-26/europe-mainmenu-35/2947-the-grasp-of-socialist-international

“Alas, like all good propositions regarding the government’s role in the economy, this one is being left by the roadside by the Obama administration.  Unfortunately, the only complaint being made by a not insubstantial segment of the political Right – frequently, the political crowd that is busy decrying “Bailout Nation” – is that the loan guarantees are not fat enough.”

“I write, of course, about the $8.3 billion federal loan guarantee announced by President Obama this week for Southern Company to build two new nuclear power plants.  The money will be used to guarantee the loans being made by the federal government (via the Federal Financing Bank) to partially cover the cost of Southern’s projected $14 billion nuclear construction project at their Vogtle plant near Waynesboro, Georgia.  The loan guarantees were authorized by Congress in the 2005 Energy Policy Act and, we are told, are the first installment on a total package of $54 billion that the President would like to hand out to facilitate the construction of 7-10 new nuclear power plants (Congress, however, has only authorized $18.5 billion to this point).”"

Jerry Taylor on government putting money where private enterprise refuses to go http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/02/18/radioactive-corporate-welfare/

“In the past few months, it has been boosted by liberal-left economists Paul Krugman and Robert Kuttner, as well as French President Nicolas Sarkozy, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Council, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou  (who is also president of the Socialist International) and the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority chairman Lord Adair Turner.”

“Advocates of the Tobin tax, named for the late Yale economics professor and Nobel laureate James Tobin, suggest a tax on foreign currency transactions would engender international currency stability by discouraging speculation. Some politicians, like Gordon Brown and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, have pushed for Tobin taxes at the national level. However, as the British journal The Economist noted,  “Unless a Tobin tax were implemented worldwide, trading would move out of any country that enforced it.” ”

William F. Jasper exposes the push for a new  tax on financial transactions @ http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/2901-qtobin-taxq-and-un-global-taxman-making-a-comeback