FBI releases file on Apple co-founder Steve Jobs - Los Angeles Times

Questionable moral character, use of illegal drugs, the abandonment of a child and a willingness to distort reality: Welcome to the FBI dossier of Steve Jobs.

On Thursday the agency released a file on Jobs that it had compiled in 1991, when the Apple Inc. co-founder was in the running for an appointment under President George H.W. Bush. Included in the 191-page document are confirmations of Jobs' dabblings in marijuana and LSD, his strained relationship with a high school girlfriend with whom he had a child out of wedlock and even some scribbled notes from a time he received a bomb threat in 1985.

Much of the information about Jobs' youth, business dealings and volatile personality have been widely known for years and received fresh attention after a lengthy biography was published after Jobs' death in October. But in interviewing dozens of friends, ex-friends, neighbors, employees and colleagues, the FBI collected a trove of firsthand opinions of Jobs, one of the most secretive figures in American business.

Though many of his acquaintances agreed that Jobs was a brilliant business man and capable candidate for the post, not all of them praised Jobs equally.

One interviewee, apparently a former colleague at Apple, said that Jobs "will twist the truth in order to achieve whatever goal he has set for himself" and that he was a "deceptive person."

The person, whose name was redacted from the report along with everyone else's, went on to say Jobs would make a fine appointee to the President's Export Council, an committee that advises the president on international trade, as "honesty and integrity are not prerequisites to assume such a position." (The same person later admitted to the agent that he did not receive any Apple stock, "which would have made him quite wealthy now.")

One woman said Jobs was a "visionary and charismatic individual who was at the same time shallow and callous to people in his personal relationships" — a trait she ascribed to Jobs' "narcissism and shallowness."

More than one interviewee brought up Jobs' troubled relationship with his high school girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan, who was also the mother of his first daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs. Jobs "basically abandoned [Brennan] and her daughter," one person said.

However, nearly everyone interviewed agreed that Jobs' intelligence, boundless energy and familiarity with the technology business would make him an excellent trade advisor.

Two interviewees called Jobs "strong willed, stubborn, hardworking, and driven, which they believe is why he is so successful."

The report contained some details of a bomb threat against Jobs in 1985, in which someone calling from a pay phone at the San Francisco airport claimed he had placed four bombs in the homes of Jobs and others and demanded $1 million. An investigation did not turn up any bombs and no suspect was located.

A few quirky details of Jobs' personal life were also buried in the report. He had a 2.65 grade-point average in high school, for instance. And as an adult he "did a great deal of jogging."

As far as his exercise habits, Jobs himself told agents that he was a member at the New York Athletic Club — the only organization he admitted to being part of.

Jobs was also known for being a good neighbor, who at his unadorned homes in Palo Alto and Woodside, Calif., often left his door unlocked and kept to himself.

He was a "quiet and unassuming individual," said a person who lived next door, who noted that Jobs had even "visited her last week to ensure some landscaping he was having done would not cause any problems."

david.sarno@latimes.com

deborah.netburn@latimes.com

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Homeowners Get Bulk of the Benefits From Mortgage Plan - New York Times

Some, like Jessica Cooper of Toledo, Ohio, will discover the program’s limitations.

Since she was laid off in June 2009, Ms. Copper and her husband have been pressing Bank of America to modify the terms of the $112,000 mortgage on their home. But because the loan is owned by the Federal Housing Administration, it is not covered. Similarly, Carlos Sandoval de Leon has been seeking a break from Wells Fargo on the $662,000 he owes on a Brooklyn brownstone. But because that mortgage is held by a private investor, it too falls outside the scope of the agreement, which mostly covers loans held by the banks themselves.

The bulk of the settlement, about $20 billion, would go to one million American homeowners who would have their mortgage debts reduced or their loans refinanced at a lower interest rate. It also includes $1.5 billion for roughly 750,000 people who lost their homes to foreclosure between 2008 and 2011, with each receiving between $1,500 and $2,000.

Economists do not expect a big boost for the economy, in part because the banks have three years to distribute the aid. Some experts questioned whether the accord would do much to stabilize the housing market and its glut of millions of foreclosed homes.

Critics also pointed to the fact that millions of mortgages owned by the government’s housing finance agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, would not be covered under the deal, excluding about half the nation’s mortgages.

“The effect of this settlement will be catalytic,” Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, said in an interview.

He predicted it would spur more loan modifications through existing government programs as well as principal reductions — when loan debt is written down for borrowers who owe more than their home is worth — as well as additional mortgage relief provided by banks.

“We do believe there should be principal reduction at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” he added. “We’ve been disappointed that this hasn’t happened thus far.” He said the government had proposed incentives for Fannie and Freddie to cut loan balances under an existing program, and the two mortgage giants were studying the idea.

Advocates for homeowners facing foreclosure expressed cautious optimism after the settlement was announced Thursday morning in Washington. “We’re hopeful,” said Joseph Sant, a lawyer at Staten Island Legal Services’ homeowner defense project. “But we had a lot of programs that are good on paper. What will make the difference is that it’s vigorously enforced.”

President Obama declared the deal the largest federal-state settlement in the nation’s history.

“No compensation, no amount of money, no measure of justice is enough to make it right for a family who’s had their piece of the American dream wrongly taken from them,” he said. “And no action, no matter how meaningful, is going to by itself entirely heal the housing market. But this settlement is a start.”

Homeowners in two states — Florida and California — will reap more than half of the $26 billion settlement, a reflection of the disproportionate number of loans that are delinquent or exceed the value of the underlying property there, government regulators said.

The amounts from individual banks were linked to their share of the servicing market. The biggest, Bank of America, would provide $11.8 billion, followed by $5.4 billion from Wells Fargo, $5.3 billion from JPMorgan Chase, $2.2 billion from Citigroup and $310 million from Ally. Bank of America would contribute an additional $1 billion for Federal Housing Administration loans.

And if nine other major mortgage servicers join the pact, a possibility that is now under discussion with the government, the total package could rise to $30 billion.

Banks stocks were mixed in trading Thursday, but shares of Bank of America rose 0.62 percent to $8.18, its highest level since September. Much of the money to pay for the settlement has already been reserved, and investors expect the settlement to remove at least one legal worry for Bank of America.

Shaila Dewan contributed reporting.

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An 'Entertainment Device' Is Expected From Google - New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO — Google is developing a home entertainment device, according to people with knowledge of the company’s plans.

The device, which exists as a prototype and will eventually be sold as a branded item to consumers, is the company’s most significant venture into hardware. While its initial purpose will be for streaming music, its eventual use could be much larger.

Larry Page, who last year took the reins of the company he co-founded, has been intent on moving into hardware. To compete with Apple and Amazon, Google thinks it has to have greater control over production.

Next week, Google is likely to complete its acquisition of the handset maker Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. That purchase puts Google into direct competition with the phone makers that use its Android software as well as Apple and its iPhone. The leader in desktop search, Google did not want to be left behind as computing went mobile.

Motorola, which made an earlier generation of home entertainment systems before stumbling, is the likely manufacturer of the new device. 

A Google spokesman declined to comment.

While Google has talked openly about its designs on consumers’ living rooms, news that the device was becoming a reality surfaced last week in an application the search giant filed with the Federal Communications Commission. In the application, Google said it would begin testing a device it labeled simply an “entertainment device.”

The device will have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and, as Google noted in the application, it will “connect to other home electronics equipment.” The application, which was first reported by the tech Web site GigaOM, said Google would test the device for stability in employees’ homes through the summer.

Analysts are wary of Google’s venture into the notoriously cutthroat hardware field. Apple has loyal, sometimes fanatical followers, and enviably rich profit margins. Amazon is willing to lose money on its devices and make it up on sales of content. Most other hardware makers have a much tougher slog.

But Google is seen as having little choice.

“Google’s future depends on extending its influence beyond the PC screen,” said James McQuivey, a Forrester analyst. “They’ve made tremendous progress in the mobile phone business, but their attempts to do the same thing with the TV and tablet flopped because the hardware manufacturers they relied on were not able to move fast enough.”

But Mr. McQuivey noted that controlling manufacturing meant calling the shots. “It’s quite telling that Amazon introduced its tablet two months ago and is already the second tablet maker in the market,” he said.

Google’s larger goal, a person closely tied to the project said, was to connect everything in the home to the Internet, including light bulbs, speakers and TV sets. The initial version will all be controlled from an Android device.

The first version of Google TV was considered a disaster, both internally and with partners. Guerrino De Luca, chief executive of Logitech, which manufactured the Google TV set-top box, has acknowledged publicly that the Google TV was “a mistake of implementation of a gigantic nature.”

Nick Bilton contributed reporting.

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Tech frenzy over mobile - Seattle Times

BARCELONA, Spain — The crowd outside the auditorium at Mobile World Congress on Monday was a restive mass of executives waiting to hear Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer. It was worse than the dressing-room line at Nordstrom Rack.

The pushing and shoving among men in suits to get a seat were a microcosm of the fierce competition and frenetic pace of a wireless industry here for its largest annual gathering. It was a stampede of the electronics industry to mobility.

The Mobile World Congress trade show, which started Monday, could draw as many as 53,000 attendees and 1,400 companies setting up booths and battling for sales and partnerships with hardware makers, software developers and wireless carriers. That compares with 49,000 attendees and 1,300 booths in 2010.

In addition to Ballmer, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo also spoke Monday.

With the industry drawing much of tech world's attention, the world's largest software company still had a lot of explaining to do about Windows Phone 7, the mobile operating system that started selling in October. The platform is growing slowly and has shipped 2 million copies to phone makers — the largest metric it has disclosed so far.

"We're off to a strong start; we know we've got a lot of work to do," Ballmer said in his speech.

But, no matter how Windows Phone 7 sales are characterized and despite Microsoft's eyebrow-raising partnership announced Friday with Nokia, the platform faces huge challenges.

Software update

Ballmer's speech was, at the end of the day, mostly a software update for an industry hungry for big technology leaps. This crowd has been spoiled by Apple's steady stream of new products and Google's stratospheric growth in mobile.

In fact, Google's mobile platform, Android, seems ubiquitous at the show, the launchpad for new products from all corners.

Samsung, for instance, announced both a new Galaxy smartphone and tablet, only a few months after releasing its first one. Sony Ericsson announced a smartphones running PlayStation games is coming in March. The platform common to all of them: Android.

Chip maker Qualcomm promoted software-development kits for new technologies such as augmented reality, also running on Android. An example of augmented reality is the yellow first-down line TV viewers of football games see on their screens.

Apple, too, looms large over the show, even though it is not at the conference in an official or public way, with many companies showing software built on the iPhone and iPad.

By contrast, Microsoft had no new devices running Windows Phone 7 to show here, and Nokia has not said when its first Windows Phone will be ready.

Even more telling is both Apple and Google are the platforms for tablets most developers here are targeting — and tablets are the hot topic at the conference.

Microsoft had no specific news about an operating system for tablets. The last update came at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, when the company showed a very rough chip prototype for the next version of Windows on tablets.

With this as a backdrop, Ballmer drummed on the phrase "fast paced" in his speech to describe Microsoft's mobile progress over the past 12 months.

The company announced plans for Windows Phone 7 about 12 months ago, began selling devices in the fall and on Friday announced the exclusive deal to put Windows Phone 7 on smartphones for the world's largest phone maker, Nokia.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, formerly president of Microsoft's Business division, joined Ballmer in the Monday appearance.

"The world is shifting from a battle of devices to a war of ecosystems," he said. "... Microsoft and Nokia together represent a natural partnership."

Ballmer shared a laundry list of updates coming to Windows Phone 7 this year in his speech. One, planned for March, will add a copy-and-paste feature for Windows Phone 7 users.

Later this year, Windows Phone 7 will get Twitter integration into its People Hub, its address book. When people pull up their address books on the phone, they will also see their most recent tweets. (Facebook is already integrated.)

Multitasking between programs is also coming to Windows Phone 7. Corporate Vice President Joe Belfiore showed the ability to pause and switch between two games on the phone.

Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft's Web browser in progress, will have a version ready for Windows Phone 7 this year. The browser is a major update for Microsoft because it supports HTML5, a Web programming standard that lets developers build richer, more applike websites.

Microsoft will also expand the integration of SkyDrive on Windows Phone so people can access Office documents created in Office Web Apps on their phones.

Kinect connection

Microsoft also showed Windows Phone 7 working with Xbox Kinect. In a video, a Windows Phone user controlled balls in an Xbox "Kinect Adventures" handball game while another player tried to hit them in a game.

"My sense is they're doing better than people expected," Will Stofega, an analyst with Framingham, Mass.-based IDC, said of Windows Phone 7. "People said they would sell 10,000 copies."

He said the key is for Microsoft not to let Nokia get in the way of other phone makers such as Samsung and LG, which are already selling Windows Phones.

Sharon Pian Chan: 206-464-2958 or schan@seattletimes.com

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Drumming Up More Addresses on the Internet - New York Times

Certainly not Vint Cerf.

In 1976, Mr. Cerf and his colleagues in the R.& D. office of the Defense Department had to make a judgment call: how much network address space should they allocate to an experiment connecting computers in an advanced data network?

They debated the question for more than a year. Finally, with a deadline looming, Mr. Cerf decided on a number — 4.3 billion separate network addresses, each one representing a connected device — that seemed to provide more room to grow than his experiment would ever require, far more, in fact, than he could ever imagine needing. And so he was comfortable rejecting the even larger number of addresses that some on his team had argued for.

“It was 1977,” Mr. Cerf said, in an interview last week. “We thought we were doing an experiment.”

“The problem was, the experiment never ended,” added Mr. Cerf, who is a former chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, a nonprofit corporation that coordinates the Internet naming system. “We had no idea it would turn into the world’s global communications network.”

Today, the Internet that Mr. Cerf helped create more than 30 years ago is about to max out. Within the next 12 to 18 months, or perhaps sooner, every one of the 4.3 billion Internet Protocol addresses will have been allocated, and the Internet, at least as it exists today, will have reached full capacity.

I.P. addresses are the unique sequence of numbers assigned to each Web site, computer, game console or smartphone connected to the Internet. They are distinct from domain names, which identify Web sites, like nytimes.com.

“There are 4.3 billion addresses, and a lot of people have more than one,” said Leo Vegoda, manager of number resources at Icann. “And there are seven billion people on the planet. That’s a big mismatch.”

The rapid expansion of Internet adoption in Asia has sped things up even more.

Experts saw this problem coming years ago, and the transition to a new system, referred to as Internet Protocol version 6, is well under way. This new standard will support a virtually inexhaustible number of devices, experts say. But there is some cause for concern because the two systems are largely incompatible, and as the transition takes place, the potential for breakdowns is enormous.

“This is a major turning point in the ongoing development of the Internet,” Rod Beckstrom, Icann’s president and chief executive, said. “No one was caught off guard by this.”

Still, the question looms, is the Internet industry prepared?

The answer depends on whom you ask. While it is true that no one has been caught off guard, some parts of the industry responded faster than others, leaving some technology companies scrambling to catch up. Software companies like Google, Microsoft and Facebook, along with PC makers, say they have been taking the problem seriously for years in hopes of thwarting any major calamities. The major operating systems — like Microsoft’s Windows 7 and Apple’s Mac OS X — have already incorporated the new system. And providers, including Comcast, say they are ready to make the switch.

But Mr. Cerf is critical of Internet service providers, along with the manufacturers of Internet devices, for not addressing the problem sooner, saying that many chose to wait until customers started asking for the new system.

“How can customers be expected to know what they need?” Mr. Cerf said. He compared Internet protocols to the internal workings of a car engine. “It’s like changing a gear in a car’s transmission,” he said. “People shouldn’t have to worry about that.”

I.P. addresses are allocated by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which is operated by Icann, to five registries representing regions of the globe. Those registries distribute the addresses to Internet service providers like cable and phone companies, universities, governments and large corporations. Millions of new devices will be attached.

At a ceremony early this month in Florida, the last block of addresses based on the original standard, known as IPv4, were allocated to the five registries.

Comcast began working on the problem nearly six years ago, and last year began customer trials nationwide. Jorge Alberni, a Comcast spokesman, said the trials so far had gone smoothly.

Comcast is now beginning to distribute dual-mode cable modems, for example, that support both the original and the new Internet Protocol versions. By the time the transition is fully under way, Mr. Alberni said, most Comcast customers will already be using cable boxes and modems that support IPv6, as the new version is commonly called. In some case, customers with older equipment will have to make a swap.

“We don’t foresee any problems for our customers,” he said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 14, 2011

Because of an editing error, a previous version of this story misstated Vint Cerf's relationship with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann. He is a former chairman, not the current chairman.

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Government contractors targeted Chamber of Commerce's critics - Los Angeles Times

Hoping to win a lucrative agreement with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, three data security contractors for federal defense and intelligence agencies developed a proposal to monitor and manipulate the chamber's left-leaning critics, according to recently released e-mail correspondence.

Employees of the firms compiled short dossiers on a few activists that included photographs, references to their families and charts of their relationships with other liberal and labor leaders.

A review of the correspondence, dating from late October through last week, suggested that the surveillance and intelligence gathering had begun only on a superficial basis in anticipation of a coming meeting with chamber officials.

The proposals were received by Hunton & Williams, a law firm that represents the chamber.

The firm, which also represents Bank of America, solicited a separate proposal from the security firms to help the bank deal with a threat by WikiLeaks, the international hacker organization, to release some of the bank's internal data.

Chamber officials as well as a spokesman for Bank of America said they knew nothing of the surveillance proposals until the e-mails were released Friday by Anonymous, a group that is sympathetic to WikiLeaks.

"No money, for any purpose, was paid to any of those three private security firms by the chamber, or by anyone on behalf of the chamber, including Hunton & Williams," the chamber said in a statement.

Hunton & Williams did not respond to requests for comment.

But in some of the e-mails, employees of the security firms and lawyers at Hunton & Williams refer to contacts they had made with the chamber about the proposed intelligence gathering.

The revelations in the e-mails triggered anxiety among some of those who were targeted.

"We are appalled at the allegations that have come to light in these e-mails," said Inga Skippings, communications director of the Service Employees International Union, some of whose allies were the subject of the intelligence gathering project. "The chamber should immediately come clean about its involvement with Hunton & Williams and the private security firms that allegedly planned these underhanded tactics."

ThinkProgress, an arm of the liberal Center for American Progress and a consistent critic of the chamber, first reported on the e-mails on its blog last week.

In a statement, the chamber accused its critics of "perpetrating a smear campaign by trying to create the illusion of a connection" between it and the security firms.

Officials for two of the security firms, Palantir Technologies and Berico Technologies, confirmed the authenticity of the e-mails sent by their employees but said top executives had no previous knowledge of them.

A spokeswoman for the third company, HBGary Federal, said executives could not address the details of the proposed work for Hunton & Williams, citing a nondisclosure agreement covering all parties.

Copies of the e-mails were provided to the Los Angeles Times by the labor and activist groups.

The correspondence shows that starting last fall, Hutton & Williams lawyers discussed with the security companies a project to be pitched to the chamber.

The three security firms, all of which are government contractors with secret clearances, proposed coming together as "Team Themis," apparently named after a Greek goddess of law and order, to monitor and possibly disrupt chamber opponents.

"Who better to develop a corporate information reconnaissance capability than companies that have been market leaders within the [Defense Department] and Intelligence Community," the companies wrote in a pitch to Hunton & Williams.

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Obama to cap off year with family talent show - Los Angeles Times

President Obama will mark the end of an often tumultuous year with a distinctly lighthearted fete: a family talent show.

It's just the latest feature in a holiday vacation that has been a study in consistency. On Thursday, Obama traveled across Oahu for an annual barbecue with family, friends and staff – one year to the day when he did so in 2009. He celebrated Christmas with a surprise visit to dining servicemen at Marine Corps Base Hawaii – which was less of a surprise considering he's done so each of the last two visits as well.

He also made expected stops to the same "shave ice" stand and upscale restaurant locals have come to expect. Every day but one, he's started his morning with a workout on the nearby base. And, of course, there's been golf.

As for the talent show, White House spokesman Bill Burton offered only that it's another annual tradition. And it turns out that Obama, known for his oratorical gifts, is also apparently something of a singer as well. A Time magazine story said the president one year sang "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" when it was his turn to perform. The first lady opted for a hula hoop display.

The trip to Hawaii, which has been extended twice since Obama arrived late on Dec. 22, has definitely been a working vacation as well. But Obama is doing some reading beyond briefing papers and an evaluation of staff prepared for him by top aides. The White House shared Friday some additional selections from his recreational reading list: "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet," by David Mitchell, and "Our Kind of Traitor," a Russian spy drama from John le Carre.

From the nonfiction genre, Obama is reading a biography of Ronald Reagan from Lou Cannon called, "The Role of a Lifetime."

Obama is set to depart Honolulu late on Monday.

mmemoli@tribune.com

twitter.com/mikememoli

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Roberts Urges Obama on Judicial Nominees - New York Times

The plea, in the chief justice’s annual year-end report on the federal judiciary, was an echo of one from his predecessor, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who made front-page news on New Year’s Day in 1998 by criticizing the Senate for failing to move more quickly on President Bill Clinton’s judicial nominees.

Both chief justices were appointed by Republican presidents, and both said that their interest was not in particular appointees but in a judiciary functioning at something like full strength.

“We do not comment on the merits of individual nominees,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote on Friday. “That is as it should be. The judiciary must respect the constitutional prerogatives of the president and Congress in the same way that the judiciary expects respect for its constitutional role.”

But he identified what he called a systemic problem.

“Each political party has found it easy to turn on a dime from decrying to defending the blocking of judicial nominations, depending on their changing political fortunes,” he said.

The upshot, he said, was “acute difficulties for some judicial districts.”

The chief justice noted that the Senate recently filled a number of vacancies. Including 19 recently confirmed judges, the Senate has confirmed 62 of Mr. Obama’s nominees. There are 96 federal court vacancies, according to the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.

“There remains,” the chief justice wrote, “an urgent need for the political branches to find a long-term solution to this recurring problem.”

The chief justice’s report, which was 12 pages long and included four pages of statistics, was largely focused on the judicial branch’s efforts to save money in difficult economic times. It did not explicitly press for an increase in judicial pay, a topic that has been a major theme in earlier reports.

The report opened with a sketch of the financial and cultural climate in 1935, during the Great Depression. “Many Americans sought respite from the nation’s economic troubles at their local movie theaters, which debuted now-classic films, such as ‘Mutiny on the Bounty,’ ‘Top Hat’ and ‘Night at the Opera,’ ” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.

“Moviegoers of that era enjoyed a prelude of short features as they settled into their seats,” he continued. “As the lights dimmed, the screen beamed previews of coming attractions, Merrie Melody cartoons, and the Movietone newsreels of current events.”

Those current events included, though the chief justice did not say so, a clash between President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Supreme Court over New Deal legislation that may foreshadow a similar conflict when lawsuits over the recent health care legislation reach the court.

Chief Justice Roberts did describe newsreels showing the new Supreme Court building, which opened that year. “Seventy-five years later, the Supreme Court’s majestic building stands out as a familiar and iconic monument to the rule of law,” he wrote.

But he said nothing about the court’s decision this year to close its front doors to people seeking to enter, for reasons of security.

That decision, in May, was criticized by Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who said they hoped the day would come when it would be possible “to restore the Supreme Court’s main entrance as a symbol of dignified openness and meaningful access to equal justice under law.”

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A Christian priest faces grim New Year in Iraq - Los Angeles Times

Father Nadheer Dako, left, leads mourners as they carry in the coffin of Fawzi Rahim, 76, for funeral Mass at St. George Chaldean Church in Baghdad. (Khalid Mohammed, Associated Press / December 31, 2010)

Father Nadheer Dako started the last day of 2010 with a funeral service for an elderly couple killed by a bomb during a string of attacks against Iraq's small Christian community.

The previous night Fawzi Ibrahim, 80, and his 75-year-old wife Jeanette had opened their door to find a piece of luggage. When they touched the bag a hidden bomb exploded. Their house was one of ten Christian targets hit by militants Thursday night.

Now Dako, who is always ready with a sarcastic barb and a smirk, had to round up enough parishioners to join five relatives for the service at St. George Chaldean Church in Baghdad. It was a cold day with gray skies. Rain pounded the sidewalk and flooded the half-paved streets.

He gathered together 20 people and they entered the yellow brick church with its cross standing out among the neighborhood's Islamic flags.

Dako, 38, is used to living with death. He had become accustomed to danger even before an Oct. 31 siege by Islamic militants at another Baghdad church that left 58 people dead and ushered in a new campaign of attacks against Iraq's Christian minority.

In 2007, he had played a cat-and-mouse game as he hid from would-be kidnappers who surrounded his church; that same year he narrowly escaped a bomb apparently meant for him. He had watched too many Christians leave the city for safety elsewhere. But he was not going to let himself fall into depression.

He would scowl and shout from the pulpit and jab the air with his finger. He would smile and indulge in ghoulish humor. Or he would sing.

And on Friday, he would bury a couple, victims of a senseless act of violence, and later in the day would celebrate life again.

"It was a good Santa Claus this year," he said with a wicked look in his eyes and a sardonic grin after returning home from the funeral.

He quickly veered off into angry screeds against the United States, blaming the 2003 invasion for his country's woes. He grinned as he said the names of U.S. officials as if speaking four-letter words. He hectored: "Where are you Americans. You promised bring us good democracy and good government. Where is [former U.S. administrator J. Paul] Bremer?"

At the service for the Ibrahims, he read to the mostly empty pews a verse from St. Paul. "God gives us a soul of power and charity, not a soul of fear."

He had admired the couple; their children had left years before for the United States and Europe but the Ibrahims refused to leave Iraq. He thought they had been preparing to die. They had readied tombstones months in advance.

As the small group of relatives traveled with the bodies to the cemetery, Dako prepared for his New Year's service that evening. He sat in his rectory, his collar loosened and a scarf tied tight around his neck and thought about what he should say. He made it clear his group was resilient and would never surrender.

"Jesus asks us not to be afraid, to be a disciple and share the light with the people," he said.

A baby's cry came from the next room, where a Christian couple were staying with their infant after fleeing from the northern city of Mosul.

Dako changed into white vestments and stood by the altar before a small crowd at 4:30 p.m. The decorations blinked on a white Christmas tree and candles gleamed by the altar. He raised his hands in the air.

"God is the light and peace," he said. "Protect the dignity of all, Muslims, Christians, Yazidis, Shabak, Sudanis, Pakistanis."

Some leaned their heads against the wooden benches in thought. For a minute, the power went out and his voice bellowed in the dark.

Later in the evening Dako planned to eat and drink wine with friends. He would call his siblings and mother, who are scattered around the world as a result of the turmoil.

He promised: "Life will continue, and never, never will it stop, even if I die, it will continue. It is God's will."

ned.parker@latimes.com

Salman is a Times staff writer.

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Life of the Party - New York Times

Right, you from Florida and Tim Scott from South Carolina.
I think that there is a changing wind. There are black conservatives out there, and their voices need to be heard.

Like other Tea Party candidates endorsed by Sarah Palin, you came from a nonpolitical background. A longtime Army officer who rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, you retired in 2004 after being investigated for firing a handgun close to the head of an Iraqi policeman during an interrogation. Is that correct?
Yes, I did that, but let me tell you what happened. I went through what is called a nonjudicial punishment, where I was fined $5,000. I redeployed from Iraq, and I retired with full rank and benefits and an honorable discharge, and that’s the end of it.

Do you consider President Obama a good leader?
Not really.

Do you think those in the military respect him?
I don’t know, you gotta ask guys in the military, but I will tell you this: I think that going in in the middle of the night doesn’t show leadership.

Are you referring to that recent three-hour trip to a base in Afghanistan? He needs to consider his own safety, doesn’t he?
Leaders lead by example, and if I’m asking my young men and women to go out there and puttheir lives on the line, I should be willing and able to do the exact same thing. As I told my soldiers when I was commander in Iraqin 2003, the most expendable person in our battalion was me.

Didn’t George W. Bush go in for a surprise visit to Iraq under similar circumstances? Remember the platter-of-turkey photo op on Thanksgiving Day?
I’m not saying that’s right, either. I’m saying that my understanding of leadership is a little bit different. Leadership is about being a servant first.

Even though you’re a Republican, did you feel a sense of pride when President Obama was elected?
I don’t look to a man to get pride in myself. It’s not about having a black president, it’s about having a good president, and I think that’s the most important thing. This country needs a good leader, and I don’t care if he’s purple or green but yes, there are some people that saw in him a sense of pride.

Michael Steele, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, said last year that blacks don’t have a reason to vote Republican because Republicans haven’t given them one.
I think that there are some objective criteria that you can look at that Chairman Steele needs to try to work through.

What made you become a Republican?
When I retired out of the military, I registered myself as a Republican because my views and perspectives were more in line with that party.

You were raised in Atlanta, in a military family of Democrats, and were the middle of three boys. Are your wife and two daughters Republicans?
After all of the crap that I was put through in this election campaign, I don’t think they’ll be liberals any time soon.

What do you mean by crap?
When you turn on the television and people are accusing you of being a member of a white outlaw motorcycle gang and saying that you run drugs and deal with prostitution, I think that’s a little bit over the top. My opponent was very nasty.

You haven’t started your new job. But you probably feel ready to retire.
No. I have not yet begun to fight, as John Paul Jones said.

INTERVIEW HAS BEEN CONDENSED AND EDITED.

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Espada Is Charged With Stealing From a Health Network He Controlled - New York Times

Mr. Espada, who would return to the Senate in 2008 and lead a coup that shut it down and paralyzed state government for a month, said his rival, State Senator Rubén Díaz Sr., had misused employees of nonprofit groups that Mr. Díaz controlled for political fund-raising and campaigning.

But in the months before and after he wrote the letter, according to federal charges leveled against Mr. Espada on Tuesday, he was putting Mr. Díaz to shame. Indeed, the indictment portrays Mr. Espada, the departing Senate majority leader whose political career unspooled in a swirl of scandal when he lost his primary race in September, as a legislator who embezzled with abandon.

And the schemes detailed in the indictment, which also charges his son, Pedro Gautier Espada, ranged from the extravagant to the absurd.

According to the charges, he used money from a subsidiary of the health care network, Soundview Healthcare Center, to pay for after-school tutoring for one young member of his family and to cater a birthday party for another at his home — complete with a petting zoo, pony rides and a videographer to record it all for posterity.

Money from the same subsidiary paid for a ghostwriter to work on his personal book project and to service the air-conditioning system at his Mamaroneck home, according to the indictment. It contends that he even tried to use $49,000 for the down payment on a $125,000 Bentley, though he never bought the car because his credit application was rejected.

Prosecutors also charge that the elder Espada used a Soundview corporate American Express card to pay for personal expenses. Among the charges was more than $100,000 worth of meals for him and his family, window treatments for his home and tickets to Broadway shows and sporting events.

All in all, the six-count indictment obtained by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn charges that Mr. Espada, 57, and his son, 37, abused their positions at Soundview between 2005 and 2009 to divert more than half a million dollars from the nonprofit organization and related companies for their own benefit and the use of family members and friends.

The charges were announced by the office of the United States attorney in Brooklyn, Loretta E. Lynch; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the Internal Revenue Service; and Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, who is the governor-elect. Mr. Cuomo’s office initiated a civil inquiry and brought a lawsuit in May against Mr. Espada, his son and Soundview.

“The indictment alleges that funds that could have been, and should have been, applied to purchase medical equipment and enhance health care services for an historically underserved population were diverted by the defendants for their personal use and to benefit friends and family members,” Ms. Lynch said in a statement. “In these difficult economic times, the charged crimes are all the more reprehensible.”

Ms. Lynch said the investigation was continuing.

Mr. Espada, the highest ranking Hispanic lawmaker in the state, founded the health care network in 1978.

His lawyer, Susan R. Necheles, said the senator and his son denied any wrongdoing and intended to fight the charges in court.

“Soundview has provided high quality health care to thousands of families, children and senior citizens in the Bronx,” Ms. Necheles said. “Today is a sad day for Soundview and a sad day for the Espada family.”

In a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, Mr. Cuomo and one of his senior aides, Mitra Hormozi, who was designated as a special assistant United States attorney for the investigation, said the dollar figure in the attorney general’s civil lawsuit — $14 million — was larger than the amount charged in the indictment because Mr. Cuomo’s wide civil jurisdiction over charities under New York State law enabled his lawsuit to encompass acts for which Mr. Espada could not be charged under federal criminal law.

But if convicted, both Mr. Espada and his son, whose lawyer did not return a call seeking comment, face a maximum of 10 years in prison for each of the five counts of embezzlement, five years for the single conspiracy count and a fine of $250,000 for each count on which they are convicted.

The indictment caps a turbulent two-year term as state senator during which Mr. Espada became perhaps the most controversial lawmaker in the Capitol.

He won election in 2008 by defeating an equally scandal-plagued incumbent, Efrain Gonzalez Jr., despite accusations that he did not actually reside in the district in question and owing tens of thousands of dollars in campaign fines. Mr. Espada refused to vote with fellow Democrats until he got a committee chairmanship and other perks, yet for months refused to file election paperwork or disclose the names of the donors who had financed his campaign.

And in summer 2009, Mr. Espada, still unsatisfied, staged the coup against his own party, joining with Republicans in a bid to wrest control of the narrowly divided Senate from the Democrats. The move plunged state government into chaos for a month.

Senate Democrats elevated Mr. Espada to majority leader in exchange for his allegiance. But unbeknown to Mr. Espada, he was already under investigation by Mr. Cuomo. Emboldened by Mr. Cuomo’s lawsuit this year, a coalition of labor unions and liberal activists joined together to back a primary opponent, Gustavo Rivera, and successfully ousted Mr. Espada.

The federal charges could spell the end of a quarter-century political career that is one of the more unusual and turbulent in recent New York City political history, spanning multiple investigations, repeated accusations of fraud and electoral misconduct, and seemingly incessant campaigns for office.

Since the late 1980s, Mr. Espada’s name has appeared on Bronx ballots roughly a dozen times, including bids for City Council, borough president, State Assembly and State Senate — the last a job he has held three different times in two different Bronx districts.

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'Operation Dark Heart' Author Sues for Uncensored Edition - New York Times

In September, the Defense Department spent $47,300 to purchase and destroy the entire first printing of “Operation Dark Heart” by Anthony A. Shaffer, asserting that it contained classified information.

The book was hastily reprinted with many passages blacked out and has become a best seller. But unredacted advance copies of the book, among a few dozen distributed by St. Martin’s Press before the Pentagon’s intervention, are still for sale on eBay for $1,995 to $4,995.

The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court here, recounts how Mr. Shaffer, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, submitted his original manuscript to the Army to be checked for classified information and got official approval to publish it last January. But when the Defense Intelligence Agency saw the manuscript in May and showed it to the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, all three agencies asserted that the approved manuscript still contained secrets.

After a second review was completed, passages were removed from 250 of the book’s 320 pages.

The lawsuit claims that “little to none” of the information blacked out of the second printing is actually classified and that the censorship violated Mr. Shaffer’s First Amendment rights. “Many of the asserted redactions are objectively absurd,” the lawsuit says.

Mr. Shaffer’s lawyer, Mark S. Zaid, said that while his client agreed to allow publication of the hardback with the government’s redactions, “we reserved the right to come back and challenge the decision in court.”

A paperback edition is scheduled for publication next year, and Mr. Shaffer is asking the court to order the Pentagon not to require the redactions in the new edition and not to pursue civil or criminal penalties against him for releasing it.

A Defense Department spokesman, Col. Dave Lapan, said that by policy, he could not comment on pending litigation.

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Air Force Limits Access to Web Sites Over Secret Cables - New York Times

When Air Force personnel on the service’s computer network try to view the Web sites of The Times, the British newspaper The Guardian, the German magazine Der Spiegel, the Spanish newspaper El País and the French newspaper Le Monde, as well as other sites that posted full confidential cables, the screen says “Access Denied: Internet usage is logged and monitored,” according to an Air Force official whose access was blocked and who shared the screen warning with The Times. Violators are warned that they face punishment if they try to view classified material from unauthorized Web sites.

Some Air Force officials acknowledged that the steps taken might be in vain since many military personnel could gain access to the documents from home computers, despite admonishments from superiors not to read the cables without proper clearances.

Computer network specialists within the Air Force Space Command last week followed longstanding procedures to keep classified information off unclassified computer systems. “News media Web sites will be blocked if they post classified documents from the WikiLeaks Web site,” said Lt. Col. Brenda Campbell, a spokeswoman for the Air Force Space Command, a unit of which oversees Air Force computer systems. “This is similar to how we’d block any other Web site that posted classified information.”

Colonel Campbell said that only sites posting full classified documents, not just excerpts, would be blocked. “When classified documents appear on a Web site, a judgment will be made whether it will be blocked,” she said. “It’s an issue we’re working through right now.”

Spokesmen for the Army, Navy and Marines said they were not blocking the Web sites of news organizations, largely because guidance has already been issued by the Obama administration and the Defense Department directing hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors not to read the secret cables and other classified documents published by WikiLeaks unless the workers have the required security clearance or authorization.

“Classified information, whether or not already posted on public websites or disclosed to the media, remains classified, and must be treated as such by federal employees and contractors, until it is declassified by an appropriate U.S. Government authority,” said a notice sent on Dec. 3 by the Office of Management and Budget, which is part of the White House, to agency and department heads.

A Defense Department spokesman, Col. David Lapan, in an e-mail on Tuesday night sought to distance the department from the Air Force’s action to block access to the media Web sites: “This is not DoD-directed or DoD-wide.”

The Air Force’s action was first reported on The Wall Street Journal’s Web site late Tuesday and underscores the wide-ranging impact of the recent release of secret State Department documents by WikiLeaks, and five news organizations, including The Times. It also illustrates the contortions the military and other government agencies appear to be going through to limit the spread of classified information that has become widely available in the public domain.

“It is unfortunate that the U.S. Air Force has chosen not to allow its personnel access to information that virtually everyone else in the world can access,” said a spokeswoman for The Times, Danielle Rhoades Ha. A senior administration official said Tuesday that the administration’s policy contained some leeway, for instance, to allow certain employees to download information in order for them to be able to verify that classified information was leaking into the public domain, and to assess damage to national security and potential danger to sources.

Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, a secrecy specialist, said dozens of agencies, as well as branches of the military and government contractors, had issued their own policy instructions based on the Office of Management and Budget memo.

“It’s a self-defeating policy that will leave government employees less informed than they ought to be,” Mr. Aftergood said.

William J. Broad contributed reporting from New York.

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Bloomberg Rules Out Presidential Run - New York Times

Seeking to quell renewed speculation about any presidential aspirations, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Sunday once again ruled out running for the White House in 2012.

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Bloomberg said he was “not looking at the possibility of running.”

“I’ve got a great job, and I’m going to stay with it,” he said.

The show’s host, David Gregory, persisted, wondering whether Mr. Bloomberg might change his mind if his advisers learned that he “could actually win this thing.” Mr. Bloomberg replied that he would not change his mind.

“No way, no how?” Mr. Gregory asked.

“No way, no how,” Mr. Bloomberg repeated.

He said he was urging his supporters to “cease and desist” fomenting speculation and buzz about his interest in a candidacy, adding “but most of this is just because the press wants to have something to write about.”

“I want to go out having a reputation as a very good, maybe the greatest mayor ever,” he said.

The periodic speculation about the mayor’s appetite for a White House bid flared anew last week when the mayor spoke to the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce and disparaged Congress and President Obama for their management of the economy. While the speech sounded campaign-like, Mr. Bloomberg, as he has many times before, ruled out a 2012 run.

On Sunday, Mr. Bloomberg also lavished praise on Mr. Obama for working out a deal with Republicans leaders to retain Bush-era tax cuts for two years and extend unemployment benefits.

“Both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue have finally come together to do something in a bipartisan way,” he said.

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France Finds Continental Guilty in Crash of Concorde - New York Times

Continental was ordered to pay civil damages of more than $1.3 million to Air France and a fine of $265,000. The mechanic was fined $2,650 and given a suspended 15-month prison sentence; three other defendants involved in the plane’s design and certification were acquitted.

A 2002 report by French air accident investigators concluded that a small strip of metal that had fallen off a Continental DC-10 that took off minutes earlier had punctured a tire of the Concorde as it accelerated down the runway on July 25, 2000. The tire disintegrated in seconds, investigators said, sending shards of rubber into the fuel tanks and sending the plane crashing into a hotel near the airport, flames pouring from its undercarriage.

All 109 passengers and crew members were killed, along with 4 people on the ground.

The court faulted the mechanic, John Taylor, 42, for using titanium, rather than a softer metal like aluminum, to construct a replacement piece for the DC-10 called a "wear strip." It also accused him of improperly attaching the strip to the aircraft, resulting in it falling onto the runway. Continental said it would appeal the “absurd” ruling, which took more than a decade to work its way through the French courts. “To find that any crime was committed in this tragic accident is not supported either by the evidence at trial or by aviation authorities and experts around the world,” Nick Britton, a Continental spokesman, said in an e-mailed statement.

The decision to proceed with criminal charges in the Concorde case has alarmed airlines and aviation safety experts worldwide, who contend that the threat of prosecution can dissuade some witnesses from cooperating in crash investigations. France is one of a handful of countries that routinely seeks criminal indictments in transportation accidents, regardless of whether there is clear evidence of criminal intent or negligence.

"Verdicts like this tend to drive safety underground,” said William R.

Voss, President of the Flight Safety Foundation based in Alexandria, Virginia. "Accident investigations depend on information from professionals who can admit mistakes when they happen,” he said. The threat of criminal conviction "generates a climate where people are unlikely to do that,” he said.

At the trial, before Judge Dominique Andréassier in Pontoise, northwest of Paris, a lawyer for Continental, Olivier Metzner, argued that investigators had disregarded accounts of more than 20 witnesses that the plane appeared to have caught fire at a point on the runway several yards before it reached the metal strip.

The three defendants who were acquitted were Henri Perrier, 81, considered the “father” of the iconic supersonic jet and an executive of Aérospatiale, the company that built the Concorde; and Jacques Hérubel and Claude Frantzen, formerly of the French airline regulator that certified the plane’s airworthiness.

Air France itself was not accused of wrongdoing and joined the case as a civil party in the hope of recouping damages from Continental. The $1.3 million in damages awarded on Monday was far less than the nearly $20 million the French airline had sought. The airline reached a $150 million settlement in 2001 with the families of the victims, most of whom were German citizens. But Monday’s verdict could still open the door to millions of dollars in potential litigation by the victims’ families against Continental and against European Aeronautic Defense and Space, the parent company of Airbus, which absorbed Aérospatiale in the 1970s. Judge Andréassier said EADS would have to share 30 percent of any future civil damages resulting from the accident.

The crash of Air France Flight 4590 was the only fatal accident involving the Concorde, which first took to the skies in 1969. became an emblem of trans-Atlantic luxury travel. Flying at twice the speed of sound, its Paris-New York crossing was less than four hours and its London-New York time just three and a half.

The disaster helped bring an end to the commercial operations of the plane, which had become a financial burden for its two operators, Air France and British Airways. Both airlines took the plane out of service in 2003. Only 20 of the planes were built, and just 14 entered commercial service.

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Wal-Mart, global warming cases will get hearings before Supreme Court - Los Angeles Times

Supreme Court: High court agrees to hear Wal-Mart, global warming cases - latimes.com div.thumbnail span.credit { font-weight: normal !important;}div.article div.articlerail ul li.relatedTitle, div.storygallery div.storyGalleryRail ul li.relatedTitle { font-size: 12px !important;} Mobile Site Subscribe/Manage Account Print Ads Place an Ad LAT Store Jobs Cars Real Estate Rentals More Classifieds   NATION HOME Breaking Crime L.A. Apps Weather Traffic Obits Community Crosswords Holiday Guide Wine Club Local L.A. Now Politics Crime Education O.C. Westside Neighborhoods Environment Obituaries FindLocal U.S. Politics Now Top of the Ticket Science & Environment Obituaries Religion World Afghanistan & Pakistan Africa Asia Europe Iran Iraq Latin America Mexico Under Siege Middle East Business Money & Co. Technology Personal Finance Small Business Company Town Jobs Real Estate Cars Sports Lakers Clippers Dodgers Angels NFL Ducks/Kings USC UCLA Soccer High Schools Scores/Stats Entertainment Movies TV Music Celebrity Arts & Culture Company Town Calendar Envelope Books FindLocal Health Booster Shots Fitness & Nutrition Medicine Mental Health Healthcare Reform Breast Cancer Diabetes Living Home Food Image Books Parenting FindLocal Brand X Magazine Your Scene Cars Travel California Hawaii Mexico Las Vegas Europe Asia Australia Travel & Deal Blog Destinations Opinion Editorials Op-Ed Letters Opinion L.A. More Corrections Readers' Rep Photos Video Blogs Data Desk Comics Puzzles & Games Community Mobile Site Subscribe/Manage Account Print Ads Place an Ad LAT Store Jobs Cars Real Estate Rentals More Classifieds Weekly Ad In the News: dwp Gay marriage Kennedy Center Honors College bowls Box office Wal-Mart, global warming cases will get hearings before Supreme Court The Supreme Court agrees to take up two cases of interest to corporate America: whether a sex-discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart can proceed as a class action, and whether courts can put limits on carbon emissions from power plants. Share Related Interactive: Major Supreme Court cases High court ruling on Arizona act could shape immigration law Supreme Court questions broad use of exception in sunshine law to withhold documents Stories Wal-Mart will buy controlling stake in South African company to get foothold in the country High court handling of Wal-Mart appeal will have wider implications By David G. Savage, Reporting from Washington December 6, 2010|8:41 a.m.

E-mail Print Text Size sc-dc-1207-supreme-court-20101206 The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear two major appeals from corporate America seeking to block mass lawsuits, one involving a huge sex-discrimination suit against Wal-Mart and the other a massive global warming suit brought against several of the nation's top power producers.

In both instances, the justices said they will consider blocking the mass lawsuit from proceeding toward a trial.

In the Wal-Mart case, the justices will decide whether the retail giant can be sued for sex bias in the largest workplace class action in the nation's history. A federal judge and the U.S. court of appeals in San Francisco cleared the lawsuit to proceed as a class action on behalf of 1.5 million women who were employed at Wal-Mart in the past decade.

The lawsuit contends women were regularly paid less than men and denied promotions. In its appeal, the company argues that the lawsuit should not proceed as a class action because hiring and promotion decisions are made in its 3,400 stores.

The issue of when a suit can proceed as a class action is of great interest to corporate lawyers and the trial bar. If a single suit can speak for thousands of employees, companies feel pressure to offer a settlement rather than risk a potentially crippling jury verdict.

The global warming case will decide whether judges and courts can put limits on carbon emissions on the theory that this pollution is a public nuisance. Eight states, including New York, California and Connecticut, joined with environmentalists and launched a lawsuit against the power producers in the Midwest, arguing that their coal-fired plants were contributing to climate change.

Environmentalists said they took the issue to court because Congress was not likely to take up the climate change issue and set limits on greenhouse gasses. They won a significant preliminary victory when the U.S. appeals court in New York cleared the suit to proceed.

But the power industry, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Obama administration joined in urging the high court to stop the lawsuit. They argue that the global warming issue and limits on carbon emissions should be decided by Congress and the White House, not by judges acting on lawsuits.

The two cases, Wal-Mart vs. Dukes and American Electric Power vs. Connecticut, will be heard in the early spring and decided by July.

david.savage@latimes.com Copyright © 2010, Tribune Interactive

E-mail Print Digg Twitter Facebook Read This Later   Comments (9)Add / View comments | Discussion FAQ jdw2010 at 10:01 AM December 06, 2010

I wonder if these are the same environmentalists that protested nuclear power to death, such a two faced argument. When will the hippies realize you need to supply base power SOMEHOW? Wind, Solar, Hydro, etc. are not applicable for base power needs. That leaves Coal, Natural Gas, and Nuclear as primary power generation with Coal being the cheapest and Nuclear being the cleanest (in terms of greenhouse emissions). Wake up people, you can only squeeze so much blood from a stone.

jav1231 at 9:56 AM December 06, 2010

In regards to "climate change," it's the job of the courts to interpret law through the prism of precedent and the Constitution. NOT to create law. This should be a slam dunk. Hopefully.

carlsherylmorris at 9:46 AM December 06, 2010

Come on, Libs...  What you want to accomplish is not Constitutionally allowed...  Things you're trying to make lawful.. or unlawful,  needs to come from Congress...  I think the whole country is sick and tired of the courts trying to run the country..  IT IS NOT within their scope of authority...  How did you Libs ever get to thinking the way that you do???

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Advertisement .latest-article { width: 334px; border-right: 1px solid #979797; border-left: 1px solid #979797; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding: 3px; margin-top: -2px; }//ul.feedMasherList li { }//.mviewed li { font-color: red; }.feedMasherList li { font-size: 15px; }//.feedMasherList li { font-size: 16px; width: 296px; position: relative; top: 0px; #left: 4px; left: 7px; margin-top: 4px; }//.feedMasherList li a { font-size: 13px; }//.mviewed .publishDate { visibility: hidden; }//.memailed .publishDate { visibility: hidden; }#most-viewed-title {font-size: 13px; font-family:"Times New Roman",Georgia,Serif ;padding-right: 8px; padding-left: 2px; border-right: 1px solid #000000;}#most-emailed-title {font-size: 13px; font-family:"Times New Roman",Georgia,Serif; padding-left: 10px;padding-right: 8px; }ul.feedMasherList span { display: inline; }.memailed, .mviewed { margin-left: -1px; margin-top: -14px; }.mviewed .feedMasherList li a { font-size: 15px; }.memailed .feedMasherList li a { font-size: 15px; }.feedSourcetitle { color: #9F9F9F; font-size: 11px; font-style: italic; }.featurePromo noHeadlineBGImage mviewed for1 .feedMasherList li a { font-size: 13px; }ul.tabModule li { padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-align: center; }ul.tabModule li:hover { text-decoration: none; padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-align: center; }.latest-article ul.feedMasherList li a { font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; }.latest-article ul.feedMasherList span { font-size: 12px; display: inline; color: #9f9f9f; font-weight: normal; }.latest-article .rssHeader { display: none; }.latest-article ul { margin-left: 6px; }.latest-body { border-left: 1px solid #979595; border-right: 1px solid #979595; }.latest-header { background-image:url("http://www.latimes.com/media/alternatethumbnails/blurb/2009-10/49851075-14114117.jpg"); background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #ffffff; font-weight: bold; font-size: 20px; padding: 6px; width: 336px; } .latest-footer { background-image:url("http://www.latimes.com/media/thumbnails/blurb/2009-10/49851075-14114117.jpg"); background-repeat:no-repeat;color: #ffffff; font-weight: bold; padding: 1px 4px 4px 0px; text-align: right; margin-top: -30px; } #latest-big { font-size: 18px; text-transform: uppercase; width: 336px; }#latest-small { font-size: 12px; text-transform: uppercase; padding-bottom: 2px; font-weight: normal; }The Latest | news as it happens Stocks fall on economy concerns - L.A. 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BREAKING - News as it happensENVELOPE - The awards insiderENTERTAINMENT - Hollywood news and buzzSPORTS - Alerts and scores .articlelevelpromo { border: 1px solid #BCB9B9; padding: 10px !important; } .articlelevelpromo h2.title { border-top: 0px !important; } Inside The Times 99 gift ideas for home and garden Book review: 'Decoded' by Jay-Z Shopping: Fashion goes noir L.A. at Home Virtual Holiday Craft Fair Enjoy more stories like this for only $1 a week. Click here to order The Times. USC takes this one down Victory Lane against UCLA Newfound bacterium casts life in a new light Umami: The burger of the year? Historic home tours, the holiday way Book review: 'America by Heart' by Sarah Palin More spotlights... Horoscopes LATMG Media Kit Events About Us Site Map Contact Us | Help Coastline Pilot Daily Pilot Huntington Beach Independent Valley Sun Burbank Leader News Press KTLA Hoy Brand X LA, Los Angeles Times Magazine ZAP2it Baltimore Sun Chicago Tribune Daily Press Hartford Courant Los Angeles Times Orlando Sentinel Sun Sentinel The Morning Call

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Google Acts to Demote Distasteful Web Sellers - New York Times

The change was prompted by an article in The New York Times on Sunday about Vitaly Borker, a Brooklyn-based online seller of eyeglasses. Mr. Borker claimed that he purposely shouted at and frightened some of the customers at DecorMyEyes.com because the online complaints actually worked in his favor in Google search results.

In essence, he claimed, Google’s search engine is unable to tell the difference between positive posts and withering online critiques. Therefore, the more complaints posted about Mr. Borker’s site, the more likely customers would be to find his store ranked high on a Google search, which yielded him more revenue.

In a blog posting titled “Being bad to your customers is bad for your business,” Google said that it had revised its algorithm so that it could detect Mr. Borker and “hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide extremely poor user experience.”

Google did not reveal how it had changed its algorithm, or how that change would affect online sellers like Mr. Borker. It simply said that the more it reveals about the changes it made, the easier it will be for unscrupulous sellers to game it.

“We can’t say for sure that no one will ever find a loophole in our ranking algorithms in the future,” Amit Singhal, a Google fellow, wrote on the blog post.

“We know that people will keep trying.”

With the changes, Mr. Borker has already had a harder time pushing DecorMyEyes to its previous high rankings on Google. The store once showed up on the first page of a search of “Christian Audigier” and “eyeglasses.” As of Wednesday night, it was not in the first 20 pages.

Mr. Singhal said that the change was made after the company read in The Times about the ordeal of Clarabelle Rodriguez, who bought a pair of glasses and contact lenses from DecorMyEyes in July.

When she tried to return the frames and get a refund, Mr. Borker (using one of his favorite pseudonyms, Tony Russo) commenced a campaign of phone and e-mail harassment.

That included threats of litigation and chilling statements like “You put your hand in fire. Now it’s time to get burned.”

He also sent a photograph of the front of her apartment building, and in a separate e-mail wrote “I AM WATCHING YOU.”

Ms. Rodriguez went to the police several times and on Oct. 27, Mr. Borker was arrested and charged with aggravated harassment and stalking.

He is set to be arraigned on Dec. 22.

The Internet is rife with consumer complaints about DecorMyEyes, and even the quickest search of the store’s name yields dozens of outraged testimonials.

In July, Ms. Rodriguez’s search used only the brand name of the glasses she wanted. DecorMyEyes was at the top of Google’s main search page.

“We were horrified to read about Ms. Rodriguez’s dreadful experience,” Mr. Singhal wrote in the blog post. “Even though our initial analysis pointed to this being an edge case and not a widespread problem in our search results, we immediately convened a team that looked carefully at the issue.”

Exactly how Mr. Borker wound up so high in Google searches has been a matter of online debate. His theory is that the great mass of grievances on all those highly regarded consumer complaint sites were the key to his success.

Google cast doubt on that idea, saying that consumer complaint sites typically include special coding along with the mentions to the companies in question so that such links do not count in the companies’ favor in search results.

At the blog Search Engine Land, Byrne Hobart also wrote in a recent posting that the review-generating strategy was not the driver of Mr. Borker’s success. His analysis found that Mr. Borker benefited chiefly from various “black-hat tricks” to improve his site’s standing, including links from what he called auto-generated spam pages. He also found that the store was frequently linked to by mainstream media sites — The Times included — when references were made to high-end eyeglasses.

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Mixed Reaction to FCC Internet Plan - New York Times

WASHINGTON — The plan from the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission to ensure an open and neutral Internet drew mixed reviews on Wednesday from consumer advocates and Internet service providers, presenting the agency with an uncertain way forward as it considers new broadband regulation.

The proposal, by Julius Genachowski, would forbid both wired and wireless Internet service providers from blocking lawful content. It would also require broadband Internet service providers to give consumers basic information about how the companies manage their networks and would forbid discrimination in transmitting lawful content.

But it relies in part on a novel legal interpretation of how much authority the agency has over the Internet, one that some critics think is almost certain to invite Congressional opposition and court challenges. And it drew lukewarm support from one of the most important voices in the debate, Michael J. Copps, an F.C.C. commissioner, who has advocated stricter regulation and whose vote the chairman will need in order to get an order approved by a majority vote of the five-member commission.

“It’s no secret that I am looking for the strongest protections we can get to preserve an open Internet, built on the most secure legal foundation, so we don’t find ourselves in court every other month,” Mr. Copps said. Noting that this is only the beginning of discussion about the proposal, which is likely to change before it becomes final, Mr. Copps added: “At issue is who will control access to the online experiences of consumers — consumers themselves or Big Phone and Big Cable gatekeepers.”

The proposal received strong support from prominent venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, and there was both praise and complaint among companies that would be affected. The wireless phone company Sprint said that it “commends the F.C.C. for the careful and deliberate approach it has taken on this issue.”

Verizon, the nation’s largest wireless phone company, was less impressed. Thomas J. Tauke, a Verizon executive vice president said, “The F.C.C.’s authority to act in this area is uncertain, and Congress has indicated a strong interest in addressing this issue.” Mr. Tauke said any new rules should be temporary, which would “encourage Congressional action, while showing appropriate deference to Congress.”

In aiming to enforce the nondiscrimination and no-blocking rules, which together make up a concept known as net neutrality, Mr. Genachowski is wading back into an area where a federal appeals court said in April that the agency has limited authority.

Because broadband service is classified as a loosely regulated information service, the F.C.C. had to prove that any regulation of it supported an expressly designated power of the agency, something that the court said the F.C.C. had failed to do.

Now, Mr. Genachowski thinks he has found a way around the court’s ruling, according to a senior F.C.C. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the chairman’s proposal was subject to change.

The official said that the proposal relied in part on what is known as the F.C.C.’s Section 706 authority, which requires that the commission report to Congress each year whether broadband service is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely manner, and if not, to take steps to make it so.

In July, after the commission issued its National Broadband Plan, it cited that report’s finding that roughly 14 million Americans do not have broadband Internet service as evidence that broadband is not being adequately deployed.

Therefore, the official said, it is within the F.C.C.’s power to take steps that will promote the spread of broadband. Putting so-called net neutrality rules in place would help ensure that content providers can reach Internet users, which will increase the output of Internet companies, thereby increasing demand for Internet services and increasing deployment of broadband service.

There are problems with that theory, said Aparna Sridhar, policy counsel for Free Press, a nonprofit group that supports net neutrality rules. Among them, the F.C.C. has to make a Section 706 report to Congress each year. That need for annual reconsideration might not provide the certainty that Internet companies need to encourage them to commit the capital to produce new innovations, she said.

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