"Schwarzenegger hires [Democrat/CFR/Bohemian Grove member] Warren Buffett as chief financial advisor for Gubernatorial run."

A former Energy Department intelligence chief who agreed with the White House claim that Iraq had reconstituted its defunct nuclear-arms program was awarded a total of $20,500 in bonuses during the build-up to the war, WorldNetDaily has learned.

Thomas Rider, as acting director of Energy's intelligence office, overruled senior intelligence officers on his staff in voting for the position at a National Foreign Intelligence Board meeting at CIA headquarters last September.

His officers argued at a pre-briefing at Energy headquarters that there was no hard evidence to support the alarming Iraq nuclear charge, and asked to join State Department's dissenting opinion, Energy officials say.

Rider ordered them to "shut up and sit down," according to sources familiar with the meeting.

As a result, State was the intelligence community's lone dissenter in the key National Intelligence Estimate . . .

A government report that urges the U.S. Postal Service to create "smart stamps" to track the identity of people who send mail is eliciting concern from privacy advocates.

The report, released last month by the President's Commission on the U.S. Postal Service, issued . . . [o]ne recommendation . . . that the USPS "aggressively pursue" the development of a so-called intelligent mail system.

Though details remain sketchy, an intelligent mail system would involve using barcodes or special stamps, identifying, at a minimum, the sender, the destination and the class of mail. . . The report proposes a broad expansion of the concept to all mail for national security purposes. It also suggests USPS work with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to develop the system.
[...]
USPS already has been investigating intelligent mail technology for at least two years.
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The commission that released the report is overseen by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and was established by an executive order from President Bush last year. It’s led by Harry Pearce, chairman of Hughes Electronics, a subsidiary of General Motors, and James Johnson, vice chairman of Perseus, an investment banking firm.

Major high-tech companies, including Canon, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Pitney Bowes, Symbol Technologies and Stamps.com, are pushing the Postal Service to adopt intelligent mail systems. . . .

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has hired a former drug smuggler to help create a 13-state anti-terrorism network being launched with $4 million in Justice Department funding.

Millionaire Hank Asher of Boca Raton, a friend of recently retired FDLE director James "Tim" Moore and a major political contributor, was never charged with drug smuggling. He served as an informant and witness after being implicated in a Bahamian drug ring in the 1980s.
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Matrix, short for Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange, is a pilot project intended to improve the exchange of information among federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.

The participating states are: Alabama, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Ohio, and Utah.
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Documents filed by prosecutors in Chicago identified Asher as a pilot and former smuggler who lived on Great Harbor Cay in the Bahamas. FDLE files say informants described Asher as someone who provided police protection for Bahamian smugglers. . . .

Hot-trouble for pro-N.K. politicos of the former and current regimes in South Korea.

Hard-breaking articles in the South Korean press here and here

The Virginia State Board of Elections had a seemingly simple task before it: Certify an upgrade to the state's electronic voting machines. But with a recent report by Johns Hopkins University computer scientists warning that the system's software could easily be hacked into and election results tampered with, the once perfunctory vote now seemed to carry the weight of democracy and the people's trust along with it.

An outside consultant assured the three-member panel recently that the report was nonsense.

"I hope you're right," Chairman Michael G. Brown said, taking a leap of faith and approving Diebold Election System's upgrades. "Because when they get ready to hang the three of us in effigy, you won't be here." . . .

CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering) is calling for a worldwide boycott of Gillette products since the company failed to renounce a Gillette Mach3 "smart shelf" spy system.

"We have corroborated evidence that a Gillette 'smart shelf' fitted with radio frequency identification (RFID) devices can sense when packages are removed from a store shelf and, in response, take pictures of consumers handling them," says CASPIAN founder and director Katherine Albrecht. "Tracking and photographing consumers without their knowledge and consent is unacceptable."
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A copy of the open letter, evidence of Gillette smart shelf trials and pictures of tagged products are available at the group's new boycott Gillette web site: http://www.boycottgillette.com. . . .

Facing increasing resistance and concerns about privacy, the United States' largest food companies and retailers will try to win consumer approval for radio identification devices by portraying the technology as an essential tool for keeping the nation's food supply safe from terrorists.

The companies are banding together and through an industry association are lobbying to have the Department of Homeland Security designate radio frequency identification, or RFID, as an antiterrorism technology.

In addition, they are asking members of Congress and other influential figures to portray RFID in a favorable light.
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The Auto-ID Center, an RFID consortium, presented its technology to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge in Washington, D.C., last year. In fact, many Auto-ID Center sponsors consider Ridge's blessing to be key to public acceptance. An internal presentation by Fleishman-Hillard, the powerhouse PR firm that advises the center, lists Ridge as a "top-tier opinion leader." And the minutes (PDF) of another meeting, attended by a representative of the Department of Defense, records a group statement that the technology will catch on "when the government mandates it for homeland security reasons." . . .

Dr. David Kelly—the biological warfare weapons specialist at the heart of the continuing political crisis for the British government—had links to three other top microbiologists whose deaths have left unanswered questions.

The 59-year-old British scientist was involved with ultra secret work at Israel’s Institute for Biological Research. Israeli sources claim Kelly met institute scientists several times in London in the past two years.
[...]
The two American scientists he had worked with were Benito Que, 52, and Don Wiley, 57. Both microbiologists had been engaged in DNA sequencing that could provide “a genetic marker based on genetic profiling.” The research could play an important role in developing weaponized pathogens to hit selected groups of humans—identifying them by race. Two years ago, both men were found dead, in circumstances never fully explained. . .

On Friday, a Memphis federal jury acquitted FedEx pilot Vernice Kuglin of six counts of felony Tax Evasion and Willful Failure to File tax returns.

Ms. Kuglin's attorneys, Tax Honesty Movement barristers Larry Becraft and Robert G. Bernhoft, told reporters that Kuglin was indicted seven months ago and had refused to plead the case out for a lesser sentence. During her testimony Kuglin testified that since 1995, she had sent numerous letters to the IRS requesting that they inform her of what law required her to pay the Individual Income Tax. To this day, she has not received an answer.

At 1:30 Friday afternoon, the jury returned not guilty verdicts on all counts.

After the jury had been excused the U.S. Attorney reportedly demanded that the Judge order the defendant to file her forms, pay her taxes and obey the law. The Judge reportedly replied "Sir, I don't work for the IRS."

The case is: U.S. District Court, Western District of Tennessee (Memphis) # 03-CR-20111, USA v. Kuglin.