The National Guard Deployment - S2 Mile Marker Mystery Tour - follow-on #3

National Guard and U.S. Border Patrol have their effective, yet separate tasks. Image Credit: The Washington Times

The National Guard Deployment - S2 Mile Marker Mystery Tour - follow-on #3

With the vote of congress to fund 370 miles of fence and 500 miles of road barriers notwithstanding, the deployment of the National Guard becomes a "counter-chip" on the table to the "underground railroad" efforts that are in play around our southern border.

The calculation and mission of the deployment, however, is not really instructed to help dismantle the underground railroad efforts of groups aligned to help with the successful crossings of the people they are trying to detect.

Humane Borders, motivated by faith, offers humanitarian assistance to those in need through more than 70 emergency water stations on and near the U.S.-Mexican border. Image Credit: Humane Borders

These group efforts include the Government of Mexico supported - Grupo Beta (described here at MAXINE, as Mexican-Spanish for 'plan-b', in that 'plan-a', a working economy and culture in Mexico, doesn't seem to be panning out), Border Angels (a U.S. based 'open-borders' socialist organization - see website), Humane Borders (a faith-based illegal alien 'humane' aid organization), and aid stations placed on land managed by and with the permission of the U.S. National Park Service; the Bureau of Land Management; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.; and various State Government agencies of States along the southern border (including, I suspect, the aid stations along 15 miles of San Diego County Road S2).

"Migrants don't know who we are, they are afraid of us," Enrique Morones (Founder - Border Angels) said. For that reason he makes regular visits to Casa Migrante in Tijuana, a shelter for men who have attempted to cross the border and were caught and those waiting to cross. He tells the men about the water stations and he asks if they have seen them. "They say yes but they think it's a trap and won't go near," Morones said. In an effort to reassure those crossing, a small wooden cross is secured to each rescue station. "The reason for the cross is because most migrants are Catholic and they may feel safe using and drinking the water," Morones said. Caption Credit: Vida en al Valle - Image Credit: La Prensa-SanDiego

This excerpted and edited from The Washington Times -

Standing guardBy Jerry Seper - THE WASHINGTON TIMES - August 13, 2006 - NOGALES, Ariz.
Sgt. Steven W. Jacobs of the Virginia National Guard, one of thousands of guardsmen from 30 states deployed along the southwest border with Mexico, says he arrived here with "no idea" of how vulnerable America is.

"I believe 95 percent of the people in this country have no clue of what it's like down here," says Sgt. Jacobs, a bear of a man with a vise-grip handshake. "I know I had no idea how many people come over this border every day and the weird things they do to get across.

"They'll do anything to get into the United States, often coming over with just the clothes on their back," he says. "And it's not just here; this happens all along the border. I was very surprised at what I saw when we first arrived, but I am here to protect my country, and I will stay as long as they need me."

Sgt. Jacobs, who lives in Fort A.P. Hill, Va., is among 350 Virginia National Guard soldiers and airmen deployed along the border as part of "Operation Jump Start." President Bush's $760 million plan calls for National Guard troops to be sent over the next two years to the U.S.-Mexico border from California to Texas. The goal: allowing the U.S. Border Patrol to move more agents into frontline positions.

Sgt. Jacobs and Spc. Jessica Jessee, also of Fort A.P. Hill, are assigned to an entry-identification team responsible for a popular corridor for illegal immigration along the border just west of here.

Members of the team work 24 hours on and 24 hours off to fight this invasion of illegal aliens while facing temperatures that rise above 100 degrees, fearsome thunderstorms that send rivers of water down nearby gullies and swarms of always-present flies.

Using binoculars, night-vision equipment and global positioning systems, the team seeks to spot anyone trying to enter the country illegally and to report their position to the Border Patrol. About a third of the National Guard force is assigned to entry-identification teams.

"It's a long, hard shift, but we have been very successful," Spc. Jessee says. "We do the best we can to keep tabs on what is going on in our area, and the Border Patrol has responded quickly to our calls."
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On the hilltops just south of the border, Mexican spotters train equally sophisticated equipment on the Guard, directing smugglers of aliens and drugs to safer areas.

"They've got their own spotters watching us, trying to catch us when we're not looking," Sgt. Jacobs says.
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'Significant dent'

Alien smugglers, he says, sometimes send people along the border to see how the Guard troops react and how quickly the Border Patrol responds. But he says his team has put a "significant dent" in the number of aliens crossing into his sector, with the daily count dropping from 150 to fewer than 20.
Watches all along the border have reported similar declines since the National Guard's arrival, says Border Patrol Chief David V. Aguilar, who notes that last week apprehensions were down by 45 percent since the start of Operation Jump Start.
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Operation Jump Start was designed to free up Border Patrol agents for expanded enforcement duties along the 1,951-mile southwest border.

National Guard troops are building roads and fences, adding cameras and sensors, conducting aerial reconnaissance and providing medical aid and communications support. Guard troops also perform administrative duties, gather intelligence from border cameras for agents to act on, assist at highway checkpoints, serve on entry-identification teams and work as mechanics at Border Patrol stations, repairing well-worn trucks and cars.

The operation is expected to give the Border Patrol time to recruit and train 6,000 new agents to bring its field strength to 17,000.
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"Probably the biggest thing we bring in terms of numbers and capability to the game are the additional eyes and ears of the initial-entry teams," Gen. Blum says. Border Patrol agents, he says, gain "greater situational awareness of what is going on in places where they could not go, or could not see, or could not hear what was happening before."
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Trooping to border
In May, Mr. Bush sent Congress a request for $1.94 billion in emergency funding for border security. Besides money to pay for 6,000 new Border Patrol agents over the next two years, the president sought $770 million for the temporary deployment of 6,000 National Guard troops.

Thirty of the 54 states and territories with National Guard units have sent troops to the border, where they are quartered in motels and hotels. Maryland sent 120 National Guard troops to Arizona for 60 days earlier this month.

Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Ralph Basham, who oversees the Border Patrol, says the National Guard met the president's commitment of 6,000 troops by currently deploying 6,199 soldiers and airmen on the border. The troops are "forward deployed," he says, meaning they directly support the Border Patrol through surveillance, intelligence gathering, entry identification, engineering and other duties.

"The deployment of the National Guard has made a powerful impact on the security of our southern border," Mr. Basham says. "Fewer people are crossing our border, and this decline far exceeds any changes in border crossing due to seasonal migration patterns.
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Although the troops are not involved directly in law enforcement, Mr. Basham says their presence led to the apprehension of 2,296 illegal aliens and the seizure of 64 vehicles, 14,496 pounds of marijuana and 220 pound of cocaine. The agency is "on track" to meet Mr. Bush's objective of doubling the number of Border Patrol agents by the end of 2008, he says.

The National Guard's priority target is Arizona, though troops are deployed along the border from California to Texas. The Arizona-Mexico border is the nation's most heavily traveled corridor for illegal immigration, accounting last year for about half of the 1.15 million illegal aliens detained nationwide. It also is a major drug-smuggling route into the United States.

'Eye-opening' service

All of the 6,199 Guard troops stationed in the border states volunteered for the mission. Among them is Spc. Travis Arnold of the Wisconsin National Guard, who also served a year in Iraq. He says he plans to help secure the border for two years.

"This certainly has been an eye-opening experience," Spc. Arnold says. "Immigration is not a huge issue in Wisconsin. It was the sheer number of people coming over that border that surprised me the most. I had no idea how many people jump that fence every day."
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'Glad to be here'
Maj. Fay Ludens, a National Guard spokeswoman, says the troops "are glad to be here."

"Nobody is here who didn't want to be here," says Maj. Ludens, a member of the South Dakota National Guard who retires this month after 23 years. "I think we have all learned a lot about the Border Patrol and how the Border Patrol and the National Guard can work together.

"This call-out was a way for us to do something in the United States, helping our own."
Border Patrol spokesman Sean King says the Guard's presence in Nogales alone enabled that field office to free up 40 agents for enforcement duties along the border, a 10 percent staffing increase per shift. The increased manpower, he says, allows the office to put agents in areas "not now patrolled."
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Gen. Blum, the Guard's bureau chief, describes Operation Jump Start as a law-enforcement operation rather than a military one. He says the Guard's role is to provide military support to civilian law enforcement, as directed by the president and the secretary of defense.

"We are not doing Border Patrol law-enforcement work," Gen. Blum says during a press conference in Washington. "We're doing everything else that other badge-carrying Border Patrol people used to have to do. We are replacing them so that they can get badges back to the border."
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All efforts to secure our borders and have others respect our national sovereignty are appreciated, no doubt.

It would make a little more sense, however, to try and dismantle some of the infrastructure that has been put in place (supported by the efforts of Governmental and individual groups listed above) over the last decade to allow successful illegal immigration to take place.

At the very least, the efforts of our Government to support successful illegal immigration should stop if we are willing to put up fences and deploy our military in an effort to stop illegal immigration and secure our borders.

Bourdais matches Allmendinger Point By Point

Sebastien Bourdais receives the Bridgestone Pole Award from Al Speyer - Photo Credit: Lesley Ann Miller, USA LAT Photographic - Copyright © 2006 Champ Car World Series, LLC.

It wasn't as if AJ didn't try to grab the pole. In the morning practice session, he scrubbed a wall and had to have repairs made to his car.

In qualifying, Tracy was the first one to post a competitive time. After that, Bourdais grabbed the pole then came along Allmendinger, but that time wasn't to remain.

Excerpts from CCWS -

CHAMP CAR WORLD SERIES POINTS LEADER SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS TAKES GRAND PRIX OF DENVER POLE WTH NEW TRACK RECORD
by Eric Mauk - CCWS

DENVER(August 12, 2006) - The Grand Prix of Denver Sponsored by Bridgestone has been the private playground of Newman/Haas Racing over the last four years as the Illinois-based team has won in each of its last three starts in Denver, winning two of those races from the Bridgestone Pole Position.

Things were no different on a cloudy Saturday in the Mile High City as NHR star Sebastien Bourdais (#1 McDonald's Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) used a dominant performance to earn his sixth Bridgestone Pole Position by setting a new track record around Denver's 1.657-mile street circuit. Bourdais needed just three laps to assume the pole, seemingly put it out of reach on his sixth pass, then cemented himself in the top spot with a new circuit standard of 59.096 seconds (100.941 mph) on his 15th and final lap of the day.

The pole was the sixth of the year for the Bridgestone Presents The Champ Car World Series Powered by Ford points leader and the 24th of his four-year series career. It is his second Denver pole and the third in four years for the Newman/Haas squad, the other coming courtesy of Bruno Junqueira (#2 Hole In The Wall Camps Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) in 2003. The pole win also gave Bourdais another championship point, widening his series lead to 32 over second-placed Justin Wilson (#9 CDW Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone).

Bourdais will be joined in the front row by first-round qualifying leader A.J. Allmendinger (#7 Indeck Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone), who was one of the few drivers to use the standard Bridgestone Potenzas in posting his top qualifying time., Allmendinger put up his best time on the regular Bridgestone tires, stopping the clocks at 59.350 seconds (100.509 mph) on his sixth trip around the Denver course. His Forsythe Championship Racing squad bolted on his last set of red-walled Potenzas for a second stint, but the Californian settled for second after being unable to run down the streaking Bourdais.

Wilson ended up third on the day, vaulting into the top three on his second set of tires, getting around the nine-turn layout in 59.878 seconds (99.623 mph). He took the third spot ahead of 2005 polesitter Paul Tracy (#3 Indeck Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) and Alex Tagliani (#15 Aussie Vineyards Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone), who were the only other drivers in the field to break the one-minute mark in final qualifying.

Tracy rebounded from an incident in first-round qualifying to snare the fourth position on the grid, carding a time of 59.903 seconds (99.581 mph). The Canadian star was one of the first drivers on track when the emerald banner waved over Saturday's final round of qualifying and held the pole briefly after posting his best time on his sixth orbit of the Denver track. But despite the fact that he used each of his 15 qualifying laps for one of the few times all year, he was unable to improve on his second stint.

Team Australia's Tagliani earned his best starting position of the year after a lap of 59.919 seconds (99.554 mph) netted him the last spot in the top five. The veteran had never started better than seventh in any of his previous four Denver starts, and his top-five grid position is his first since the 2005 Molson Grand Prix of Toronto.

Bourdais had already scored a time that would have been good enough to score the pole on his sixth lap, but the Frenchman decided that in this case, valor would trump discretion as he rolled off Pit Lane to protect his lead. He was moved to do so when Allmendinger bolted on the red-walled Potenzas for his final stint, but while the young American was unable to lower his time, Bourdais shaved more time off his best effort, establishing what will now stand as the Denver track record.

The end of the session did yield some excitement as spots six through 10 all changed hands in the waning moments. Sophomore Andrew Ranger (#27 MSR Houston Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) matched a season-best by taking the sixth spot on the grid, dropping Oriol Servia (#6 Gulfstream Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) and Mario Dominguez (#19 Sonny's Bar-B-Q Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) to eighth and ninth respectively, after the two veterans posted their best times of the day on their 15th and final laps of the day. Junqueira jumped into the seventh spot between Ranger and Servia while Nelson Philippe (#4 CTE Racing - HVM Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) rounded out the top 10.

The Champ Car rookie contingent struggled on the tricky Denver layout as the six members of the class of 2006 will all grid in the last three rows for Sunday's event. Roshfrans Rookie-of-the-Year points leader Will Power (#5 Aussie Vineyards Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) showed the way, and will start 11th after posting a time of 60.405 seconds (98.753 mph).
The fifth running of the Grand Prix of Denver Sponsored by Bridgestone will take place tomorrow, with 97 laps of racing beginning at 1:45 local time. The race can be seen live nationwide on SPEED, and fans can also follow all of the action via the Race Director feature on the official website of the Champ Car World Series, www.champcar.ws. Fans can see highlights from the first two rounds of qualifying for the Bridgestone Pole Position on SPEED tonight, in a 30-minute show that airs at 9 p.m. Eastern Time.
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AJ Allmendinger Continues To Run At The Front In Denver

AJ Allmendinger - Photo credit: Lesley Ann Miller, USA LAT Photographic - Copyright © 2006 Champ Car World Series, LLC.

Ya' don't say ... hey, AJ, you're at it again!

First session qualifying in Denver added to the historic rise of AJ Allmendinger in this year's drive toward the CCWS championship.

It was only a few weeks ago when AJ, with little or no points, was fired by RuSPORT and picked up as a teammate to Paul Tracy at Forsythe Racing. Since then, Allmendinger has piled up points in bunches to come within 45 points of the two-time CCWS champion, Sebastien Bourdais.

Yesterday, AJ gained another point, by besting Bourdais by .049 seconds (.079 mph). By being fast on the first day, AJ guarantees himself a spot on the front row (again) for Sunday's race through the streets of Denver.

Excerpts from Champ Car World Series -

A.J. ALLMENDINGER FRONTS FIRST-DAY CHAMP CAR WORLD SERIES QUALIFYING AT GRAND PRIX OF DENVER SPONSORED BY BRIDGESTONE
CCWS - Friday, August 11, 2006

DENVER (August 11, 2006) - Looking to get back to his winning ways and keep his title hopes alive, Forsythe Championship Racing's A.J. Allmendinger (#7 Indeck Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) got on top early and cemented his status late to lead first-round Champ Car qualifying at the Grand Prix of Denver Sponsored by Bridgestone.

Allmendinger made a quick early lap around the 1.657-mile Denver street course to get to the top of the time charts, then strapped on his red-walled alternate Bridgestone Potenzas to turn an even-faster lap, allowing him to take the top spot in Friday's qualifying for Round 10 of the Bridgestone Presents The Champ Car World Series Powered by Ford.

Concerned with avoiding traffic on the tight street course as well as outracing an ominous cloud bank that threatened to douse the Denver course, competitors rolled off Pit Lane as son as the green flag flew on the session, going against standard protocol that sees the veterans wait while the younger drivers cut the first laps.

But rain and traffic were the least of the worries in the session as a pair of early red flags thwarted early runs. Allmendinger rocketed to the top of the speed sheets early, getting in a fast lap of 60.725 on his last orbit prior to the first red flag, which was brought out by his teammate Paul Tracy (#3 Indeck Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone). Last year's polesitter in Denver, Tracy bounced into the Turn Five fence after sliding through the corner, incurring damage to his rear wing that would end his session after just four laps.
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Justin Wilson (#9 CDW Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) was the first to make a move once the green flag wave, moving from fourth to third and then to second on three successive laps. The run ended there as two-time defending Denver champion Sebastien Bourdais (#1 McDonald's Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) turned his best lap of the day, swooping into the second slot with a time of 60.763 seconds (98.172 mph) on his sixth lap.

Allmendinger answered Bourdais' challenge by lowering his top time to 60.714 seconds (98.251 mph), but it turned out to be a gain just for gain's sake as Bourdais would be unable to post a lap quick enough to top either of Allmendinger's top two times. Bourdais made three more laps to try to unseat the American star, before calling it a day with three minutes left on the clock.

The final battle on the day was for the final spot on the qualifying podium as Wilson saw his third-place berth wrested away from him by Team Australia's Alex Tagliani (#15 Aussie Vineyards Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) with two minutes left in the session. Tagliani carded a quick time of 60.988 seconds (97.809 mph) to drop Wilson back to fourth, but Wilson had one more shot to fire. The Brit, who is second in the championship points, ran his best lap of the day in trying to reclaim third, but came up a scant .003 seconds short and would end his day in the fourth position.
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The final grid for Sunday's Champ Car World Series event will be set by final qualifying in a session that gets underway at 2 p.m. Mountain time [today].
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Practice 3 UPDATE:

Sebastien Bourdais nabs quickest time away from Paul Tracy by .283 seconds. AJ brushes the wall and will require a fix to the front suspension arms. One more practice and then qualifying begins.

GM, E85, & Bonneville: The Corn Is Going To Grow Tall ... In Utah

After setting a new land speed record in the 2.0-liter (G)/Blown Gas Lakester class at 179.381 mph in October 2004, GM, in a ongoing effort to develop its Ecotec “crate” motor, will race the Lakester again at this year’s Bonneville National Speed Week—August 13-19. Image Credit: SO-CAL SPEED SHOP, POMONA, CA (July 20, 2005)

Ahhhh, speed week at the flats!

The place where more land speed records have been set, broken, and re-set than any other place in the world.

Auto drama and performance on display at the 58th meeting in Bonneville and a new record hope is being planned by General Motors.

This time, the stars are a cool retro car named the Ecotec Lakester and a fuel mix known as E85. Some corn (along with some records) is goin'a get popped before the week is through.

Excerpts from Paddock Talk -

GM Returns To Bonneville Salt Flats Looking To Finish What It Started With E85 Ethanol
Posted on Paddock Talk by: ASkyler on Aug 08, 2006 - 04:13 PM

With anticipation at a near-fever pitch, GM Performance Division returns to the historic Bonneville Salt Flats this week, intent on making up for lost time and focused on becoming the first team to set a record using E85 ethanol.

After only two days of speed trials last August, a violent storm swept through northern Utah , leaving standing water on the immense natural speedway and causing officials to cancel the final four days of the event. Until that point, GM Performance Division had set just one record in the G/BGL class (G Class/Blown Gas Lakester) with its Ecotec Lakester, which makes 2006 a redemption year of sorts for the team.

“The rain-shortened schedule prevented us from achieving the goals we set for all our entries last year, but we still gained valuable experience, which will certainly carry over to next week,” said GM Performance Division executive Al Oppenheiser, whose team heads up GM’s efforts at Bonneville . “We have some unfinished business to take care of out at Bonneville.”

Highlighting GM’s vehicle lineup at this year’s 58th Annual Speed Week event on Aug. 12-18 is a Chevrolet Cobalt SS race car engineered in part by three female students, which will attempt to set records using both E85 ethanol and gasoline in the G/FCC (G Class/Unblown Fuel Competition Coupe) and G/GCC (G Class/Unblown Gas Competition Coupe) classes, respectively.

If the Student Project Cobalt SS is successful, it will be the first vehicle to set a record at Bonneville using E85, according to the group that sanctions Speed Week, the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA).

“E85 burns cooler and has a higher octane rating (108) than gasoline, which allows for increased power,” said Oppenheiser. “It’s essentially an environmentally friendly racing fuel, and with GM being a flex fuel vehicle leader, it only makes sense that GM Performance Division would expand that leadership by attempting to set the first E85 record at Bonneville.”

Rounding out the GM vehicle lineup for 2006 are three vehicles built in partnership with So-Cal Speed Shop – the radically redesigned 2006 Chevy So-Cal HHR, the Chevy So-Cal Cobalt SS race car and the Ecotec Lakester, which set a 189.205 mph speed record in the G/BGL class last year and is a modern-day replica of the famous So-Cal belly tank Lakester.
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The Ecotec Lakester will again try to up the ante and best its own record in the G/BGL class at this year’s event, but this time, it’s 200 mph or bust for driver Mark Dickens.

“We know the car is capable of setting a 200-plus record, and we really won’t be satisfied unless we achieve that goal this year,” said Dickens. “Last year, we made a pass at 203 mph, so now it’s just a matter of actually putting it into the record book.”

The Bonneville Salt Flats has been the home of speed since the first organized trials were conducted there in 1914. It’s a speedway like no other; hand-crafted by Mother Nature and made of crystallized salt that stretches to the horizon. The grassroots racing environment is very demanding with a “run what you brung” mentality that’s distinctly American, and a deep foundation of tradition permeates the senses.

This year, GM Performance Division will provide regular updates on its record progress to the GM FYI Blog (fyi.gmblogs.com), giving visitors an inside look at the Bonneville experience.
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“We consider the Ecotec engine to be this century’s small-block V-8 of four-cylinder engines,” said Oppenheiser, referencing the iconic Chevrolet V-8 engine introduced more than 50 years ago. “Highly adaptable and interchangeable, the Ecotec is extremely robust and provides racers with a great way to field an inexpensive, highly competitive race car. Plus, it’s very hard to argue against an engine that keeps winning races and setting records as much as the Ecotec.”

And ultimately, Bonneville is about just that, setting records. Given the four vehicles GM Performance Division is bringing to the Salt for 2006, there’s no reason to walk across the state line into Nevada and bet against them, unless you have inside information from Mother Nature.
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2006 Chevrolet So-Cal HHR, So-Cal Cobalt SS, Cobalt SS. Image Credit: General Motors

E85 - From California Dreamin' to Golden State Joke

GM EV1 - World's most energy efficient production vehicle is also, by necessity , the ideal platform for advanced vehicle technology development as illustrated by cutaway showing host of new technologies it incorporates. Image Credit: General Motors

California --- land of milk and honey, designer agriculture, Sequoias, Hollywood, "from the desert to the sea", "Silicon Valley", the sixth largest economy in the world, and car-cars-cars.

One would think that since our state has such a "cutting edge" image throughout the Planet that we would be getting our arms around this issue of vegetable matter fuels --- E85. But NooOOOOoo, California, "The Golden State", currently has only four (4) fuel stations that offer a "FlexFuel" option (where E85 Ethanol fuel mix can be purchased) and only one (1) of the stations is open to the public (the other three are for use with U.S. Government vehicles and/or employees).

This glaring failure isn't because California hasn't tried in its efforts to bring alternative energy sources and cleaner air to the State, but more a matter of intent, application, and taxes. The government can not get out of its own way.

Excerpts from The Wall Street Journal via the Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh, PA.) -

How California failed in efforts to curb oil addiction
By Jeffrey Ball, The Wall Street Journal - Wednesday, August 02, 2006

OAKLAND, Calif. -- In a government parking lot by the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, California is about to launch its latest attempt to get cars to run on something other than oil.

Chevron Corp., the California-based oil giant, plans to install a small tank here soon with enough corn-based ethanol to power about 35 General Motors Corp. cars capable of burning both ethanol and gasoline. California, the nation's biggest auto market, has about 10,000 gas stations. This will be its fifth ethanol pump.

For a quarter century, California has pursued petroleum-free transportation more doggedly than any other place in the U.S. It has tried to jump-start alternative fuels ranging from methanol to natural gas to electricity to hydrogen. None has hit the road in any significant way. Today, the state that is the world's sixth-largest economy finds itself in the same spot as most of the planet: With $75-a-barrel oil, and increasing concern about the role fossil fuels are playing in global warming, 99 percent of its cars and trucks still run on petroleum products.

At a time when President Bush is advocating alternative fuels, particularly ethanol, as an antidote to what he calls America's "addiction" to oil, California's experience offers a reality check. Perfected over a century, gasoline is convenient, reliable, and, even at current prices, relatively affordable. Challengers start with big disadvantages: inadequate infrastructure, their own performance problems, and higher costs. Moving alternative fuels into the mainstream would require hard political and economic choices -- choices that even California hasn't been willing to make.

California launched its alternative-fuel drive as an energy-diversification effort following the 1979 global oil shock. When oil prices fell back, the state shifted its emphasis to fighting air pollution. Since then, California has rolled out mandates and subsidies for alternative-fuel demonstrations along with broader rules forcing the oil and auto industries to clean up their conventional fuels and internal-combustion engines. The assumption was that the one-two policy punch would induce the industries to shift away from oil.

But the market hasn't responded the way California intended. The oil and auto industries got the state to kill or water down the alternative-fuel mandates, arguing that making the technologies viable would require big public subsidies -- something most Californians didn't support. Meanwhile, the industries made their conventional products clean enough to meet the state's pollution limits.

The upshot: The alternative-fuel push has helped scrub California's air, but it has done so by forcing improvements in fossil fuels and the cars that burn them. It hasn't curbed California's oil consumption, because it hasn't meaningfully deployed alternative fuels.

California's experience shows that there are "somewhat viable types of alternative fuels available out there in the event that somebody wanted to move towards them," says James Boyd, who has been pushing for oil alternatives for more than two decades as a California environmental and energy regulator. Though politicians since Richard Nixon have called for diversifying America's energy mix, he says, "we've never had a serious effort."
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Oil and auto companies say they're justified in resisting government mandates to roll out alternative technologies when they're not convinced consumers will buy them. Donald Paul, Chevron's chief technology officer, says California regulators essentially tell industry officials, "We know what the answer is. You guys just spend the money and everything will work fine." He adds, "History has not shown that that works very well."
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The question today is whether the resurgence of high oil prices and the rise of global-warming concerns will give alternative fuels sustained backing. Already, ethanol, the brew now generating the biggest buzz, is hitting many of the same roadblocks that slowed California's past alternative-fuel attempts.

GM and Chevron are bickering over the ethanol demonstration project that is set to include the pump in Oakland and one near Sacramento. It's a chicken-or-egg dispute. GM, which for years has been building "flexible-fuel" vehicles that can burn ethanol but typically don't, wants Chevron to install a lot of ethanol pumps. Chevron, which estimates that installing a single ethanol pump and related equipment costs more than $200,000, wants to go slow to make sure first that consumers will buy the fuel.

When California started searching for potential petroleum alternatives following the 1979 oil shock, it concluded that methanol was particularly promising. The alcohol already was being made for industrial use. And it was derived from natural gas, which was cheap and was believed to be domestically plentiful.

The state began experimenting with a handful of 1979 Honda Civics that had been converted to run on gasoline mixed with up to 15 percent methanol. The idea was to use the methanol to make the gasoline go farther -- "Hamburger Helper," as state officials called it.

Soon California ratcheted up its experiment to include several hundred Ford Escorts that had been tweaked to run on a blend of 15 percent gasoline and 85 percent methanol, or M85. The state installed 18 methanol pumps at gas stations near state offices, divided up the cars into fleets, and told state employees to give them a whirl.

Operational problems soon arose, in part because alcohol fuels like methanol contain less energy than gasoline. The Escorts went only about 60 percent as far on a tank of fuel as their gasoline counterparts.
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In the late 1980s, the auto industry came up with a technology designed to solve such problems: a "flexible-fuel" vehicle, able to run on either straight gasoline or an alternative fuel, which at the time was a blend of up to 85 percent methanol.

Legislation worked out in Washington gave auto makers a big incentive to crank out flexible-fuel vehicles. In 1988, with the support of California officials, Congress passed a law giving auto makers extra credit under the nation's fuel-economy standards for every such vehicle the companies built. The credits allowed the auto makers to build thirstier conventional vehicles. But they didn't require that the buyers of the flexible-fuel vehicles actually use an alternative fuel. Most of them filled up with gasoline.

That was rational at a time when global oil prices were once again falling. In California, alternative-fuel proponents shifted to a priority that had more enduring political support: cleaning up the state's notoriously dirty urban air.
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California continued to search for oil alternatives. In 1990, as California regulators were putting the finishing touches on new clean-air rules, GM unveiled at the Los Angeles auto show a bubble-shaped car that ran on electricity and thus emitted no pollution. It was called the Impact.

State officials were enthralled. The California Air Resources Board, the state's clean-air cop, mandated that 10 percent of all new cars sold in California be "zero-emission vehicles" by 2003.

Meanwhile, California told its investor-owned utilities to do what they could to encourage the rollout of both electric and natural-gas-powered cars. The utilities were eager for the potential new market that the alternative-fuel cars presented. By the early 1990s, they were spending tens of millions of dollars each year installing natural-gas fueling stations around the state and testing new technology for natural-gas and electric vehicles. They applied to state regulators for permission to pass along those costs to customers through higher rates.

The oil industry formed a coalition that sent letters to commission members and legislators opposing what it dubbed a "hidden tax" to subsidize alternative fuels. The California Public Utilities commission ruled that, while utilities might be able to spend ratepayers' money to roll out alternative fuels in the utilities' own fleets, they couldn't spend that money to try to commercialize alternative fuels more broadly.

As a result, California utilities closed or sold 54 natural-gas stations that they had installed for customers' fleets, says Brian Stokes, manager of clean-air transportation for PG&E Corp.'s Pacific Gas & Electric Co., a big California utility. They also stopped subsidizing customers' purchases of electric and natural-gas vehicles. Though natural-gas and electric-charging stations still exist throughout California, and PG&E is working to promote their expanded use, the state's decision severely impeded their growth, he says. "To the extent that policy could have provided a sustainable market, it was nipped in the bud," he says.
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The auto industry also opposed the electric-car mandate, arguing that the California measure was forcing a technology that wasn't road-ready.

In response, California officials repeatedly softened the rule. They ended up letting the industry comply largely with a compromise technology: hybrid cars. Hybrids have an electric motor and batteries, but instead of having to be plugged into a socket for their power, their batteries are recharged continuously during normal driving -- driving that still requires a conventional engine under the hood. Hybrids have lower emissions and get better mileage than conventional cars, but they still burn fossil fuel.

Yet the auto industry protested the move toward hybrids too. In 2001, GM sued California to block the zero-emission vehicle rule. Its suit, later joined by DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler unit, argued that by shifting their focus from electric cars to gasoline-burning hybrids, California regulators had turned their clean-air rule into a veiled attempt to improve fuel economy. And fuel economy, the auto companies noted, is something only the federal government has the legal power to regulate.

GM and Chrysler later dropped their suit when California officials further softened their rule.
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Around 2000, a series of gasoline-price jumps hit California. State officials ordered a study of whether oil companies were gouging drivers at the pump. The study concluded the jumps were due not to gouging, but to market forces: Global demand for oil was growing faster than global supply. A follow-up report called for California to cut its oil use 15 percent by 2020, in part by using more ethanol and other "biofuels."

That marked a turning point in California's energy agenda. No longer was the state's goal simply to reduce the pollution produced when fossil fuel is burned. Now, as in 1979, it was to reduce the amount of fossil fuel burned in the first place.

Since then, oil companies have helped quash efforts in the California Legislature to codify that oil-use-reduction target into law.
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Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who met Monday with British Prime Minister Tony Blair to discuss ways to reduce global-warming emissions, says he supports the oil-use-reduction goal. "I think it's a good idea," the former body builder said in a recent interview, likening it to a dieter's resolution. "If I don't say that I want to lose 10 pounds by summer, it's not going to happen by itself." He added, "Of course the fat in your body is screaming, 'Don't attack me. I love myself.' So the oil companies are screaming, 'This is terrible.' "
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For years, gasoline in parts of the country with particular smog problems has contained 10 percent ethanol, the result of a federal rule ordering refiners to put an oxygen-rich additive in the gasoline they sell in those areas to help curb pollution. Yet studies show that while ethanol added to gasoline in low concentrations helps reduce certain emissions, such as carbon monoxide, it tends to increase some other emissions. In particular, it raises the gasoline's "vapor pressure," leading more gasoline fumes to seep out of a car's fuel system. California effectively restricts ethanol concentrations in its gasoline to 6 percent.
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Early this year, GM launched an advertising campaign to tout the use of the corn-based fuel in those vehicles. Its tagline: "Live green. Go yellow."

Last fall, GM approached Alan Lloyd, then secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, and proposed an ethanol demonstration. Mr. Lloyd suggested involving Chevron, since it is based in the state. In discussions that followed, Chevron officials "wanted a very limited number" of ethanol stations, and GM wanted more, Mr. Lloyd says.

David Barthmuss, a GM spokesman, confirms that account. "Until oil companies see there's money to be made in ethanol, they're going to lobby for petroleum," he says. "E85 is asking them to give up 85 percent of what they make." He says GM hopes to persuade Chevron and other oil companies that if they put in E85 pumps, the auto industry will build the vehicles to make those pumps profitable.

Chevron recently announced a new business unit that will focus on trying to make ethanol and other biofuels viable. But Chevron's Mr. Paul says the company has learned from California's history not to rush into potential oil alternatives. "If you're going to roll out a very large infrastructure and put what could be a lot of money into it, you don't want something that you're going to have to throw away," he says.

Today there's just one E85 station in California that is open to the public. It sits beside a highway interchange in San Diego. It was opened three years ago by Pearson Ford, a San Diego Ford dealer that was convinced alternative fuels would be the next big thing. The station offers gasoline and diesel, natural gas, propane, electricity, biodiesel and E85.

What it sells, though, is mostly gasoline and diesel. On a recent morning, it was offering E85 for $3.10 a gallon, about 6 percent less than the $3.30 per gallon it was charging for regular gasoline. But, because a gallon of E85 contains about 25 percent less energy than a gallon of gasoline, the E85 actually cost more per mile. Only a handful of cars pulled up to the E85 pump.

"I would like nothing better than to turn all my pumps over to alternative fuels," says Mike Lewis, the station's co-owner. "But I'm not willing to carry the alternative-fuel flag into bankruptcy."
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Naveed Afzal Haq - A Bigger Story Than Mel Gibson

The Seattle shooter who killed one woman and shot five other women in their stomachs after declaring he was a "Muslim-American" who was "angry at Israel" has been charged with nine felony counts including murder, hate crimes, and kidnapping.

Here, at MAXINE, we happen to think the news this week about this terrorist and murderer is far more important news than Mel Gibson getting charged with drunk driving and public intoxication.

Basically, the cartoon and posts at Cox and Forkum say it all when it comes to the "Seattle Shooter":

HT: Michelle Malkin

Of RFID Chips, E-Passports, Hackers, & Clones

Grunwald placed the passport on top of the RFID reader and within four seconds the data on the RFID chip embedded in the passport appeared on the screen in the Golden Reader Tool template. New e-passports come with a metallic jacket to prevent someone from surreptitiously "skimming," or reading the data on the chip from afar. To allow authorities to read the data on the RFID passport chip, the passport owner must remove the document from the shield before passing it over the RFID reader. Data retrieved from an RFID passport chip gets dumped into the Golden Reader Tool template where passport authorities can examine it. Here, Grunwald has typed in random data, and a photo was taken from the internet to show how the tool works. Photo Credit: Kim Zetter

The Department of Homeland Security's agenda for streamlining the passport issuance and reading process is not without its problems.

The new RFID (radio frequency identification) enabled passports due to be issued later this year, has had it critics and most people believe that this technology used with this application is not a good idea >>> Symblogogy: Proximity Passport Perception Problems Persist (July 26, 2006).

To be honest, if information can be stored and read from an RFID chip, the information can be hacked, manipulated and used for no good.

Excerpts from Wired News -

Hackers Clone E-Passports
By Kim Zetter - Wired News - 02:00 AM Aug, 03, 2006

LAS VEGAS -- A German computer security consultant has shown that he can clone the electronic passports that the United States and other countries are beginning to distribute this year.

The controversial e-passports contain radio frequency ID, or RFID, chips that the U.S. State Department and others say will help thwart document forgery. But Lukas Grunwald, a security consultant with DN-Systems in Germany and an RFID expert, says the data in the chips is easy to copy.

"The whole passport design is totally brain damaged," Grunwald says. "From my point of view all of these RFID passports are a huge waste of money. They're not increasing security at all."

Grunwald plans to demonstrate the cloning technique Thursday at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

The United States has led the charge for global e-passports because authorities say the chip, which is digitally signed by the issuing country, will help them distinguish between official documents and forged ones. The United States plans to begin issuing e-passports to U.S. citizens beginning in October. Germany has already started issuing the documents.

Although countries have talked about encrypting data that's stored on passport chips, this would require that a complicated infrastructure be built first, so currently the data is not encrypted.

"And of course if you can read the data, you can clone the data and put it in a new tag," Grunwald says.

The cloning news is confirmation for many e-passport critics that RFID chips won't make the documents more secure.

"Either this guy is incredible or this technology is unbelievably stupid," says Gus Hosein, a visiting fellow in information systems at the London School of Economics and Political Science and senior fellow at Privacy International, a U.K.-based group that opposes the use of RFID chips in passports.
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Grunwald says it took him only two weeks to figure out how to clone the passport chip. Most of that time he spent reading the standards for e-passports that are posted on a website for the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations body that developed the standard. He tested the attack on a new European Union German passport, but the method would work on any country's e-passport, since all of them will be adhering to the same ICAO standard.

In a demonstration for Wired News, Grunwald placed his passport on top of an official passport-inspection RFID reader used for border control. He obtained the reader by ordering it from the maker -- Walluf, Germany-based ACG Identification Technologies -- but says someone could easily make their own for about $200 just by adding an antenna to a standard RFID reader.

He then launched a program that border patrol stations use to read the passports -- called Golden Reader Tool and made by secunet Security Networks -- and within four seconds, the data from the passport chip appeared on screen in the Golden Reader template.

Grunwald then prepared a sample blank passport page embedded with an RFID tag by placing it on the reader -- which can also act as a writer -- and burning in the ICAO layout, so that the basic structure of the chip matched that of an official passport.

As the final step, he used a program that he and a partner designed two years ago, called RFDump, to program the new chip with the copied information.

The result was a blank document that looks, to electronic passport readers, like the original passport.
Although he can clone the tag, Grunwald says it's not possible, as far as he can tell, to change data on the chip, such as the name or birth date, without being detected. That's because the passport uses cryptographic hashes to authenticate the data.

When he was done, he went on to clone the same passport data onto an ordinary smartcard -- such as the kind used by corporations for access keys -- after formatting the card's chip to the ICAO standard. He then showed how he could trick a reader into reading the cloned chip instead of a passport chip by placing the smartcard inside the passport between the reader and the passport chip. Because the reader is designed to read only one chip at a time, it read the chip nearest to it -- in the smartcard -- rather than the one embedded in the passport.
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Frank Moss, deputy assistant secretary of state for passport services at the State Department, says that designers of the e-passport have long known that the chips can be cloned and that other security safeguards in the passport design -- such as a digital photograph of the passport holder embedded in the data page -- would still prevent someone from using a forged or modified passport to gain entry into the United States and other countries.

"What this person has done is neither unexpected nor really all that remarkable," Moss says. "(T)he chip is not in and of itself a silver bullet.... It's an additional means of verifying that the person who is carrying the passport is the person to whom that passport was issued by the relevant government."

Moss also said that the United States has no plans to use fully automated inspection systems; therefore, a physical inspection of the passport against the data stored on the RFID chip would catch any discrepancies between the two.
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In addition to the danger of counterfeiting, Grunwald says that the ability to tamper with e-passports opens up the possibility that someone could write corrupt data to the passport RFID tag that would crash an unprepared inspection system, or even introduce malicious code into the backend border-screening computers. This would work, however, only if the backend system suffers from the kind of built-in software vulnerabilities that have made other systems so receptive to viruses and Trojan-horse attacks.
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Grunwald's technique requires a counterfeiter to have physical possession of the original passport for a time. A forger could not surreptitiously clone a passport in a traveler's pocket or purse because of a built-in privacy feature called Basic Access Control that requires officials to unlock a passport's RFID chip before reading it. The chip can only be unlocked with a unique key derived from the machine-readable data printed on the passport's page.

To produce a clone, Grunwald has to program his copycat chip to answer to the key printed on the new passport. Alternatively, he can program the clone to dispense with Basic Access Control, which is an optional feature in the specification.

Grunwald's isn't the only research on e-passport problems circulating at Black Hat. Kevin Mahaffey and John Hering of Flexilis released a video Wednesday demonstrating that a privacy feature slated for the new passports may not work as designed.
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In addition to cloning passport chips, Grunwald has been able to clone RFID ticket cards used by students at universities to buy cafeteria meals and add money to the balance on the cards.
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Many of the card systems that did use encryption failed to change the default key that manufacturers program into the access card system before shipping, or they used sample keys that the manufacturer includes in instructions sent with the cards. Grunwald and his partners created a dictionary database of all the sample keys they found in such literature (much of which they found accidentally published on purchasers' websites) to conduct what's known as a dictionary attack. When attacking a new access card system, their RFDump program would search the list until it found the key that unlocked a card's encryption.

"I was really surprised we were able to open about 75 percent of all the cards we collected," he says.
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RFID may sound like a good idea for automating the process of identification through our nation's checkpoints, but when it comes to the internal security of our country and the protection of our identity ... this just isn't the same application process as a "Mobil Speedpass" or a freeway tollway access payment verification.

Typical, the federal government remains clueless to the real issues that surround the application of this proximity technology.

As in real estate (location, location, location) the axiom for the implementation of a new technology is "application, application, application!"

Consistancy Reins In The Senate - A Funded Fence

A view of the well-lighted fence at the U.S.-Mexican border is seen from San Ysidro section of San Diego, with the Mexican city of Tijuana in the background. Image Credit: Associated Press

After voting back in May to erect some of the border fencing needed to begin to secure the border between Mexico and the U.S., the Senate, yesterday, voted to fund 370 miles of border fencing and 500 miles of road impediment barriers.

This is just a start, but it is a step in the right direction.

Now, the last time the Senate voted on this issue (July 13, 2006), they placed a requirement to discuss this issue with the government of Mexico. We have funded the fence, but do we have the approval of the Mexican Government? Do they get to decide where the fence is installed? They may have a special request not to erect the fence and road barriers on existing and established "underground railroad" border crossing routes.

Excerpts from the Washington Insider -

Senate votes to fund the fence
By Stephen Dinan and Brian DeBose - THE WASHINGTON TIMES - August 3, 2006

The Senate did an abrupt about-face yesterday, voting overwhelmingly to begin paying for 370 miles of fencing and 500 miles of vehicle barriers on the U.S.-Mexico border, just three weeks after voting against the same spending.

The amendment's sponsor said senators were so embarrassed by that July 13 vote that most felt they had to reverse course and vote for it this time -- especially after so many were on record in May voting to build the fence in the first place. The amendment, which provides nearly $2 billion for the project, passed 94-3, with 66 senators switching from "no" to "yes" votes since last month.

"I think people wanted to get right," said Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican. "People heard from their constituents after they voted to authorize the fence in May and then voted against funding it a couple of weeks ago."

The fence has become one of the flash points as Congress and President Bush try to craft a new immigration enforcement policy this year piece by piece. Mr. Bush travels to Texas today to review operations at the border, including the success of his plan to deploy the National Guard to assist the U.S. Border Patrol in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

This week, the president reached his goal of assigning 6,000 Guard troops to the border states by Aug. 1. Still, of the 6,340 troops assigned as of yesterday, only 2,675 troops, or 42 percent, were "forward deployed." The rest are at joint task force headquarters, in training or in transit.

But the Guard's presence has led to a 25 percent drop in apprehensions at the border compared with the same time last year, suggesting the troops are having success in preventing illegal aliens from trying to cross.

That good news, though, was tempered by a government report that found Department of Homeland Security employees were fooled by counterfeit driver's licenses in nine different tests by undercover investigators at U.S. border crossings. The Government Accountability Office said that hole in security "potentially allows terrorists or others involved in criminal activity to pass freely into the United States from Canada or Mexico."
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At the White House, spokesman Tony Snow said the administration is still pushing for a broad bill and he sees headway on administration insistence that Congress pass a broad bill that includes a guest-worker program and a path to citizenship for illegal aliens.

"I think there's increasing awareness in both houses of Congress that that is the proper way to proceed," Mr. Snow said.

But House Republicans remain adamant about border security first, said Ron Bonjean, spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Illinois Republican.

He said Mr. Hastert, who toured the border two weeks ago, is pleased with the assistance the Border Patrol is getting, "but a lot more needs to be done. The speaker believes we need a broad, strong border security bill first before we can do anything else."
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Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who voted against the amendment three weeks ago, praised yesterday's vote, which came on an amendment to the defense appropriations bill. The Tennessee Republican called it a step toward fulfilling the commitment the Senate made in May but stressed that he remains committed to a broad immigration bill.

"Getting border security right, including building fences, is a key component to securing our homeland -- which also helps open the door to comprehensive immigration reform," he said.
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The three senators who voted against yesterday's fence amendment were Democrat Russ D. Feingold of Wisconsin, Republican Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and independent James M. Jeffords of Vermont.
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A "Gas" Choice For Mileage? ... Hint, Not Fiber-Based

A motorist uses a gauge to check air pressure in a tire. Image Credit: Associated Press

With the increase in fuel prices at the pump, many consumers are looking for alternatives and additives that might decrease the impact on one's wallet.

People have recommended FlexFuel automobiles that use petroleum based gasoline and can fill up with E85 ethanol (a fuel made from fiber and corn based chemical conversion). However, many have found that the strengths of this strategy lay primarily with the fact that our country would become less dependent on foreign sources of oil ... not increased mileage performance.

The single most reliable "Gas" change one can make may just be in how one chooses to inflate the tires on one's car.

It turns out that nitrogen gas, as opposed to the air we breathe, is a more stable substance to cushion our ride. Nitrogen is impacted less with the changes in tire/road temperatures, compression due to the addition of load weight (as in loading up the back of a pick-up truck), and can deliver an additional mile to two miles per gallon in the distance traveled.

The teams that operate race cars at NASCAR, IndyCar, and ChampCar have known about the beneficial and competitive properties of nitrogen gas for some time now.

Excerpts from AP via the Washington Times -

Nitrogen a gas for better mileage
By David Sharp - ASSOCIATED PRESS - August 1, 2006

TOPSHAM, Maine -- Many motorists seeking to improve their mileage as gas prices soar this summer are examining everything, right down to the air in their tires. And for a growing number, plain old air isn't good enough.
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Nitrogen has been used for years in the tires of race cars, large commercial trucks, aircraft and even the space shuttle.

But it is finding its way into the mainstream at a growing number of tire dealers, including Costco Wholesale Corp. and its Washington-area stores.

Nationwide, fewer than 10 percent of tire dealers offer nitrogen, but the number is growing, said Bob Ulrich, editor of Modern Tire Dealer magazine in Akron, Ohio. Most dealers charge $2 to $5 per tire for the nitrogen fill-up, he said. The dealers generally offer free lifetime refills.
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Skeptics will question how much can be gained by filling tires with pure nitrogen when air is 78 percent nitrogen.

The differences are subtle, but important, said Steve McGrath, Tire Warehouse's vice president of marketing in Keene, N.H.

Nitrogen molecules are bigger than oxygen molecules, so nitrogen seeps out more slowly from tires than air. Nitrogen also resists heat buildup better than air, which contains moisture, and it reduces oxidation, which can damage the tire from the inside out, proponents say. Nitrogen is an inert gas, so there are no safety or environmental issues.

Those advantages are important in vehicles equipped with tire pressure monitoring systems, which are sensitive to changes in tire pressure, Mr. McGrath said.

With or without nitrogen, proper inflation is the key to improving gas mileage. Motorists can improve gas mileage by 3.3 percent simply by keeping their tires properly inflated, according to the Department of Energy.
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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has no opinion on nitrogen, but it does encourage motorists to keep their tires properly inflated, both for safety and to boost gas mileage, said spokesman Rae Tyson. Severely underinflated tires are dangerous, especially for sport utility vehicles and light trucks.
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For Mr. Bourque, his tire pressure remains constant -- 40 pounds for his fully loaded truck -- even on hot days, when tire pressure normally fluctuates.

His gas mileage was about 19 mpg when he bought his 2005 Chevrolet Colorado. Now, with the engine broken in and new tires filled with nitrogen, he gets 20.5 to 22 mpg, depending on whether he runs the air conditioner, he said.

For tire dealers, the nitrogen generator and associated equipment typically run between $3,000 and $12,000, Mr. Ulrich said.

Marty Mailhot, manager of the Tire Warehouse in Topsham, Maine, said the idea is catching on with consumers, who are buying nitrogen for tires for cars, trucks, motor homes and lawn tractors. He has even tried it on footballs and inflatable tubes pulled behind boats.

He has a retort for those who pooh-pooh the notion of paying for nitrogen when there's plenty of free air for the taking.

"I say, 'Why are you drinking that bottled water when there's a pond out back?' " he said.
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Tiny "Designer Microbes" - A Greater Terror WMD

It has been five years since the first of the Anthrax terror scares where all of us were made aware of the effectiveness of bioterrorism.

Since then, a new technology has made it easier to genetically modify microbes and even create new ones from scratch. One doesn't even need living material to make up a batch of "designer microbes" that could wreak havoc and create emotional terror - the war effect we worry about from nuclear "dirty bombs", but much easier to make up and dispatch.

Excerpts from the Washington Post -

Custom-Built Pathogens Raise Bioterror Fears
By Joby Warrick - Washington Post Staff Writer - Monday, July 31, 2006; Page A01

STONY BROOK, N.Y. - Eckard Wimmer knows of a shortcut terrorists could someday use to get their hands on the lethal viruses that cause Ebola and smallpox. He knows it exceptionally well, because he discovered it himself.

In 2002, the German-born molecular geneticist startled the scientific world by creating the first live, fully artificial virus in the lab. It was a variation of the bug that causes polio, yet different from any virus known to nature. And Wimmer built it from scratch.

The virus was made wholly from nonliving parts, using equipment and chemicals on hand in Wimmer's small laboratory at the State University of New York here on Long Island. The most crucial part, the genetic code, was picked up for free on the Internet. Hundreds of tiny bits of viral DNA were purchased online, with final assembly in the lab.

Wimmer intended to sound a warning, to show that science had crossed a threshold into an era in which genetically altered and made-from-scratch germ weapons were feasible. But in the four years since, other scientists have made advances faster than Wimmer imagined possible. Government officials, and scientists such as Wimmer, are only beginning to grasp the implications.
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Five years ago, deadly anthrax attacks forced Americans to confront the suddenly real prospect of bioterrorism. Since then the Bush administration has poured billions of dollars into building a defensive wall of drugs, vaccines and special sensors that can detect dangerous pathogens. But already, technology is hurtling past it. While government scientists press their search for new drugs for old foes such as classic anthrax, a revolution in biology has ushered in an age of engineered microbes and novel ways to make them.
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"The biological weapons threat is multiplying and will do so regardless of the countermeasures we try to take," said Steven M. Block, a Stanford University biophysicist and former president of the Biophysical Society. "You can't stop it, any more than you can stop the progress of mankind. You just have to hope that your collective brainpower can muster more resources than your adversaries'."

The Bush administration has acknowledged the evolving threat, and last year it appointed a panel of scientists to begin a years-long study of the problem. It also is building a large and controversial lab in Frederick, where new bioterrorism threats can be studied and tested. But overall, specific responses have been few and slow.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declined so far to police the booming gene-synthesis industry, which churns out made-to-order DNA to sell to scientists. Oversight of controversial experiments remains voluntary and sporadic in many universities and private labs in the United States, and occurs even more rarely overseas.
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"There's a name for fixed defenses that can easily be outflanked: They are called Maginot lines," said Roger Brent, a California molecular biologist and former biodefense adviser to the Defense Department, referring to the elaborate but short-sighted network of border fortifications built by France after World War I to prevent future invasions by Germany.
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How to Make a Virus

Wimmer's artificial virus looks and behaves like its natural cousin -- but with a far reduced ability to maim or kill -- and could be used to make a safer polio vaccine. But it was Wimmer's techniques, not his aims, that sparked controversy when news of his achievement hit the scientific journals.

As the creator of the world's first "de novo" virus -- a human virus, at that -- Wimmer came under attack from other scientists who said his experiment was a dangerous stunt. He was accused of giving ideas to terrorists, or, even worse, of inviting a backlash that could result in new laws restricting scientific freedom.
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Wimmer's method starts with the virus's genetic blueprint, a code of instructions 7,441 characters long. Obtaining it is the easiest part: The entire code for poliovirus, and those for scores of other pathogens, is available for free on the Internet.

Armed with a printout of the code, Wimmer places an order with a U.S. company that manufactures custom-made snippets of DNA, called oglionucleotides. The DNA fragments arrive by mail in hundreds of tiny vials, enough to cover a lab table in one of Wimmer's three small research suites.

Using a kind of chemical epoxy, the scientist and his crew of graduate assistants begin the tedious task of fusing small snippets of DNA into larger fragments. Then they splice together the larger strands until the entire sequence is complete.

The final step is almost magical. The finished but lifeless DNA, placed in a broth of organic "juice" from mushed-up cells, begins making proteins. Spontaneously, it assembles the trappings of a working virus around itself.
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The technology envisions new species of microbes built from the bottom up: "living machines from off-the-shelf chemicals" to suit the needs of science, said Jonathan Tucker, a bioweapons expert with the Washington-based Center for Non-Proliferation Studies.

"It is possible to engineer living organisms the way people now engineer electronic circuits," Tucker said. In the future, he said, these microbes could produce cheap drugs, detect toxic chemicals, break down pollutants, repair defective genes, destroy cancer cells and generate hydrogen for fuel.

In less than five years, synthetic biology has gone from a kind of scientific parlor trick, useful for such things as creating glow-in-the-dark fish, to a cutting-edge bioscience with enormous commercial potential, said Eileen Choffnes, an expert on microbial threats with the National Academies' Institute of Medicine. "Now the technology can be even done at the lab bench in high school," she said.
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A Darker Side

In May, when 300 synthetic biologists gathered in California for the second national conference in the history of their new field, they found protesters waiting.

"Scientists creating new life forms cannot be allowed to act as judge and jury," Sue Mayer, a veterinary cell biologist and director of GeneWatch UK, said in a statement signed by 38 organizations.

Activists are not the only ones concerned about where new technology could lead. Numerous studies by normally staid panels of scientists and security experts have also warned about the consequences of abuse. An unclassified CIA study in 2003 titled "The Darker Bioweapons Future" warned of a potential for a "class of new, more virulent biological agents engineered to attack" specific targets. "The effects of some of these engineered biological agents could be worse than any disease known to man," the study said.
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"The capability of terrorists to embark on this path in the near- to mid-term is judged to be low," Charles E. Allen, chief intelligence officer for the Department of Homeland Security, said in testimony May 4 before a panel of the House Committee on Homeland Security. "Just because the technology is available doesn't mean terrorists can or will use it."

A far more likely source, Allen said, is a "lone wolf": a scientist or biological hacker working alone or in a small group, driven by ideology or perhaps personal demons. Many experts believe the anthrax attacks of 2001 were the work of just such a loner.
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A 2004 National Academy of Sciences report recommended that the committees take on a larger role in policing research that could lead to more powerful biological weapons.

In reality, many of these boards appear to exist only on paper. In 2004, the nonprofit Sunshine Project surveyed 390 such committees, asking for copies of minutes or notes from any meetings convened to evaluate research projects. Only 15 institutions earned high marks for showing full compliance with NIH guidelines, said Edward Hammond, who directed the survey. Nearly 200 others who responded had poor or missing records or none at all, he said. Some committees had never met.
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"We haven't yet absorbed the magnitude of this threat to national security," said O'Toole, who worries that the national commitment to biodefense is waning over time and the rise of natural threats such as pandemic flu. "It is true that pandemic flu is important, and we're not doing nearly enough, but I don't think pandemic flu could take down the United States of America. A campaign of moderate biological attacks could."
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Testosterone - Where There’s Money, There’s Doping

Floyd Landis at a news conference in Madrid. Image Credit: Jasper Juinen/Associated Press

Floyd Landis gave an interview and defended himself along with his Doctor stating that Testosterone is not a friend ... but an enemy to the bicycle racer's performance.

Further, Landis, through the statements of his lawyer, Luis Sanz, said he fully expected the backup test to come back with the same result, because the testosterone imbalance was produced naturally by his [Landis'] body.

What is at question here is the difference in levels between testosterone and epitestosterone that appear in the body. The blood testing showed an abnormal balance/ratio in the levels of testosterone/epitestosterone.

Excerpts from the New York Times -

Testosterone Seems to Be Enhancer of Choice
By JULIET MACUR – New York Times - Published: July 31, 2006

When a doping scandal shook the Tour de France on the eve of this year’s race, Floyd Landis climbed onto his bike, unscathed. When a doping investigation involved some of track and field’s most high-profile figures, the sprinter Justin Gatlin continued to compete, untouched.

But last week, Landis, the Tour de France winner, and Gatlin, who shares the world record in the 100 meters, were no longer on the outside looking in. They were ensnared in the net of drug testing, with the same substance, testosterone, at the center.

For some, last week’s news is a sign that doping controls have improved, but it may also be evidence that some athletes remain undeterred, tempted to break the rules by the promise of money and fame.

“Many more athletes are going to get caught, and it’s going to get ugly,” said Dr. Steven Ungerleider, an antidoping expert who wrote the book “Faust’s Gold: Inside the East German Doping Machine.” “I think people need to brace themselves for some darker clouds on the way here.”

Landis was found to have an illegally high ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone after his Stage 17 performance during the Tour, which moved him to third place in the standings from 11th and back into contention. If the results of his backup urine sample, which could be released as early as today, confirm the initial positive result, he will be stripped of his Tour de France title and face a two-year ban from the sport. If the result comes back negative, the doping charges will be dropped.

Gatlin, who also failed a drug test in 2001, may already face a lifetime ban. He tested positive for testosterone or its precursors on April 22, after the Kansas Relays, and announced the result Saturday.
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“When the smoke clears, I think we’ll all go back and look at what we’ve done to Floyd,” said Landis’s doctor, Brent Kay, in a teleconference Friday.
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In track and field, a host of athletes have tested positive for abnormal testosterone levels. The sprinter Dennis Mitchell, an Olympic gold medalist from the United States, tested positive for a high testosterone-to-epitestosterone, or T/E, ratio in 1998, claiming that alcohol and sex with his wife had caused the positive test. In 1997, the distance runner Mary Decker Slaney also tested positive for a high T/E ratio. Both athletes won on appeal, but an international panel overturned those decisions. They were barred from the sport for life.

But Kay could not see why a cyclist would take testosterone. He said it would make the rider slower because it is an anabolic steroid that builds muscle.
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Scientists like Dr. Donald H. Catlin, who runs the Olympic drug-testing laboratory at U.C.L.A., say that athletes might use testosterone to recover quicker. The former professional cyclist Jesús Manzano said he was given testosterone when he competed for the Kelme team, and said he immediately felt the positive effects.

In an essay in the Spanish sports newspaper AS on Saturday, Manzano wrote: “It gives you a lot of strength, and it works very well. It produces a euphoria.”

John Hoberman, a University of Texas professor who wrote the book “Testosterone Dreams: Rejuvenation, Aphrodisia, Doping,” said: “These people who are using it are probably doing what they thought was low dosing and thought they could probably get away with it. The idea that these are all clever people who are doing it right is erroneous.

“Some are doing it better than others. Some are using physicians. Some are using it on advice from another athlete.”
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Still, even Landis admitted that a dark cloud would remain over him and the sport. And Andy Rihs, Landis’s team owner and owner of the Swiss hearing-aid company Phonak, has agreed.

After so many of his riders have tested positive since the team’s inception two years ago, including the 2004 Olympic gold medalist Tyler Hamilton, Rihs announced last month that he would abandon his sponsorship of the team.

In an article in The Times of London last week, Rihs summed up the reason: “Where there’s money, there’s doping.”
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