Please help save Haiti's internet operations - URGENT

mbw

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Monday January 18, 2010 · 9:34 AM PST

2010/01/18 · 09:34

It's been so long since I even used this account, but, as newcomers can see, my user ID is pretty low. I've run into road-block after road-block on this holiday weekend - Doesn't Congress know that emergencies never take a holiday.

I've started emailing all of my political contacts, and to save time and energy, I'm going to cut and paste some of the text from one I just sent to Joe Trippi:

Hello, Joe, sorry for using FB, but I'm trying every option I have, especially with the holiday and the Hill being shut down.

The short of it is, my spouse, who is the Chief Technical Officer of one of the original ICANN registries, has been working around the clock to keep the Internet working in Haiti.

(Continued after the jump)

mbw

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Tuesday January 01, 2008 · 6:26 AM PST

2008/01/01 · 06:26

In 2004, I was co-convenor for the largest caucus in the Northeast: Portland, Maine. A convenor, for the non-caucus-goers among us, is the person who, prior to and during the event, runs the caucus. Each precinct also has a convenor, and those convenors all were trained by, and reported to me. I held this position solely because I was a member of the Democratic City Committee's four-person executive board (de facto three-person at the time,) and the other two members were organizing the rally/candidate forum which preceded the caucus. Frankly, I had never attended a caucus before.

I'd like to share some of that experience, and some thoughts on Thursday's Iowa caucuses.

mbw

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Friday June 29, 2007 · 10:33 AM PDT

2007/06/29 · 10:33

The marriage of two former Interior Department appointees, Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles and Solicitor and Deputy Chief of Staff Sue Ellen Wooldridge made headlines last spring, as it occurred three days after Griles entered into a plea agreement with Wooldridge's most recent employer, the Department of Justice. Talking heads abound suggested that it was an attempt by Griles, who had once been Wooldridge's boss, to protect himself from further prosecution by envoking spousal privilege.

mbw

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Tuesday June 19, 2007 · 4:32 PM PDT

2007/06/19 · 16:32

I've been following the Wyoming GOP central committee meeting all day, as the 71 members whittled the field of 31 applicants first down to ten, then five, then the final three.

Now why would I, an American Indian gal from Maine, do such a thing?

Because I already knew who was going to be the top dog, and wasn't any of the names tossed around in the immediate wake of Senator Craig Thomas' death two weeks ago. In fact, I speculated as much that very day at my home blog.

Poll

102 votes Show Results

Who should Freudenthal chose to replace Thomas?

102 votes Vote Now!

Who should Freudenthal chose to replace Thomas?

Tom Sansonetti

32 votes

John Barrasso

8 votes

Cythnia Lummis

31 votes

None... The process is unconstitutional and he should reject it.

31 votes

SoCal trust mismanagement and the USA purge: Related?

mbw

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Wednesday April 11, 2007 · 8:30 AM PDT

2007/04/11 · 08:30

I ran across this article on Indianz.com yesterday, and then decided to do some extra digging.

Probe: Local Indian Affairs office troubled
Woes highlighted in 1992 audit persist today
Diana Marrero
Desert Sun Washington Bureau
April 10, 2007

The Bureau of Indian Affairs in Palm Springs, which manages millions of dollars in commercial leases for Indian landowners in the area, continues to be plagued with problems found in an audit 15 years ago, documents show.

The local agency was the subject of a recent investigation by an internal auditor who found the office had not yet implemented all recommendations made in a 1992 audit report that found serious deficiencies in the agency's handling of leases.

Management problems at the BIA are costing members of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians untold amounts of money because of delays on lease agreements, overdue payments and the failure to assess proper annual rent increases, documents show.

mbw

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Wednesday April 04, 2007 · 8:23 AM PDT

2007/04/04 · 08:23

Central to a great deal of the malfeasance which has occurred at the Interior Department over the past six-plus years is the question of unpaid or underpaid royalties by extraction industry leasees on federal and Indian land. While mostly shuffled under the bed by the previous Republican Congresses, the issue gained greater scrutiny just last week, when the House Committee on Natural Resources called witnesses, including former MMS investigator-turned-whistleblower, Bobby Maxwell. Maxwell recently prevailed in a multi-million dollar case against oil and gas giant Kerr-McKee, which Maxwell filed as a private citizen when his superiors at Interior refused to address the issue. He was fired after filing the suit.

mbw

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday April 03, 2007 · 8:56 AM PDT

2007/04/03 · 08:56

My friend Dengre emailed me yesterday, asking if I'd read the latest CREW announcement on my favorite criminal subject, Italia Federici. Seeing that we'd spent Sunday travelling from Mojave NP back to the coast at Malibu, and then Monday running errands all day, I'd missed it. Bad me.

mbw

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Thursday March 29, 2007 · 11:22 PM PDT

2007/03/29 · 23:22

Acting Associate Attorney General of the Department of Justice, William Mercer, testified before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee today when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refused to appear and answer questions relating to a proposal on Tribal Trust "reform"; specifically, a letter with his name on it, offering a $7 billion dollar "settlement" for all claims, past, current and future, from both individuals and tribes, as well as monies to deal with "fractionation" and updated computer systems.

A little background on William Mercer. He is acting (not yet confirmed) Associate General for DoJ, the number three man. He has also, since 2001, held the position of U.S. Attorney for the state of Montana, recommended for the position by former Senator Conrad Burns. He had never testified before the Committee on this subject.

mbw

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Thursday January 18, 2007 · 7:04 AM PST

2007/01/18 · 07:04

When the going gets tough, Republicans drop even their bestest friends like a lump of burning coal:

Lobbying Firm Cuts Ties to Name Partner Under Investigation in Abramoff Probe
Jason McLure
Legal Times
January 18, 2007

Lobbying firm Lundquist, Nethercutt & Griles has severed ties with former Department of the Interior Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles.

Griles has been targeted in the Justice Department's ongoing corruption probe stemming from the lobbying activities of Jack Abramoff.

(More after the jump.)

mbw

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday January 16, 2007 · 2:55 PM PST

2007/01/16 · 14:55

Last week, I wrote this diary on the news that former Deputy Secretary of the Interior J. Stephen Griles had received a letter from the Justice Department indicating he was a target of an investigation, and may well be indicted, we assume, for false statements he made while under oath before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. The gist of that false testimony was that Griles was not in contact with Jack Abramoff and had not provided assistance for Abramoff's tribal clients within the Interior (which oversees federal Indian tribes.)

The real shocker was the news that Department of Justice lawyer, and former Interior Solicitor and Counselor to Secretary Gale Norton, Sue Ellen Wooldridge, was also being investigated by the grand jury, and thus had submitted her resignation. The cherry on the cake? Wooldridge and Griles are romantically involved.

This morning, the New York Times posted a detailed story on the Director of the Mineral Management Service, Rejane "Johnnie" Burton, who, it seems, may soon be leaving Interior in order to spend more time with her lawyer.

mbw

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Friday January 12, 2007 · 8:43 AM PST

2007/01/12 · 08:43

Two days ago, LeftWingNut posted a diary which informed dKos readers that former Deputy Secretary of the Interior J. Steven Griles had received a target letter from the Justice Department, indicating he might be soon indicted for lying about his relationship with the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff (see WaPo1, WaPo2, or NYTimes for details.) I was rather surprised to see the diary slide off the page with only a few comments, as this may be the first breach of the dam in the biggest corruption scandal Washington has seen in many years.

mbw

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Monday November 20, 2006 · 8:59 PM PST

2006/11/20 · 20:59

My spouse doesn't have a dKos account. He did once, but sometime back before the switch to Scoop, he pissed off Kos enough with his anti-Dean rants (for Pres that is, we love him as DNC Chair) that Kos banned him. He was okay with that, as he wasn't much of a blogger anyway.

But then he started for fill in for me at Wampum when I ran for the Maine Leg in 2004, and the blogging bug bit pretty bad. He's been writing over there ever since, often on military matters (as a Vietnam-era Navy vet, having grown up at the Naval Post Graduate School (where his mom taught until retiring recently.)) A few hours ago, he wrote something I thought deserved a much greater audience than our pre-Koufax-period pulls, so am using my daily diary to do just that. It's rather short, but sweet. His words, below the jump.

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Please help save Haiti's internet operations - URGENT

Some thoughts from a former Caucus Convenor...

Griles & Wooldridge: A marriage made by Cheney?

Wyoming Senate: The three GOP names are in...

SoCal trust mismanagement and the USA purge: Related?

Gravely ill judge reverses himself on Whistleblower case...

Another DoJ "target letter": Could this take down the GOP money-machine?

Senator Tester catches the DoJ's #3 man just making [censored] up.

The Impending Griles Indictment: Cheney's Energy Tzar dumps Griles

The Impending Griles Indictment: Johnnie Burton in legal trouble too?

The pending Griles indictment: It's bigger than you think.

Not by draft alone, but by deed