I just found this item out from a mailing list I am subscribed to. It would appear that one of the House Appropriations Committees is about to drastically underfund the library services available to blind Americans, perhaps even leading to its effective closure.

Major Vulnerability Found in Diebold Election Machines

By Bruce Schneier

This is a big deal:

    Elections officials in several states are scrambling to understand and limit the risk from a "dangerous" security hole found in Diebold Election Systems Inc.'s ATM-like touch-screen voting machines.

http://tinyurl.com/...

Can running free software with an old Diebold voting machine yield valid, verifiable election results and save a city millions by avoiding a runoff election? It did for Burlington, Vermont.

The Northeast city last month combined a proprietary Diebold AccuVote machine and freely available ChoicePlus Pro code to produce publicly available election results. An instant runoff voting (IRV) program allowed city voters to pick a mayor in one trip to the ballot box, without the expensive runoff election often required in local, multi-candidate races where no candidate gets a majority on the first ballot.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/...

For those of you who like to travel via Greyhound, here is a gentle word of warning: Greyhound's policy is to charge a 15% penalty if you attempt to cash-in any unused tickets.

I've been travelling Greyhound for 25 years now, and this is the first I've heard of this. It's a nice little racket--for every 7 refunds, they make the equivalent of a full fare, and have to provide absolutely NO service, to boot.

Ian H

Iraq war resister Jeremy Hinzman, formerly of the 82nd Airborne, has been in Canada since January of 2004. He has applied for refugee status in Canada on the basis that he will be persecuted if he is forced to return to the United States.

The Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) denied his claim for refugee status, whereupon Mr. Hinzman appealed to the Federal Court of Canada.  The Federal court has now given Mr. Hinzman leave to appeal, thus opening up an avenue for the IRB's decision to be overturned.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told France's Finance Minister Thierry Breton the United States has "lost control" of its budget deficit, the French minister said Saturday.

"'We have lost control,' that was his expression," Breton told reporters after a bilateral meeting with Greenspan.

"The United States has lost control of their budget at a time when racking up deficits has been authorized without any control (from Congress)," Breton said.

http://www.tinyurl.com/bz6e5

It's one thing for the Democrats, progressives and assorted media pundits to say it, but when Greenspan says it, it's gotta hurt.

Even the most ardent Republican supporter is gonna wince at this one.