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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Argentina's Congress criticized the United States on Wednesday over an alleged cover-up involving a cash-stuffed suitcase that U.S. prosecutors say was bound for President Cristina Fernandez's campaign. U.S. prosecutors say a Venezuelan-American man who brought $800,000 to Argentina for Fernandez's campaign was offered $2 million by Venezuelan agents to keep quiet and help cover up the source of the money. Fernandez describes herself as the victim of dirty politics by the U.S. intended to undermine Argentina's relationship with Venezuela. But the U.S. insists its prosecutors act independently and have pursued the case without influence from the...

Student loan holders logging on to an Education Department Web site between Sunday night and Tuesday morning exposed their personal identities to others as a result of a glitch in a contractor's efforts to service the site. As first reported in the Boston Globe Wednesday, as many as 21,000 borrowers in the Federal Direct Student Loan Program could have had their personal data, including Social Security numbers, birthdates and addresses, compromised in yet another government agency data breach. This incident follows a string of publicized breaches governmentwide, affecting information systems in more than a dozen federal agencies. Dallas-based Affiliated Computer...

6 shot, "revolver" type 40mm grenade launchers have been around for years. But the U.S. military has never adopted them, until now. The U.S. Marine Corps has, after several months of testing, issued these weapons to troops in Iraq. The MGL-140 40mm, six shot, grenade launcher is now called the M32. This weapon is, literally, a shotgun size revolver that fires standard American 40mm grenades. Thus it has a minimum range of 30 meters, and a maximum range of 400 meters. The weapon is 32 inches long, and weighs 13.2 pounds empty, and 20.3 pounds loaded (40mm rounds weigh about...

How radical Muslims masquerading as "moderates" are infiltrating our government, our military, our prisons, our schools -- and even the Department of Homeland Security Infiltration by Paul Sperry The most dangerous Muslim radicals won't be sneaking through our borders from the Middle East -- they're already here. That's the alarming message of Washington-based investigative reporter Paul Sperry's new book, Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington. Using access to classified documents as well as exclusive interviews with FBI agents, Customs officers, and military intelligence officials, Sperry reveals how the top levels of our government, armed forces and intelligence...

An abundance of sensational and irrational conjecture about the September 11 terrorist attacks is being used to discredit any consideration of conspiracy in general. "The truth is out there." So went the tagline of the popular TV sci-fi series, The X-Files. Sometimes it can seem that the truth is way "out there," as one tries to sift through the confusion of conflicting statements of government officials, mainstream media organizations, alternative media outlets, witnesses, experts, and so-called experts. This is certainly the case regarding the terrorist events of September 11, 2001. Of the four coordinated events — the two attacks on...

In 1987, after he was exonerated of corruption charges, former Secretary of Labor Raymond Donovan issued the classic plea of the wronged man: "Which office do I go to get my reputation back?" Whichever office it is, Ahmad Chalabi may want to apply there as well. The leader of the Iraqi National Congress has been the most unfairly maligned man on the planet in recent years. If you believe what you read, Chalabi is a con man, a crook and, depending on which day of the week it is, either an American or Iranian stooge. The most damning charge is...

Asbestos and Alar are only two of many instances where vast sums were spent on hypothetical risk while science was ignored. In the past we used our natural resources freely. We took great pride in our ability to convert resources into products with a direct benefit to the public. We turned trees into houses, coal and iron into automobiles. Today we hear that we must stop using our economic resources. Scale back! Harvest fewer trees. Drill fewer oil wells. Use less fertilizer. Build no new power plants. Encourage the government to buy back land it once offered to its people,...

Countless conservatives fear the quickening onset of judicial activism. Challenges that never would have passed the laugh test in days of yore are passing the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to find sympathy from our Supreme Court. We all remember Michael Newdow, aptly named “America’s least favorite atheist” by Time Magazine. The man had the hubris to charge that our Pledge of Allegiance was an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion, due to the inclusion of the phrase, “under God.” While it is unremarkable that a wannabe Perry Mason would allege anything to argue before our nation’s highest court, the...

Muqtedar Khan of the Brookings Institution has announced, in a recent article in the Daily Times of Lahore, the coming into existence on Dec. 13, 2004, of yet another organization of American Muslims claiming to be moderates. It does not lack for ambitions: “Now with the constitution of the American Muslim Group for Policy Planning, Moderate Muslims in America have a name and an address.” Unfortunately, in its initial form, the AMGPP does not at all appear to be moderate. Rather, it resembles the Progressive Muslim Union (which opened its virtual doors a month earlier, and which I have analyzed...

Missing RIAA figures shoot down "piracy" canard By Andrew Orlowski in San FranciscoPosted: 16/12/2002 at 20:15 GMT Research by George Zieman gives the true reason for falling CD sales: the major labels have slashed production by 25 per cent in the past two years, he argues. After keeping the figure rather quiet for two years, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) says the industry released around 27,000 titles in 2001, down from a peak of 38,900 in 1999. Since year-on-year unit sales have dropped a mere 10.3 per cent, it's clear that demand has held up extremely well: despite...

There is no evidence that Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) employees who charged Lin Drake of Cedar City, Utah, with violating the Endangered Species Act (ESA) ever heard this poem: “Yesterday upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today, I wish that man would go away.” Nonetheless, the poem encapsulates their case against Mr. Drake. For it was those employees who saw prairie dogs on Drake’s property, prairie dogs that were never there and that have, mysteriously, gone away. In January 1995, Drake bought property in nearby Enoch, Utah, intending to develop a...