Declassified MISC 16

Jeb · October 4, 2006

That DM 15 thread got so unbelievably long, that I realized it's high time to launch the new DM 16 news topic!

Rep. LaHood urges pause in page program

A close House ally of Speaker

Dennis Hastert called Wednesday for temporary suspension of the congressional page program amid the uproar over former Rep. Mark Foley's Internet exchanges with former teenage pages and Hastert's handling of the problem.

"People are very, very concerned" about daily disclosures concerning Foley's salacious messages, said Rep. Ray LaHood, saying the program should be shut down at least for awhile.

As Republicans grow increasingly nervous about their election prospects and Hastert tries to save his job in the face of criticism, the scandal dominates the 24-hour news media and the Internet blogosphere.

Asked by conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh Tuesday if he was going to step down, Hastert, R-Ill., replied, "I'm not going to do that."

Meanwhile, LaHood, who also is from Illinois, said that it's not the speaker who should go and said the page program should be shut down, at least temporarily.

He questioned an "antiquated" congressional page system that brings 15- and 16-year-olds to the Capitol and has resulted in scandals in the past.

"Some members betray their trust by taking advantage of them. We should not subject young men and women to this kind of activity, this kind of vulnerability," LaHood said in a CNN interview. He said the program should be shut down until problems can be resolved.

In another development Wednesday, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who's in line to become Republican leader in the Senate after the election, said the scandal could hurt House candidates in November. But McConnell also said he didn't expect it to have any impact on Senate races.

President Bush, speaking at a Stockton, Calif., elementary school on Tuesday, said he was disgusted by the Foley revelations and voiced support for Hastert.

"I know that he wants all the facts to come out," the president said.

Conservatives debated whether Hastert should resign over his handling of the controversy.

Activist Richard A. Viguerie called for Hastert to step down. "The fact that they just walked away from this, it sounds like they were trying to protect one of their own members rather than these young boys," Viguerie said on Fox News.

Yet the Christian Coalition said it was standing behind Hastert, and Arizona Republican Rep. John Shadegg circulated a "Dear Colleague" letter in support of Hastert, saying calls for the speaker to resign were "unwarranted and fundamentally unfair."

Hastert says he first heard details of the Foley matter last Friday when the story was breaking. The No. 2 House Republican, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, and House GOP campaign chair Rep. Tom Reynolds of New York said they had spoken with Hastert about a complaint concerning a former page from Louisiana last spring after being told about it by Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., who had sponsored the teen.

Hastert sought to blame Democrats for leaking sexually explicit computer instant messages between Foley and former pages from 2003.

"Democrats have ... put this thing forward to try to block us," Hastert told Limbaugh.

"It's absolutely not true," countered House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

ABC News, which first reported on initial online exchanges from Foley that were questionable but not graphic, says sexually explicit messages reported last Friday were provided by former pages after its initial report Thursday.

ABC News said Tuesday it had obtained additional instant messages.

"Can I have a good kiss goodnight," Foley was said to have messaged in one. A boy responded with cyber symbols and "kiss."

In another message, Foley invited the teenager to his Capitol Hill town house "for a few drinks" even though he knew the boy was under the legal drinking age. "We may need to drink at my house so we dont get busted," Foley messaged.

Foley's attorney, David Roth, said at a news conference in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Tuesday that he had no reason to believe that Foley "ever had teenage boys at his house to have alcohol."

Roth said Foley, 52, had himself been molested between the ages of 13 and 15 by a clergyman but added that Foley "does not blame the trauma he sustained as a young adolescent for his totally inappropriate e-mails" and instant messages. "He continues to offer no excuse whatsoever for his conduct."

Roth insisted Foley never had had sexual contact with a minor. He said the former Florida congressman, who had kept his sexual orientation private, wanted people now to know that he is gay.

The House ethics committee, meanwhile, scheduled its first meeting on Foley's actions for Thursday, in closed session. The House voted last Friday to direct the ethics panel to inquire into the matter.

Foley resigned abruptly on Friday after being confronted with the 2003 instant message exchanges.

The FBI announced over the weekend it was opening a preliminary investigation into the matter.

Separately, Kirk Fordham, a Reynolds aide who was a longtime former aide to Foley, told The Associated Press of counseling Foley on Friday on how to deal with the developing story.

Fordham said when he learned the details of some of the instant messages, he confronted Foley.

"I said: 'Are these authentic?' and he said 'probably' and he confirmed that they were likely his instant messages," Fordham said.

Reynolds immediately said Foley had to resign and GOP campaign aides drafted a resignation letter.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061004/ap_on_.../congress_pages

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Drive Thru Marketing

Remember the Dotcom burst? I do. I specifically remember things like clients asking for content management system enabled Websites when they didn’t need one. Or better yet—choosing the wrong system. I remember the abuse of Flash (skip intro anyone)? I even remember co-workers back in the height of the bubble saying things like “this will make your site sticky”—when the experience of the site was about buying something quickly vs. hanging around it. And who can forget about scalable? Oh yeah and let’s throw in seamless for good measure hold the ROI.

Thankfully those days are over. So let’s learn from them. Today’s marketing mix has it’s own challenges. RSS feeds, Podcasts, Blogs, Viral content—it all sounds so yummy and immediately gratifying. Just like fast food. But We all know what fast food leads to. Putting together a marketing mix that looks like “one Social Media Network with a side of Viral, hold the mayo”—may not be the best thing for your business and brand. And the stakes are high.

Here’s a few things to think about as you plan your 2.0 marketing strategy:

What percentage of your customers are using these platforms regularly?

What is the plan to maintain something like a blog? (they require a lot of effort—trust me)

How transparent are you willing to be?

How will you deal with negative feedback?

How will these channels compliment the traditional/digital ones?

What will make your effort genuine vs. feeling "staged"?

I know there is more, but just think of this as a little fast food for thought. The marketing media landscape is changing, but it’s best to combine calculated experimentation with strategic planning vs. the “midnight munchies” approach to selecting tactics.

http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2..._thru_mark.html

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When Splog Attacks

http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2...splog_atta.html

The Advertising Brand is in Trouble

http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2...dvertising.html

Making Your Viral Video Long Tail Friendly

http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/10/making_your_vir.html

MIMA Summit Starts Today

http://www.toprankblog.com/2006/10/mima-summit-starts-today/

Matt Cutts Answers Common PageRank Questions

http://www.hawaiistreets.com/seoblog/index.php?itemid=1063

Google outlines plans at Manhattan opening

http://www.threadwatch.org/node/9104

A9 Quits. 83rd is not worthy

http://www.threadwatch.org/node/9123

More Politics - Google PR (PoliticoRank, Stoopid)

http://www.threadwatch.org/node/9129

Google Literacy

http://www.threadwatch.org/node/9130

PR Can't Spin Gym's Service

http://www.marketingshift.com/2006/10/pr-c...yms-service.cfm

New Cisco Logo Thoughts

http://www.marketingshift.com/2006/10/new-...go-thoughts.cfm

Worm Boosts AdSense Traffic

http://www.marketingshift.com/2006/10/worm...nse-traffic.cfm

Links That Generate Click Thrus

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2006/10/li...lick-thrus.html

Hint: Don’t Reveal Your Gmail RSS Feed

Okay, this should be a no-brainer, but just because Gmail offers RSS feeds doesn't mean you should offer them to the public.

A number of people have done just that, sending their Gmail off to Feedburner and then subscribing in Bloglines, which puts it in the public directory (unless you actually thought to make it private). Among the apparent victims: Andy Rutledge, who likes Bear Grams when he isn't redesigning company homepages.

I've already found out Naveen Joshi's username (and missed his password by an ellipsis), know that Joe is getting messages from his personal trainer, Joe Grossberg invited himself to Gmail (for multiple accounts, I presume), and that there are nine companies that will refinance. Does Bloglines need to protect these users from themselves, or is it your fault when you make a feed of your email public?

Martin Belam discovered this snafu, and has a lot more to say on it. He also found one guy's termination letter (ouch!). Maybe someone should email all these people and let them know what happened?

http://www.securitypronews.com/news/securi...ailRSSFeed.html

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SEE ALSO:

http://bloglines.com/search?q=gmail+inbox+...op=l&news=m

Design View : Andy Rutledge

http://www.andyrutledge.com/

Using Bloglines to snoop on people's private Gmail

I was astonished on Friday when I was looking at my Gmail account inbox, and accidently hit the 'Subscribe with Bloglines' bookmarklet on my Firefox links toolbar. Bloglines then dutifully put up on the screen a whole series of Atom feeds of other people's Gmail accounts that I could subscribe to.

At first, because all of the Atom feeds had been sent through FeedBurner, and the content seemed so spammy, I wondered if it might not have been set up to entice people to subscribe to the feeds as a way of getting more eyeballs on spam email. However, a couple of the feeds seemed to contain genuine personal email, and frankly, such a high percentage of email traffic is spam that if you monitored any email address I'm sure the ratio of spammy mail would look quite high.

Whilst you are not able to go straight from the feed to look at the complete email, once subscribed you can read the subject and the first line of any email sent to these addresses. That can be enough though, especially once a thread starts. For example I know one of these people left their job last week.

In another email, you nearly get hold of someone's user ID and password for a website, further prove that Dave Cross is right when complaining about the poor handling of password data by a lot of online applications. In this case there just are not enough characters in the snippet to reveal the password - but only just.

I think that is where the privacy issue gets a bit scarier and, for me, more controversial. The people sending emails to these addresses have no control over whether the recipient has made their Gmail feed public via an aggregator like Bloglines or not. There is the potential that in the opening line or subject of an email that they think is a secure private one-to-one conversation they could give out very personal details, or defame someone, and end up with their private communication plastered all over the web.

The fault I guess lies with both Google and Bloglines. Google clearly need to more to educate their Gmail Atom users about the potential privacy implications of making their email available in a syndication format. They do have an FAQ answer that warns you that if you do not set the feed to private in your aggregator, you are revealing your email to the world.

Are my Google Mail RSS feeds publicly accessible?

Many aggregator services mark your profile and feeds as public by default, making the subjects and snippets of your Google Mail messages searchable. Even though other users can view the subjects and snippets, the entire content of your messages is not accessible.

If you want to make sure that your Google Mail feeds are not searchable, we suggest setting your profile and feeds as private.

However, that warning isn't given in the main FAQ entry about setting the feed up, even though Google take the time to warn you that the feed will not appear until you have some unread mail in the feed.

How do I view Google Mail messages with my aggregator?

You can view Google Mail messages in your aggregator by subscribing to a new channel. Enter https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom in the 'URL' field, then submit your Google Mail address and password.

Please keep in mind that Google Mail messages will not appear in your aggregator unless there are unread messages in your inbox.

And Bloglines could do something to restrict the display of feeds with the telltale sign of contaning content from Gmail, so that if you know your own Gmail Atom address you can subscribe to it, but that you can't fish for other people's mail using Bloglines anymore.

COMMENTS

Hmm, I'd say that it's more of Google's fault than Bloglines. Bloglines can't after all be expected to detect and place warnings on all the various kinds of potentially private news feeds (why give Gmail special treatment). Besides, there are potentially cases where uses might WANT to make a Gmail feed publically available (difficult to think of examples though, other than perhaps as part of some Alternative Reality Game).

Ultimately, having 'private' RSS feeds via a unique and non-easily guessable URI is just an example of trying to do 'security through obscurity', and is doomed to failure. To really do private feed syndication, you either need to use simple HTTP authentication (which Bloglines doesn't support) or invent some new format...

Posted by Frankie Roberto, October 1, 2006 08:17 PM

As all these GMail feeds have been put through Feedburner or some similar service (you can also access them by clicking on the green feedburner.com links), then the blame lies at the feet of Feedburner (by not password-protecting feeds that are read from password-protected sources), or the user themselves (for running a private feed through a public RSS provider, then publicly subscribing to it in Bloglines).

Posted by Chris Applegate, October 2, 2006 04:35 PM

I would tend to think that Google, Bloglines and Feedburner *all* need to look at either the way they have their system set up, or the advice that they are giving to their users at the point where the users are causing/allowing this to happen.

Of the feeds you can see via Bloglines, a couple of them are not being made available via Feedburner, although all of the ones in my screenshot were

Posted by Martin Belam, October 2, 2006 04:59 PM

This is the fault of the education system and its lack of informing the public not to do foolish things in life.

Posted by umopapisdn, October 3, 2006 07:02 PM

http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2006/10/...snoop_on_pe.php

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SEE ALSO:

How do I view Gmail messages with my aggregator?

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer....&topic=1573

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When I use Atom, are my Gmail RSS feeds publicly accessible?

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer....&topic=1573

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Basic Password Handling

http://blog.dave.org.uk/archives/000860.html

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Basic Password Handling

This afternoon I signed up to a new web-based application from a very well-known media company. I gave them my email address and the password that I wanted to use and a few minutes later I got an email from them confirming my registration.

That was fine. But then I noticed that the email from them contained the name of their site, my username and my password. All in plain text. This is a breach of basic internet security processes. And thinking about it, I've seem several similar breaches recently. So I thought it was worthwhile making a note of some of the rules you should be following when handling users' passwords on web sites and in emails. A sort of "Password Handling 101".

Rule 1: Don't Store Plaintext Passwords

This is the fundemental principle that all the other rules follow from. It is non-negotiable. If I give you a password to use on your web site then I should be the only person who knows it. I don't want it stored unencrypted in your database so that any of your staff can look it up.

"But," you say, "if it's encrypted, how can we check it against the password you give us when you log in?"

"Easy," I reply, "you do it the same way that Unix passwords have been checked for decades."

You store the password using some encryption algorithm. The stronger the better. Then when I give you a password for you to check, you encrypt the new password using the same algorithm and compare it against the encrypted version in your database. If the two encrypted strings match then I've given you the correct password and you can log me in. Simple isn't it?

"But," you say, "if it's encrypted, how can we tell you what it is if you forget it?"

"Simple," I reply, "you don't."

If I forget my password then you have two options. Option one is that you generate me a new password, email it to my registered email address (but see rule 2 below) and store an encrypted version of the new password in your database. Option two is that you send (to my registered email address) a link to a web page where I can enter a new password. This link should obviously be time-limited (so I can only use it for a few hours) and should contain some encrypted key so that no-one can guess what the link is. The second option is less secure as anyone can intercept the email and get access to the link, so the first option should be prefered.

Rule 2: Username and Password Travel Separately

The problem with internet email is that (unless you use something like GPG) everything is in plain text and anyone can intercept it and read it. It's like you are sending every letter on a postcard rather than in an envelope. For this reason you should never put the username and the password in the same email. The forgotten password scenario above should be the only reason why you ever send a password to a user in an email. So don't put the username in that email as well.

Rule 3: Web Pages with Passwords Should Use HTTPS

Like email, by default, all web traffic is unencrypted. Anyone can potentially read anything that you send to a web site. So when I log on to your site and I enter my username and password, anyone can potentially intercept those values and that will enable them to log on to your site as me. If you serve login pages using HTTPS instead of just HTTP then that login transaction will be encrypted all the time the data is on the public internet and it will be much harder for anyone to extract my login details.

Three simple rules that every web site should be following. And it's surprising (or, at least, it surprises me) how many sites don't follow these basic rules. Following these rules won't make your site impervious to people determined to break into in, but it will go a long way to making your users' accounts more secure.

I was going to name and shame the site that I dealt with this afternoon, but I wrote them a polite email explaining the problems and in less than 45 minutes I got a reply saying that these problems had already been noted and that they should be fixed by the end of the week. That's pretty good customer service so I won't embarass them by telling everyone who they are.

http://blog.dave.org.uk/archives/000860.html

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Top Malware Threats And Hoaxes For September

http://www.securitypronews.com/news/securi...rSeptember.html

Sophos Shows HIPS

http://www.securitypronews.com/news/securi...sShowsHIPS.html

McAfee And Symantec Unhappy With Microsoft

http://www.securitypronews.com/news/securi...hMicrosoft.html

McAfee Acquires Citadel

http://www.securitypronews.com/news/securi...resCitadel.html

Citadel

http://www.citadel.com/

Plenty Of Love For The LG C1 Tablet

http://www.webpronews.com/expertarticles/e...LGC1Tablet.html

Is Confidence In Paid Search Slipping?

http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/blogtal...chSlipping.html

Google Germany Reunification Doodle

http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/blogtal...tionDoodle.html

Scoble's Day Of Meetings

http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/blogtal...ofMeetings.html

Pincus Punked By The Post

http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/blogtal...dbythePost.html

Countdown To Oracle Open World

http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/blogtal...eOpenWorld.html

Why And How To Podcast

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/...wToPodcast.html

Podcasting Could Resurrect Employee Comm

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/...ployeeComm.html

Pimp Your Web Ride With Google

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/...WithGoogle.html

Facebook Will Pay If It Goes To Yahoo

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/...oesToYahoo.html

Piczo Plays It Safe

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/...laysItSafe.html

Piczo

http://www.piczo.com/?cr=4&rfm=y

Google Does The Mashup Dance

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/03/googl...e-mashup-dance/

FilmLoop 2.0 Coming This Month, Improvements Mixed

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/03/filml...ovements-mixed/

FilmLoop

http://filmloop.com/

Pageflakes 2.0 To Launch

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/03/pagef...s-20-to-launch/

PageFlakes

http://www.pageflakes.com/

Fighting Open Source Competition May Be Foolish

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/04/perha...ion-is-foolish/

Introducing SlideShare: Power Point + YouTube

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/04/intro...-point-youtube/

SlideShare

http://slideshare.net/login

Why Blogs Are Different #99: They Thank Their Advertisers

http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/10/why_blogs_are_d.html

links for 2006-10-04

http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/10/lin...or_20061_3.html

View your Flickr photos on a gorgeous plain all-black or all-white background.

http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/onblack.php

Hidden Labels in Gmail

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/10/h...s-in-gmail.html

Axing the Podcast Middleman

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,718...ml?tw=rss.index

iTunes Cheat Sheet

http://doors.stanford.edu/itunes/

The Innovators - John Battelle

http://adage.com/article?article_id=112221

Commenting Tips

http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/10/commenting_tips.html

Commenting Tips - Lifehacker

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/...nting-tips.html

Verizon jumps into the blogosphere with a policy blog

http://www.blogwriteforceos.com/blogwrite/...on_jumps_i.html

Making Your Viral Video Long Tail Friendly

http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/10/making_your_vir.html

Wikipedia Mobile

http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/10/wikipedia_mobil.html

Piecing together Windows Vista

http://news.com.com/2009-1016_3-6050105.ht...5&subj=news

Fonality buys into Asterisk community

http://news.com.com/2061-10795_3-6122569.h...9&subj=news

Pay checks for Gates, Ballmer fall short of $1 million

http://news.com.com/2100-1014_3-6122597.ht...7&subj=news

Google gadgets a-go-go

http://news.com.com/2061-11199_3-6122601.h...1&subj=news

U.S. Army to join MySpace ranks

http://news.com.com/2061-10796_3-6122604.h...4&subj=news

Amish grandfather: 'We must not think evil of this man'

PARADISE, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- A grieving grandfather told young relatives not to hate the gunman who killed five girls in an Amish schoolhouse massacre, a pastor said on Wednesday.

"As we were standing next to the body of this 13-year-old girl, the grandfather was tutoring the young boys, he was making a point, just saying to the family, 'We must not think evil of this man,'" the Rev. Robert Schenck told CNN.

"It was one of the most touching things I have seen in 25 years of Christian ministry."

The girl was one of 10 shot by Charles Carl Roberts IV after he invaded their one-room schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania on Monday.

Three died at the scene and two died early Tuesday at hospitals.

Funerals for four of the victims are scheduled for Thursday, and the fifth will be Friday.

Five girls remained hospitalized on Wednesday in critical or serious condition.

At the families' request, the hospital did not provide details on the extent of the girls' injuries.

Schenck met with the families of two of the victims as well as the family of the gunman.

Relatives of Roberts had no hint that he would commit such violent acts, the pastor said.

Others who knew him described him as troubled.

"One person who had had almost daily encounters with him said that she noted that he never looked into anyone's eyes, he never looked into anyone's faces, and she knew that there was something deeply troubling about him," Schenck said.

"Although she did say, she was very careful to say, that Charles Roberts was not an evil person. That he was a deeply troubled man, that he had, in her words -- the sort of modest words of the Amish -- that he had problems of the heart."

On Tuesday, police said Roberts told his wife he molested young relatives 20 years ago and was dreaming about molesting children again.

Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller said Roberts may have targeted the school for its girl students and -- given various items found in the school -- intended to molest the children.

Jack Meyer, a member of the Brethren community living near the Amish in Lancaster County, said local people were trying to follow Jesus' teachings in dealing with the "terrible hurt."

"I don't think there's anybody here that wants to do anything but forgive and not only reach out to those who have suffered a loss in that way but to reach out to the family of the man who committed these acts," he told CNN.

Sam Stoltzfus, 63, an Amish woodworker who lives a few miles away from the shooting scene, told The Associated Press that the victims' families will be sustained by their faith.

"We think it was God's plan, and we're going to have to pick up the pieces and keep going," he told AP. "A funeral to us is a much more important thing than the day of birth because we believe in the hereafter. The children are better off than their survivors."

When members of the community die, they are buried in wooden coffins; women in all white and men in all black, according to AP.

Bodies are embalmed, but undertakers do not apply makeup. Funerals are held in the victim's home, and the dead are delivered to the cemetery in a horse-drawn carriage. A hymn is read, but there is no singing, AP reported.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/04/amish.shooting/index.html

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Report: Hastert's office warned about Foley two years ago

A senior congressional aide said Wednesday he told House Speaker Dennis Hastert's office in 2004 about worrisome conduct by former Rep. Mark Foley with teenage pages -- the earliest known alert to the GOP leadership.

Kirk Fordham told The Associated Press that when he was told about Foley's inappropriate behavior toward pages, he had "more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene."

The conversations took place long before the e-mail scandal broke, Fordham said, and at least a year earlier than members of the House GOP leadership have acknowledged.

Fordham resigned Wednesday as chief of staff to Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-New York.

Fordham spoke to the AP after ABC News quoted unidentified GOP sources as insinuating that he had intervened on behalf of Foley, his former boss, to prevent an inquiry into Foley's conduct.

"This is categorically false," Fordham said. "At no point ever did I ask anyone to block any inquiries into Foley's actions or behavior."

The longtime Capitol Hill aide said he would fully disclose to the FBI and the House ethics committee "any and all meetings and phone calls" regarding Foley's behavior that he had with senior staffers in the House leadership.

"The fact is even prior to the existence of the Foley e-mail exchanges I had more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene when I was informed of Mr. Foley's inappropriate behavior," Fordham said.

Fordham said one staffer to whom he spoke remains employed by a senior House Republican leader. He would not identify the staffer.

"Rather than trying to shift the blame on me, those who are employed by these House leaders should acknowledge what they know about their action or inaction in response to the information they knew about Mr. Foley prior to 2005," Fordham said.

A Capitol Hill aide for more than a decade, Fordham said he resigned because he did not want his role in the Foley matter to harm his boss' re-election bid.

"I have no reason to state anything other than the facts. I have no congressman and no office to protect," Fordham said.

Justice Department launches investigation

Fordham's resignation comes as the Justice Department ordered House officials to "preserve all records" related to disgraced Rep. Mark Foley's electronic correspondence with teenagers, intensifying an investigation into a scandal rocking Republicans five weeks before midterm elections.

Republicans have been struggling to put the scandal behind them, but another member of the leadership, Rep Roy Blunt of Missouri, said pointedly during the day he would have handled the entire matter differently than Speaker Dennis Hastert did, had he known about the complaints when they were first raised last year.

"I think I could have given some good advice here, which is you have to be curious. You have to ask all the questions you can think of," Blunt said. "You absolutely can't decide not to look into activities because one individual's parents don't want you to."

Acting U.S. Attorney Jeff Taylor for the District of Columbia sought protection of the records in a three-page letter to House counsel Geraldine Gennet, according to a Justice official speaking on condition of anonymity.

Such letters often are followed by search warrants and subpoenas, and signal that investigators are moving closer to a criminal investigation.

The request was aimed at averting a conflict with the House similar to a standoff in May when FBI agents raided Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson's office seeking information in a bribery investigation.

FBI interviews former pages

Meanwhile, FBI agents have begun interviewing participants in the House page program, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. The official declined to say whether the interviews were limited to current pages or included former pages.

Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos stressed that the investigation is still preliminary. Also, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement confirmed that it has begun its own preliminary inquiry. Spokesman Tom Berlinger said the case is in its initial stages and is not a full-blown criminal inquiry.

Fordham played a key role in fast-developing events late last week. Initially, Foley was reported to have written overly friendly -- not sexually explicit -- e-mails to a former Capitol page. A day later, ABC news followed up with a report that said the Florida lawmaker had also sent sexually explicit instant messages to at least one other male page.

He said earlier this week he asked Foley about the sexually explicit instant messages, and the congressman confirmed they were probably his.

"Like so many, I feel betrayed by Mark Foley's indefensible behavior," he said. He blamed Democrats for seeking to make a political issue of the matter in Reynolds' re-election campaign, "and I will not let them do so."

McCain calls for independent investigation

There were signs of concern among Republicans, as well.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona called for a group of former senators and others to investigate how the House handled the affair.

"We need to move forward quickly and we need to reach conclusions and recommendations about who is responsible," McCain said during a campaign speech for Sen. Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island. "I think it needs to be addressed by people who are credible."

Some other Republicans rallied to the speaker. The chairmen of two coalitions of social and fiscal conservatives in Congress said he should not step down. "Speaker Hastert is a man of integrity," Rep. Mike Pence, R-Indiana, and Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pennsylvania, said in a joint statement.

Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-Louisiana, the congressman who sponsored the page at the heart of the furor, said Hastert "knew about the e-mails that we knew about," including one in which Foley asked the page to send his picture. But he quickly backed off that comment, saying he discussed the e-mails with Hastert's aides, not the speaker himself.

"I guess that's a poor choice of words that I made there," he told AP.

Hastert has insisted he not know about the e-mails that were discussed with his staff.

Representative says Hastert's staff knew about e-mail

Alexander said in an interview he first took up the matter after receiving press inquiries in November, when he told Hastert's staff and the parents of the 16-year-old boy who received the e-mails. The parents wanted the correspondence stopped but apparently did not want to take the matter further.

After a second round of press inquiries in the spring, Alexander said, he again notified the family and discussed the e-mails with the new majority leader, John Boehner of Ohio, on the House floor during a vote.

Alexander said Boehner turned first to Reynolds, the architect of the Republican midterm election strategy.

"I went to Boehner before Reynolds," Alexander told AP. "He sent Reynolds to me to talk about it. Within a minute Reynolds and I were talking."

Boehner and Reynolds have both said they had spoken with Hastert about a complaint concerning a former page from Louisiana last spring, after Alexander told them about it.

The uproar that followed Foley's resignation has enveloped Republicans who were already at risk at losing control of Congress in elections five weeks away.

Conservative activist Richard A. Viguerie was among those who called for Hastert to step down. "The fact that they just walked away from this, it sounds like they were trying to protect one of their own members rather than these young boys," Viguerie said on Fox News.

Hastert has he would not quit.

Alexander defended Hastert on Wednesday, as well as his own response.

"Hey, what else was I supposed to do?" Alexander asked. "I was very uncomfortable even talking to somebody in the speaker's office."

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/10/04/foley.ap/index.html

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Dow hits new record

Major gauges jump, with the industrials hitting a fresh all-time high and the S&P 500 hitting a 5-1/2 year high.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/10/04/markets/ma...dex.htm?cnn=yes

FBI searches 2 spinach processors

http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/10/04/taint...h.ap/index.html

Dobbs: Are you a casualty of the class war?

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/03/Dobbs.Oct4/index.html

Dad pleads guilty in beating death of suspected molester

A man pleaded guilty Wednesday to criminally negligent homicide for beating to death a 77-year-old man he believed had molested his young daughter.

Robert Fontanez Jr., 27, had faced the more serious charge of second-degree murder in the April death of Bismark Vasquez before agreeing to the plea. He faces up to five years in prison at sentencing, expected early next year.

According to police, Fontanez became enraged when his 5-year-old daughter told him that Vasquez had touched her inappropriately.

He went to Vasquez's home and punched him so hard that the older man went through the back door, police said. Investigators said Fontanez continued to beat Vasquez as he lay bleeding on the concrete outside. Vasquez died in a hospital three days later.

Police detective Scott Chaffin said there was no physical evidence to support the molestation allegation, though he said the child's comments to police were consistent with what she had told her mother.

In a similar case in Fairfield, Connecticut, a man was charged with stabbing to death a 58-year-old neighbor in August whom he had suspected of molesting his 2-year-old daughter.

Jonathon Edington, 29, is free on $1 million bond and due back in court next week. Police have said they do not know if the abuse claim against the neighbor was true.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/10/04/molestat...n.ap/index.html

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Paris Hilton, Shanna Moakler in altercation

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/10/04/p...r.ap/index.html

Flower girl's last moments shown in DWI murder trial

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/10/04/wedding....h.ap/index.html

Madonna adopts baby boy in Malawi

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/africa/10/04...reut/index.html

Coroner describes gruesome scene at Amish school

When the deputy coroner reached the Amish schoolhouse, she found blood on every desk, every window broken and the body of a young girl slumped beneath the chalkboard. Ten children had been shot, five fatally, and the gunman was dead.

"It was horrible. I don't know how else to explain it," Amanda Shelley, deputy Lancaster County coroner, said Wednesday. "I hope to never see anything like that again in my life."

The gunman, a 32-year-old milk truck driver and father of three, was wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a button-down shirt, Shelley said. He had stationed weapons around the schoolhouse and "really appeared he had planned on staying there a few hours," she said.

Authorities say Charles Carl Roberts IV had started buying supplies for a long siege six days before he stormed the tiny schoolhouse. He made a checklist of what to bring and wrote out four suicide notes, one talking about how he was "filled with so much hate" and "unimaginable emptiness."

Monday morning, Roberts ran his milk route as usual and walked his own children to school, police said. Then he drove to the Amish school and walked inside.

Teacher Emma Mae Zook, 20, said she immediately sensed something was off.

"He stood very close to me to talk and didn't look in my face to talk," she told the Intelligencer Journal of Lancaster in Wednesday's edition. She thought he was saying something about a metal object in the road.

Roberts walked back to his truck, then reappeared at the door with a gun, she said.

He sent the adults and boys out and bound the 10 girls in a row at the chalkboard, police said. He had been inside for about an hour, at one point speaking briefly by cell phone with his wife, when authorities closed in and Roberts opened fire on the girls at close range, fatally wounding five of them and then killing himself.

"We're quite certain, based on what we know, that he had no intention of coming out of there alive," State Police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said.

The letters Roberts left behind and that short conversation with his wife indicated Roberts had remembered molesting two relatives 20 years ago and had been tormented by dreams about molesting again.

Roberts had brought lubricating jelly to the schoolhouse and may have planned to sexually assault the Amish girls, Miller said. He said a piece of lumber found in the school had 10 large eyebolts spaced about 10 inches apart, suggesting that Roberts may have planned to truss up the girls.

In the suicide notes, Roberts also said he was haunted by the death of his prematurely born daughter in 1997. The baby, Elise, died 20 minutes after being delivered, Miller said.

Elise's death "changed my life forever," Roberts wrote to his wife. "I haven't been the same since it affected me in a way I never felt possible. I am filled with so much hate, hate toward myself hate towards God and unimaginable emptyness it seems like everytime we do something fun I think about how Elise wasn't here to share it with us and I go right back to anger."

The state police commissioner on Tuesday laid out the steps Roberts took in the days and hours leading up to his attack on the West Nickel Mines Amish School in Lancaster County, where the Amish live an 18th-century lifestyle with no automobiles and electricity.

"He certainly was very troubled, psychologically deep down, and was dealing with things that nobody else knew he was dealing with," Miller said. But he said Roberts, who was not Amish, did not appear to have anything against the Amish people.

During the standoff, Roberts told his wife in a cell phone call that he molested two female relatives when they were 3 to 5 years old, Miller said. Also, in the note to his wife, Marie, he said he "had dreams about doing what he did 20 years ago again," Miller said.

Police could not immediately confirm Roberts' claim that he molested relatives, and family members knew nothing of molestation in his past. Police located the two relatives and were hoping to interview them.

At the time Roberts' wife received the phone call, she was attending a meeting of a prayer group she led that prayed for the community's schoolchildren.

The crime bore some resemblance to an attack on a high school in Bailey, Colorado, where a 53-year-old man took six girls hostage and sexually assaulted them before fatally shooting one girl and killing himself. That attack occurred September 27, the day after Roberts began buying materials for his siege.

At least three prayer services were held Tuesday night, attended by more than 1,650 people, who observed moments of silence, sang hymns and listened to Bible readings.

"Set your troubled hearts to rest," the Rev. Douglas Hileman said from the pulpit of Georgetown United Methodist Church, a short distance from the crime scene. "May we be able to forgive as God has already forgiven us."

The victims were identified as Naomi Rose Ebersole, 7; Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12; Marian Fisher, 13; Mary Liz Miller, 8; and her sister Lena Miller, 7. Stoltzfus' sister was among the wounded.

Three other girls were in critical condition and two were in serious condition. They ranged in age from 6 to 13.

Church members visited with the victims' families Tuesday, preparing meals and doing household chores, while Amish elders planned funerals.

Sam Stoltzfus, 63, an Amish woodworker who lives a few miles away from the shooting scene, said the victims' families will be sustained by their faith.

"We think it was God's plan, and we're going to have to pick up the pieces and keep going," he said. "A funeral to us is a much more important thing than the day of birth because we believe in the hereafter. The children are better off than their survivors."

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/04/amish.sho...g.ap/index.html

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Timeline of Amish school attack

Charles Carl Roberts IV had planned the fatal attack on an Amish schoolhouse Monday "at least two or three days in advance," State Police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller told CNN.

Below is a rough timeline that police have been able to piece together of events leading up to the attack after interviewing Roberts' wife.

3:00 a.m. -- Roberts is home from work after finishing his milk run, picking up milk between Amish farms.

7:30 a.m.-7:45 a.m. -- Roberts and his wife, Marie, are up with their children getting them ready for school.

8:45 a.m. -- Roberts walks his children to the bus stop

9:00 a.m. -- Marie Roberts leaves the house before Roberts and heads to a church prayer group at the Presbyterian Church, picking up a friend along the way. Charles Roberts was to leave for a random drug test as required by his employer for the license to drive in Pennsylvania.

9:15 a.m. -- Marie Roberts arrives at the Presbyterian Church.

10:30 a.m. -- Marie Roberts leaves the church with her friend.

10:45 a.m. -- Marie Roberts drops off her friend.

10:45 a.m. - 10:50 a.m. -- Roberts' wife tries to call him from their home phone. He had taken her cell phone.

10:48 a.m. -- The Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, emergency communications Web site showed 20 incident calls listed to the normally quiet Bart Township.

10:50 a.m. -- Roberts calls his wife and would not tell her where he is but says he is not coming home and that the police had arrived. He then tells his wife the location of his suicide notes. Roberts' wife finds some of the suicide notes and calls her mother and 911.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/03/amish.timeline/

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Political gridlock: Good news for big stocks

If the November elections bring a politically divided government as expected, that would help bonds and some types of blue chips.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/10/02/commentary...dex.htm?cnn=yes

Housing burden rising across America

Renters and homeowners paying more than 30 percent of income on housing increasing across the U.S.; median home prices up 32 percent nationwide.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/10/03/news/econo...dex.htm?cnn=yes

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Jeb · October 4, 2006

North Korea Raises the Stakes

Analysis: More tough talk, another provocation. What's behind Pyongyang's threat to test a nuclear weapon?

We'll see your financial sanctions and raise you a nuclear bomb test. So, in essence, went North Korea's latest bid in the high-stakes poker game with the U.S. over its nuclear program.

North Korea's foreign ministry made the unprecedented announcement Tuesday that the regime would test a nuclear weapon at an unspecified point in the future. The statement cited among Pyongyang's reasons for considering the step the "vicious sanctions and pressure" it said the U.S. was using to "isolate and stifle" North Korea. Those sanctions, intensified in the wake of North Korea's test firing of a long-range missile in July and confirmed in a U.N. Security Council resolution last month, were part of a U.S.- and Japan-led drive to squeeze the regime in Pyongyang to reverse course on its nuclear program. Instead, North Korea is threatening to raise the ante by testing a nuclear weapon — a step that would finally confirm Pyongyang's February 2005 claim to have built such weapons. (Although U.S. intelligence has concluded that North Korea has sufficient fissile material to build six devices, the actual extent of its technological progress in transforming that material into working nuclear warheads remains a matter of speculation.)

The threat to test a weapon certainly fits with the traditional North Korean game of provocative threats and actions aimed at securing concessions. It hasn't yet named a date, of course, and its statement makes clear that it wants a negotiated settlement with the U.S. at the end of the day. But testing a weapon would mark the crossing of a threshold over which retreat may be difficult. Only one country has ever dismantled an arsenal of actual nuclear weapons, and that was South Africa during the early 1990s, in one of the final acts of the outgoing apartheid regime.

Previous North Korean saber-rattling has been directed at squeezing more concessions out of the U.S. and its allies around the six-party negotiating table. The six-party process, which also involves South Korea, China and Russia, remains stalled amid sharply differing interpretations between the U.S. and North Korea over what had previously been agreed. North Korea has repeatedly pushed for direct talks with the U.S. — an idea supported by South Korea, China and Russia — but Washington has insisted, much as it has in its nuclear standoff with Iran, that it will only do business with Pyongyang on the basis set out in the multiparty process.

The North Korean statement made clear that once it had tested a weapon, it would continue to pursue the goal of a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, but seemed to suggest that it would negotiate with a weapon in hand. The goal of diplomacy, it said, could not be "unilateral disarmament," but instead "settling the hostile relations between the DPRK and the U.S. and removing the very source of all nuclear threats from the Korean Peninsula and its vicinity."

Pyongyang clearly wants the international community to believe that it is prepared to dramatically raise the stakes now in pursuit of a "grand bargain" agreement with the U.S. All the diplomatic players have adopted familiar responses, with Japan threatening harsh responses to a nuclear test and Russia and China calling for restraint and diplomacy. Hawks in the U.S. policy debate will say the new threat is a sign that sanctions are effective and are hurting the regime; doves will warn that escalating pressure will simply provoke the North Koreans into crossing the nuclear Rubicon.

In Pyongyang, however, the calculation may be different: The experience of India and Pakistan shows that no matter how hostile the initial response of the international community is to newcomers breaking into the exclusive club of nuclear-armed nations, the weapon's daunting capability eventually forces everyone to find ways of dealing with those states to avoid confrontation. That, unfortunately, may be an example the North Koreans are now opting to follow.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8...00.html?cnn=yes

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