Comparative look at two ethics bills
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Similarities and differences in House and Senate lobbying bills that have to be merged into one before becoming law.
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The House majority leader faces yet another ethics investigation
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The Republican debate in Columbia, South Carolina on May 15 broached the issue of 'enhanced interrogation techniques' and torture, and whether or not the use of either is legitimate. &nbsp;Ron Paul and John McCain were the only two in the whole field who called 'enhanced interrogation techniques' a euphemism for torture, and they were the only two who expressly rejected the use of these techniques. Ron Paul at one point accused Brit Hume, a Fox News moderator, as well as the other candidates, of engaging in 'newspeak.' &nbsp; This was a big highlight for me, even though I have, for years, resisted the urge to simply compare Fox News or the Bush administration to the societies described by George Orwell in his novels. I always rejected it as overly simplistic, or as breathless left-wing hysteria on par with 'OMG BUSHITLER' and the like. I must admit however that the exchange was getting pretty surreal until Ron Paul pointed it out. But that was hardly the strangest thing that happened. That would be the exchange between Paul and Giuliani, facilitated by moderator and all-around Fox News hack Wendell Goler. Paul comported himself well in spite of the openly hostile treatment by Fox News and some of his opponents, notching 2nd place in the Fox News text message poll. This is notable because Paul's positions on almost every issue stand in stark contrast to those of his opponents. Links, transcript, and some thoughts below the fold, with a poll.
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Ministers claim issues raised in Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill are matters of conscience
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By Reid J. Epstein And Rick Brand, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.  Feb. 6--Sen.
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By The Miami Herald  Sep. 22--The underlying cause for two very different policies on reforming the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers contained in Senate and House bills is timing. The bills now are being reconciled in a conference committee.
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WASHINGTON - The House ethics committee rebuked Majority Leader Tom DeLay for the second time in a week for questionable conduct, sternly warning the Texas Republican to temper his behavior.    The committee late Wednesday admonished DeLay for creating an appearance of giving donors special access on pending energy legislation and using the Federal Aviation Administration to intervene in a Texas political dispute...
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Columnist John Florez asks, "Why don't we live the values we preach?" (Jan. 22). If those values include respect for the law, equal treatment under the law and honesty, it's strange he goes on to defend HB144 -- a 2002 law that gives in-state tuition to illegal immigrants.  Mr.
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Animal advocates hope dogfighting and puppy mill scandals will breed tougher animal abuse laws. Here is a look at legislation already proposed:
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An Illinois controversy pitting two important constituencies against each other put Barack Obamaâs legislative skills to the test.
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I spent much of this afternoon in a mandatory (for poll workers) four hour training class on the Hart InterCivic eSlate voting system, soon to be in use in elections in my home county. (Hart InterCivic is a privately held firm out of Houston, specializing in election equipment and in software products for county records offices). Contrary to my previous impression, the machines are not touch screen machines, although they share some similarities.  I went into the class skeptical; I have been a critic of what I percieve as an unseemly rush to adopt insecure electronic voting systems. I emerged guardedly optimistic; the systems appear, from what I can tell, to be reasonably secure against vote manipulation by people who are not part of the election staff, and they appear to provide approximately the same level of security against election office malfeasance that paper ballots do. At the end of the day, if the election staff wants to tamper, they can; but that was true with paper ballots as well. That risk can be mitigated by election office procedures intended to mitigate it; in San Mateo County's case, those procedures have in some important regards not yet been established, as I will discuss below.
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IN BASEBALL lingo, Senator Kennedy went one for two last week. His immigration bill went down to defeat, but the Senate health committee approved unanimously a compromise bill setting out a pathway for approval of copycat versions of high-cost biotechnology medicines. The bill balances the interests of the pioneering companies that first develop the medications -- used to treat diseases ...
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The government has many tools at its disposal to poke around in your business in search of criminal behavior. You have basically only one weapon in your defense - The Bill of Rights.
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Here is a capsule view of how our senators and representatives voted on major legislation in the past week.  In the House:  * Proof of Citizenship to Vote: The House on Sept. 20 passed the Federal Election Integrity Act (H.R. 4844) sponsored by Rep.
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Editor and Publisher - NEW YORK A proposed new ethics policy for The Associated Press, which would be the news organization's most extensive to date, is drawing some concern from union leaders, who say its limits on financial investments, conflict of interest, and freelance work may be too restrictive.
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ISLAMABAD: PML-N leader Mian Nawaz Sharif has presented a proposal to PPP-P chairperson, Benazir Bhutto for signing a code of ethics by both the parties for the sake of beginning of new democratic era in the country and the latter has okayed the proposal.
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(InfoWorld) - Members of the U.S. Congress introduced a flurry of new technology-related bills this week, including two bills that would require companies with data breaches to notify affected customers. Senators Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, and Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, introduced the Personal Data Privacy and Security Act. In addition to requiring data breach notification, the bill would also require data brokers to disclose what information they hold on individuals. The bill would allow individuals to correct information held by data brokers, and it would require companies that have databases with personal information on more than 10,000 U.S. residents to implement data privacy and security programs. Representatives Bobby Rush, a Illinois Democrat, and Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican, introduced the Data Accountability and Trust Act this week. Their bill, with 24 co-sponsors, authorizes the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to draw up data privacy requirements for businesses, including requirements that they have vulnerability assessments and policies for disposing of obsolete data. After a company reports a data breach, the FTC would conduct an audit of its security practices, and, like the Leahy-Sanders bill, the bill would require data brokers to disclose the information they hold on individuals and allow individuals to correct wrong information. Organizations have lost 100 million personal records belonging to U.S. residents in data breaches since 2005, Leahy said in a speech on the Senate floor. Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, singled outÂ data breaches at the U.S. Department of Veterans AffairsÂ last May andÂ retailer The TJX Companies,Â announced in January, in his speech. "These data security breaches are compelling examples of why we need strong federal data privacy and security laws to protect Americansâ personal data and to address the ills of lax data security," he said. "In the information age, any company that wants to be trusted by the public must earn that trust by vigilantly protecting the databases they use and maintain." Members of Congress introduced about a dozen bills requiring data breach notification after a series of breaches in early 2005, but legislation stalled largely over committee jurisdictional wrangling. About 30 states have passed breach notification laws, most of them since 2005. The Cyber Security Industry Alliance, a trade group of IT security vendors, in January called on Congress to pass a comprehensive data protection bill, including breach notification. But some groups, including conservative think tank the Progress and Freedom Foundation, have questioned the need for a breach notification law, saying the cost to businesses may far outweigh the benefits to consumers. Other tech-related bills introduced this week: -- Two bills allowing the FTC toÂ investigate the practice of pretexting, when an investigator assumes a false identity to gain access to a person's telephone records. President George Bush signed a bill creating penalties for pretexting in January, but the two new bills would give the FTC the authority to investigate and prosecute pretexters. Many lawmakers became interested in the issue afterÂ Hewlett-Packard disclosedÂ in September that investigators it had hired used pretexting in an attempt to gain access to board members' and reporters' phone records. -- A bill targeted at spyware by establishing criminal penalties for a number of actions. The bill would prohibit keystroke logging, taking control of a computer without the user's consent, diverting Web browsers, using computers to create botnets and modifying a computer users' browser and security settings without permission. Two spyware bills passed the House of Representatives by overwhelming majorities in March 2005, but the Senate didn't act on them. Â