Some of the FBI agents not busy investigating what you're pulling out of the tubes of the internet are engaged in truly worthwhile work: investigating the imaginative land deals of Congressman Gary Miller (R-Diamond Bar, and one of the 20 most corrupt members of Congress according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington). I'm sure the more accountant-y agents are enjoying Miller's interesting approach to paying taxes, which was touched on in the post, Public Service for Fun and Profit (Gary Miller edition).

In terms of media attention, Long Beach has always languished in the shadow of the colossus of the north, L.A. And of course, it has never provided TV networks with the hours of advertising-delighting conspicuous consumption that OC has (The OC, The Real Housewives of…, Laguna Beach). But tonight the spotlight is on Long Beach-- it's featured in one of the most talked about segments of a top-rated network program. Unfortunately, the program is Dateline NBC and the segment is "To Catch a Predator", which is a sort of Candid Camera for potential statutory rapists. Even more unfortunately, Dateline found enough material (38 arrests) in LBC to make it a two-parter. Part one airs tonight at 8pm, part two is scheduled for February 6.

That's not "us" in the post title, that's U.S.   As in the U.S. federal government.  Because according to a Cnet News story (found via TPMmuckracker.com), while your boss may never find out what you're really doing with your computer when you should be working, the feds just might.

The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed.

Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords. . . .

"What they're doing is even worse than Carnivore," said Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. . . "What they're doing is intercepting everyone and then choosing their targets."

. . . [Bankston said] the FBI is "collecting and apparently storing indefinitely the communications of thousands--if not hundreds of thousands--of innocent Americans in violation of the Wiretap Act and the 4th Amendment to the Constitution."

Credit where credit is due-- it couldn't have been easy coming up with something worse than Carnivore, but apparently the feds have done it.  They may not be able to catch Osama bin Laden, but our intelligence services are doing brilliantly in the war on civil liberties.

The campaign of an OC Republican candidate named Nguyen has been caught distributing a clumsy bit of fraud. No, this is not another Tan Nguyen and the "Immigrants Can't Vote Letter" post.

From this morning's Times:

The campaign of an Orange County supervisorial candidate, whose slogan is "Honesty, Integrity and Leadership," has been caught doctoring a photo so that it places the politician close to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The photo into which Trung Nguyen was inserted appeared over the weekend in two Vietnamese-language daily newspapers, Vien Dong and Viet Bao Kinh Te. The papers are heavily circulated in Little Saigon, home to the largest Vietnamese community outside Southeast Asia.

Nguyen's campaign variously blamed the alteration on an advertising company and a volunteer.

If all this seems familiar-- particularly that last line about the campaign pointing multiple fingers of blame-- there's a good reason.

Back in November, Gustavo Arellano summed up the Tan Nguyen campaign's attempts to shift the blame for that infamous letter as far away from the candidate as possible.

First Nguyen denied his campaign had anything to do with the forged letter. Then he rescinded the claim, stating he didn't "authorize" or "approve" the letter, and he fired a rogue campaign worker whom he alleged was responsible. Then he rehired her, claiming once again that his campaign had nothing to do with the letter, although he stood by its content. At a press conference two days after the raid by the attorney general's office, Nguyen again denied any ties to the letter, then handed out copies of what he claimed was the real letter, insinuating Sanchez was behind it.

The Trung Nguyen campaign seems to be up to stage two in the blame-someone-else strategy. With Tan's campaign, first it was an outsider, then an overzealous campaign worker. But this latter Nguyen campaign seemed to taking steps one and two at the same time.

Saulo G. Londono, Nguyen's campaign manager, called it "a very stupid mistake made by a third-party vendor. We don't want to go in great detail into what the vendor did, but we definitely made sure it won't happen again."

He said the photos the advertising company used did not come from Nguyen's campaign. Londono said he did not know who provided the company with the altered photo. He would not give the name of the advertising company, which, he said, no longer works for the campaign.

Assemblyman Van Tran (R-Westminster), who is co-chairman of Nguyen's campaign, blamed a volunteer for the fake photo. The volunteer, whom he declined to name, has been reprimanded and removed from working with newspapers and photos, Tran said.

Nice to see that Londono and Tran can at least agree that the responsible party must remain nameless.

It doesn't seem likely that Trung Nguyen will be able to take Tan Nguyen's step 3-- insinuate that your opponent is really responsible-- for the simple reason that the other candidate whose campaign exposed this fraud was Janet Nguyen (no relation). Nguyen hinting that Nguyen was really responsible for the half-assed photo-shopping could prove too confusing.

Even if Nguyen can't follow Nguyen's example by insinuating that Nguyen is really responsible for the phony photo of Nguyen, let's hope that Trung learns from the other memorable achievement of Tran's campaign, and sticks to the 100-foot penis rule.

A report arrives from the cutting edge of science, where wonders never cease.  The cutting edge is currently in Durham, North Carolina, and Dr. Robert Bohannon is busy honing it.

Dr. Bohannon, according to the Associated Press, is a "molecular scientist" (the sort of impressive yet vague job title characters in '50's sci-fi movies often have), who has turned his scientific genius to the task of fusing the molecules of coffee and doughnuts into one tasty treat.  That's right:  he's created caffeinated doughnuts.

Reports the AP:

Bohannon says he's developed a way to add caffeine to baked goods, without the bitter taste of caffeine. Each piece of pastry is the equivalent of about two cups of coffee

While the product is not on the market yet, Bohannon has approached some heavyweight companies, including Krispy Kreme, Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks about carrying it.

The deal with Krispy Kreme may not be done yet, but Bohannon has already done the one thing every scientist interested in improving mankind's lot needs to do-- he's hired lawyers.  Bohannon has patented his pastry caffeination  process and trademarked the names "Buzz Donuts" and "Buzzed Bagels."

While most newspapers are just running with the brief AP account and leaving their readers to ponder that great question first posed by Homer Simpson-- "Donuts.  Is there anything they can't do?"-- the buzzkills at the San Francisco Chronicle have taken a different approach.  This morning's Chron features an anti-caffeinated doughnut, pro-health editorial.  It begins "Is it possible to find a more unhealthy choice for breakfast than a doughnut?" and ends "It's enough to make one lunge for the healthy option of a bowl of fresh fruit."

I don't understand the Chron's objection.  According to an endless parade of conservative opinion-merchants hawking their well-worn goods on TV and in newspapers, San Francisco welcomes every unnatural practice imaginable.  And what could be more unnatural than a caffeinated doughnut?

If so, contact the Tyra show, er, Oprah, um, I mean, Weekly intern Nardine Saad, who is pulling together a story on erroneous messages DMV drones mailed out to thousands of Californians.

Here's where you can vent, early and often: nsaad@uci.edu

Yes, naranjeros: OC Weekly founder/editor/publisher/soul Will Swaim has resigned. Coverage in the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Business Journal, Orange County Register. Our paper? Wait until Thursday...until then, por favor post all thoughts/rants/valentines about our dearly departed Herr below! And do check out our music blog and find out the unofficial Will Swaim playlist!

The Little Hoover Commission* (the bipartisan, independent state commission dedicated to "promoting economy, efficiency and improved service in the transaction of public business") has issued a new report on the state prison system, one that neatly dovetails with recent Blotter posts on sentencing and politics. And for such a nice bunch of technocrats, the Lil' Hooverites are using awfully tough language.

Says the Times:

In a blistering 84-page report, the nonpartisan Little Hoover Commission linked the problems plaguing the correctional system to political cowardice among governors and lawmakers fearful of being labeled soft on crime.

If policymakers are unwilling to make bold changes, the commission said, they should appoint an independent entity — modeled after the federal Base Closure and Realignment Commission — with the power to do it for them.

"For decades, governors and lawmakers fearful of appearing soft on crime have failed to muster the political will to address the looming crisis," the commission said.

"And now their time has run out."

Of course, there's a reason politicians like to engage in the more-brutal-than-thou posturing on penal issue-- it works.

"We're always ever so nice to furry animals and very, very mean to criminals," said Shaun Bowler, a professor of political science at UC Riverside. "It's almost reflexive, the voters' desire to be tough. If the prisons are a cross between a sewer and the Roman Colosseum, their answer seems to be, 'Good.' "

But some criminologists say the public has been misled about just what sort of policies make the streets safer. At UC Irvine, Joan Petersilia said the "cookie-cutter" approach has put a lot of people in prison but failed to deliver much in the way of public safety.

"I don't think the public really understands that all this money we're spending isn't yielding much in return," Petersilia said. California, she noted, may spend more than $8 billion a year on corrections — a 52% increase over the last five years — but roughly 70% of inmates released by the state wind up back behind bars.

And the money being thrown into the prison system isn't just producing little in the way of results, it's also causing "collateral damage". With an ever increasing prison population, comes a greater need for health workers in prisons (sorry, brutality fans-- there are certain federally mandated standards that must be maintained, so the prisoners get medical attention). The results show up in another Times story:

Court orders mandating drastic pay increases for health personnel in California prisons have led to an exodus of workers from state mental hospitals and left the facilities struggling to provide adequate patient care.

Staff shortages at Atascadero State Hospital, where psychiatrist vacancies stand at 70%, have caused the facility to all but freeze new admissions.

All the state's mental hospitals, which like the prisons are also under federal scrutiny, report staff departures for prison jobs that now pay about 40% more. And they fear that many more staffers will leave.

I'm not sure where the patients in state mental hospitals fall on the voters' furry animals-to-prisoners spectrum of concern, but unfortunately I doubt they are close enough to furry and cute to make many rethink their devotion to the Roman-ish aspects of the state corrections system.

---------------------------------------

*The name is a reference to the Hoover Commission, an advisory board headed by ex-President Herbert Hoover, that was created by President Truman in 1947 to examine the structure and workings of the executive branch of the federal government. Since that commission last met in 1955, the name was already a little dusty by the time the diminutive version was attached to the state commission in 1962.

From the Associated Press:

Two election workers were convicted Wednesday of rigging a recount of the 2004 presidential election to avoid a more thorough review in Ohio's most populous county.

Jacqueline Maiden, elections coordinator of the Cuyahoga County Elections Board, and ballot manager Kathleen Dreamer each were convicted of a felony count of negligent misconduct of an elections employee. They also were convicted of one misdemeanor count each of failure of elections employees to perform their duty.

Prosecutors accused Maiden and Dreamer of secretly reviewing preselected ballots before a public recount on Dec. 16, 2004. They worked behind closed doors for three days to pick ballots they knew would not cause discrepancies when checked by hand, prosecutors said.

[…]

Ohio gave President Bush the electoral votes he needed to defeat Democratic Sen. John Kerry in the close election and hold on to the White House in 2004.

Given that there were-- shall we say?-- certain irregularities in the 2000 presidential election, and-- shall we say?-- a number of questions regarding the administration of the electoral process in Ohio in 2004, you might think that this story would be taking up as many minutes on news shows and inches in newspapers as the behavior of the judges on American Idol.

You might think that, but you'd be wrong.

Ryszard Kapuscinski, a great reporter and one of the finest writers of nonfiction, died Tuesday after suffering a heart attack.  He was 74, and had lived a hard life, so perhaps there was nothing surprising about that-- but where he died was a little surprising.  He died in bed, in a hospital in his native Warsaw.  Of course, for most people there's nothing surprising about dying in the hushed, sanitary atmosphere of a hospital, but Ryszard Kapuscinski was nothing like most people.

The Washington Post recounts a scene from Kapuscinski's legendary career as a foreign correspondent for the Polish Press Association:

At the outbreak of the 1967 Biafran secessionist war in Nigeria, Mr. Kapuscinski heard of a road that was blocked by burning roadblocks and from which "no white man can come back alive."

Testing the rumor, he passed the first roadblock but was assaulted at a second by machete-wielding thugs who supported the United Progressive Grand Alliance political party. They took his money and doused him with the flammable liquid benzene.

"The boss of the operation stuffed my money into his pocket and shouted at me, blasted me with his beery breath: 'Power! UPGA must get power! We want power! UPGA is power!'" Mr. Kapuscinski later wrote. "His face was flooding sweat, the veins on his forehead were bulging and his eyes were shot with blood and madness. He was happy and he began to laugh in joy. They all started laughing. That laughter saved me.

"They ordered me to drive on."

Kapuscinski wrote about that incident in his 1992 book, The Soccer War.  The Soccer War, a beautifully written collection of reportage and ruminations, is also the best introduction to Kapuscinski's career, during which he covered 27 revolutions and coups in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East.