pullback salk: June 2012

Sunday, June 17, 2012

GOP In A Pickle On Obamacare (talking-points-memo)

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EURO 2012 LIVE: Final Group A matches

WARSAW, Poland (AP) ? Co-host Poland plays the Czech Republic, and Russia takes on Greece in the final Group A matches at the European Championship. The four teams are battling for two spots in the quarterfinals.

Here is a running account of Saturday's action. All times are local to Poland.

___

2118: GREECE VS. RUSSIA: Russia goes close again in Warsaw, where it's a lovely summer's evening and the stadium roof is open. Arshavin plays the ball into the center and fellow forward Kerzhakov is waiting to prod home, but the Greek defense clears.

___

2112: Still 0-0 in both matches.

CZECH VS. POLAND: Actually, the weather appears to be getting worse in Wroclaw. There were just rumbles of thunder and flashes of lightning. There's not going to be another suspension, is there? The players are absolutely soaked!

___

2105: CZECH VS. POLAND: It's raining in Wroclaw, but nothing like the downpour we saw in Donetsk on Friday for the France vs. Ukraine match. The Czechs have managed to take the sting out of a bright start from Poland.

GREECE VS. RUSSIA: Russia captain Arshavin tries his luck with a low shot from outside of the penalty area, but drags it wide.

___

2100: CZECH VS. POLAND: Lewandowski misses a great chance to give Poland the lead! On a quick break, Obraniak picks out the run of the striker in the penalty area and he holds off the challenge of Gabre Selassie but slices his left-foot shot wide. He should have tried to shoot across Cech there. That was a great chance to give the co-host a dream start.

GREECE VS. RUSSIA: Kerzhakov goes close now for Russia, which has come back into the game. Dzagoev tries to burst into the penalty area but he's blocked off by the Greek defense. The ball bounces out to Kerzhakov, who hits the ball on the bounce and it slowly curls wide of the far post.

___

2055: GREECE VS. RUSSIA: Early attempt for Greece through Katsouranis. He runs to the near post to flick the ball on from a corner and the ball loops toward the Russia goal. Goalkeeper Malafeev gets a fist to it at the last moment, pushing it away. The Greeks have started the brighter ? remember, they have to win to go through.

___

2050: We are up and running. Both matches are make-or-break ? one team will go through and one will go out in each game. After two matches, Russia is top of the group on four points, the Czechs three, Poland two and Greece one.

___

2044: And here are the teams for Greece vs. Russia:

Greece: Michalis Sifakis, Vassilis Torosidis, Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Kyriakos Papadopoulos, Giorgos Tzavelas, Yiannis Maniatis, Giorgos Karagounis, Kostas Katsouranis, Dimitris Salpingidis, Georgios Samaras, Fanis Gekas.

Russia: Vyacheslav Malafeev, Alexander Anyukov, Alexei Berezutski, Sergei Ignashevich, Yuri Zhirkov, Igor Denisov, Roman Shirokov, Denis Glushakov, Andrey Arshavin, Alexander Kerzhakov, Alan Dzagoev.

___

2040: Here are the lineups for the Czech Republic vs. Poland:

Czech Republic: Petr Cech, Theodor Gebre Selassie, Michal Kadlec, Tomas Sivok, David Limbersky, Jaroslav Plasil, Vaclav Pilar, Tomas Hubschman, Daniel Kolar, Petr Jiracek, Milan Baros.

Poland: Przemyslaw Tyton, Sebastian Boenisch, Marcin Wasilewski, Damien Perquis, Lukasz Piszczek, Dariusz Dudka, Eugen Polanski, Ludovic Obraniak, Rafal Murawski, Jakub Blaszczykowski, Robert Lewandowski.

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Saturday, June 16, 2012

Hunter-Reay wins IndyCar race at Milwaukee

WEST ALLIS, Wis. (AP) ? As long as his boss went to the trouble of bringing IndyCar racing back to the Milwaukee Mile, Ryan Hunter-Reay figured he might as well bring home the winner's trophy.

Hunter-Reay took the lead from Helio Castroneves on the 142md lap, didn't cough it up on a couple of restarts and held on to the IndyCar race Saturday at the Milwaukee Mile.

It was a doubly sweet win for Michael Andretti, who fields cars for Hunter-Reay as a team owner and served as the event promoter for the race.

"It really is amazing," Hunter-Reay said. "Milwaukee has been so important to IndyCar for so long, and I think this is a huge event for Milwaukee. These two belong together. So I really thank Michael for sticking his neck out, coming back here and really doing it the right way."

It was the sixth career victory and first this season for Hunter-Reay. He also won at Milwaukee in 2004 in the now-defunct Champ Car Series, starting from the pole and leading every lap.

Tony Kanaan was second, followed by James Hinchcliffe, Oriol Servia and E.J. Viso.

Scott Dixon had to serve a drive-through penalty for jumping a restart and finished 11th. He questioned the penalty immediately afterward ? and as it turns out, he was right.

"I'm actually very excited to see what the hell they're talking about," Dixon said. "I'm disappointed."

IndyCar race director Beaux Barfield acknowledged after the race that officials made a mistake. He said a failure in their timing and scoring system caused them to look at the wrong replay.

What officials looked was a replay of a previous restart that was waved off by officials at the time and didn't count. Dixon did commit a potential infraction on that restart ? but he didn't do so on the subsequent restart that ended up counting and should not have been penalized.

"It was obviously the wrong call, based on the reality of the situation," Barfield said.

Barfield took responsibility for the mistake, and said Chip Ganassi Racing officials were "very gracious" when presented with an explanation. Barfield said there wasn't anything officials can do to undo the mistake.

Last year's Milwaukee winner, Dario Franchitti, started from pole position and dominated the early stages of the race. But he fell back in the field and then spun out and hit the wall on lap 195.

Franchitti tangled with Ryan Briscoe shortly before he spun, and said afterward that contact might have broken something on his car.

"I was on Ryan's inside, but he just kept coming down there," Franchitti said. "I just don't think his spotter told him I was there."

Points leader Will Power finished 12th. Hinchcliffe moved up to second in the points.

It was a boost for the historic but financially troubled Milwaukee track, which has been hosting racing since 1903 but originally was left off the 2012 IndyCar schedule after not hosting any major racing events in 2010 and drawing a lackluster crowd for IndyCar last year.

Milwaukee was put back on this year's schedule after Andretti agreed to serve as the race's promoter ? and Andretti announced just before Saturday's race that the event would return in 2013.

"We're going to be back here next year, and hopefully for a long time after that," Andretti said.

Despite the race being a late addition to the schedule ? and then a rain delay that pushed the start back ? the race drew a significantly better crowd than last year.

Franchitti was untouchable in the early stages of the race, leading the first 60-plus laps before making his first pit stop. The race went green until Simona de Silvestro spun on lap 67, bringing out a caution.

Franchitti was shuffled back to fourth on the restart, after a few drivers were on pit road when the caution came out ? including Viso, who took the lead on the restart.

Justin Wilson then blew an engine on lap 94, pulling to the inside wall and scrambling to get out of the car when it briefly caught fire. It was a tough reversal of fortune for Wilson, who won last week at Texas.

After a round of pit stops under caution, Castroneves ? who didn't pit after Wilson's incident ? took the lead.

With Castroneves' tires later wearing out, Hunter-Reay waited for the right moment, then passed him for the lead on lap 142.

"We pounced," Hunter-Reay said. "We were right there ready to go when somebody slipped up."

Kanaan is known for his aggressiveness on restarts, but said he was just worried about not getting passed on restarts and defending his position during Saturday's race.

"Do you even know how to do that?," Hinchcliffe asked jokingly in the post-race news conference.

Kanaan took the good-natured ribbing in stride, answering, "I do not know how to do that."

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UN observers in Syria suspend operations

FILE - In this file citizen journalism image taken on Tuesday, May 29, 2012 and provided by Edlib News Network ENN, Syrians gather around a U.N. observers vehicle during a demonstration in Kfarnebel, Idlib province, northern Syria. U.N. observers in Syria suspended their activities and patrols Saturday, June 16, 2012 because of escalating violence in the country, the head of the mission said, the strongest sign yet that an international peace plan for Syria is disintegrating. Maj. Gen. Robert Mood said rising bloodshed over the past 10 days was posing significant risks to the lives of the some 300 observers in the country, and was impeding their ability to carry out their mandate.(AP Photo/Edlib News Network ENN, File) THE ASSOCIATED PRESS IS UNABLE TO INDEPENDENTLY VERIFY THE AUTHENTICITY, CONTENT, LOCATION OR DATE OF THIS HANDOUT PHOTO

FILE - In this Sunday, May 20, 2012 file photo, Norwegian Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, head of the U.N. observer team in Syria, stands near a U.N. observers car in Zabadani neighborhood in Damascus, Syria. U.N. observers in Syria suspended their activities and patrols Saturday, June 16, 2012 because of escalating violence in the country, the head of the mission said, the strongest sign yet that an international peace plan for Syria is disintegrating. Maj. Gen. Robert Mood said rising bloodshed over the past 10 days was posing significant risks to the lives of the some 300 observers in the country, and was impeding their ability to carry out their mandate.(AP Photo/Muzaffar Salman, File)

BEIRUT (AP) ? U.N. observers in Syria suspended their activities and patrols Saturday because of escalating violence in the country, the head of the mission said, the strongest sign yet that an international peace plan for Syria is disintegrating.

Maj. Gen. Robert Mood said rising bloodshed over the past 10 days was posing significant risks to the lives of the 300 unarmed observers in the country, and was impeding their ability to carry out their mandate.

The observers were sent to the country after international envoy Kofi Annan brokered a peace plan that included a cease-fire that was supposed to take effect on April 12. But both sides have continued to stage daily attacks and the observers themselves have been caught up in the violence on several occasions.

The Syrian government, intent on wresting back control of rebel-held areas, launched a fierce offensive in recent days to recover territories in several locations, shelling heavily populated districts and using attack helicopters over towns and cities.

U.N. officials have said that the opposition, in turn, is increasingly coordinating attacks against government forces and civilian infrastructure.

On Saturday, government troops kept up their relentless shelling of rebel-held districts in the central city of Homs, killing at least five. Another 12, including a man, his wife and child, were killed in overnight shelling of suburbs of the capital Damascus.

"U.N. observers will not be conducting patrols and will stay in their locations until further notice," Mood said in a statement Saturday. He said the observers will not leave the country, and the suspension will be reviewed on a daily basis.

"Operations will resume when we see the situation fit for us to carry out our mandated activities," he said.

The suspension signals the unraveling of Annan's plan as the conflict that began in March 2011 with peaceful protests challenging the regime spirals closer toward civil war. Activists say some 14,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

Western powers have pinned their hopes on the plan, in part because there are no other options on the table. The international community has little appetite for the military intervention that helped oust Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, and several rounds of sanctions have failed to stop the bloodshed.

"The lack of willingness by the parties to seek a peaceful transition, and the push towards advancing military positions is increasing the losses on both sides," Mood said. "It is also posing significant risks to our observers."

He did not elaborate or say whether the monitors might eventually leave, but on Friday, he said states that provide the observers were concerned that the risk is approaching an unacceptable level ? suggesting the violence could prompt the observers to pull out of the country at some point.

The Syrian government said it conveyed to Mood its "understanding" of the decision taken and blamed the rebels, whom it refers to as "terrorists" for the escalation.

The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it had "clarified to the leadership of the U.N. mission that armed terrorist groups have conducted, since the signing of the Annan plan, an increase in criminal operations that have targeted, many times, the observers, and threatened their lives."

The opposition, for its part, has blamed the regime for the attacks near the observers.

The observers have been tasked with monitoring the cease-fire and supporting the full implementation of Annan's six-point plan, which was supposed to lead to talks between the sides. Instead, they got caught up in the bloodshed, and have often been blocked from reaching the site of massacres and other violence until too late.

Last week, an observers' convoy was blocked and attacked with stones, metal rods and gunfire by an angry crowd as it was trying to head to the town of Haffa in the coastal Latakia region, where troops had been battling rebels for a week.

The observers only managed to enter once government troops had seized the area back from the rebels.

On May 15, a roadside bomb damaged observers' cars shortly after they met with Syrian rebels in the northern town of Khan Sheikoun. A week earlier, a roadside bomb struck a Syrian military truck in the south of the country just seconds after Mood drove by in a convoy.

Still, their presence has been a crucial source of independent information, particularly as Syria bars journalists from reporting freely in the country.

Despite fears that violence could significantly worsen without the their presence on the ground, prominent activist Rami Abdul-Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was better for the U.N. teams to leave.

"We haven't seen anything beneficial from them. If they are independent ? so what?" he said. "A lot of crimes happened in Syria, and they couldn't do anything."

He called on the international community to more actively intervene to halt the bloodshed in Syria.

"The situation can't get worse than this: are we afraid that it's a civil war? Well it is a civil war. The situation is difficult. The international community's silence on Syria is working to destroy Syria," Abdul-Rahman said.

In the Damascus suburb of Douma, where overnight shelling killed 12 people, activist Mohammed Douma said the presence of observers had been irrelevant anyway, adding that they hadn't visited Douma, a hotspot, in a week.

"But anyway, all they can do is record what they see, they cannot help," he said.

___

Associated Press writer Diaa Hadid contributed to this report.

Associated Press

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Joy and anger as Obama relaxes deportation rules

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Friday, June 15, 2012

Egypt in turmoil after court ruling on parliament

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Imangi Taps Disney/Pixar To Launch ?Temple Run: Brave? Ahead Of Movie Launch

Despite the fact that almost nothing happens but running, turning, jumping and sliding, Temple Run is one of the most popular games on mobile. In fact, in just a month on the platform the Android version of the game saw 10 million downloads. But there's gotta be more to life than jumping over overgrown tree roots and sliding under bridges, which is why a new version of the game has been brought to life within the App Store and Google Play. It's a collaborative project between Imangi Studios, makers of the original Temple Run, and Disney/Pixar, which has a big new movie coming out soon titled Brave.

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Foreclosure activity in May up 9 percent from month before | Real ...

By Dennis Norman, on June 14th, 2012

This morning, RealtyTrac released their U.S. Foreclosure Market Report for May 2012 which shows that foreclosure filings (default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions) we?re reported on 205,990 properties in the U.S. during the month, a 9.0 percent increase from the previous month and a decrease of 4.0 percent from May 2011. During the month, 1 out of every 639 homes in the U.S. had a foreclosure filing.
Foreclosure activity in U.S. decreases on a year-over-year basis for the 20th straight month

?U.S. foreclosure activity has now decreased on a year-over-basis for 20 straight months including May, but the jump in May foreclosure starts shows that it?s going to be a bumpy ride down to the bottom of this foreclosure cycle,? said Brandon Moore, CEO of RealtyTrac. ?Based on the rise in pre-foreclosure sales we?ve seen so far this year, a higher percentage of these new foreclosure starts will likely end up as short sales or auction sales to third parties rather than bank repossessions going forward. While pre-foreclosure sales have less of a negative impact on home values than bank-owned sales, they still represent a discounted sale where a distressed homeowner is losing his or her home.

Report highlights:

Foreclosure activity rose back up above the 200,000 level in May after two consecutive months below 200,000.
Foreclosure starts nationwide increased on an annual basis after 27 consecutive months of year-over-year declines.
Judicial states combined posted a 26 percent year-over-year increase in overall foreclosure activity while non-judicial states combined posted a 20 percent year-over-year decrease in foreclosure activity.
Foreclosure starts increased on a year-over-year basis in 17 of the 26 judicial states and in 16 of the 24 non-judicial states.
Georgia leapfrogged past Arizona, Florida, California and Nevada to post the nation?s highest state foreclosure rate in May, the first time since February 2006 that Georgia?s foreclosure rate has ranked highest among the states.

Foreclosure Starts Increase in 33 of 50 States:

Foreclosure Activity Drops 3 Percent in May; 15th Consecutive Month of Over 300,000 Foreclosure Actions
Foreclosure activity falls to lowest level since 2007
Foreclosure Activity Decreases 9 Percent in April
U.S. Foreclosure activity decreasing in the west and on the rise in the midwest and east
84 Percent of U.S. Metros Post Lower Foreclosure Activity in First Half of 2011

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Video: Chris Matthews on the need to talk about the Sandusky trial

Man's microbes help map 'normal' in humans

Charles Rathmann, 40, of St. Louis is one of 242 volunteers whose skin, nose, mouth, gut and other samples have been analyzed to create what scientists say is the first map of the normal microbial make-up of healthy humans.

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Sunday, June 10, 2012

Yemen clashes leave 11 dead

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Undoing health law could have messy ripple effects

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Overturning President Barack Obama's health care law might not be as simple as it sounds.

Here's a twist that shows why:

Experts say it could lead to higher taxes for some families with a young adult covered under a parent's plan.

It's a popular benefit and employers and insurers could keep offering it if the Supreme Court strikes down the law.

But economist Paul Fronstin of the Employee Benefit Research Institute says many parents would face higher taxes as a result ? a couple of hundred dollars a year or more.

That's because they would have to pay for the young adult's coverage with after-tax dollars. Under the health care law, that coverage now comes out of pre-tax dollars.

Associated Press

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Saturday, June 9, 2012

David Beckham moves a step closer to London Olympics dream

It represents the latest stage in a process that will end with the announcement of Stuart Pearce's final 18-man squad on July 6.

There has been a huge amount of debate around who will be the three overage players in Pearce's squad.

Ryan Giggs, Craig Bellamy, Rio Ferdinand and Frank Lampard have all been mentioned as potential candidates.

Beckham's name has been a constant though, mainly due to the influential role he played in getting the Olympics to London in the first place.

The 37-year-old's popularity remains undimmed, even though he has not played his club football in England for nine years now.

He was greeted with rapturous applause at Wembley on Saturday when given a special award for reaching 100 caps by UEFA, and it is understood the former Manchester United midfielder remains amongst the players Pearce has submitted.

There is little doubt Beckham's presence would help sell tickets for the football event, which features Great Britain's group matches at Old Trafford, Wembley and the Millennium Stadium.

It is yet to be decided whether the FA will formally announce the 35-man squad.

However, it is also believed young goalkeeper Jack Butland remains in the squad.

Although they had previously stated no player who was selected for Euro 2012 would be involved in the Olympics, it is thought Pearce would be willing to bend the rules for Butland, who has been elevated to England's third-choice keeper.

Butland has expressed a desire to remain in Olympic contention, although club side Birmingham would have to sanction the move.

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Taliban kill 4 French troops in Afghanistan

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Friday, June 8, 2012

Natasha Trethewey named 19th US poet laureate

WASHINGTON (AP) ? A poet-historian representing a younger generation of writers will soon take office on Capitol Hill, overlooking the politicians, in a lesser-known post enshrined in federal law.

The Library of Congress named Natasha Trethewey on Thursday to be its 19th U.S. poet laureate with a mission to share the art of poetry with a wider audience. The 46-year-old English and creative writing professor at Atlanta's Emory University distinguished herself early, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 2007.

Trethewey will be the first poet in chief to take up residence in Washington to work at the library's Poetry Room for part of her term in 2013. As one of the youngest poet laureates ever selected, she also brings fresh perspective to an office more recently held by poets in their 80s.

Part of her work has focused on restoring history that has been erased or forgotten from the official record and the nation's shared memory. She has researched in the library's Civil War archive to inform some of her writings.

Trethewey won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for her collection of poems, "Native Guard." She wrote of the Louisiana Native Guard, a black Civil War regiment assigned to guard white Confederate soldiers held on Ship Island off Mississippi's Gulf Coast.

The Confederate prisoners were later memorialized on the island, but not the black Union soldiers.

A stanza reads:

"Some names shall deck the page of history

"as it is written on stone. Some will not."

Librarian of Congress James Billington, who chose Trethewey after hearing her read at the National Book Festival in Washington, said her work explores many tragedies of the Civil War.

"She's taking us into history that was never written," he told The Associated Press. "She takes the greatest human tragedy in American history ? the Civil War, 650,000 people killed, the most destructive war of human life for a century ? and she takes us inside without preaching."

It's a "happy coincidence," he said, that Trethewey was chosen during the 150th anniversary of the War Between the States. He was also impressed with her skill in translating a visual image into words and moving from rhyme to free verse ? but always keeping her poems accessible.

Trethewey began writing poems after a personal tragedy. While she was a college freshman, her mother was killed by a stepfather Trethewey had long feared.

"I started writing poems as a response to that great loss, much the way that people responded, for example, after 9/11," she told the AP. "People who never had written poems or turned much to poetry turned to it at that moment because it seems like the only thing that can speak the unspeakable."

She is the nation's first poet laureate to hail from the South since the first federal poet ? Robert Penn Warren ? was named by the Library of Congress in 1986. She is also Mississippi's top poet and will be the first person to serve simultaneously as a state and U.S. laureate.

Her term, beginning in September, also coincides with the 75th anniversary of the poetry center and a dedicated poet-consultant position at the world's largest library.

Trethewey said she hopes to promote national activity around poetry and to engage with the library and people who visit the nation's capital.

Past poet laureates have included W.S. Merwin, Kay Ryan, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Pinsky, Rita Dove and Warren ? the Southern native who was an inspiration for Trethewey. Their agendas as the nation's chief poets have included readings across the country, newspaper syndication of poems and poetry readings over high school public address systems.

Poetry lives in the Trethewey family. Her father, Eric Trethewey, is a poet and college professor. But when she went to graduate school, she was more interested in telling stories and studied fiction writing.

"On a dare that first semester, a poet friend of mine got me to write a poem. I did it because I thought I would prove that I couldn't do it," she said. "It was at that moment that something really clicked."

Her Pulitzer-winning poems also included her personal history as the daughter of interracial parents ? and the story of her mother, who died at the age of 40.

In "Miscegenation," a poem in "Native Guard," she wrote about her parents' journey to Ohio in 1965 for a marriage that was illegal at home in Mississippi.

"They crossed the river into Cincinnati, a city whose name

"begins with a sound like sin, the sound of wrong ? mis in Mississippi."

Trethewey's next collection of poems, "Thrall," will be published this year. It explores her relationship with her white father and shared and divergent memory within families, along with poems about paintings and the history of knowledge from the Enlightenment. www.loc.gov/

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Digital forensic investigation fails to exonerate Heartland of authoring

On May 1, 2012, The Heartland Institute published a digital forensics report from Protek International, a computer and information forensics and security firm based out of Chicago. Heartland hired Protek to investigate whether there was evidence that anyone from Heartland had written the ?2012 Heartland Climate Strategy? memo (aka the Memo) that Heartland claims was fabricated by Peter Gleick when he falsified his identity in order to acquire and then leak confidential Heartland documents in February, 2012.

As a result of their investigation, Protek concluded that the Memo had not been created on Heartland?s computer system and didn?t exist there or in Heartland?s email system prior to its publication on February 14, 2012. An S&R analysis of Protek?s investigation report finds that this broad conclusion is not supported by the details of Protek?s investigation. Specifically, S&R found that Protek may not have interviewed everyone at Heartland who could have authored the Memo, didn?t analyze enough types of computers and storage devices to rule out creation of the Memo, limited their investigation to only one of Heartland?s several offices, and didn?t search through enough different file types and storage to guarantee that they would have detected the Memo.

Protek?s interviews not inclusive enough

In the course of their digital forensics investigation, Protek interviewed a number of Heartland employees, ?focusing on those who were part of the e-mail communications and transmission of documents in response to their online solicitation.? In addition, Protek?s report says that they ?also interviewed senior officers of Heartland including [Heartland president] Joseph Bast, Diane Bast, and Kevin Fitzgerald.? Furthermore, Protek reported that ?everyone interviewed by Protek stated that they had either not seen the Memo, or had not seen it prior to its being posted online on February 14th and all denied creating it as well.? While these statements are reasonable enough, they also raise a number of questions and concerns.

First, why did Protek focus on the employees who were involved in emailing the Board meeting documents to Gleick? Gleick himself said that he?d received the memo in the mail, not electronically, so there?s no evidence presented that these employees would have been the ones to send the Memo to Gleick via the USPS et al. Similarly, Protek doesn?t explain whether these employees could have been the Memo?s author, so there?s no good reason to focus on them in particular.

Second, Protek?s report implies that Protek interviewed other ?senior officers? besides the Basts and Fitzgerald, but it leaves the other interviewees unnamed. It?s unclear whether or not these included all the members of the Heartland Board of Directors, for example, and the report specifically doesn?t say that it interviewed all ?senior officers.? This approach would not necessarily detect officers who had seen the Memo, as the Memo itself explains.

The Memo?s author proposes that ?it be kept confidential and only be distributed to a subset of Institute Board and senior staff.? If the Memo is authentic, this would mean that not all ?senior officers? would have seen it. As a result, it?s possible that the Heartland senior officers that Protek interviewed could have honestly said that they didn?t read the memo precisely because they hadn?t been on the Memo?s limited distribution list. Without interviewing all of Heartland?s ?senior officers? ? senior staff and board members, plus any staff assistants to the ?senior officers? ? Protek?s interviews might not have detected the Memo?s origin even assuming all the interviewees answered honestly.

Protek too focused on Heartland?s Chicago headquarters

While Protek interviewed only a select few Heartland staff and ?senior officers,? those interviews were only a small part of the overall digital forensics investigation that Protek was hired to conduct. In the course of the larger investigation Protek interviewed people and analyzed computers at Heartland?s Chicago headquarters office and at the private home of Joe and Diane Bast. But Protek either did not ask for or was refused access to computers at Heartland?s satellite offices and the private residences of Heartland?s other senior officers besides the Basts. This narrow focus on people and computers at just the Chicago headquarters means that Protek could have missed the Memo?s presence on computers located outside Heartland?s headquarters.

Protek?s report explains why they chose to focus exclusively on the Chicago headquarters. Specifically, Protek writes that ?Heartland?s senior officers, who would be most likely authors of [the Memo] work at the Chicago office? and that much of the information needed to write the Memo was ?resident only on the Heartland System? (the ?Heartland System? is defined as the network and workstation computers present in Heartland?s headquaters).

Given modern networking and telecommuting, this explanation is insufficient to justify Protek?s narrow investigation. While Protek?s investigation would have presumably turned up evidence of the Memo had it been created at the Heartland Chicago headquarters computers via remote PC login (Windows ?Remote Desktop Connection,? for example), the same cannot be said of other access methods.

Many organizations that are scattered across multiple physical locations pay telecommunications companies for secure data connections between those offices. These links would enable a Heartland employee working at a satellite office (for example, the Washington D.C. office) to access to all the information present on the network servers at the Chicago office. As a result, the Memo?s author and hypothetical Heartland employee could have accessed the information that was ?resident only on the Heartland System? while editing the Memo on his own local computer. Here?s how:

The Memo?s author sits down at his Heartland-owned computer that resides in a satellite office.
The author logs into the Heartland network and opens the files containing the information he needs to write the Memo.
The author creates a new document in his word processor and either cuts&pastes or transcribes the information into the Memo, then saves the Memo and closes down the other files.

This process would create a Memo where the file resides on a computer at a Heartland satellite office, but not on a Chicago computer. The only evidence that the Memo had been written present on the Chicago network would be a log that the source files had been opened. In this case Protek?s Chicago-only investigation would not detect the creation of the Memo.

A similar scenario would permits the Memo?s author to use a remote desktop connection to author the memo on a home personal computer while still accessing needed information on the Chicago network. Here?s how:

The Memo?s author opens his word processor on his home computer.
The author uses a remote desktop connection to log into his computer located in Heartland?s Chicago headquarters.
The author opens the Chicago-only data on the remote desktop. The data is visible on the author?s PC, but it?s actually open on the headquarters computer.
The author writes the Memo on his home computer, saves the Memo, closes the Chicago-only files, and then logs out of his Chicago headquarters computer.

In this scenario, the Memo resides on the author?s home computer, not in the Chicago network. The only trace that the Memo has been written on the Chicago network is that the Chicago-only files had been opened. As with the prior scenario, Protek?s investigation would not detect the creation of the Memo.

Both of these scenarios are plausible, and neither is even mentioned in Protek?s report.

Protek?s focus on ?workstations? too narrow

Protek appears to have missed interviewing a number of possible Memo authors and/or distributors, and their focus on only the Chicago headquarters cannot conclusively demonstrate that the Memo was not authored by a Heartland employee. Similarly, Protek?s investigation of Heartland?s computers and servers was so narrowly focused on ?workstations? and network servers that the investigation report raises a number of additional questions and concerns about Protek?s results.

First, what exactly is a ?workstation? as Protek defines it? Workstations have historically been desktop PC-sized boxes with external monitors. This historical definition excludes laptop computers, and yet it?s likely that many computers attached to the ?Heartland System? are laptops. Moreover, Heartland?s senior officers are the individuals who are most likely to use laptops instead of desktop workstations, and it?s those senior officers that would be likely authors or recipients of the Memo.

Joe and Diane Bast volunteered to have three of their personal computers imaged and analyzed by Protek ? a Dell Dimension 3000, a Dell Dimension 2400, and an Dell Inspiron 530. According to the Dell website, all three of these computers are desktop style and the most recently sold (Inspiron 530) was last sold by Dell in 2009. It?s possible but unlikely that neither Bast owns a laptop or tablet computer, yet Protek?s report doesn?t say that they volunteered any laptops or tablets to be imaged in the same way that their personal desktop computers were.

Second, other mobile devices such as tablet computers do not appear to have been included in Protek?s investigation. A tablet computer like the Apple iPad, Dell Latitude, or Samsung Galaxy Tablet are definitely not ?workstation? computers, but there?s no reason why the Memo couldn?t have been written on a tablet device instead of a laptop or workstation.

Third, Protek?s investigation report does not mention smartphones such as the iPhone, Blackberry, and various Android phones. Note-taking apps are available for every smartphone on the market, either built into the phone?s operating system or via app store download, and every smartphone has a keyboard of some kind. If the Memo was written during a meeting, it?s plausible that the Memo?s author could have typed it up on a phone and then used a personal email account to distribute it or saved the Memo to a cloud-based storage service like Dropbox. While this is a possible hole in Protek?s investigation, it?s a much smaller one than either the tablet or laptop holes identified above.

S&R repeatedly asked Protek if they created forensic images (exact replicas of the hard drives, including the state of any unused or unallocated storage space) of laptops, tablets, or investigated the possibility the Memo had been created on a smartphone or similar mobile devices, but S&R received no response.

Protek?s focus on computer hard drives too limited

According to Protek?s report, they created forensic images of 32 ?Heartland Chicago office computer workstations, as well as the Basts? privately owned computers.? These exact images were created to permit Protek to run scans on the computer storage looking for files and strings of bits that serve as digital ?fingerprints? of the Memo in the data. But as with each of the cases described previously, Protek?s reported approach is too limited.

While Protek claims that they imaged the Chicago servers and workstations and the Basts? three home computers, the report refers only to ?hard drives.? Other types of storage are not mentioned at all, so anyone reading the report doesn?t know whether or not forensic images of other storage media were also created. For example, if Protek imaged only computer and server hard drives, then the 7.3 TB of data they imaged would have missed every one of the following storage media, all of which could reside at Heartland?s Chicago headquarters:

CD-RW and/or DVD backups
Tape backups
USB thumb drives/memory sticks
External hard drives

While it is possible that an internal flash drive would have been considered a ?hard drive? for the purposes of Protek?s investigation, it?s not clear from the report. And it?s reasonable that a Memo intended for very limited distribution could have been stored on a removable USB thumb drive/memory stick. This doesn?t mean that the Memo would have been kept on a thumb drive, only that Protek?s hard drive-focused investigation can?t say one way or another.

In the course of their investigation, Protek scanned for file fragments of the Memo in ?unallocated space,? the portions of the storage that are ?blank? and awaiting data. These areas could contain evidence of old data that has been partly overwritten, which is why Protek scanned there. They didn?t find any examples of their four selected digital fingerprints in the unallocated space. But it?s unclear whether Protek scanned for file fragments within ?unused? or ?slack? space as well as unallocated space. Unused/slack space is parts of the hard drive that were allocated to a file but that were ultimately not used by that file. Unused/slack space may also contain fragments of files that were partly overwritten. Protek?s report makes no mention of scans for the Memo?s digital fingerprints in unused/slack space.

It?s also unclear whether Protek looked into encrypted files or int encrypted hard drive partitions. Windows 7, for example, is shipped with ?BitLocker? encryption that essentially scrambles the entire hard drive (or that can be configured to encrypt a specific portion of a hard drive, known as a ?partition?) in a way that prevents unauthorized data copying. There?s no mention of Protek having scanned within encrypted files or disk partitions in their report.

Finally, Protek?s report indicates that they may have missed, or been denied access to, Heartland?s cloud storage. Most people are familiar with cloud storage like Google Docs, where files can be created and stored entirely on the Internet. But cloud storage also includes off-site file servers like Dropbox, where documents are stored off-site and encrypted. And cloud storage also includes something that Heartland is known to have ? off-site backups like Mozy or Carbonite. According to the published Heartland 2012 budget, Heartland uses an off-site backup for their computers and/or network servers (see Budget item 522 OO on the last page). The name of the backup service provider isn?t important, only that Protek?s hard drive-focused investigation would not detect the Memo if it been securely deleted from Heartland?s Chicago computers and only remained in the off-site backups.

Again, S&R repeatedly asked Protek whether they imaged storage media other than hard drives, whether they scanned unused/slack space in addition to unallocated space, whether they searched for the Memo within encrypted files and encrypted disk partitions, and whether they imaged Heartland?s off-site backup(s). S&R received no response from Protek to our questions.

The investigation report doesn?t say whether Protek didn?t ask to image the alternative storage media that S&R identified above or whether Heartland denied Protek access to those media. But there is no indication from Protek?s report that alternative storage media were forensically imaged and analyzed. As a result, Protek?s investigation could have missed the Memo even if it?s hypothetical Heartland author wrote it at Heartland?s Chicago headquarters but stored it on something other than a hard drive.

Protek?s investigation neglected common file formats

When Protek conducted their analyses, they looked for four different electronic fingerprints in a set of files and in ?unallocated? disk storage. The files they analyzed were all of the following types: Word .doc and .docx files, WordPerfect .wpd files, Adobe .pdf files, and Rich Text Format .rtf files. In addition, Protek searched for the fingerprints within all compressed .zip files/archives.

As above, this list of file types is not comprehensive enough to ensure that the Memo did not originate on the ?Heartland System.? Specifically, the investigation missed a number of file formats in which the Memo could have saved, it missed a number of compression formats in which the Memo could have archived, it assumed that the document was created in a standard word processing program, and it didn?t mention whether there was evidence on Heartland computers that files had been securely deleted.

Microsoft Word documents are saved in more formats than just the .doc and .docx formats through which Protek searched. For example, some older versions of Word created temporary files that used .tmp file extensions. Word 2007 and 2010 use .asd files as auto-recover files in case Word crashes unexpectedly. And Word can be configured in the ?Preferences? to automatically save backup files as .wbk files.

In addition, Protek didn?t investigate whether the file could have been created in Works, which saves files natively as .wps files. And if the Memo was created in Windows? WordPad or Notepad application, it would have been saved as either a .txt file or an Open Document standard .odt file, neither of which were searched.

On their Fakegate site, Heartland posted images that show they use WordPerfect rather than Word (see the Windows taskbar in the image at right), which could explain why Protek chose not to search Word backup and auto-recover files. However, Protek does not appear to have searched through WordPerfect backup files either, which are .bk* files (where * is a number). Similarly, many programs use the .bak file extension for backups, and the .tmp file extension is common for any temporary working file.

Compressed .zip files and archives (collections of files and folders) are common on Windows computers, but Zip format is not the only compression method that could have been used to collect the Memo and the associated documents that Gleick released. WinZip uses a .zipx extension in addition to standard .zip files. Apple OS computers often use StuffIT, which compresses data into .sit and .sitx files. Gzip is an industry standard and it produces files with a .gz extension. Yet none of these compression file extensions were searched by Protek either. Given the sheer number of possible archive file compression options (see this matrix at Wikipedia for a visual overview of the problem), searching within only .zip files without at least explaining the rationale for ignoring all the other compression files is not credible.

And this doesn?t even begin to touch the complexities of whether the file was written on a device that uses a non-standard text format. Smartphone note-taking apps often save notes in a specialized ASCII text format that is specific to the app instead of attached to some form of standard. Basic text documents can often be saved without any file extension at all. Apple word processors like iWorks use entirely different file extensions, none of which were searched (or their exclusion explained) according to the Protek report. And there?s no indication that Protek looked at Internet files that are generated in the Internet cache when someone edits an on-line document from a site like Google Docs/Drive. Had the Memo been authored using Google Docs, there?s no indication that Protek?s investigation of just standard word processing software would have found it.

Finally, Protek?s report doesn?t mention whether or not there was evidence of secure deletion on any of the imaged hard drives. Secure deletion is a method that permanently removes any indication the bits were ever present, even from ?unallocated space.? However, this method often leaves detectable traces that something was securely deleted, either in the form of large regions of 0 bits, 1 bits, or uncharacteristically randomized 0s and 1s. While the Memo, if it ever existed on Heartland?s computers, would not be detectable once it was securely deleted, the deletion of something would have been, and yet Protek?s report doesn?t indicate whether or not they scanned for such evidence.

S&R repeatedly asked Protek why they didn?t investigate (or report investigating) additional file formats, temporary Internet cache files, and securely deleted regions, but they again didn?t respond.

Protek?s email investigation misses webmail options

In addition to the data searches on Heartland?s Chicago workstations and servers, Protek also searched the Heartland email system for evidence of the Memo. Protek created a forensic image of the Exchange Node Database and then searched the image for the same digital fingerprints that they searched for on the hard drives. Protek found that the Memo did not appear to have been created as an email on the Heartland email server or emailed to or from anyone at Heartland as an attachment (but only as a .doc, .docx, .pdf .rtf, .wpd, or .zip file) before it was posted online on February 14, 2012.

There?s two possibilities for how the Memo could have been created in Heartland?s Chicago headquarters but still been missed by Protek?s investigation. First, it could have been attached as some kind of file that Protek failed to search in, like a .odt Open Document file. Second, it could have been composed on a personal Webmail account such as Hotmail and then distributed to the subset of Institute Board and senior staff mentioned by the Memo?s author. In this case, the email might not be detectable anywhere on the Heartland system. Even if the Memo were detectable, it would only be through a careful search of the temporary Internet cache files that Protek did not analyze.

S&R asked Protek if their investigation would have detected the Memo if it had been written via a webmail interface of some kind, but they did not respond to repeated request for comment.

???-

As part of S&R?s analysis of Protek?s investigation report, S&R contacted several computer scientists and information technology experts. All agreed that Protek?s investigation as documented was too narrow to support the broad conclusion that the Memo was not created by someone at The Heartland Institute. What is unclear is whether Protek failed to ask the right questions, whether Heartland denied Protek enough access to their system, or whether Heartland refused to pay Protek for a more thorough analysis.

What is known is the following:

Protek?s investigation did not identify all the people they interviewed, and the descriptions of the people interviewed did not include all of the likely sources of the Memo.
Protek only analyzed digital data from The Heartland Institute?s Chicago headquarters and three personal computers of Joe and Diane Bast, yet modern networking and telecommuting would enable any Heartland employee to author the Memo from a satellite office or from home in a manner that Protek?s analysis would not detect.
Protek?s focus on workstation and server computers might have neglected to scan laptops and would have missed tablet computers, netbooks, and smartphones as devices on which the Memo could have been authored.
Protek?s focus on hard drives would have missed thumb drives, tape backups, DVDs and CD-RWs, and perhaps most critical of all, would not have detected the Memo had it been saved in one of Heartland?s off-site backups.
Protek?s search for digital fingerprints focused on five word processing file formats and one file compression/archiving format, but would have missed a large number of common text file formats and any file stored in an alternative compression format. Protek also did not search within files created by word processors in the course of authoring and printing, but not saving, the Memo.
Protek did not analyze whether the Memo could have been written using an on-line document service such as Google Docs.
Protek?s investigation would not detect the Memo if it were an email attachment in any file format other than the five formats they searched, and Protek did not investigate the possibility of the Memo having been authored in a webmail interface.

At the end of their investigation, Protek issued a broad conclusion that ?the Memo was not created on the Heartland System and never existed there prior to February 14, 2012.? But the many large holes that S&R identified in Protek?s analysis casts a significant shadow of doubt over Protek?s conclusion. In reality, Protek?s conclusion is more strictly limited than their investigation implies, and the best that Protek can really say is that they found no evidence that the Memo had been created at Heartland?s Chicago headquarters in the few places they looked.

Given the flaws in Protek?s analysis, the absence of evidence demonstrating Heartland authored the Memo cannot be considered evidence that Heartland didn?t author it. A much more thorough investigation than what is documented in the Protek investigation report would be required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that no-one at Heartland authored the Memo.

Image credits:
Peter Sinclair of Climate Denial Crock of the Week
The Heartland Institute