artur davis

Since Newt's win in South Carolina this weekend and Florida only a week away the civil war in the GOP is really heating up. The battle is establishment verses base and it's really becoming fun to watch.

First off we have this from CNN:

Veteran Republican leadership aide Ron Bonjean said on the record what most of his colleagues would only tell CNN privately.

"Most people on Capitol Hill and in Washington are very nervous about a Gingrich candidacy," he said. "It sends a shiver down a lot of Republican spines."

"You can actually feel the nervousness from Republicans around town that Gingrich could actually bring the craziness back of his speakership from the 1990s. It's everywhere."

The establishment remembers what it was actually like having Newt Gingrich in charge. They hated it and don't want to see it return. That explains this from another establishment person, Bill Kristol:

I’ve got to think Monday night’s debate further swelled the groundswell of support for Mitch Daniels. The liveliest part of the debate was at the beginning, when Mitt went after Newt—and Republicans all over America watched with fascinated horror at the thought that these are the two GOP frontrunners. The only spectacle in American politics more off-putting than Newt Gingrich in self-righteous defense mode is Mitt Romney in self-righteous attack mode. I thought Mitt’s attacks were somewhat more dishonest than Newt’s defenses were disingenuous, but it was good to move on to the rest of the debate, where little further damage was done.

It hasn't even been a year since their last major breech of security involving personal information for our veterans and we get another one:

The Department of Veterans Affairs began notifying 1.8 million veterans and doctors Monday that their personal and business information could be on a portable hard drive that has been missing from an Alabama hospital for nearly three weeks.

The hard drive may have contained Social Security numbers and other personal information from about 535,000 individuals and billing information on 1.3 million doctors nationwide, the VA said. That's more than 37 times more people than authorities initially believed were affected.

An employee at the VA medical center in Birmingham reported the external hard drive missing on Jan. 22. The drive was used to back up information on the employee's office computer. It may have contained data from research projects, the department said.

U.S. Rep. Artur Davis questioned why it took the agency so long to begin sending out notification letters.

Bush has been busy putting out executive orders to further add political influence to different departments in our government. Why doesn't he put one out to demand more strict security on vital information?

I have experienced identity theft and it is no fun. The bad part was when I went through it, it was before online identity theft was a problem. Someone got my social security number via different means and decided to start renting apartments in my name and not paying rent. Needless to say no one gets my social security number now.

Now that we have a Democratic Congress maybe we can get some legislation through to make the government, schools and corporations take our privacy more seriously. Something needs to change soon.