What the Bush Administration DOESN'T want you to know

It's News, Dammit uncovers strong evidence to support claims that the White House has suppressed the availability of important information on the Internet.Computer forensics experts working for Byzantine Communications have uncovered a large repository of information stored on the whitehouse.gov web server that the Bush administration doesn't want people to find. Due to Freedom of Information mandates, the governmental information must be publicly accessible, but the White House's IT staff has exploited a loophole in the law, making every effort to keep the public from finding out about this information.

The technical means through which the Bush Administration is suppressing the information is use of a robots file, which restricts the ability of search engine to catalog a web page. With the robot restrictions in place, for example, Google cannot "spider" those restricted web pages.

Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry has launched a radio and television ad assault on the current administration's information repression policy. Here is one short radio ad's text:

How is it that John Ashcroft can view your library and bookstore purchase records, but you can't find supposedly public information regarding the Iraq war or the Department of Homeland Security on www.whitehouse.gov? As your president, I will share all information with you. I'm John Kerry, and I approve of this message.

The Kerry campaign has also launched a massive web blitz, urging people to link to the list of repressed websites at this address: http://www.whitehouse.gov/robots.txt. Through increased exposure, the campaign argues, Americans will learn just to what extend the Bush administration wants to hide information from the public.

White House officials argue that there is no conspiracy, no coverup of information. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan: "All of the information disallowed in the robots file is merely to conserve bandwidth by minimizing search engine traffic. Any citizen can go to whitehouse.gov and use the site map, or the site search functionality to find all of this information. It is available for public consumption, in accordance with all of the laws and regulations in place."

Members of the information technology community remain unimpressed with the web restrictions, as well as the reaction to it. "A robots.txt file cannot suppress information, and cannot be enforced by any technology. It's an 'on your honor' system. A rogue search engine could ignore the robots restrictions, cataloging each and every link on a website," says Martijn Koster, a respected expert on web search technology.

"Also, the Kerry campaign has greatly overblown this issue. Take a look at the whitehouse.gov robots.txt file. It's mostly just info of some historical or press-release nature. Does Google really need to give a high page rank to the 2004 state easter eggs, or tee ball pictures from 2003? If you think there's some hidden agenda going on, go search the robots.txt file yourself."

Girl still has hope for dog lost over Hoover Dam

"i hope this person didn't lose their dog, because that would just be sad."

Djibouti, Africa -- A girl here is still holding out hope that a dog lost over the Hoover Dam in Nevada may have been found.

Linking on her website to what appears to be a photograph from a family vacation photo album, her web page shows an image of a dog chasing a Frisbee over the edge of the Hoover Dam, with a man, presumably his owner, watching in horror as his dog falls 726 feet to his presumably untimely end.

Calls to the Hoover Dam visitor center to find out more about the dog in the photo have gone unanswered, but Marvin Hagworth, spokesman for the Bureau of Reclamation (which operates the dam) made these comment:

At a height of over seven hundred twenty feet, it's unlikely that a dog would survive the fall. In fact, he probably would land on one of the many structures at the bottom of the dam, rather than landing in the water, what with the prevailing winds and the apparent velocity of the dog in the photo, and those structures are made of concrete, so it wouldn't be a soft landing.

I've personally checked with the Dam operators, and they told me that there have been no reports of lost dogs at the Dam, nor any reports of animal carcasses appearing near the base of the dam."

Some animal rights groups have voiced their concern that the Frisbee may have been deliberately thrown over the edge of the dam, citing statistics that most dogs taken on family vacations are then abandoned hundreds or thousands of miles from home. Such a possibility cannot be ruled out at this time.

Spokesman Hagworth could not comment on whether the Hoover Dam visitor center would soon be ordering new warning signs for the visitor areas atop the dam, advising visitors not to throw any Frisbees or old tennis balls. Any such developments, Hagworth assured us, will be made available to the media.

The Djibouti girl, pictured at right, remains cautiously optimistic about the dog's fate. With no definitive evidence of the dog's whereabouts, she says, it's too early to jump to any conclusions.

Urinal Screen Changes Man's Life

"This urinal screen reached out to me and ended my downward spiral into the world of alcohol and illicit drugs."

San Francisco, CA - Robert Raydur, an entrepreneur from Chicago has become the new spokesman for Swisher Hygiene, a company which he credits with saving his life. On a business trip to San Francisco, Raydur stopped in the B Spot restaurant to use the restroom, where he saw Swisher's trademark urinal screen with its "Say No to Drugs" message.

"I went to the bathroom just before leaving the restaurant. I was planning to use drugs. Then I saw the screen at the bottom of the urinal. My life has been changed ever since that moment," Raydur told reporters.

"My family had tried to introduce me to Jesus, take me to AA meetings, but none of it worked. It's as if I had to hit bottom in my life, and that bottom was right at the base of that urinal."

Raydur will be touring the country, selling Swisher Hygiene products and services largely to fast food franchises, touting the strong anti-drug messages found on Swisher's urinal products.

John Kerry reveals platform: ''I'm Still Not Bush!''

John Kerry Thursday night unveiled his campaign platform before the Democratic Convention, to the delight of the party delegates who selected him. "I'm still not Bush and I never will be!" Kerry shouted to cheering crowds of delegates. Party leaders are pleased with Kerry's platform, and believe it will lead him to victory.In his acceptance speech, John Kerry laid out three facets of his campaign platform:

1. I am still not George W Bush.
2. I never will be George W Bush.
3. Did I mention I went to Vietnam?

"The first two points are designed to appeal to the hard-core liberal elements of the Democratic party: the gay marriage advocates, the government health care proponents, the 'We hate that election-stealer Bush' element," Kerry strategist Tad Devine explained. "The third point we believe will convince swing voters that John Kerry is really the man they want to be president."

Kerry strategists believe that if Kerry can successfully convey these three key messages to the American public, that they will pull the voting lever for him.

"What's going to be really important for Kerry is to get these points out in every single speech he makes," Devine said. "Every sentence, every word he speaks has to say 'I'm not George W Bush' or reflect back on his time in Vietnam."

In fact, Kerry's acceptance speech included references to Vietnam no fewer than thirty-eight times, which works out to nearly one Vietnam mention per minute.

John Kerry and his campaign managers will do everything in their power to get out the message that he's not George W Bush. "Fingerprints, blood or urine tests," said Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill. "We will prove to the American voters that John Kerry is still not George W Bush."

DECLASSIFIED: JFK could have ended Vietnam War with Undead Soldiers

Documents recently declassified through the Freedom of Information Act showing a secret Pentagon project in 1960 to train zombie soldiers; other documents indicate that President Kennedy refused to allow the military to take those undead soldiers into Vietnam, favoring traditional military techniques instead.Washington, DC -- President Kennedy's refusal to allow the Pentagon to send highly-trained zombie soldiers into Vietnam may be responsible for the United State's decade-plus long involvement in the war, experts say after reviewing the declassified documents.

The documents detailing the 1960 zombie training program paint a picture of a dedicated faction of military scientists working to prevent military casualties. The project, according to the documents, was immensely successful, with training exercises and simulations showing civilian casualty rates near zero percent, friendly fire casualties also down significantly. Perhaps most significantly, the documents state that the zombie soldiers could have replaced the entire front line of the US military in Vietnam, protecting our own soldiers behind a wall of unstoppable fighting creatures.

"I don't even need to tell you how many lives this could have saved," said Philbert McNamey, a military historian specializing in the Vietnam War. "With this army of undead soldiers under our control, we could have saved Vietnam from falling to Communism, or even have marched this army into China and the U.S.S.R. to completely erradicate the communist threat."

A source close to the Kennedy family, speaking anonymously, says it was JFK's Catholic upbringing that ultimately kept him from approving the use of the zombies. "Voodoo and the black arts [which turn dead bodies into zombies] are seen as sinful, and the tools of Satan according to the Roman Catholic catechism. John couldn't justify using the tools of the devil to attack communism, as evil as communism itself may have been. 'You can fight fire with fire,' JFK said, 'but you can't fight evil with the tools of the devil.'"

Nader outraged by ''This Land Is Your Land'' political satire web cartoon

"Why ain't I in it?" Nader demands of the creators, the Spiridellis brothers, who have this three minute long cartoon song and dance posted at their website JibJab.comHeralded as this weeks fastest-spreading non-virus email, people around the country are sharing the link to this web parody of President George Bush and presidential-hopeful John Kerry.

Ralph Nader has objected to the widespread viewing of this cartoon, because it purports to show America it's choices for the November election, but it leaves out the Nader Choice™.

"I have a strong following among young people with technological skills," Nader said to a reporter. "Given the blueprints for this web cartoon, I'm sure we could work in some images of me, and Peter Camejo too."

Nader even offered up some suggested lyrics for his refrain in the song:

This land is your land

This land is my land

I really want to

Get e-lected.

Please vote for me,

I'm really the best shot we got.

This land should really vote for me.

Many Nader supporters are complaining of disenfranchisement, because the Republican and Democrat candidates are getting free exposure from this video, but their man is nowhere to be found. "I don't know if it's illegal to make a video like this, leaving out a major presidential contender," says Melanie, one Nader supporter, "but it should be."

When asked if the Libertarian candidate should appear in the video as well, Melanie replied that Libertarians are stupid and should go jump off a bridge.

Choosy viruses choose Google, survey shows

More than three-quarters of Internet worms and viruses use Google as their default search engine to retrieve email addresses, according to a study by eWeek, a computer technology trade journal.Google suffered an onslaught of automated searches Monday as unwitting computer users infected their computers with the latest MyDoom computer virus. This variant of the virus expands on previous versions by searching the Internet for additional email addresses to infect. According to technology experts, the sub-variants of this virus that are spreading the fastest are those which make use of the Google search engine. The virus has also affected several other search engines, including Yahoo, Lycos and AltaVista, but to a far lesser extent.

"Google is proud to host the world's largest and freshest index of the World Wide Web," says Google co-founder Larry Page. "We're also quite popular, it seems, among those who surf the darker side of the 'Net."

According to eWeek, a vast majority, 78%, of the brunt of the MyDoom virus wrath was born by Google. Yahoo came in second with 15%, with Lycos and AltaVista soaking up most of the rest of the hits.

For several hours on Monday, people around the globe found Google and the other search engines to be slow or completely unresponsive. Google has responded with additional server capacity and countermeasures to reduce the flow of data from the computer viruses.