The most dangerous show on television?   Indiscriminate in the targets it so brilliantly satirises, 'South Park' might have incited its most extreme response yet, argues James Delingpole.  Read Article    

 Preoccupations: What My Mentors Have Taught Me Keecia Scott of UCB recommends finding a mentor to help with your career.    

  From The Times of London August 12, 2009     Hillary Clinton is no ventriloquist’s dummy The Secretary of State has learnt to take her knocks like a man Alice Fishburn   Kinshasa’s heat might have wilted her usually pristine pantsuit. But Hillary Clinton showed enough starch yesterday to win respect from any woman. Forced into dutiful wife mode by a seemingly sexist question, she firmly removed herself in ten little words: “My husband is not the Secretary of State. I am.” Precisely so. Mrs Clinton’s fighting words sum up the drive that propelled baby-boomer women to power. Gags about her menopausal tantrum may have begun, but men with HRT punchlines should prepare for a punch of a different sort. When it comes to endurance, Job has nothing on Mrs Clinton. Over the years she has lost her vision for healthcare, her husband’s fidelity and the Oval Office. But still she gets back up. Take this past week. She has met Nelson Mandela, spent time with refugees and rape victims and tactfully handled an offer of 20 cows and 40 goats for Chelsea’s hand in marriage. All while conducting the highest-level diplomacy. How insulting then to find herself reduced to a ventriloquist’s dummy by the mistranslated question: “What does Mr Clinton think, through the mouth of Mrs Clinton?” You could see the exasperation in her eyes as all those meetings and briefings and long, long days faded into insignificance. BACKGROUND Hillary: I'm Secretary of State, not Bill Obama gives birth to genuine hatred ] Marriage to Bill Clinton has never been easy. The clash of the titanic egos played out again last week. Hillary had just set off for Africa when Bill got a call from his old pal Al Gore. Next thing, he’s borrowed a jet from a playboy friend, zoomed off to North Korea and returned with two kidnapped reporters and the President’s thanks. Hillary had barely left the baggage reclaim area. The flare-up in the Congo rings true with any woman who has been constantly defined in relation to a successful man in her life. “How much,” she seemed to be asking, “do I have to do to prove myself?” Nobody asks Barack Obama for Michelle’s views on the Dow Jones. Many believe that Mrs Clinton’s great strength is her steely determination. But it’s the odd glimmer of humanity that explains her appeal. This is the woman who cheered up culinary illiterates when she said that she didn’t bake cookies, captured the sisterhood’s sympathy when she swallowed back tears in New Hampshire and still muscled her way into government. So all hail to Hillary’s ability to ignore the knuckleheads and knuckle down. There have been no rows, spiteful asides or calculated positioning against Mr Obama. Her rigor mortis grin at the inauguration has been replaced by a fruitful partnership with the boss. In short, she knows how to take her knocks like a man.…

  Extent of E-Mail Surveillance Renews Concerns in Congress By JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domestic surveillance program, with critics in Congress saying its recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged, current and former officials said. The agency’s monitoring of domestic e-mail messages, in particular, has posed longstanding legal and logistical difficulties, the officials said. Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency’s ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation. Both the former analyst’s account and the rising concern among some members of Congress about the N.S.A.’s recent operation are raising fresh questions about the spy agency. Representative Rush Holt, Democrat of New Jersey and chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, has been investigating the incidents and said he had become increasingly troubled by the agency’s handling of domestic communications. In an interview, Mr. Holt disputed assertions by Justice Department and national security officials that the overcollection was inadvertent. “Some actions are so flagrant that they can’t be accidental,” Mr. Holt said. Other Congressional officials raised similar concerns but would not agree to be quoted for the record. Mr. Holt added that few lawmakers could challenge the agency’s statements because so few understood the technical complexities of its surveillance operations. “The people making the policy,” he said, “don’t understand the technicalities.” The inquiries and analyst’s account underscore how e-mail messages, more so than telephone calls, have proved to be a particularly vexing problem for the agency because of technological difficulties in distinguishing between e-mail messages by foreigners and by Americans. A new law enacted by Congress last year gave the N.S.A. greater legal leeway to collect the private communications of Americans so long as it was done only as the incidental byproduct of investigating individuals “reasonably believed” to be overseas. But after closed-door hearings by three Congressional panels, some lawmakers are asking what the tolerable limits are for such incidental collection and whether the privacy of Americans is being adequately protected. “For the Hill, the issue is a sense of scale, about how much domestic e-mail collection is acceptable,” a former intelligence official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because N.S.A. operations…

  Inside Rod Blagojevich's jobs machine SPECIAL REPORT | Declaring a hiring freeze while doling out jobs based on clout, former governor carried on business as usual from day 1 of his term, files revealOctober 16, 2009
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