Key West Ink - Evaporating

After a seemingly endless battle and a lot of positive noise from all kinds of officials and regular Key West folk, it appears all is far from well on Duval Street.

We have skanky ex strippers, openly selling themselves in storefronts, T-shirt shops with some of the most offensive logos ever seen, front and central, some very seedy looking stores with 9 foot long triple bladed swords and throwing stars happily marketed alongside coke bullets and a wide assortment of drug scales, and of course the reason why the Navy has always loved our little bit o' paradise , more actual strip clubs per capita than downtown Bangkok. OK, so I exaggerate. A bit.

What we do not have, and it seems are unlikely to ever have, are tattoo shops. You can watch a zit faced coke whore push her nasty goods in your face whilst you down as much liquor as you can handle, but should you choose to have said ho's face permanently memorialized on your back.. you have to drive 3 miles to Stock Island.

From The Keynoter

After spending $500,000 to prepare his tattoo parlor, paying a down payment of $260,000 on a $1.4 million mortgage and attending city workshop after city workshop, Key West Ink owner Jim McAlhany is taking his case to a judge.

“Maybe I should turn it into a T-shirt shop,” McAlhany mused. “I could probably get an ordinance for that.”

A 43-year-old city ban prohibits tattoo shops in Key West proper and the City Commission has been trying to craft an ordinance lifting the ban.

But McAlhany, along other hopeful tattoo-parlor owners, is tired of waiting and pressing forward with a lawsuit he previously put on hold.

It alleges the ban is unconstitutional, a violation of First Amendment rights.

A subpoena has been issued to city Planning Director Gail Kenson to appear before Monroe County Judge Mark Jones at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday with “all documents” relating to her work on the tattoo-parlor ordinance, including e-mails, staff reports, draft ordinances and communications with others.

The owners of Paradise Tattoo, which has operated on Stock Island for 15 years, filed a similar complaint and consolidated their lawsuit with Key West Ink's. Both have shops on Duval waiting to open, Key West Ink at 717 Duval and Paradise Tattoo at 627. Paradise owner Doreen Eppy sells merchandise out of her shop.

Attorney Wayne Larue Smith represents Key West Ink, Jerry Coleman represents Paradise and Nathan Eden is helping Goldie's Southernmost Tattoo Parlor on Stock Island, which has not sued.

Commissioner Bill Verge, whose district lies where the shops would go, doesn't see any ruling happening Tuesday.

“You can only work on it so fast,” Verge said. “I can't imagine Judge Jones ruling on anything until we vote on the ordinance.”

But McAlhany said the suit has nothing to do with the city, rather the “unconstitutional ordinance” itself, which was enacted to keep U.S. Navy personnel from getting tattoos in the 1960s, when there weren't the same sanitation measures there are today.

McAlhany, who said he has 1,500 clients waiting for tattoos from his shop, said he bought his Duval shop before the commission passed an ordinance because most city officials told him it would pass, and in a short time period.

“I believe that if the judge rules in line with the Constitution, it should then will be all right.”

Dining With Hitler In Asia: Hitler-themed Bars & Restaurants

Adolf Hitler? In most western countries he is viewed as history’s most evil man, and almost all are aware of the horrific genocide he was responsible for, with many having had family fight and/or die in the war against Nazi Germany.

However, in Asia, Hitler is a far more distant figure. This distance might be an explanation for the bizarre case of Hitler restaurants and bars that can be found throughout Asia.

Here are some photos of these strange Hitler-themed establishments:

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In 2006, the restaurant Hitler’s Cross opened in Mumbai, India:

From the Associated Press:

When Hitler’s Cross restaurant opened in a Mumbai suburb Sunday, local politicians and movie industry types were on hand to celebrate beneath the posters of the Nazi leader and swastikas.

“It’s really made people very upset that a person responsible for the massacre of six million Jews can be glorified,” Elijah Jacob, one of the Jewish community’s leaders, said on Wednesday.

But owner Puneet Sablok has refused to back down. Apart from Mumbai’s 4,500 Jews, there has been little controversy in India, where Holocaust awareness is limited, Adolf Hitler is regarded as just another historical figure and swastikas are an ancient Hindu symbol, displayed all over to bring luck. There are just 5,500 Jews in all of India.

Soon after the article was published the restaurant’s owner backed down and changed the name of the restaurant.

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This Hitler Bar, which was located in Busan, South Korea, caused a lot of anger in the foreign community.

The website Pusanweb interviewed the owner of the bar, who said the following:

I wanted to design a beer bar with something shocking that would attract the young generation. Beer got me thinking about Germany (the home of beer) which made me think of Hitler.
[…]
….he is no different than Alexander the Great or Gengis Khan. They were all conquerors who killed many people and they are all ‘big men’ in the sense of their notoriety living on long after they died.

The owner eventually changed the name of his bar to Ditler’ and then to ‘Ceasar’.

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Modern Bar Hitler (South Korea), photographed by Lynxsquared:

Inside Modern Bar Hitler:

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A charming sign for a Hitler bar in Korea, photographed by Oronzo:

A Korean Hitler bar in Daejong South Korea, captured by photographer Modrob:

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Another Hitler Bar in Busan, South Korea (From the The Gates of the Minjok, an article by Michael Hurt about the nazi roots of modern Korean national identity) :

From the same article:

The picture I should have taken was of another Hitler bar, this one way down on the coast in Sunchon, and which I ran across in 1994 – doesn’t exist because I was simply in too much shock at the time to have the foresight to take a picture. I tend to think, though, that since many trends in the big city get followed by small towns – and not the other way around – I tend to think that there were more Hitler bars peppered across the peninsula. And given that many other expats have told me stories of “their” Hitler bar from their own cities, I’m actually pretty sure of this.

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Inside of a Hitler Bar in Busan, South Korea (from Flickr photographer Cfarivar)

A flier for the same Hitler bar:

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A Japanese tempura restaurant with a hitler-ish mascot (from Cityskip):

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A LOL-tastic Hitler costume, which can be found on the shelves of party stores across Japan:

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Round-up of Non-Events in and Around KW.

A total of 64 Cuban migrants repatriated on Sunday

A total of 64 Cuban migrants were interdicted at sea in four different incidents last week and repatriated Sunday to the island by a Coast Guard cutter.

On Monday, the crew of the Cutter Drummond interdicted a go-fast vessel carrying 29 migrants and two suspected smugglers 35 miles south of the Dry Tortugas.

The two suspected smugglers were transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Key West, Fla.

Earlier in the week a go-fast vessel carrying 22 additional migrants was spotted 75 miles west of Dry Tortugas and as intercepted.

The suspected smugglers were turned over to ICE in Key West. One of the 22 Cuban migrants was be transferred to Guántanamo Bay, Cuba.

In another incident, 10 Cuban migrants were found aboard a rustic vessel 40 miles south of Islamorada.

Finally, the Coast Guard received a report that a Good Samaritan located a vessel with four Cuban migrants aboard approximately 15 miles south of Big Pine Key on July 21.

''Today's repatriations should send a clear message to smugglers and those who hire them,'' said Lt. J.G. Eric Pare, a Coast Guard Seventh District law enforcement duty officer.

``We will continue to aggressively patrol the waters surrounding Florida and we will interdict people trying to illegally enter the United States from the sea. Those who have violated laws will be held accountable in a court of law.''

At Hemingway's home, claws are out

The notion that Charlie Chaplin is putting on a show as he snoozes on the Hemingway Home and Museum veranda — well, that's enough to make a cat laugh.

But neither the fluffy feline, named for the Little Tramp because of his tuxedo-like markings, nor his 46 companions lazing around the late author's estate are likely to be amused if the U.S. government succeeds in designating them an animal act and restricts their freedom.

Pampered cats, some of them descendants of Ernest Hemingway's six-toed pet Snowball, have had the run of the leafy compound for generations.

They are named for the writer's wives, fictional characters, Hollywood friends and colleagues. Zane Grey and Truman Capote often can be found napping in the flower beds between the villa and the pool. Archibald MacLeish prefers the cool tile floor of the master bathroom. Emily Dickinson seems indifferent to the camera flashes catching her in repose on a predecessor's tombstone, rarely bestirring herself from the limelight.

Fed organic cat food, tended weekly by a visiting veterinarian, and petted, photographed and cooed at by adoring tourists, the cats have become a beloved quirk of this Key West landmark.

But the languid lifestyle of the Hemingway Home cats is threatened by proposals from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that they be treated like performers in a zoo or circus. The feds want the museum to obtain an animal exhibition license, which would require staff to "protect" the felines from contact with spectators and cage them after their daily "performance" ends when the front gate closes at 5 p.m.

"Our cats do not do tricks. They don't do flips and jump through hoops. They're our pets!" said Jacque Sands, manager and 14-year veteran at the museum, where the cats can curl up in kitty condos scattered through the gardens. "They own us. We don't own them."

The trouble began as a spat with a neighbor several years ago. Now, the conflict pits the cats' keepers against two former members of the Florida Keys Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Motivated by concern for what they considered an excessive cat population on the property and the potential for the cats to escape and be run over, Gwen Hawtof and Debra Schultz are believed to have brought the museum to the attention of those charged with applying the 1966 Animal Welfare Act, said the museum's chief executive, Michael Morawski.

The Hemingway cats rarely strayed from the 1-acre property surrounded by a 5-foot brick wall until Schultz arrived about eight years ago and established a feral-cat feeding site half a block away, Morawski said. Cats began disappearing over the wall and turning up at the SPCA as captured strays, he said.

In October 2003, a USDA inspector posing as a tourist surveyed the grounds and later ordered the museum staff to get a license or face $10,000 in daily fines. Since then, a veterinarian from the USDA has made repeated inspections of the property, recommending increasingly restrictive measures each time, Morawski said. The cat population is down from its usual 60 or so, although museum managers are eagerly expecting a litter in early autumn to replace a generation succumbing to old age — including Mark Twain, whose cancer claimed him at 21 last year, and 20-year-old Trevor Howard, who was euthanized in July when his kidneys failed.

Most of the cats are spayed or neutered, but a couple of males and females are allowed to breed to maintain what museum staff consider the optimal population, Morawski said.

There are now Web-based petitions to Save the Hemingway Cats, and the Key West City Commission has exempted the museum from a city law prohibiting more than four domestic pets per household. The commission pronounced the cats "an integral part of the history and ambience of the Hemingway house," which draws 300,000 visitors each year.

Judge tosses condo lawsuit

A federal judge this week dismissed a lawsuit that owners of Santa Maria condominiums filed against the developer when the buyers were unable to "flip" their condos after ponying up a $230,000 deposit. Six people who paid the deposit said in the lawsuit that the developers and Realtors led them to believe they wouldn't have to come up with the balance of the $1.2 million sales price because they would be able to sell the condos at a higher price even before construction was finished. That was not the case, given the decline in the real estate market, and the owners now have to forfeit their deposit or close on the property. "The plaintiffs were assured by the defendants that once the building was under construction, prices would increase dramatically, as they were contracting at a bargain price, therefore there would be no issue with the plaintiffs being able to resell their investment contracts to somebody else at a profit," the lawsuit said. "The plaintiffs were assured that defendants had a program in place which would guarantee that the plaintiffs would make a substantial profit on their investment and would not have to close on the purchase of the units." The buyers also admitted in the lawsuit that they had not read their investment contracts, but had relied on their Realtors' claims. "The written contract was very clear and unambiguous," said Ed Scales, one of the lawyers representing Santa Maria. "The judge held that we didn't do anything to prevent these folks from reading their contracts. He said it was 'entirely unreasonable' for people to plop down [that amount of money] as a deposit and not read the contract." Scales pointed out how laughable the situation would be if the roles were reversed. "Let's say the market suddenly went up by 25 percent," he said Friday. "Would the developers then be able to say that the buyers owe us 25 percent more money because we had not anticipated the change in the value?" The final written order from the judge should be signed next week, and the plaintiffs then have 30 days to file an appeal, Scales said.

Are You On the 'Good' Lords Hitlist?

The nuttiness of Christian American, evangelical born-again types, never ceases to amaze me.

This poor misguided boy has listed all kinds or irredeemable folks on his cute sandwich board and it does bear further examination. Sex Addicts and Mormons appear to be at the top of Gods hit list. As recent and not so recent news items tell us, the leaders of a variety of evangelical churches have been caught in a mind boggling array of sexual and drug fueled liaisons, which appear to get forgiven by god and the congregation, far quicker than those who commit the same acts, but are not church leaders or members. These "child molesting homosexuals" get 'cured' at a remarkable rate using only prayer and seemingly endless tears.

Atheists, of which I am one, are tiny by comparison. In fact are the smallest graphic on his board. Witches, racists and liars are a close second.

However, it is the Mormons who for some unknown reason, really get under skin of the (self) righteous. They have been called everything from Devil worshipers, to aliens and coming from a group whose entire belief system is based on ancient mythology, is curious to say the least. A Mormon is now running for Republican President. Given that the Republicans are run by severely right wing Christian fundamentalists, this is causing quite a stir.

IS AMERICA ready for a Mormon president? A few months ago the political commentariat of Washington was convinced that the Mormon former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, would remain a bit player because of his religion. Mormonism is still seen by some as a cult rather than a mainstream creed, despite its 6 million members in the US alone.

This was despite Romney's matinee-idol looks, sharp intellect, $US300 million ($A342 million) personal fortune and Wall Street background. The last two were acquired while he headed Bain Capital, now one of the five largest US private equity firms.

But Mitt Romney has defied gravity and may well be the dark horse of the 2008 race.

In recent weeks, he has overtaken Senator John McCain — once seen as the strongest Republican candidate, and has been steadily gaining on former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Last week a strategist in the Romney campaign claimed his boss was really the frontrunner in the Republican race.

Mr Romney's strategy — one that has been used successfully in the past — is to win at least one of the early primaries, in Iowa or New Hampshire, giving his campaign the momentum and credibility for the major primaries on February 5 in California and New York.

Winning Iowa worked for Jimmy Carter in 1976. He went from being a non-entity to winning the Democrat nomination. A win over Bob Dole in New Hampshire also revitalised then vice-president George Bush senior's campaign in 1988.

Aside from the polls, Romney appears to be winning the fund-raising race. He has led Republicans in the last two quarters, raising over $US40 million so far.

But the question of his religion continues to dog him just as it did John F. Kennedy, whose Catholicism was seen as a handicap in his presidential run four decades ago.

In a recent Pew survey, 30 per cent of respondents said they would be less likely to vote for a Mormon candidate.

The Romney campaign also tacitly acknowledges it remains an issue. Yesterday, Mr Romney announced he was planning a speech to explain his faith and its role in his life — a task that is fraught with political danger.

Whether that will be sufficient to overcome the prejudice among the evangelical base of the Republican Party, which he is courting, and the broader community, remains to be seen.

A month ago Mormonism came up during one of Mitt Romney's frequent community meetings in Iowa.

Mary Van Steenis, a teacher at a local Christian school, took the microphone at an "Ask Mitt Anything" forum in Pella, Iowa. She wanted him to say where the Book of Mormon would figure in his presidential decision-making. "Where would the Bible be?" she asked. "Would it be above the Book of the Mormon, or would it be beneath it?"

"This is a nation where people come from different faiths, different doctrines, different churches," Mr Romney said.

"But, unlike the people we're fighting over in the Middle East, we don't have a religious test to say who should be able to run our country. It's over there where people say, 'You don't go to my church, you can't run our country.' "

There was resounding applause from his audience.

The role that the Book of Mormon plays in the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, the church's formal name, is a fundamental difference between Mormonism and other Christian faiths. Mormons believe that the Christian church lost its way in the first millennium.

This wasn't rectified until 1820 when by God's power, Joseph Smith translated the book from an ancient record written on gold plates. Based on these prophesies, Mr Smith founded the Mormon religion, which is said to be the true course of Christianity.

This would be controversial enough but Mormons are still battling to distance themselves from the practice of polygamy, which the church banned more than 100 years ago.

The church's efforts haven't been helped by the HBO series Big Love which portrays a man who belongs to one of the breakaway cults in Utah, dealing with the none-too-pleasant realities of polygamy.

Einstein on Gandhi

Albert Einstein

"I believe that Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time.

We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil. "

Albert Einstein


Einstein's letter to Gandhi - Courtesy: Saraswati Albano-Müller
Letter by Albert Einstein to Mahatma Gandhi

Translation:

Respected Mr. Gandhi !
I use the presence of your friend in our home to send you these lines. You have shown through your works, that it is possible to succeed without violence even with those who have not discarded the method of violence. We may hope that your example will spread beyond the borders of your country, and will help to establish an international authority, respected by all, that will take decisions and replace war conflicts.
With sincere admiration,

Yours A. Einstein.

I hope that I will be able to meet you face to face some day.


Gandhi's letter to Einstein - Source: Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 54
LONDON, October 18, 1931

DEAR FRIEND,
I was delighted to have your beautiful letter sent through Sundaram. It is a great consolation to me that the work I am doing finds favour in your sight. I do indeed wish that we could meet face to face and that too in India at my Ashram.

Yours sincerely,
M. K. GANDHI

Notes by Einstein on Gandhi - Source: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Einstein's writeup on Gandhi Translation:

"Mahatma Gandhi's life achievement stands unique in political history. He has invented a completely new and humane means for the liberation war of an oppressed country, and practised it with greatest energy and devotion. The moral influence he had on the conciously thinking human being of the entire civilized world will probably be much more lasting than it seems in our time with its overestimation of brutal violent forces. Because lasting will only be the work of such statesmen who wake up and strengthen the moral power of their people through their example and educational works.

We may all be happy and grateful that destiny gifted us with such an enlightened contemporary, a role model for the generations to come."

Our Clueless Intelligence System

I have no real excuse for neglecting my blog lately, except for that annoying 'job' thingy. I had no idea working full time again would suck up so much of my time. Also, I have been posting a lot on my Myspace blog. Yeah I know, full of kids, but actually I have a lot of socially conscious and interested people linked to me and I get great feedback from them. But it is censored and I am sure watched fairly closely. I have had several posts 'disappear' strangely and others just lose pictures or paragraphs. Call me paranoid:) Anyway this is a very good piece on the ridiculous situation in the security business lately.

By Amy Zegart
The Washington Post
Sunday, July 8, 2007

The hunt was on last week as British intelligence officials searched for suspects in the attempted bombings in Scotland and London. After the attention fades, they'll examine what went right and wrong and how to do better next time. Let's hope that in doing so, they'll be more successful than the United States has been since Sept. 11, 2001.

Our national response to the worst terrorist attacks in U.S. history has consisted chiefly of finger pointing and ax grinding. Some say Clinton administration officials were too wimpy in their response to earlier al-Qaeda attacks outside the United States. Others think that Bush administration officials were out to lunch, so preoccupied with Cold War bogeymen that they never noticed the CIA's memo warning of Osama bin Laden's determination to strike on U.S. soil.

We've become obsessed with the personal drama of failure. As Bob Woodward wrote in his book "The Commanders": "Decision making at the highest levels . . . is a complex human interaction. . . . This human story is the core."

Actually, the human story is irrelevant. Those who want to learn what went wrong and how to fix it need to understand something far less intriguing: bureaucracy -- the organizational weaknesses that cause smart people to make dumb decisions.

Many of the agonizing missteps and missed clues leading to 9/11 are now well known. There was the failure to watchlist or spread the word about Khalid Almihdhar, the 9/11 hijacker who first attracted the CIA's attention in January 2000 when he attended an al-Qaeda meeting in Malaysia carrying a multiple-entry U.S. visa in his passport.

There is the FBI's "Phoenix memo," which warned that bin Laden could be training terrorists in U.S. flight schools but which never reached top FBI officials or any other intelligence agency. And there is the refusal by FBI headquarters to seek a search warrant for the computer files of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in the United States for his connection to the 9/11 plot.

But these screw-ups are the tip of the iceberg, and they all stem from a handful of organizational deficiencies that have plagued U.S. intelligence agencies for decades-- and, despite intelligence "reform," still do.

Public government documents reveal that the CIA and the FBI missed 23 potential opportunities to disrupt the

9/11 attacks. In each case, failure stemmed from the same causes: 1. agency cultures that led officials to resist new ideas, technologies and missions; 2. promotion incentives that rewarded all the wrong things; and 3. structural weaknesses that hampered the CIA and the FBI and prevented all 15 U.S intelligence agencies from working as a unified team.

Case in point: Nineteen days before 9/11, the FBI got word that the suspected al-Qaeda operative Almihdhar might be in the United States. Its response was to put the manhunt on the back burner and call out the C-team. The search was designated "routine," the lowest priority level, and given to an agent who had just finished his rookie year.

Although a full-scale, first-string effort might not have found Almihdhar in time, the evidence suggests otherwise. He and fellow hijacker Nawaf Alhazmi were hiding in plain sight, using their real names on rental agreements, bank accounts, credit cards, auto insurance and telephone listings. They were also operating under the FBI's nose, living for a while with an FBI informant and making contact with several targets of counterterrorism investigations. On the evening of 9/11, an anguished FBI agent, suspecting Almihdhar, submitted his name to the bureau's information technology center just to see what a search of public records would uncover. A few hours later, he got Almihdhar's correct address in San Diego.

Individuals were not the problem. The FBI was. The bureau's highly decentralized structure -- which assigned all cases to a lead office -- meant that what should have been a nationwide effort was instead the focus of a few people in New York. The FBI's law enforcement culture, which prized catching criminals and investigating past crimes more than finding suspected terrorists and preventing future disasters, guaranteed that the manhunt would go straight to the bottom of the pile. And in an organization in which convictions made careers, finding potential terrorists went to one of the office's least seasoned investigators because it was one of the least desirable jobs.

These and other crippling organizational weaknesses were no secret before 9/11. Between 1991 and 2001, a dozen reports examining U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism capabilities found serious organizational problems and urged immediate action. The consensus was stunning. Of 340 recommendations, 84 percent focused on the same four deficiencies: poor coordination across intelligence agencies, terrible information sharing, inadequate human intelligence and insufficient attention to setting priorities.

But almost none of the suggested fixes were implemented before 9/11. Most recommendations -- 268, or 79 percent of the total -- spurred no action. Nothing. The

9/11 commission and the congressional intelligence committees found that these same weaknesses led to disaster on 9/11.

If you think these problems have been solved, think again. Despite the recent creation of a director of national intelligence, the U.S. intelligence community remains a dysfunctional family with no one firmly in charge. The "new FBI" is still fighting the old FBI's cops-and-robbers culture. Visit the bureau's Web site, where job postings are divided into two categories -- special agents who wear badges, carry guns and catch bad guys, and everyone else. Analysts, those dot-connectors who since

9/11 have been touted as equal partners in the FBI's counterterrorism mission, are still relegated to "professional support staff," alongside auto mechanics and janitors.

Meanwhile, incentives still encourage analysts everywhere to think in the short term. At his confirmation hearings last year, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden warned Congress that unless the United States gets serious about doing big-picture analysis, it will be "endlessly surprised." And not in a good way.

Even our successes aren't cause for celebration. The FBI's recent disruptions of terrorist plots to kill soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey and to blow up the Sears tower in Chicago and New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport were all in the early planning stages -- more pipe dreams than pipe bombs. In January, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III characterized the bureau's 2006 record as one of stopping "several unsophisticated, small-scale attack plans that reflect the broader problem homegrown extremists pose."

Intelligence reform is failing now for the same reasons it always has: Transforming any organization from the inside is hard, and imposing reform from the outside is even harder.

No organization changes easily by itself. Businesses often fail to adapt to shifting market conditions even when their corporate lives depend on it. Government agencies are worse off because they aren't designed to adapt. They're built to be reliable and fair, performing the same tasks in standard ways over and over again.

This isn't all bad. Standard operating procedures ensure that all military pilots have the same rules of engagement and that everyone stands in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles. But the downside is that government agencies are hardwired to keep doing things the same old way even when they shouldn't.

Imposing intelligence reform from the outside has always been a political loser. There's a reason why no president since Harry S. Truman has gotten serious about overhauling intelligence agencies through executive orders or legislation. It's called the Pentagon. For decades, the Defense Department has controlled about 80 percent of the intelligence budget and housed most of the agencies. And for decades, it has fiercely resisted any move to realign power in the CIA or anywhere else. Pentagon officials and their turf-conscious congressional supporters have been torpedoing intelligence reform forever -- crippling the CIA when it was created in 1947, savaging intelligence reform bills twice in the 1990s and fatally weakening the powers of the new national intelligence director during the last reform round, after the release of the 9/11 commission's report in 2004.

There's no magic potion for fixing U.S. intelligence. Meaningful reform will take years, requiring bottom-up cultural transformation as well as top-down policy changes. Sadly, it may need another catastrophic failure to gain traction. We've known about intelligence problems and their solutions for years. What we've never had, and desperately need, is the political courage in the White House and Congress to take on the Pentagon, demand radical overhaul and see it through.

Now that's where individuals matter.

Amy Zegart is associate professor of public policy at UCLA and the author of the forthcoming "Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI and the Origins of 9/11."

Here is a little gadget with potential for, well frightening options. Yeah sure grandma can switch over the TV without moving, but I am sure the alternative uses are fairly clear to the more concerned viewer. Enjoy.