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All U.S. troops to get anthrax vaccine

December 15, 1997

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Concerned about the possibility of germ warfare at home and overseas, the Pentagon has ordered that all 1.4 million active duty men and women in the U.S. military be vaccinated against anthrax. The biological agent can be fatal even in microscopic amounts.

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Heeding court order, Pentagon halts anthrax shots

Wednesday, December 24, 2003 Posted: 12:32 PM EST (1732 GMT)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The Pentagon defended the safety, effectiveness and necessity of the anthrax vaccine it has made mandatory for U.S. troops on Tuesday, but stopped administering it one day after a judge ordered an end to the inoculations without the consent of service members.

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The (anonymous) plaintiffs argued that giving anthrax inoculations against "inhalation anthrax" is an "experimental," not an "approved," use and therefore requires a presidential waiver in order to be made mandatory for members of the military. The plaintiffs' argument, accepted by Judge Sullivan, is that the Pentagon overstepped its authority in requiring its personnel to submit to a medical procedure against their will.

For more about this issue, visit Anthrax Vaccine Current Events, by clicking here.

Person of the Week: Jose Padilla

For incarnating the sum of our fears, the former Chicago thug-turned-terror suspect is our person of the week

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Appeals Court Rules Military Must Release Padilla

By mattw
Thu Dec 18th, 2003 at 05:53:54 PM EST

The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the President cannot legally order the continuing detainment of U.S. Citizen Jose Padilla, who was taken into custody at O'Hare airport 18 months ago on suspicion of plotting to detonate a "dirty bomb". The court has ruled that the military cannot hold Padilla, although the court notes that he can be turned over to a civil authority to face charges.

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The President argued that he could designate someone an "enemy combatant," put him in military custody and let him rot in prison without being charged and without the benefit of counsel, but only until the "war on terrorism" was successfully concluded. The courts said differently, and ordered the military to turn the accused over to the civilian courts or to let him go.

From the National Association of State Election Directors Web Site:

The FVSS [Federal Voting Systems Standards] contains all the requirements for punchcard, lever, optical scan or direct recording equipment systems. Provisions for Internet enabled voting systems will be included in future revisions.

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From the Black Box Voting Activism "SERVE" Discussion Thread: Carol Paquette, SERVE Program Manager, Answers a Question from "JohnGideon"

How does the SERVE program get around state and federal certification requirements?

The SERVE program is not "getting around state and federal certification requirements." The UOCAVA Voting System is subject to the same National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) qualification process and state certification process as any other voting system must be before being used in an election. The Federal Voting Assistance Program conducted a competitive procurement to acquire the services of an independent testing contractor to completely test all elements of the UOCAVA Voting System (UVS). This contract was awarded to CIBER, one of the two NASED certified software testing authorities. In fact, the UVS is being more extensively tested than the Federal Election Commission Voting System Standards requires. The Voting System Standards do not apply to many of the capabilities included in the UVS such as identification and authentication and voter registration. Since the UVS operates over the Internet, the security features are more extensive than those for a pollsite voting system. All these elements of the UVS will be comprehensively tested. Some commentators have queried how UVS testing can be done when the Voting System Standards don't cover all the system elements. The answer is that there are other standards available that can be meaningfully applied, such as the Federal Information Processing Standards and the federal Common Criteria. We have been coordinating with the Federal Election Commission and expect to work with the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Election Assistance Commission as they come into operation.

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The Defense Department argues, as above in an e-mail from Carol Paquette, SERVE Program Manager, that it is entitled to decide on its own how to certify the UVS remote Internet voting system. This ignores the fact that all OTHER voting systems need to conform to the requirements of the FVSS (which contain no provisions for Internet voting), and therefore no other entities can get their remote Internet voting systems certified or used, giving the military the ability to collect and submit hundreds of thousands of votes from its own personnel voting remotely using the latest technology, while this right is denied to everyone else.

To read, "Ciber Official Says His Company Will Test Only the 'Voting Part' of SERVE, not the 'Internet Part'," click here.

To read, "Pentagon Won't Urge Election Assistance Commission to Upgrade Federal Voting Systems Standards to Include SERVE-type Remote Internet Voting; Says Only, 'We Intend to Offer a Secure System'," click here.

What's missing to bring this segment into alignment with the last two is a link to the article reporting on the court case that shuts down UVS/ SERVE, in the way that the mandatory anthrax inoculations were shut down and the denial of basic legal rights to accused "enemy combatants" was shut down.

The purpose of a civilian-controlled military is to carry out the lawful orders of the Commander-in-Chief and to wage war when Congress decides it should, not to overstep the regulations of the FDA when it wants to inoculate the troops, not to ignore the dictates of the Constitution when a former gang member is suspected of breaking the law, and not to facilitate electronic voting by the same people it already controls to the extent that it thinks it can order them inoculated with an experimental drug against their will, by circumventing the established procedures according to which all other voting machines must be tested, qualified, and certified for use in the elections that are the only real source of its own political legitimacy.