Holy Land Foundation Verdict: Guilty on All Counts

US NEWS | Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 1:15:39 pm PST

After the first disaster of a trial, this news comes as a pleasant surprise: Holy Land Foundation defendants guilty on all counts.

A jury on Monday sided with the prosecution in the Holy Land Foundation trial, determining unanimously on more than two dozen counts that the defendants were guilty of charges related to the financing of the terrorist group Hamas.

The verdicts were read Monday afternoon.

Members of the formerly Richardson-based Holy Land are accused of funneling $12 million to Hamas after the Palestinian group had been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. in 1995.

It took the jury eight days of deliberations to reach its decisions – less than half the time it took jurors to deadlock end up with an almost complete mistrial last year on the first go-around.

Opening statements at the Earle Cabell Federal Courthouse in downtown Dallas began Sept. 22. Over the past two months, prosecutors attempted to prove that five former charity organizers used Holy Land, once the largest Muslim charity in the U.S., to funnel an estimated $60 million to the militant group – most of it before 1995.

The End of an Era

MEDIA | Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 12:34:04 pm PST

His work there is done: Alan Colmes To Leave FNC’s Hannity & Colmes Show.

Allahpundit is crushing heavy on Kirsten Powers (yes, again) for Colmes’ replacement. My preference would be a left field oddball like Kinky Friedman. But it looks like Fox is leaning toward a stultifying five-day dose of “Hannity’s America.”

Serving the Underground Economy

US NEWS | Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 11:47:47 am PST

Here’s a scary little story about the increasing sophistication of online criminals: Hands-off hackers: Crooks opt for surgical strikes.

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Internet criminals have been getting more “professional” for years, trying to run their businesses like Big Business to get better and more profitable at selling stolen data online. Now the bad guys of the cyber-underworld are exhibiting other unexpected traits: remarkable patience and restraint in stalking their victims.

A new report by antivirus software vendor Symantec Corp. details a startling trend that highlights the inventive ways criminals are figuring out ways [sic] to make money online.

Hackers are sometimes breaking into online businesses and not stealing anything. Gone are the bull-in-the-China-shop days of plundering everything in sight once they’ve found a sliver of a security hole.

Instead of swiping all the customer data they can get their hands on, a small subset of hackers have concerned themselves with stealing only a very specific thing from the vendors they breach — they want access to the compromised companies’ payment-processing systems, and nothing else, according to the “Symantec Report on the Underground Economy,” slated for release Monday.

They use their illicit access to online payment gateways for only one purpose: to validate stolen credit card numbers. They sell this validation service to the criminals who actually buy lists of card numbers, so they can be sure the numbers they’re buying will work. It’s a kind of underground service industry.

Saviors of the Economy

BUSINESS | Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 11:16:28 am PST

Barack Obama’s economic advisers: Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers.

CHICAGO — President Elect Barack Obama selected a Mr. Defense and a Mr. Offense for his economic team Monday,  picking Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury and Lawrence Summers as director of the National Economic Council. …

The dual selection set up a formidable tag team to take on the global financial crisis. Geithner at Treasury will likely take a defensive role, spearheading the remainder of the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program and decisions to bail out individual financial institutions.

Inside the White House, Summers will be the architect of the administration’s economic stimulus proposals, including what is shaping up to be a multi-hundred billion dollar jobs and infrastructure spending plan.

Obama’s Education Hopes

POLITICS | Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 8:32:54 am PST

Barack Obama has promised the world to every special interest group in the US, and now they’re going to want to collect. One area where the promises have been especially extravagant: Experts Say Obama Must Build a Bipartisan Machine to Move Education Law.

President-elect Barack Obama has made big promises to educators, parents and the nation’s nearly 50 million public school students. He vowed to recruit an “army of new teachers,” create better tests and give public schools more funding. He also said he would make college more affordable.

As the new administration prepares to take over the Education Department, school experts say one of Obama’s first — and toughest — jobs must be restoring the broad bipartisan support it took to pass the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act, which aims to boost the achievement of poor children. That consensus has splintered, with people on both sides of the aisle souring on the law as it is overdue for reauthorization in Congress.

Overnight Open Thread

OPEN | Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 10:41:08 pm PST

Paula: You seem to still be up there somewhere.

Jeff: Maybe I am.

Paula: I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in this mood before.

Jeff: I guess it’s because I’ve never been in this mood before.

Paula: Something about your flight?

Jeff: Yeah.

Paula: What happened, Jeff?

Jeff: I saw a flying saucer.

Paula: A saucer? You mean the kind from up there?

Jeff: Yeah, or its counterpart. I was shaped like a huge cigar. Dan saw it too. When it passed over, the whole compartment lighted up with a blinding glare. Then there was a tremendous wind that practically knocked us off our course.

Paula: Well did you report it?

Jeff: Yeah, radioed in immediately and they said well keep it quiet until you land. Then as soon as we landed, big army brass grabbed us and made us swear to secrecy about the whole thing. Oh, it burns me up. These things have been seen for years. They’re here, it’s a fact. And the public oughta know about it.

Paula: There must be something more you can do about it.

Jeff: Oh no there isn’t. Oh, but what’s the point of making a fuss. Last night I saw a flying object that couldn’t possibly have been from this planet. But I can’t say a word. I’m muzzled by army brass! I can’t even admit I saw the thing!