DOD released their latest quarterly report on the situation in Iraq.
The September 2008 version of the "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq" report is now available at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/d20080930iraq.pdf




The report includes various useful graphs and charts including: the production and export of oil; oil revenue; average electricity demand and production; average daily hours of electrical power by Province; weekly security incident trends; civilian deaths; ISF and US Military deaths; ethno-sectarian deaths; high profile attacks (explosions); Iraqi Security Forces numbers and more



These reports to Congress are issued in accordance with the Department of Defense Appropriations Act 2008 (Section 9010, Public Law 109-289; Section 9204, Public Law 110-252)



Previous editions of the report can be found at http://www.defenselink.mil/home/features/Iraq_Reports/index.html

SHUTTERED EPA LIBRARIES OPEN DOORS TOMORROW AFTER TWO YEARS EPA Headquarters and Chicago, Dallas and Kansas City Regional Libraries Re-Open

Washington, DC - Under orders from Congress, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency tomorrow will again provide access to library services in
15 states and its own headquarters to agency employees and the public.
This ends a 30-month campaign by the Bush administration to restrict availability of technical materials within EPA but leaves in its wake scattered and incomplete collections under new political controls of library operations, says Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
On September 30th, the last day of the federal fiscal year, EPA will re-open its regional libraries in Chicago (serving the Great Lakes region), Dallas (Mid-Southern region) and Kansas City (Mid-Western region) after more than two years. In addition, a long-shuttered library in EPA Headquarters will re-open and include a small portion of holdings from what had been a free-standing Chemical Library, for research on the properties and effects of new chemicals, as a "special Chemical Collection".

In its September 24, 2008 Federal Register notice, EPA promises that these re-opened facilities "will be staffed by a professional librarian to provide service to the public and EPA staff via phone, e-mail, or in person?for a minimum of 24 hours over four days per week on a walk-in basis or by appointment."

"While we are happy that EPA is re-opening its libraries, we are disturbed that the minds which plotted their closure remain in charge," stated PEER Associate Director Carol Goldberg, whose organization first revealed EPA's plans to shut libraries and maintained a drumbeat of disclosures until Congress finally intervened and directed the agency to reverse course in December 2007. "Tomorrow, EPA will still accord its own scientists and the public less access to information than it did back in 2005."

Most of the re-opened new libraries will be housed in less space and one, in Chicago (formerly the largest regional library), will re-open without "permanent furniture and shelving." PEER notes that during the past two years, EPA further diminished its own informational infrastructure by Breaking up collections and disbursing them in a fashion that they may never be reassembled. Most of the re-opened libraries will only provide "core"
reference materials; Banning any technical holdings (called
"mini-libraries") for scientists and specialists that are not subject to centralized control; and Placing all library acquisition and management decisions under a political appointee.

In response to stinging public and congressional criticism, EPA has undertaken an elaborate "National Dialogue on Access to Environmental Information" to develop a new Library Strategic Plan in December 2008, just before the Bush administration leaves office. "Given its record, the idea that the Bush administration is now sincerely interested in expanding access to environmental information is a bit hard to take," Goldberg added.
"If Congress had not intervened, all of EPA's remaining libraries would now be on the chopping block." See the Federal Register notice on library re-openings http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2008/E8-22468.htm

Trace the history of EPA shutting down its libraries http://www.peer.org/campaigns/publichealth/epa_library/index.php

Look at EPA attempt at "National Dialogue on Access to Environmental Information"
http://www.epa.gov/nationaldialogue/

Sebastopol man puts code manuals online

Matthew B. Stannard, Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, September 27, 2008

From a paper-choked sublet office in Sebastopol, Carl Malamud is operating a kind of nonprofit Napster, with offerings a little less sexy than the music of Metallica, Dr. Dre and Green Day.

Example: 404.1. All plumbing fixtures, other than water closets and urinals, shall be equipped with approved strainers having an approved waterway area.

That's a snippet of the 2007 California Plumbing Code, a print version of which might cost $125. But Malamud purchased the code and placed it on his Web site - and now anybody can download all 526 riveting pages free.

Or the building codes, fire codes, or mechanical codes from California, San Francisco or Los Angeles. Or millions of pages of other codes, all legally obtained by Malamud, who then uploaded them to public.resource.org for anybody to take, even though many of them are copyrighted.

"Not everybody is going to read the building code, but everybody who wants to should be able to without putting 100 bucks in the slot," Malamud said. "Primary legal materials are America's operating system."

His actions perturb government agencies, technical organizations and publishers who create, maintain and sell books of codes. While some say they do not plan to oppose Malamud's efforts, others question the legality of his site and the wisdom of his actions.

Malamud says he believes that he's on solid ground if he is sued. Some legal experts agree.

Law belongs to all

"It's very clear in American law that you can't get intellectual property protection for law," said Pamela Samuelson, co-director of the UC Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. "Law belongs to everybody."

This year Malamud persuaded the Oregon legislature not to enforce its copyright claim to Oregon Revised Statutes - after he put them online. Now he'd like to see California - and other agencies that claim copyright over public codes and regulations - do the same.

"This stuff has been locked up behind a cash register," Malamud said. "(It's) way too important to just leave it there."

If Malamud is fishing for a lawsuit - something he denies - so far nobody is biting. Officials at the agencies whose codes Malamud has posted all say they are aware of his efforts but have no plans for legal action.

Which doesn't mean those agencies are giving up their copyright - especially if someone republishes the codes for profit, said Linda Brown, deputy director of the California Office of Administrative Law.

"If somebody is going to make commercial use of that, the people of California deserve to benefit," she said.

Brown said Malamud's rhetoric is misleading - many of the codes on his site are already available free online.

The state's administrative law office Web site, for example, allows users to search the California Code of Regulations. Many other state and federal agencies do the same.

But it's not enough, said Malamud. Many of the free codes carry notices banning downloading for commercial use or downloading, printing or more-complicated options.

Free codes in future

He envisions a future where government codes are freely available in computer-friendly form to be mashed up, cross-linked, debated and redrafted by the online community.

"By liberating it, we can begin making it more useful," Malamud said. "If it costs $6 million to buy a copy of federal law ... you're not going to get somebody like Larry Page in a Stanford dorm room downloading American law and making a better version of it."

But the organizations that oversee or publish the codes appearing on Malamud's site question that claim.

"The Internet really succeeds when it's used collaboratively," said Dexter Johnson, Oregon's legislative counsel. "When laws are created by elected people, I'm not sure that model works so well."

Call it the Brittanica vs. Wikipedia debate - can online crowds be as wise as one expert? Except this debate involves laws where small details can make a difference in whether a house is constructed safely.

Codes keep changing

What's more, said California's Brown, some codes - including the California Code of Regulations - change frequently. Those changes are pushed out to people who purchase official subscriptions, but republishing sites like Malamud's may not be up to date.

Creating and updating the codes that help build safe schools, homes and offices is enormously complicated, said Michael Colopy, spokesman for the International Code Council. And the money from selling codes pays for that process.

"It is ultimately a disservice to the public if in the name of access to so-called free codes the very process that develops and enhances public safety is undermined," Colopy said. "The public is the big loser."

Malamud said he is sympathetic and willing to work with the ICC. But he argued that the ICC must grapple, like many industries, with the way the Internet is disrupting its business model.

"I think there is a lot of ways to keep that going without taking it out on the back of the kid in the pickup truck studying for the plumber's license," he said.

E-mail Matthew B. Stannard at mstannard@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/27/BAAH134FI4.DTL

This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Check out Gambling on the Future: Managing the Education Challenges of Rapid Growth in Nevada
By Aaron Terrazas and Michael Fix
Nevada, the fastest growing state in the United States, is experiencing a population boom – driven in part by immigration – that has key implications for its school system and labor market. Immigrants represent one in five Nevada residents and their children account for one in three Nevadans under age 18. Yet even as schools have experienced a surge in enrollment, federal and state investments in the state's failing education system haven't kept pace at The National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy.

Access to Science Information Expands with Science.gov 5.0 Launch

 

200 Million Pages of U.S. Government Science Resources Now Available on the Internet

 

The latest version of Science.gov <http://www.science.gov/> -Science.gov 5.0-was launched Sept. 15th, allowing users to search additional collections of valuable science resources; more easily target their searches; and readily find links to information on a variety of science topics. Science.gov is a free, integrated single-search gateway to reliable science and technology information from 17 organizations within

13 federal science agencies.

 

Science.gov 5.0 improves upon the previous version, Science.gov 4.0, by offering seven new databases and portals which allow researchers access to over 200 million pages of scientific information. New information available includes thousands of patents resulting from U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) research and development(DOepatents <http://www.osti.gov/doepatents> ); documents and bibliographic citations of DOE accomplishments (DOE R&D Accomplishments Database <http://www.osti.gov/accomplishments> ); millions of electronic scientific documents from around the world known as e-prints (Eprint Network <http://www.osti.gov/eprints> ); and comprehensive and peer-reviewed toxicology data for thousands of chemicals (HSDB Hazardous Substances Databank <http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/htmlgen?HSDB>

) as well as more than 3 million references to worldwide literature on the adverse effects of chemicals on living organisms (TOXLINE Toxicology Bibliographic Information <http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/htmlgen?TOXLINE> ).  New information also includes a digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature (PubMed Central <http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/> ) and cancer-related information of all kinds for all audiences (Cancer.gov <http://www.cancer.gov/> ), including support and treatment resources for patients, comprehensive descriptions of research programs and clinical trials for healthcare professionals and the general public, and funding opportunities for researchers.

 

Another key feature of Science.gov 5.0 is a "clustering" tool which helps target searches by grouping results by subtopics or dates. This technology was recently developed through a DOE Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program award.

 

In addition to quadrupling the amount of searchable content and enhancing the search technology, Science.gov 5.0 now provides links to related EurekAlert! Science News <http://www.eurekalert.org/>  and Wikipedia, and provides the capability to easily download research results into personal files or citation software.

 

Science.gov is hosted by DOE's Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), within DOE's Office of Science.  In addition to DOE, Science.gov is supported by contributing members of the Science.gov Alliance, including the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, and the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Government Printing Office, the Library of Congress, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation, with support from the National Archives and Records Administration.

 

WASHOE COUNTY APPROVES INTERLOCAL AGREEMENT WITH CITY OF RENO FOR HOMELESS SERVICES PROVIDING MORE THAN $1 MILLION IN CASH AND IN-KIND SERVICES



Reno, Nevada. September 16, 2008. At their meeting today, the Washoe County Commission approved an interlocal agreement with the City of Reno for the operation and provision of homeless services at the Community Assistance Center (CAC) located at 315 Record Street.



The interlocal agreement is for $1,035,000 in cash and in-kind support ($240,000 in professional staff assigned to assist at the center) for fiscal year 2008-09. In addition to the $1 million-plus agreement, Washoe County had previously agreed to provide an additional $300,000 in cash for support of the construction of the Family Shelter/Resource Center Building for a total of $1,335,000 in homeless shelter support from Washoe County for fiscal year 2008-09. The $300,000 cash support is an annual commitment Commissioners made towards the Family Shelter/Resource Center Building construction and will be granted for four more years.



Key components of the agreement include:

Identifies the City of Reno as the lead entity responsible for oversight and implementation of the operation of the homeless shelters, community resource center and related services at the CAC;
Defines the term of the agreement through June 30, 2009;
Identifies that the cities of Reno and Sparks and Washoe County will cooperate in the research, planning and/or development of a 501©3 organization to take over management of the CAC;
Identifies the cooperative funding and in-kind contributions to support the CAC for fiscal year 2008-09 and any restrictions on the use of these funds.

The USCCR Report on the civil rights record of President Bush - Redefining Rights in America: The Civil Rights Record of the George W.
Bush Administration - that was mentioned in the NYT article on Saturday
- can be found on the Historical Publications of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. - http://www.law.umaryland.edu/marshall/usccr/

In Digital Age, Federal Files Blip Into Oblivion By ROBERT PEAR
Published: September 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/13/us/13records.html


WASHINGTON Countless federal records are being lost to posterity because federal employees, grappling with a staggering growth in electronic records, do not regularly preserve the documents they create on government computers, send by e-mail and post on the Web.

Federal agencies have rushed to embrace the Internet and new information technology, but their record-keeping efforts lag far behind. Moreover, federal investigators have found widespread violations of federal record-keeping requirements.

Many federal officials admit to a haphazard approach to preserving e-mail and other electronic records of their work. Indeed, many say they are unsure what materials they are supposed to preserve.

This confusion is causing alarm among historians, archivists, librarians, Congressional investigators and watchdog groups that want to trace the decision-making process and hold federal officials accountable. With the imminent change in administrations, the concern about lost records has become more acute.

We expect to see the wholesale disappearance of materials on federal agency Web sites, said Mary Alice Baish, the Washington representative of the American Association of Law Libraries, whose members are heavy users of government records. When new officials take office, they have new programs and policies, and they want to make a fresh start.



---------------------------------------




The complete article may be read at the URL above.