| CQ: NY23 hits its tipping point

CQ:-NY23-hits-its-tipping-point WASHINGTON - New York 23 ... Thems fightin words.

These days, whether youre a conservative activist, or a Republican Party official, saying New York 23 out loud leads to a shortening of breath, a quickening of the pulse, and a tightening of the muscles. Heads whip around to see who said it, and in what context — friend, or foe?

With less than a week to go before the special election in New Yorks 23rd Congressional District, tempers are flaring on the campaign trail — and fingers are being pointed in, and at, a big white building at 320 First Street, S.E. .

The official GOP nominee — Dede Scozzafava, a very liberal New York Assemblywoman — now trails her Democratic opponent, Bill Owens, and the Conservative Party nominee, Doug Hoffman, according to a survey released Monday by the Club for Growth.

The survey shows Hoffman surging into the lead with 31 percent, to 27 percent for Owens, with a fading Scozzafava drawing just 20 percent of the vote, and 22 percent of the voters still undecided.

Judging by their spending decisions, it appears the party apparatchiks who run the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee believe the CFG survey — theyve taken down their advertising against Scozzafava, and are concentrating their fire in the final week on Hoffman.

Meanwhile, the apparatchiks at the National Republican Congressional Committee continue to view Hoffman and his candidacy as some sort of flu-like disease — rather than examine the data, and come to the conclusion that he is the only Republican who can win, they choose instead to fight him off as if he were an invading infection or virus.

For more than two months, Hoffmans momentum has been building, as conservatives of all shapes and sizes and pedigrees — Old Right barons , new media conservatives , social conservatives and fiscal conservatives , and political leaders like Rick Santorum, Fred Thompson, Sarah Palin, and Tim Pawlenty — have come together behind his candidacy.

Those few GOP leaders who have dared speak out publicly in support of GOP nominee Scozzafava — like Newt Gingrich — have been roundly criticized by conservatives.

As the weeks have worn on, and the race has intensified, the campaign has become a proxy war for control of the center-right political apparatus in this country.

Tuesday, New York 23 hit the tipping point — with a front page story in the national edition of The New York Times, and a shocking endorsement for Hoffman from a respected and pragmatic political professional, the race has now become, officially, The Race To Watch.

The Times storys position in the newspaper, as much as its content, signaled to the Washington-New York mainstream media that theyd better bone up on this race in upstate New York, lest they be caught with their pants down.

But the truly stunning news was Hoffmans endorsement by Rep. Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican who is, to my knowledge, the only former political consultant currently serving in the Congress.

While he is ideologically conservative — he boasts a lifetime 94 percent rating from the American Conservative Union — Cole is a shrewd and canny campaign strategist whose avuncular personality masks a Type A drive and a determination to excel.

He happens to love making life miserable for Democrats.

Before being elected to the House of Representatives in 2002, Cole served as chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party, as executive director of the NRCC, and as chief of staff of the Republican National Committee. In his spare time, he ran one of the more successful GOP consulting firms in the nation.

But, more importantly, in the 2008 cycle, Cole served as Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

He was replaced in that post by Texas Rep. Pete Sessions, under whose leadership the NRCC has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars backing Scozzafava in what increasingly appears to be a failing attempt to hold off Hoffman.

Other Republican members of Congress had endorsed Hoffman — Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Todd Tiahrt of Kansas had previously endorsed Hoffman, while Dana Rohrabacher of California and Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina joined Cole in endorsing Hoffman yesterday — but, frankly, I can think of few who look to them for political guidance in a matter like this. Each has established a reputation, to varying degrees, as a political maverick; no one confuses them with the Republican Leadership.

So Coles endorsement represents the first breach of the Hoffman Flu into GOP leadership circles.

Apparently, Cole is the first Republican insider to recognize the importance of the confluence of two key data points revealed in recent polling — last weeks Washington Post/ABC News poll, which revealed that only 20 percent of the nation answers to the name Republican, posted against this weeks Gallup Poll, which showed that 40 percent of the country identifies itself as conservative.

In other words, Cole understands which end is the tail, and which end is the dog.

Note to Republican leaders — when there are twice as many people calling themselves conservative as there are people calling themselves Republican, it makes no sense to nominate as your partys candidate a woman whos so far to the left, ideologically, that shes been endorsed by the nations premier left-wing blogger.

And it makes even less sense, if youve decided to do that, to go to the next level and try to defeat a Republican who, upon entering the Congress after a victory in the special election, would be virtually guaranteed to cast more regular party-line votes than would the official GOP nominee.

Thats the truly remarkable part of this whole story — look at all the polls taken in this race, and you see that if you combine the Scozzafava vote and the Hoffman vote, youve got a clear majority for one Republican candidate; why should it make a difference to the NRCC whether the Republican who represents the district is the officially-sanctioned Republican, or the unofficially-sanctioned Republican?

Answer: It should not. Either one is going to vote for a Republican for Speaker, and thats all the NRCC cares about — scratch that, should care about — in this instance.

Pete Sessions didnt make the choice of Dede Scozzafava, 11 GOP county chairmen in upstate New York made the choice.

Sessions could save his colleagues hundreds of thousands of dollars, and himself a couple of Excedrin headaches, if he would simply pull out of NY23 and let nature take its course -- without the propping up by the NRCC and RNC, the Scozzafava campaign would implode into the black hole that is its true nature, and leave Hoffman to defeat Owens.

Eh, but this is the same team that lost the special election in NY20 six months ago. Dont hold your breath.

DISCLAIMER: CQPolitics says that when I write about the politicians in my past, I have to turn the cards face up. When Tom Cole was chief of staff at the Republican National Committee, I worked under him as press secretary.

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- | CQ: NY23 hits its tipping point |

| Experts See Forecast Worsen for Cybercrime

Experts-See-Forecast-Worsen-for-Cybercrime Experts See Forecast Worsen for Cybercrime - | Experts See Forecast Worsen for Cybercrime |

| NASA flies over Antarctica to measure icemelt

NASA-flies-over-Antarctica-to-measure-icemelt ABOVE ANTARCTICA -Hoping to better understand how a melting Antarctica could swamp the planet, a NASA plane outfitted with lasers and ground-penetrating radar made its first flight over the icy continent on Friday.
The DC-8 left Punta Arenas, Chile, on a mission to fly as low as 1,000 feet over Antarctica. Like the NASA satellite that has provided shocking data on how quickly Antarctic ice is disappearing, this plane will measure snow cover and ice thickness. But it also has equipment that will enable scientists to see under the ice shelves, measuring the water below.
The goal is to understand just how warm ocean currents may be pulling the ice sheets seaward, melting their undersides. These ice sheets are rapidly collapsing — as fast as nine meters a year according to a study published in the journal Nature last month. If they disappear, far greater ice masses that lie on Antarctic bedrock could then melt into the sea, submerging coastal communities around the globe.
Until now, the U.S. National Aeronautic and Space Administration has used satellites to track the impact of climate change in the Antarctic, but the satellite will be phased out at years end. Fridays flight is the first of many planned as part of Operation Ice Bridge, to bridge the gap in data that would otherwise result before the next satellite goes up in 2015.
Investigators from the Columbia Universitys Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the University of Washington and the University of Kansas also are on board for the 11-hour flights, running their own sets of instruments.
—
On the Net:
NASA Ice Bridge blog:
http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/icebridge
Ice Bridge Twitter:
http://twitter.com/IceBridge - | NASA flies over Antarctica to measure icemelt |

| One mother’s battle to save her son from OCD

One-mother’s-battle-to-save-her-son-from-OCD What would you do if your previously normal child suddenly refused to bathe, burst into fits of rage, slithered along walls and wouldn’t walk out the front door? When Beth Maloney was faced with that situation she fought tooth and nail to reclaim her son, taking on members of the medical establishment who were too quick to label and treat him in a way that only made the symptoms worse. “Saving Sammy: Curing the Boy Who Caught OCD” is her account of her remarkable and ultimately triumphant journey. An excerpt.

Chapter four: Diagnosis
On a day in late August when a storm has cleared and a rainbow paints the sky, I grab my paddle and head for the seals. They rest on their backs, their noses poked high, while they float and drift with the tide. Their bellies are full, their whiskers distinguished and dripping beyond their chins. They peer as I pass. Their eyes look like glass, and they stare at me cautiously. The seals all know instinctively what men have learned over time: the best salt-water fishing in Maine comes when August folds into fall.

The striped bass are heading south by then — and so were we.

If the ride up to Limestone was the worst car ride of my life, the trip back was a living hell. Sammy was crunched into the corner of his seat. The clawed thumbs of his empty hands moved back and forth as if he held a Game Boy. His head bobbed with the bumps in the road. I couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or shut. I just knew that he was far away.

My mind was spinning. When did he last eat? Why didn’t I know this? What kind of mother was I? Maybe if I’d served him a decent meal instead of working so hard, none of this would have happened.

“Sammy, should we stop and get something to eat?” I called back periodically to him. He did not give me a response.

“I’m hungry, Mom,” James answered instead.

“Where are those pretzels I brought with us?”

“We ate them,” James answered.

“Are there any apples left?”

“Yes.”

“Eat those.”

I thought about Sammy standing at the table during meal after meal, with his eyes shut. Had he actually eaten? I had been in overdrive for weeks. In addition to the packing, the unpacking, and all the craziness around Sammy, one of my clients was closing a major deal. I had been pushing that deal through night and day. Had I neglected my child because of my work? Was it my fault this had happened?

“Sammy, do you want to stop for food?” I called back again much later. Still no response.

Stress isn’t causing Sammy’s problems! my head and my heart shouted silently together.

It was ten oclock by the time we got home that night. I readied myself to dash through the woods if he bolted when I parked, but he did not move. I woke James, held his soft cheeks in my hands, and spoke into his ear.

“You are to go directly into the house and up to bed. Do you understand me?” I spoke in a low, commanding-officer kind of voice. “Right into your room and shut your door.”

“But I’m hungry,” James whined softly.

“Get an apple and take it into your room; that’s the best we can do tonight.”

James nodded and headed for the house. I watched James go inside; then I turned to Sammy. He was hunched over into a ball in his seat. He nodded: yes, he would come into the house. He shook his head: no, he would not run away. I followed him around to the back of the house, and we went in. I locked every door, turned on every light, and shut every window. Once confined, I knew, he would not leave, since he would not touch a door handle. I left him on the first floor in the den; then I went up to my office. I called the psychologist’s voice mail and left a detailed message about what had happened.

“This is not stress,” I said through gritted teeth. “There is something medically wrong.” Then I typed a fax to the pediatrician describing what was going on and telling him that I needed a call back first thing in the morning with an appointment time. I noted that we were in an urgent, life-threatening situation and I needed his help.

Then I collapsed on my bed and listened to Sammy pound his way around the house. I called the pediatrician at 9:01 the next morning. The nurse answered. I held while she searched for the fax and went to talk to the doctor; then she came back on and delivered the news.

“The doctor says you should take him to the crisis unit.”

“Are you saying the doctor won’t see my son?” I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

“He says you should go to the crisis unit,” she repeated.

“I think we have a misunderstanding here,” I said slowly.

“Sammy has been the doctor’s patient for more than five years. He is sick. He needs to see his doctor. We are going to be at the psychologist’s office at three p.m. Right after that, I will walk him over to see the doctor. If four o’clock isn’t good, tell me another time, and we’ll be there.” She put me on hold again; then she came back on the line.

“He says you should take him to the crisis unit,” she repeated once more.

“So you’re saying he refuses to see my son?” I asked, my blood boiling over.

“He thinks you need the crisis unit,” she said.

“Without even seeing him,” I stated.

I had been a guardian ad litem long enough to know that the crisis unit is the last place you take your child. It is absolutely the very last place. You take your child to the crisis unit when you are totally and completely out of options, when you have tried everything else and you have absolutely nowhere else to go. It is the last stop on a dead end. The crisis unit is where I visit the children who are out of control and suicidal or homicidal, the kids who are hallucinating, the kids whose parents have beaten them so badly that they start a fire to burn down the house. It’s where you’ll find the thirteen-year-old girls who have group sex with a dozen grown men because they’ve been molested or abandoned and they feel so lousy about themselves they think maybe this will help. It’s where the kids learn from one another how to cut themselves. My son was not going to the crisis unit. He did not need a holding cell disguised as a hospital. He needed a medical doctor to figure out what was wrong with him, and his own doctor would not see him.

Sammy’s pediatrician was fired the moment he refused to see my son, but I was not going to say that until I had his replacement lined up. “Tell him thanks for me, will you?” I said and hung up the telephone.

Later that day, we went to see the psychologist. Sammy waited skittishly in the lobby while I met with the psychologist. I was dangerously close to screaming that I felt he had wasted our time, but I mustered all of my self-control.

“We’ve got one minute,” I told him, seething, “because he might run away. We’re not waiting any longer to see if he gets better. This isn’t stress. There is something terribly wrong, and I want my kid back. His doctor has refused to see him, and these sessions are doing nothing. Where do we go from here?”

He gave me a list of about a dozen child psychiatrists. “Tell them we need a screen-out for obsessive-compulsive disorder — OCD,” he said.

I went back to the lobby and breathed a sigh of relief, because Sammy was still there. He went into the office. They spoke briefly, and then we went home. I made calls relentlessly to all the doctors on the list. I could not reach any of them. I left messages, and most did not call back. Those who did call — usually days after I had left my urgent message — said it would be about three months before I could get an appointment.

“In three months, he could be dead,” I told one of them.

“And if I did see him,” noted another, “it would only be to give a diagnosis. I don’t do treatment.”

I could not find a single psychiatrist in all of southern Maine who would see my son.

I briefly thought there was hope when Sammy asked one day if there were some type of drink I could get him. He said he couldn’t eat anything, but that a drink made with fruit would be good. Watermelon was his favorite fruit.

“Watermelon in the blender?” I asked excitedly.

“Whatever you want,” he answered as I hurried off to the kitchen.

When I handed him the glass, he held it high in the air.

“To new beginnings,” Sammy said as he chugged it.

I thought that all might be well; maybe he’d eat again. He did not get well; he got worse. He relentlessly rubbed, paced, huffed, puffed, and held his breath. We were not allowed to look at him. One night he caught me watching him. He screamed and cried for an hour. Sometimes at one or two in the morning, Sammy would finally go into his room. On the first night this happened, when he slammed his door and all the sounds stopped, I crept quietly down the stairs. I lay on the floor outside his room, listening for sounds that might mean he was trying to hurt himself.

All was quiet, so I tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. I tried to look under the crack at the bottom of the door, but it was too thin. I went outside and set up a ladder to his second-story window. I could see him on the floor, curled in a fetal position, pushed up against the door. He was breathing.

He was safe. After that, when his door slammed late at night and the sounds quieted, I came downstairs and slept on the floor outside his room.

I sent James to my parents in New Jersey, and I cried all the way home from the airport. I had no choice. I was unable to do anything except try to take care of Sammy. Some nights I would wake from my place on the floor and go lie on James’s bed, sobbing, because I missed him so much. I wanted my baby with me.

I wasted precious days making useless calls to psychiatrists in Maine. I waited for return calls that never came and finally expanded my search to New Hampshire. It was there I found Dr. Drill. His office called me right back, but — once again — there was no availability. In fact, his receptionist explained, he had canceled all his appointments because his wife was overdue with their first child.

“So he has no patients this week?”

“That’s correct,” she answered.

“But he’s in the office?”

“Yes.”

“Suppose we make an appointment and understand that he’ll cancel if she goes into labor? If you call and we’re on our way, we’ll turn back.”

There was silence on the other end of the line.

“Please,” I begged. “My son is desperately ill, and I can’t find anyone in Maine to see him. I’ll pay cash. We can be there on two hours’ notice.”

She hesitated, then said, “Hold on.”

I prayed while I waited, and then she came back on the line.

“Tomorrow at two, but he might have to cancel.”

“I know. Thank you. Thank him for me. Thank you so much.”

The next day we were in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I watched Sammy in Dr. Drill’s waiting room as he held his ears shut, huffed and puffed, and rubbed his feet back and forth on the rug. His clothes were rumpled and filthy. His eyes were like slits. He hopped. He pounded. He did everything but shriek.

He bore no resemblance whatsoever to the award-winning, kindhearted, brilliant son who had been mine just six weeks before. I did not recognize this child.

“I’m fine,” Sammy sneered at anyone who expressed concern, asking if they could help or get him anything.

I saw the staff whispering. I knew it was about him. The receptionist was so alarmed that she made Dr. Drill begin our appointment early. Sammy snorted and huffed his way from the reception area to Dr. Drill’s office. He scraped his body along the wall. It took him about ten minutes to cover a distance that would usually take less than a minute. Once in the office, Sammy was theoretically “on” the leather couch. In reality: he was squirming, turning sideways, snaking along the cushions, hanging his legs over the back, rubbing his body on the side arms of the couch, squinting his eyes, holding his ears shut, and gasping for breath.

The office had a large desk, Oriental rugs, a leather couch, and two leather chairs that faced the couch. The walls were lined with bookcases full of complicated titles. I sat on one of the leather chairs, trying hard to appear calm and responsible, even though I wanted to scream. The doctor faced us from the other chair. He was trim with dark hair. Dr. Drill may have been the only doctor who would see Sammy, but he had excellent credentials and was extremely well respected. We were in good hands.

“What seems to be the problem, Sammy?” Dr. Drill asked as he watched my son through his black-framed glasses.

Sammy wriggled around violently on the couch. “Why don’t you ask my mother? She’s the one who thinks I need to be here.” He pushed the words out, in the middle of snorting, while he glared at the doctor.

“It started about six weeks ago,” I said quietly, “and here’s what is happening now.” I reached into my bag and retrieved a sheet of typing paper. I had anticipated that this question would come in one form or another. I thought it might be too painful to detail the behaviors in front of Sammy, so I had compiled the long list at home. It included all of the behaviors

I had spoken about with the psychologist and his newest ones, too: scratching and picking at his skin, blowing on his hands, constantly pulling at his clothes as if they were too tight.

“Yesterday,” I added as I handed the list to Dr. Drill, “we had to take all the clocks off the walls and put them in closets because he can’t stand the ticking.”

The doctor and I talked about the list while Sammy, on his back, skidded from one end of the couch to the other. Then the doctor asked Sammy if he had any questions.

“Yes.” He squinted and slithered. “Did you wear a pocket protector in high school?”

“No,” answered Dr. Drill, who seemed somewhat uncomfortable. I sat there and wondered what a pocket protector was.

We sent Sammy out. I knew that because of Sammy’s strange behaviors, it would take him at least ten minutes to reach the reception area; that gave me ten private minutes with the doctor to find out what on earth was wrong with my son. He gave me the diagnosis the psychologist had suspected: obsessive-compulsive disorder, commonly known as OCD.

“His behaviors are compulsions,” the doctor explained. “They are beyond his control.”

“You’re saying he can’t stop himself from doing any of this?” It was a tough concept to register.

“That’s right.” Dr. Drill thumbed the pages of a prescription pad.

The doctor said it had to do with something called serotonin. Sammy’s brain was making serotonin but absorbing it into his system too quickly. He had a chemical imbalance, and medication could help with that. The dose would start small and then increase as his body became able to process the dose more quickly. We wanted the medication to stay in his system and slow things down, so we would periodically increase the dose.

“But where did this come from?” I asked. “Six weeks ago he was fine.”

“Sometimes it happens like that,” the doctor answered, searching for a pen.

“With no family history?” I asked.

“There’s probably an uncle out there, or another relative who was odd, but no one talks about it.” He scribbled on the pad.

“I don’t think so.” I shook my head and carefully searched my memory. It came up blank.

“You’re in for a long haul ahead,” the doctor said and handed me a prescription.

“How long will it take for him to get better?” I fingered the slip of paper on which all our hopes now rested.

He stood up and pulled a videotape from the bookcase behind him, then turned to face me.

“Sometimes the children get better.” He hesitated. “And sometimes they don’t.” He added the last part quietly and proffered the videotape. It was called Understanding Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

“Thank you, Doctor.” I took the tape and looked him square in the eyes. “My son will get better.”

Reprinted from “Saving Sammy” by Beth Alison Maloney. Copyright © 2009 Beth Alison Maloney. Published by Crown/Publishers, a division of Random House, Inc.

- | One mother’s battle to save her son from OCD |

| Tot survives 8-mile river ride on toy

Tot-survives-8-mile-river-ride-on-toy VANCOUVER, British Columbia - A boy celebrating his third birthday was unhurt and apparently unfazed after he floated nearly eight miles down a river riding atop his toy truck, police said.

The boys family was camping at a popular park near Fort St. John, in northeastern British Columbia, on Sunday when the boy wandered off unnoticed and somehow entered the nearby Peace River, Royal Canadian Mounted Police said Monday.

The boys parents at first thought he was playing with other relatives at the campsite. But police were later alerted and had begun a search when a boater found the boy, and the toy, about 7.8 miles away.

After a nearly two-hour journey down the swift-moving river, the boy had no injuries and was apparently unaware of the danger he had been in.

He was very excited to see the police, said RCMP Constable Jackelynn Passarell.

A local news report said the boy made sure the boater who found him also retrieved the toy truck.

- | Tot survives 8-mile river ride on toy |

| Can a fancier glass add class to your wine?

Can-a-fancier-glass-add-class-to-your-wine? Can a fancier glass add class to your wine?

Stemware manufacturers certainly think so, offering varietal-specific designs that supposedly enhance whatever you care to quaff.

To Maximilian Riedel , CEO of Riedel Crystal, a glass is the messenger that shapes and delivers wine in a nuanced manner influenced by slight changes in the design, such as a bigger bowl or narrower rim.

There is no one glass that can showcase every wine, he said as he led a recent tasting seminar in the Napa Valley.

Conventional wisdom holds that sparkling wines keep their bubbles better in skinny flutes. Heavier whites, such as a chardonnay, usually are served in glasses with a fairly large bowl; red wines generally are served in tulip style glasses, with the rim slightly narrower than the bowl. And there are plenty of variations of each.

But there also are plenty of skeptics.

The glass doesnt know what kind of wine is in there, points out Joshua Wesson, a former sommelier and co-founder of Best Cellars, wine stores selling inexpensive wines. Good wine is good wine and good taste will out regardless of the vessel.

Theres not a lot of science on the subject, hardly surprising since wine tasting is highly subjective.

Greg Hirson, an enology graduate student at the University of California, Davis, recently studied how glass shape affects the smell of a wine . He analyzed aroma compounds in the headspace or upper portion of a glass, then had human testers sniff the wine.

The shape of the glass did seem to have some effect. A glass with a wider bowl and narrower rim, say a typical Bordeaux glass, did seem to make wine more intense to the human testers. But the effect was small, and, Hirson points out, intensifying flavor doesnt guarantee improved taste.

Which is not to say he doesnt like a fine wine in a fine glass.

Theres certainly an emotional aspect to tasting wine out of an expensive glass, he said. You feel differently. You feel like its more of an event. Theres the whole pomp and circumstance about drinking wine out of a glass and I think it will change your perception of the wine tasting, but I dont think it actually changes the wine.

These days, Riedel has an extensive line of wine glasses, including a recent addition designed specifically for Oregon pinot noir after producers in that region made a case their wines were unique enough to merit the distinction.

Wesson agrees that glass shape affects aromatics to some extent and calls Riedel glasses beautiful. But glass shape cant change the ultimate degree of pleasure that you take from drinking, he said, calling wine tasting a binary exercise — thumbs up or thumbs down.

He needs four glasses on my desert island. Stemless for everyday drinking, an all-purpose wine glass for red, one with a slightly larger bowl for white and a flute for bubbly.

On the other hand, Mary Ewing-Mulligan, owner and president of International Wine Center in New York, has dozens of wine glasses at home.

She concedes that thinking about glass shape is a little bit geeky, but is convinced that glass design can affect wine taste, to the point that she once took her own glasses to a favorite restaurant that was using inferior stemware.

The glass definitely is the delivery system and the process of delivering is definitely relevant, she said.

- | Can a fancier glass add class to your wine? |

| Cybersecurity starts at home and in the office

Cybersecurity-starts-at-home-and-in-the-office WASHINGTON - When swine flu broke out, the government revved up a massive information campaign centered on three words: Wash your hands. The Obama administration now wants to convey similarly clear and concise guidance about one of the biggest national security threats in your home and office — the computer.

Think before you click. Know whos on the other side of that instant message. What you say or do in cyberspace stays in cyberspace — for many to see, steal and use against you or your government.

The Internet, said former national intelligence director Michael McConnell, is the soft underbelly of the U.S. today. Speaking at a new cybersecurity exhibit at the International Spy Museum in Washington, McConnell said the Internet has introduced a level of vulnerability that is unprecedented.

The Pentagons computer systems are probed 360 million times a day, and one prominent power company has acknowledged that its networks see up to 70,000 scans a day, according to cybersecurity expert James Lewis.

For the most part, those probes of government and critical infrastructure networks are benign. Many, said McConnell, are a nuisance and some are crimes. But the most dangerous are probes aimed at espionage or tampering with or destroying data.

‘The fat kid in the race’
The attackers could be terrorists aiming at the U.S. culture and economy, or nation-states looking to insert malicious computer code into the electrical grid that could be activated weeks or years from now.

We are the fat kid in the race, said Lewis. We are the biggest target, we have the most to steal, and everybody wants to get us.

And if, for example, the U.S. gets into a conflict with China over Taiwan, expect the lights to go out, he said.

The exhibit at the Spy Museum — Weapons of Mass Disruption — tries to bring that threat to life.

A network of neon lights zigzags across the ceiling. Along the walls computer screens light up with harrowing headlines outlining the countrys digital dependence. Drinking water, sewer systems, phone lines, banks, air traffic, government systems, all depend on the electric grid, and losing them for weeks would plunge the country into the 1800s.

Suddenly, the lights go out and the room is plunged into silent darkness.

Seconds later as the sound system crackles, a video ticks off a pretend crisis: no food, no water, system shutdown.

Safety vs. privacy
That faux threat has become a prime concern for the government, but fully protecting the grid and other critical computer systems are problems still waiting a solution.

Federal agencies, including the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, are pouring more money into hiring computer experts and protecting their networks.

But there are persistent questions about how to ensure that Internet traffic is safe without violating personal privacy.

One answer, experts said last week, is to begin a broader public dialogue about cybersecurity, making people more aware of the risks and how individuals can do their part at home and at work.

Some will find it easier than others.

Much of the younger generation has grown up online and are more likely to know about secure passwords, antivirus software and dangerous spam e-mails that look to steal identities, bank accounts and government secrets.

Older people moved into the digital universe as it began to evolve and most have not grown up thinking about how to protect themselves online.

Detection and prevention are fast, but crime is still faster, said Phil Reitinger, director of the National Cybersecurity Center. The key, he said, is to make sure that were all getting the word out about not only the seriousness of the threat, but the fairly simple steps that people can take to help secure their systems and their lives and families from the threats that are out there.

In the computer world, wash your hands is less about tossing your keyboard into the dishwasher — although some have tried — and more about exercising caution.

Those steps include:

using antivirus software, spam filters, parental controls and firewalls.regularly backing up important files to external computer drives.thinking twice before sending information over the Internet, particularly when using wireless or unsecured public networks.© 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.var url=location.href;var i=url.indexOf + 1;if{i=url.indexOf + 1;}if{i=url.indexOf;}if{url = url.substring;document.write;if{window.print;}}
MSN Privacy .
Legal © 2009 MSNBC.com - | Cybersecurity starts at home and in the office |