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Two-thirds of State Attorneys General File Amicus Brief Supporting Second Amendment Incorporation
Fairfax, Va. – Two-thirds of the nation’s attorneys general have filed an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to grant certiorari in the case of NRA v. Chicago and hold that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This bi-partisan group of 33 attorneys general, along with the Attorney General of California in a separate filing, agrees with the NRA’s position that the Second Amendment protects a fundamental individual right to keep and bear arms in the home for self-defense, disagreeing with the decision recently issued by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
“The historical record clearly shows that the Second Amendment was intended to apply to every American in every state in the country,” said Chris W. Cox, NRA chief lobbyist. “As the Supreme Court said clearly in last year’s landmark Heller decision, the Second Amendment protects an individual right that ‘belongs to all Americans’. Two-thirds of America’s state Attorneys General agree.”
The Seventh Circuit claimed precedent bound it from holding in favor of incorporation of the Second Amendment. However, it should have followed the lead of the recent Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Nordyke v. King, which found that those cases don't prevent the Second Amendment from applying to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. The Seventh Circuit opinion upholds current bans on the possession of handguns in Chicago and Oak Park, Illinois.
California attorney general Edmund G. Brown Jr. is filing a separate brief arguing that the Supreme Court should take up NRA’s appeal and hold that the Second Amendment is incorporated against the States.
“It is fundamentally wrong to violate the civil rights of any law-abiding person based on their zip code,” Cox concluded. “The fundamental right of self-defense must be respected by every jurisdiction throughout our country.”
http://www.nraila.org/News/Read/NewsReleases.aspx?ID=12654

Microsoft warns of serious computer security hole
Microsoft warned users Monday about yet another serious security flaw related to its Internet Explorer browser for which there is no fix.
Security firm Symantec said the vulnerability, which affects PCs using Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 operating software, is already being taken advantage of by cybercriminals.
It can allow hackers to remotely take control of victims' machines. The victims don't need to do anything to get infected except visit websites infected with a tiny bit of code that taps into the security hole.
Dean Turner, director of Symantec Security Response, says a cybercriminal group has corrupted an estimated several hundred legitimate Web pages with such infections since July 1. The criminals most likely are sending out e-mail spam to trick victims into clicking to the corrupted pages.
Symantec researchers caught part of the malicious code moving across the Internet in a computer, called a honey pot, set up to receive infections. But they have not captured any samples of the e-mail trickery.
"This is not that uncommon," Turner says. "But this kind of exploit in the wild, with no security patch yet available, has the potential to affect hundreds of thousands of people."
A flurry of similar attacks on Internet Explorer took place in 2007 and 2008, but have slowed. Attackers in 2008 began to gravitate to security holes in popular applications, such as Microsoft Word.
And in the past few months, the most widely attacked program has been Adobe Acrobat Reader, says Roel Schouwenberg, senior researcher at Kaspersky Lab.
The so-called zero day vulnerability disclosed by Microsoft affects a part of its software used to play video. The problem arises from the way the software interacts with Internet Explorer, which opens a hole for hackers to tunnel into.
Microsoft urged vulnerable users to disable the problematic part of its software, which can be done from Microsoft's website, while the company works on a "patch" — or software fix — for the problem.
Once the attacker gains access to a PC, the machine most often is used in a network of other compromised PCs, called bots, to spread spam and steal data. Bots are also widely used to spread promotions for fake anti-spyware subscriptions and to hijack cash from online banking accounts.
A Microsoft advisory says the company is working on a patch, which will be distributed "when it has reached an appropriate level of quality for broad distribution."
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2009-07-06-microsoft-security_N.htm

Banks get stingy on credit; new cards down 38%
Despite massive government efforts to bolster the credit market, banks are pulling back severely on card lending.
In the first four months of the year — the latest data — banks issued 9.8 million new credit cards, a 38% drop from the same time last year, according to Equifax credit bureau data. Low-risk borrowers can still get credit, but they're getting less than before. The average limit on a new card, after rising during the recession, slipped 3% so far this year to $4,594.
That's discouraging for those who want to see banks pumping liquidity into the economy. "The credit engine needs a tuneup," says Jim Powers, an Equifax assistant vice president.
While it's not surprising that banks are pulling back on unsecured loans as card defaults and delinquencies surge, "what's remarkable is the very sharp decline in lending," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.
The drop signals a shift in mind-set by issuers, which historically have raised credit card limits through booms and busts.
The government has tried to stimulate overall lending by funding securities backed by assets such as credit cards and mortgages. It's also injected billions of aid into banks in return for preferred stock.
But in the credit card market, policymakers are working at "cross purposes," Zandi says. President Obama recently signed a law imposing far-reaching restrictions on cards, mostly starting in February 2010. Those will likely lead to even fewer cards being issued, Zandi says.
Still, if this trend means issuers are "doing better underwriting, that could be a positive thing," says Lauren Zeichner Bowne of Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports. What worries consumer groups, Bowne says, is that issuers are closing inactive cards and slashing limits even for responsible consumers.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/credit/2009-07-06-banks-credit-cards_N.htm

Germany's biggest bank admits spying on staff: spokesman
Germany's biggest bank, Deutsche Bank, admitted Monday it had spied on a former member of its supervisory board, suspected of disclosing 2001 third quarter results before their official publication.
A bank spokesman said the target was Gerald Herrmann, who represented the union Verdi on the board that year.
German magazine Der Spiegel had reported over the weekend that the bank hired detectives to spy on its employees including a member of its supervisory board, managers and a shareholder.
The bank launched an internal inquiry at the end of May into potential breaches of data privacy law in connection with the affair, Spiegel said.
The spokesman confirmed the investigation and said the financial market regulator Bafin had also been contacted.
Herrmann told the Handelsblatt business newspaper on Monday Deutsche Bank informed him of the case a couple of days ago.
He denied the allegations against him and said he suspected he was spied on because Deutsche Bank did not appreciate his criticism of a redundancy compensation scheme.
The bank apologised to Hermann but the union member said he wanted a personal apology from chief executive Josef Ackermann who promised a "zero tolerance" approach over the affair at an annual general meeting of the bank.
According to Der Spiegel detectives "kept an eye on the movements of these people, and made inquiries as to who they were meeting and when".
In 2006, managers were spied on because of their suspected links to media mogul Leo Kirch, who was involved in a legal battle with Deutsche Bank, the magazine said.
Spiegel also said minority shareholder Michael Bohndorf, a lawyer living in Ibiza, Spain, was spied on.
Several detective agencies may have been involved in the affair.
Among the agencies is one led by a former agent of the Stasi, the notorious secret police in the former East Germany, who was also implicated in a scandal at German phone giant Deutsche Telekom.
Deutsche Bank even used "female bait" to find "personal weaknesses of certain shareholders", the magazine added.
Scandals over violations of privacy law have rocked the German corporate world in recent months, notably at railway company Deutsche Bahn and Deutsche Telekom.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.b1bda39889783bf24189b0a92f01fc43.1a1&show_article=1