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WASHINGTON
Elven J. Swisher wore a replica of a Purple Heart on the witness stand when he testified that the defendant had tried to hire him to kill three federal officials.
Asked about the medal, Mr. Swisher pulled a document from his pocket to show that he was entitled to it and many others for his service in combat in the Korean War.
Mr. Swisher said the defendant, David R. Hinkson, an armchair constitutionalist with eccentric views about the tax code, had asked him how many men he had killed. ?Too many,? Mr. Swisher recalled saying.
All lies. Mr. Swisher had never seen combat, had killed no one and had served without distinction. The document was a forgery. Mr. Swisher has since been convicted of lying to federal officials, wearing fake medals and defrauding the Department of Veterans Affairs of benefits for combat injuries.
But the jury knew none of this, and with Mr. Swisher?s testimony it convicted Mr. Hinkson of soliciting three murders. He was sentenced to 33 years for those crimes, along with 10 years for tax evasion, and he is serving his sentence in the maximum-security prison in Florence, Colo.
When Mr. Swisher?s lies came to light, Mr. Hinkson challenged his convictions for soliciting the murders. The jury had believed him guilty of more than loose talk, he said, only because Mr. Swisher had falsely presented himself as a battle-hardened killer.
But the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled against him last year by a 7-to-4 vote.
Mr. Swisher?s lies, the majority said, were no big deal. There was no reason to think the jury would have come out differently had it known of ?Swisher?s routine, rather than heroic, military history,? Judge Carlos T. Bea wrote.
That decision has outraged veterans.
William F. Mac Swain, the national president of the Korean War Veterans Association, told the appeals court in a brief filed after the decision that ?its reasoning and language are a slap in the face to veterans and jurors alike.?
The majority opinion implied ?that the average American no longer attaches any significance to a veteran?s wartime service,? Mr. Mac Swain continued.
In fact, he said, jurors are likely to believe those who have sacrificed to defend them and are likely to reject the testimony of those who have falsely claimed entitlement to honors for which others have bled and died.
That was not just speculation. One of the jurors at Mr. Hinkson?s trial, in Boise, Idaho, in 2005, later said he would have voted to acquit had he known the truth.
?I was surprised to hear that Mr. Swisher was allowed to tell such lies which created the misimpression that he would be a good ?hit man? candidate based on having been a decorated combat veteran,? the juror, Ben S. Casey, said in a sworn statement. ?These lies discredit him as a witness and therefore discredit the rest of his testimony.?
Mr. Mac Swain?s brief was prepared by John W. Keker, a prominent San Francisco lawyer who earned a Purple Heart in Vietnam. In an interview, Mr. Keker said the majority?s ?dismissive and even supercilious attitude? about military service ?drove me out of my mind.?
?The idea that jurors wouldn?t be tremendously affected if they knew someone had lied about getting their war decorations was just astonishing,? Mr. Keker said.
After reading Mr. Keker?s brief, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski switched his vote. He said the brief and a recent Supreme Court decision had made him realize he had ?underestimated the trust some jurors would have placed in Swisher if they thought he was a decorated combat veteran, and the likely backlash if they learned he was a fraud.?
But the tally the second time around, in July, was still 6 to 5 against Mr. Hinkson.
Dennis P. Riordan, one of Mr. Hinkson?s lawyers, said he was working on an appeal to the Supreme Court, where the justices have lately been quite engaged with the meaning of military service.
The decision Chief Judge Kozinski referred to, for instance, granted a new sentencing hearing to a death row inmate, George Porter Jr. In an unsigned unanimous opinion, the justices chastised Mr. Porter?s trial lawyer for failing to tell the jury about ?Porter?s heroic military service in two of the most critical ? and horrific ? battles of the Korean War,? service for which he earned two Purple Hearts and other distinctions.
On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in another case about a Korean War veteran. It concerns David L. Henderson, who missed a filing deadline for veterans? benefits because he was bedridden from the very disability for which he sought help.
At the argument in Mr. Hinkson?s case in the Ninth Circuit, there was much discussion of medals and their meaning.
Judge Harry Pregerson, who would end up in dissent, said he and his father had both earned Purple Hearts. ?So I know what it?s about,? he said.
A lawyer for the government, on the other hand, argued that Mr. Swisher?s lies had been inconsequential.
Judge Pregerson asked the lawyer, John F. DePue, what he was wearing on his lapel. It turned out to be a Distinguished Service Medal.
?I honor you for your service,? Judge Pregerson said. ?When I look at you, I say, ?This guy?s got credibility standing there.? ?
?You?re impressing us,? Judge Pregerson said, and then he seemed to refer to Mr. Swisher. ?And if a guy is wearing a Purple Heart medal, that?s going to impress some people, too.?
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=c68fd699989681c65d5bb6167efe1abf
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Here's how to get started:

Many of the rewards are aimed at new users, meaning Microsoft's goal is get more users to enroll in Xbox Live, though keeping current users hooked is probably still part of the strategy. The biggest payouts come from staying enrolled.
It took Microsoft quite some time to launch the loyalty rewards program. Just last week, the Xbox 360 console turned five years old.
Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/41389-microsoft-introduces-xbox-live-rewards-program.html
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Doesn?t matter if it?s for your company, your hobby, or yourself if you want to have a more personal presence online you need a domain name of your own. Now sometimes getting that name is easy. Like my personal domain is trishussey.com ? yeah that?s pretty easy. Robert Scoble has had scobleizer.com for years, because ?scobleized? and ?scobleizer? was something that came from his college days. If you?re lucky enough that your company name is available, again, all set, but what if you need more help? What if the ideas are just not coming to you? What if you need a little help?
You?ve come to the right place, welcome to ?
Tips and Tools for Picking the Right Domain
Keywords
First tip isn?t related to tools at all, it?s about words. Think keywords when you?re picking a domain. Think about what words you want tied to your idea. What is your site going to be about? Is it more than your business name? Are we talking about an idea? For a now-defunct cocktail blog I came up with DrinksAfterDark.com ? it was available, had a good keyword in there, was easy to spell?
Spelling
Oh yes, spelling. Nothing worse than a domain no one can spell. Too long, too complicated ? mixing zero and the letter ?o? ? all those things make for bad domains, well except for spelling something entirely else.
Make sure that your domain doesn?t spell something you?d rather not have associated with your company. You know like, Mole Station Native Nursery using molestationnursery.com or Who Represents as whorepresents.com or Experts Exchange as expertsexchange.com. Yeah, you?ll become a joke in all Internet marketing 101 classes from now on.
Okay, these are ground rules, things to start off with. Remember: Keywords, spelling, easy, understandable.
Now, for that domain.
You can brainstorm ideas for a while, but honestly that gets old after about 5 or 10 minutes, and that?s what we have computers for. So armed with the info on what makes for a good domain, let?s take a couple apps for a spin to see what we can come up with.
Domain Recommendation Apps-Websites
There are a couple different ways to attack getting a domain, but let?s start with the keyword-based approach. A site like NameBoy.com lets you put in a couple keywords and returns a list of potential domains. So, let?s say I was going to start a blog on fountain pens, so using ?fountain pen? in the first box (primary keywords) and ?advice? in the second, I get a list like this:

Yeah, maybe not the best first start, but lots of ideas there.
Oh and a note on hyphens. I?m not a fan of those in domain names. When I?ve had domains with a hyphen I was always saying ?blahblahblah hyphen blahblah dot com? which isn?t great for clarity or communication.
If you don?t like the results from NameBoy, try NetTumbler.com. NetTumbler will return a massive list of domains, again?maybe no winners right off, but certainly more ideas.
But what about something a little more ? current? You know like Instagram using Instagr.am, using a word as a domain? No, I can?t keep all the TLDs (top level domains) in my head, nor can I just pull cool words out of my head that will end in the right dot suffix, but wordy can!
Finding those ?word? domains
Wordy let?s you type in a word and you get domains that use all or part of the word. I came up dry using fountain pen, but Vancouver returned vancouv.er! It?s a lot more error for all the trying, but no doubt it?s fun. Just remember, these domains are trendy now, but it might also become tedious having to spell out your domain all the time. Yeah, .com is boring, but .com is what people know.

Speaking of trends, what about short domains? Like our own tnw.to or my tris.me? As trendy as these might be, they are trendy and useful. Figuring out a cool short url can be tricky. In Canada we?re pretty lucky because our TLD is .ca so we can start with the shortest TLD possible, but what about other options? I have just the thing for you: Domainr.
When shorter is better
Domainr is the tool bit.ly suggested when they came out with bit.ly pro (which I got into in short order). Domainr is as simple as all the others, start with a word and start getting suggestions. If there is a green box next to the name, it?s available. Yeah, I wanted tr.is, but I couldn?t get it. I could get tristr.am ? for about $60-70.

Right.
This is the other important thing to know about domains. A lot of these new ?fun? TLDs like .tv (Tuvalu), .me (Macedonia) and .co (Columbia) come at premium prices. Not many $10 a year domain deals here.
Still stuck? Yeah, I feel your pain. I?ve had to come up with dozens of domain names over the years, and frankly most of the best ones have come like a bolt from the blue. Course you can attract that bolt by using tools like NameBoy, NetTumbler, wordy, Domainr and others (a great list is in this post) to start playing with ideas and keywords.
The rest?is up to you.
Source: http://thenextweb.com/lifehacks/2010/12/02/how-to-choose-the-right-domain-for-you/
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Some defense lawyers and civil rights advocates said the government?s tactics, particularly since the Sept. 11 attacks, have raised questions about the possible entrapment of people who pose no real danger but are enticed into pretend plots at the government?s urging.
But law enforcement officials said on Monday that agents and prosecutors had carefully planned the tactics used in the undercover operation that led to the arrest of the Somali-born teenager, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, a naturalized United States citizen. They said that Mr. Mohamud was given several opportunities to vent his anger in ways that would not be deadly, but that he refused each time.
?I am confident that there is no entrapment here, and no entrapment claim will be found to be successful,? Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Monday. ?There were, as I said, a number of opportunities that the subject in this matter, the defendant in this matter, was given to retreat, to take a different path. He chose at every step to continue.?
Mr. Holder called the sting operation, in which Mr. Mohamud was under the scrutiny of federal agents for nearly six months, ?part of a forward-leaning way in which the Justice Department, the F.B.I., our law enforcement partners at the state and local level are trying to find people who are bound and determined to harm Americans and American interests around the world.?
A study this year by the Center on Law and Security at New York University, which tracks terrorism cases, found that of 156 prosecutions in what it identified as the most significant 50 cases since 2001, informers were relied on in 97 of them, or 62 percent. The entrapment defense has often been raised, but as of September, it had never been successful in producing an acquittal in a post-Sept. 11 terrorism trial, the study found.
The Portland case resembles several others in which American residents, inspired by militant Web sites, have tried to carry out attacks in the name of the militant Islamic movement only to be captured in a sting operation, with undercover F.B.I. agents or informers playing the role of terrorists and, as in this case, supplying a fake bomb.
In September 2009, Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year old Jordanian citizen, was arrested and charged with placing a fake bomb at a Dallas skyscraper. In October, Farooque Ahmed, a 34-year-old naturalized American citizen born in Pakistan, was arrested and charged with plotting to bomb the Washington Metro after meeting with undercover agents and discussing his plans and surveillance activities, the authorities said.
Some Muslim leaders in Oregon questioned how the sting operation there was carried out.
Imtiaz Khan, the president of the Islamic Center of Portland and Masjed As-Saber, a mosque where Mr. Mohamud worshiped, said several people at the mosque had questioned why law enforcement helped orchestrate such an elaborate plan for a terrorist act.
?They?re saying, ?Why allow it to get to this public stunt? To put the community on edge?? ? Mr. Khan said.
Mr. Khan said he and other Muslim leaders met regularly with the F.B.I. and other federal officials. In May, he was among a group of Muslim leaders in the Portland area who issued a statement condemning an attempted bombing in Times Square and thanking law enforcement for its ?outstanding work? in the case.
Jesse Day, a spokesman for the mosque and Islamic center, said the circumstances of Mr. Mohamud?s arrest had stirred ?some distrust, a little bit, in the tactics? of law enforcement.
The government?s 36-page affidavit filed in the Oregon case lays out a crucial conversation between Mr. Mohamud and an F.B.I. informer at their first meeting, on July 30, 2010. According to the affidavit, the informer suggested five ways that Mr. Mohamud could help the cause of Islam, some of which were peaceful, like proselytizing, and some of which were violent and illegal.
Mr. Mohamud, the affidavit said, immediately picked a violent crime: becoming ?operational,? by which he said he meant putting together a car bomb. The informer then offered to put Mr. Mohamud in touch with an explosives expert, setting off the chain of events that led to his eventual arrest.
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=f9b266109d5571aaa76d7b9591f92e59
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To say that WordPress.com has a loyal following would be an severe understatement ? millions of people rely on the blogging platform day in and day out. Well, if you?re a fan of WordPress.com, and you?d like to tell the world, Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com has just launched an official swag store.
Right now there seems to only be 13 products, ranging in prices from $8-35, with most of them in the $10-20 range. Clothes, hoodies, baby clothes and things like water bottles and USB flash drives are featured, and while we?re not sure if all of the models in the pictures are Automattic employees, Matt Mullenwag and a few other recognizeable faces are on the page.
Of course, if you?ve ever been to a WordCamp before you probably already have some WordPress swag at home, but if not, here?s your chance to get all geekified.

So, what would you like to buy today dear bloggers?
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The BlackBerry OS managed to grab 34.3 percent last month while Apple's iOS recorded 33 percent. Google's Android is rapidly gaining and has almost tripled its Internet market share from 8.2 percent in November 2009 to 23.8 in November 2010. Apple's iOS has fallen from 51.9 percent to 33 percent over the same period. Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 has not yet registered a significant amount of Internet usage.
"These figures suggest that developers should not be developing solely for the iPhone to the exclusion of BlackBerry and Android," Aodhan Cullen, CEO of StatCounter, said in a statement. "This data demonstrates that there is a battle royal already going on in the smartphone market for the consumer and business internet user. You can never underestimate Microsoft but it looks to have its work cut out."
He also added that if current trends continue, BlackBerry and Android combined are on course to become twice the size of iOS in mobile Internet usage next year. The statistics are based on aggregate data collected by StatCounter on a sample exceeding 15 billion page views per month collected from across the StatCounter network of more than three million websites.
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Ever since HP acquired Palm for $1.2 billion, the company seems to becoming more competitive with its various partners. The company apparently has lost interest in selling Windows Home Server boxes. Instead, HP is promising to continue support for its existing MediaSmart products but has already redeployed development teams to focus on WebOS, according to Engadget.
Despite suspicions by many that the company would kill webOS, so far it has done the exact opposite. Two months ago, HP officially introduced webOS 2.0, the most significant update to the platform since its launch in 2009, along with the Palm Pre 2, the first device to sport it. Four more webOS 2.0 devices are slated to arrive in early 2011, and the company also plans to roll it out for current devices. Developers will thus be able to target eight webOS 2.0 devices in total, plus whatever Windows Home Server replacements the company may have under its sleeve.
"Microsoft continues to work on delivering 'Vail' to our customers," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. "We are working very closely with our partners such as Acer, Tranquil and many System Builders to bring the best solution to market. HP and Microsoft have a long-standing strategic relationship across both consumer and commercial markets and will continue to work together moving forward."
Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/41391-hp-kills-windows-home-server-options-to-focus-on-webos.html
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