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Kevblog archive
05/25/04
Iraq: The Bitter Lessons of History
05/23/04
Where Do I Fit?
05/19/04
Rest in Peace Civility
and Common Sense
05/16/04
Running The Other Way
with Ad Guru Hillsman
05/09/04
Friendless in St. Paul
05/06/04
The Bad CEO Theory is Proven
05/03/04
The Bad CEO?
05/02/04
Say There, Brother,
Can You Spare a Mil?
05/01/04
Leave Evangelizing to the Evangelists
04/29/04
In Early '01, Bremer
Bashed Bush on Terror
04/27/04
Giving President Bush
Credit Where It's Due
04/23/04
Dean, Stewed in Weber's Kettle
04/21/04
Incurious George
04/19/04
Free Wally
04/18/04
How I Discovered the Kinks
04/17/04
Youthful Voters Engage
Additional past Kevblogs
Selected published articles
Run, Ralph, Run (But I Won't Vote for You) -- St. Paul Pioneer Press, May 11, 2004
Friendless in St. Paul -- MNPolitics.com, May 10, 2004
Don't Stop Treating Third Parties Fairly -- Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 25, 2004 (with Tim Penny)
Killed Bill: Minnesota Senate Squelches Attempt To Choke Off Third Parties -- MNPolitics.com, April 16, 2004
My iBook Failed Me -- St. Paul Pioneer Press, Jan. 7, 2004
Did the Star Tribune Minnesota Poll Destroy Tim Penny's Campaign? -- Minnesota Law & Politics, March 2003
Digital Video Recording Changes TV For Good -- St. Paul Pioneer Press, Feb. 9, 2003
Distraught Over Son's Disappearance, Mom Says Downtown 'Dangerous' -- Skyway News, Dec. 19, 2002
Major Label First: Unencrypted MP3 For Sale Online -- Newsbytes.com, May 23, 2002
Eskola and Wurzer: The Odd Couple -- Minnesota Law & Politics, January 2002
U.S. on Verge of 'Electronic Martial Law' -- Newsbytes.com, Oct. 16, 2001
Disorder in the Court -- Minnesota Law & Politics, October 2001
Stopping Bin Laden: How Much Surveillance Is Too Much? -- Newsbytes.com, Sept. 25, 2001
Verizon Works 'Round The Clock' On Dead N.Y. Phone Lines -- Newsbytes.com, Sept. 13, 2001
Artificial Intelligence: Help Wanted - AI Pioneer Minsky -- Newsbytes.com, Aug. 31, 2001
More past published articles
The Kevrock Dept.
This is the cover of my home-recorded 2002 CD, "Gettysburg." Linked selections are available to be played as MP3 files.
Track Listing
- Seaweed Boots (Featherly/Koester)
- She Sees Me (K. Featherly)
- She Knows Me Too Well (Brian Wilson)
- Salt Mama (K. Featherly)
- Another Age (K. Featherly)
- So Special (K. Featherly)
- Bring it on Home (Sam Cooke)
- Being Free (K. Featherly)
- Tammy (K. Featherly)
- River City Blues (K. Featherly)
- Beware of Darkness (George Harrison)
- Gettysburg (K. Featherly)
- Minong at Midnight (K. Featherly)
- Violent State of Mind (Nate Featherly)
- Don't Do It (Featherly/Featherly/Koester)
- Save the World (Koester)
- The Grave Song (Featherly/Koester)
Contact the Kevblog
if you're interested in obtaining a copy of "Gettysburg."
Favored news sites
Best of blog
All that is old and already formed can continue to live only if it allows within itself the conditions of a new beginning.
-- Jacob Needleman,
The American Soul
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"All that is old and already formed can continue to live only if it allows within itself the conditions of a new beginning."
-- Jacob Needleman, The American Soul
Memo: Army Predicted Contractor Problems
Posted 5:38 p.m., May 28, 2004
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I came across an item I thought worthy of some attention while trolling the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity's Web site, where I found an interesting piece dealing with the privatization of the U.S. military. It was published in early May.
It details a March 2002 memo from former Secretary of the Army Thomas E. White to three Department of Defense officials saying that the Army didn't have the information--and hadn't performed the proper analysis--to manage and oversee its ballooning number of private contractors.
"White warned the under secretaries responsible for army contracting, personnel and finances that reductions in the service's civilian and military work force, carried out over the previous 11 years, had been accompanied by an increased reliance on private contractors--a personnel shift, he noted, apparently done without adequate analysis.
"'Currently,' [Secretary] White admitted, 'Army planners and programmers lack visibility at the Departmental level into the labor and costs associated with the contract work force and of the organizations and missions supported by them.'"
-- Alan Green, Center for Public Integrity
What this all means, of course, is that the top officials were asking a year before the war about private workers performing sensitive military and homeland security duties at the same time that they were keenly aware they didn't have either the data or the resources to account for them.
This issue, as you will recall, is part of the problem at the heart of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
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Visit the Kevblog archive.
Kevin Featherly, a former managing editor at Washington Post Newsweek Interactive, is a Minnesota journalist who covers politics and technology. He has authored or contributed to five previous books, Guide to Building a Newsroom Web Site (1998), The Wired Journalist (1999), Elements of Language (2001), Pop Music and the Press (2002) and Encyclopedia of New Media (2003). His byline has appeared in Editor & Publisher, the San Francisco Chronicle, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Online Journalism Review and Minnesota Law & Politics, among other publications. In 2000, he was a media coordinator for Web, White & Blue, the first online presidential debates. Currently is news editor for the McGraw-Hill tech publication, Healthcare Informatics.
Copyright 2004, by Kevin Featherly
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