Andrew Jackson did it

City leaders in New Orleans are up in arms this week about the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest estimate of the storm-ravaged city’s population. The Census Bureau says New Orleans had fewer than 240,000 people in July 2007. That’s down from more than 450,000 before Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, but up from around 210,000 in July 2006.

City leaders say the actual population is higher–and they need every person counted because such figures help determine grant dollar distribution. We can’t tell you how many people have gone back to New Orleans. But we can go back to New Orleans’s history–and tell you how a hard fight for the Big Easy helped establish the United States.

Big Easy History

Say “New Orleans” and most people think jazz, Mardi Gras, or the French Quarter. But the city once exercised Thomas Jefferson’s mind for more strategic reasons. “There is on the globe one single spot,” he said, “the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans.”

Jefferson knew that New Orleans commands the mouth of the mighty Mississippi River–which, through its many tributaries, drains much of North America. Before the invention of the railroad, many goods couldn’t make it to market except via the big river. So whoever held New Orleans had huge power over the newborn United States.

French Foundations

The French had founded the city in 1717, and called it Nouvelle-Orléans after Philippe II, duc d’Orléans, then regent of France. From the start, they envisioned New Orleans as a “port of deposit” for Mississippi trade. Back then, French territory stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada.

In 1803, Napoleon sold French Louisiana to the United States for less than three cents an acre. President Jefferson had actually been looking to buy just New Orleans and a bit of west Florida, but he took the rest of the 828,000-square-mile (2,144,520-square-km) territory into the bargain–and so nearly doubled the size of the United States.

Un-Impressed

Unfortunately, getting bigger and grabbing New Orleans didn’t make other security concerns disappear. Unresolved issues with the British had festered for years, including disputes over trade, incitement of Indian attacks, and the “impressment” of sailors on U.S. ships into British naval service. Tensions came to a head in 1812, and Congress voted to declare war on Britain–though only by margins of 79-49 in the House and 19-13 in the Senate.

The War of 1812 would see the destruction of York (now Toronto) in Canada, the burning of Washington, DC, and the penning of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It would also see an attack on New Orleans that came after a peace deal–the Treaty of Ghent–had already been signed.

Battle on the Bayou

In December 1814, 7,500 British forces under Sir Edward Pakenham landed in Louisiana, just miles from New Orleans. U.S. forces under General Andrew Jackson went to meet them, slowing their advance toward the city. By January, Louisiana militiamen, batallions of free blacks, a band of Choctaw Indians, and a pack of pirates led by the swashbuckling Jean Lafitte had joined with U.S. regulars to defend New Orleans.

Meanwhile, British and U.S. representatives had signed their peace deal in Ghent (now in Belgium). But news of the deal didn’t make it to New Orleans in time. On January 8, 1815, the British began a full-scale attack on the American position under cover of dense fog.

By the time British troops reached Jackson’s well-fortified lines, the fog was long gone. U.S. artillery and riflemen opened up, destroying perhaps a third of the British ranks in less than an hour. Pakenham and two of his top officers were among the dead. The remaining British forces retreated, and major post-war hostilities came to an end.

Its Aftermath

Obviously, the bayou battle had no impact on the negotiations that ended the war. Yet the battle’s symbolic significance outstripped its actual military importance. News of the victory at New Orleans reached the nation nearly at the same time as news of the Treaty of Ghent. Soon, a war that had deeply divided the nation, and actually ended in stalemate, began to look like a victory.

While the Treaty of Ghent merely restored the pre-war status quo, the win at New Orleans helped inspire a renewed U.S. nationalism and sense of strength. In the words of Albert Gallatin, treasury secretary under Presidents Jefferson and Madison, the end of the war “reinstated the national feelings and character which the Revolution had given.” Now, people felt and acted “more American . . . more as a nation.”

For his part, Andrew Jackson emerged as a national hero, and eventually rode his fame all the way to the White House. Meanwhile, Jean Lafitte and his pirates went on to establish their own short-lived “kingdom” on the island that’s now Galveston, Texas. But that’s a story for a different day.

–Steve Sampson

No peeking

Congress and the White House continue to wrangle over a new version of the law that covers the nation’s wiretapping program. The question of the moment is whether people should be able to sue private telecom companies who cooperated with the government after 9/11 and may, in the process, have violated their customers’ privacy rights.

The bigger question, though, is just how far the people’s right to privacy goes–and how to strike a balance between that right and the needs of national security. After all, privacy is every U.S. citizen’s constitutional right, right?

Well, maybe. The U.S. Constitution never specifically says that citizens have a right to privacy. Yet it does say they have rights that aren’t specifically mentioned in the Constitution–and the Supreme Court has ruled that privacy is among them.

Never Enumerate Your Rights

How can the Constitution protect rights it never names? Well, the framers were clever fellows. They realized people might read an enumerated list–like, say, the Bill of Rights–and assume the list was supposed to be exhaustive. So, to make sure their list wasn’t read that way, they wrote a rule against doing so and added it to the list. That rule is the Constitution’s Ninth Amendment, which reads:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Some scholars read those words strictly as a prohibition that prevents the government from doing whatever it wants as long as it doesn’t violate your enumerated rights. Others argue they imply positive constitutional protection for one or more unenumerated, yet important, rights–such as the right to defend yourself, the right to move from one place to another, and the right to privacy.

Private Penumbras

Many of the Constitution’s amendments are privacy-related. The First Amendment preserves your right to practice your religion and speak your mind. The Fifth Amendment preserves your right to remain silent and your right to private property. The Fourth Amendment preserves “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

In a 1965 privacy rights case, Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court ruled that these “various guarantees create zones of privacy.” Striking down a Connecticut statute that forbade the use of contraceptives even by married couples, the Court held that “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.” (A penumbra is a partly shaded region at the edge of a shadow.)

Basically, the Court held that the spirit of one of the Constitution’s amendments, or several together, can cast shadows long enough to cover a right–such as marital privacy–that the Constitution doesn’t mention. And, under the Ninth Amendment, such rights are “retained by the people” without being enumerated. Future rulings extended Griswold’s notion of privacy beyond marriage, to strike down fornication and sodomy laws.

Penumbral Problems

Critics of Griswold argue that penumbral privacy rights are a fiction conjured from constitutional shadows. Even some privacy proponents stay away from penumbras, arguing instead that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees privacy by promising not to “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Privacy, they say, is essential to liberty.

In fact, the Supreme Court followed that line of reasoning in the most controversial privacy-related case of all: 1973’s Roe v. Wade. According to the majority opinion in Roe, “this right of privacy . . . founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty . . . is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” Clearly not everyone agrees with that argument, either.

–Steve Sampson

Terror Fight Blurs

Line Over Domain;
Tracking Email

By SIOBHAN GORMAN
March 10, 2008; Page A1

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon antiterrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious patterns. Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on Americans’ privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But the data-sifting effort didn’t disappear. The National Security Agency, once confined to foreign surveillance, has been building essentially the same system.

The central role the NSA has come to occupy in domestic intelligence gathering has never been publicly disclosed. But an inquiry reveals that its efforts have evolved to reach more broadly into data about people’s communications, travel and finances in the U.S. than the domestic surveillance programs brought to light since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Congress now is hotly debating domestic spying powers under the main law governing U.S. surveillance aimed at foreign threats. An expansion of those powers expired last month and awaits renewal, which could be voted on in the House of Representatives this week. The biggest point of contention over the law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is whether telecommunications and other companies should be made immune from liability for assisting government surveillance.

Largely missing from the public discussion is the role of the highly secretive NSA in analyzing that data, collected through little-known arrangements that can blur the lines between domestic and foreign intelligence gathering. Supporters say the NSA is serving as a key bulwark against foreign terrorists and that it would be reckless to constrain the agency’s mission. The NSA says it is scrupulously following all applicable laws and that it keeps Congress fully informed of its activities.

According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. The NSA receives this so-called “transactional” data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns. Then they spit out leads to be explored by counterterrorism programs across the U.S. government, such as the NSA’s own Terrorist Surveillance Program, formed to intercept phone calls and emails between the U.S. and overseas without a judge’s approval when a link to al Qaeda is suspected.

The NSA’s enterprise involves a cluster of powerful intelligence-gathering programs, all of which sparked civil-liberties complaints when they came to light. They include a Federal Bureau of Investigation program to track telecommunications data once known as Carnivore, now called the Digital Collection System, and a U.S. arrangement with the world’s main international banking clearinghouse to track money movements.

The effort also ties into data from an ad-hoc collection of so-called “black programs” whose existence is undisclosed, the current and former officials say. Many of the programs in various agencies began years before the 9/11 attacks but have since been given greater reach. Among them, current and former intelligence officials say, is a longstanding Treasury Department program to collect individual financial data including wire transfers and credit-card transactions.

It isn’t clear how many of the different kinds of data are combined and analyzed together in one database by the NSA. An intelligence official said the agency’s work links to about a dozen antiterror programs in all.

A number of NSA employees have expressed concerns that the agency may be overstepping its authority by veering into domestic surveillance. And the constitutional question of whether the government can examine such a large array of information without violating an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy “has never really been resolved,” said Suzanne Spaulding, a national-security lawyer who has worked for both parties on Capitol Hill.

NSA officials say the agency’s own investigations remain focused only on foreign threats, but it’s increasingly difficult to distinguish between domestic and international communications in a digital era, so they need to sweep up more information.

The Fourth Amendment

In response to the Sept. 11 attacks, then NSA-chief Gen. Michael Hayden has said he used his authority to expand the NSA’s capabilities under a 1981 executive order governing the agency. Another presidential order issued shortly after the attacks, the text of which is classified, opened the door for the NSA to incorporate more domestic data in its searches, one senior intelligence official said.

The NSA “strictly follows laws and regulations designed to preserve every American’s privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” agency spokeswoman Judith Emmel said in a statement, referring to the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the NSA in conjunction with the Pentagon, added in a statement that intelligence agencies operate “within an extensive legal and policy framework” and inform Congress of their activities “as required by the law.” It pointed out that the 9/11 Commission recommended in 2004 that intelligence agencies analyze “all relevant sources of information” and share their databases.

Two former officials familiar with the data-sifting efforts said they work by starting with some sort of lead, like a phone number or Internet address. In partnership with the FBI, the systems then can track all domestic and foreign transactions of people associated with that item — and then the people who associated with them, and so on, casting a gradually wider net. An intelligence official described more of a rapid-response effect: If a person suspected of terrorist connections is believed to be in a U.S. city — for instance, Detroit, a community with a high concentration of Muslim Americans — the government’s spy systems may be directed to collect and analyze all electronic communications into and out of the city.

The haul can include records of phone calls, email headers and destinations, data on financial transactions and records of Internet browsing. The system also would collect information about other people, including those in the U.S., who communicated with people in Detroit.

The information doesn’t generally include the contents of conversations or emails. But it can give such transactional information as a cellphone’s location, whom a person is calling, and what Web sites he or she is visiting. For an email, the data haul can include the identities of the sender and recipient and the subject line, but not the content of the message.

Intelligence agencies have used administrative subpoenas issued by the FBI — which don’t need a judge’s signature — to collect and analyze such data, current and former intelligence officials said. If that data provided “reasonable suspicion” that a person, whether foreign or from the U.S., was linked to al Qaeda, intelligence officers could eavesdrop under the NSA’s Terrorist Surveillance Program.

The White House wants to give companies that assist government surveillance immunity from lawsuits alleging an invasion of privacy, but Democrats in Congress have been blocking it. The Terrorist Surveillance Program has spurred 38 lawsuits against companies. Current and former intelligence officials say telecom companies’ concern comes chiefly because they are giving the government unlimited access to a copy of the flow of communications, through a network of switches at U.S. telecommunications hubs that duplicate all the data running through it. It isn’t clear whether the government or telecom companies control the switches, but companies process some of the data for the NSA, the current and former officials say.

On Friday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a letter warning colleagues to look more deeply into how telecommunications data are being accessed, citing an allegation by the head of a New York-based computer security firm that a wireless carrier that hired him was giving unfettered access to data to an entity called “Quantico Circuit.” Quantico is a Marine base that houses the FBI Academy; senior FBI official Anthony DiClemente said the bureau “does not have ‘unfettered access’ to any communication provider’s network.”

The political debate over the telecom information comes as intelligence agencies seek to change traditional definitions of how to balance privacy rights against investigative needs. Donald Kerr, the deputy director of national intelligence, told a conference of intelligence officials in October that the government needs new rules. Since many people routinely post details of their lives on social-networking sites such as MySpace, he said, their identity shouldn’t need the same protection as in the past. Instead, only their “essential privacy,” or “what they would wish to protect about their lives and affairs,” should be veiled, he said, without providing examples.

Social-Network Analysis

The NSA uses its own high-powered version of social-network analysis to search for possible new patterns and links to terrorism. The Pentagon’s experimental Total Information Awareness program, later renamed Terrorism Information Awareness, was an early research effort on the same concept, designed to bring together and analyze as much and as many varied kinds of data as possible. Congress eliminated funding for the program in 2003 before it began operating. But it permitted some of the research to continue and TIA technology to be used for foreign surveillance.

Some of it was shifted to the NSA — which also is funded by the Pentagon — and put in the so-called black budget, where it would receive less scrutiny and bolster other data-sifting efforts, current and former intelligence officials said. “When it got taken apart, it didn’t get thrown away,” says a former top government official familiar with the TIA program.

Two current officials also said the NSA’s current combination of programs now largely mirrors the former TIA project. But the NSA offers less privacy protection. TIA developers researched ways to limit the use of the system for broad searches of individuals’ data, such as requiring intelligence officers to get leads from other sources first. The NSA effort lacks those controls, as well as controls that it developed in the 1990s for an earlier data-sweeping attempt.

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who led the charge to kill TIA, says “the administration is trying to bring as much of the philosophy of operation Total Information Awareness as it can into the programs they’re using today.” The issue has been overshadowed by the fight over telecoms’ immunity, he said. “There’s not been as much discussion in the Congress as there ought to be.”

Opportunity for Debate

But Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the committee, said by email his committee colleagues have had “ample opportunity for debate” behind closed doors and that each intelligence program has specific legal authorization and oversight. He cautioned against seeing a group of intelligence programs as “a mythical ‘big brother’ program,” adding, “that’s not what is happening today.”

READ THE RULING

While the Fourth Amendment guarantees “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” the legality of data-sweeping relies on the government’s interpretation of a 1979 Supreme Court ruling allowing records of phone calls — but not actual conversations — to be collected without a warrant. Read the ruling.¹

The legality of data-sweeping relies largely on the government’s interpretation of a 1979 Supreme Court ruling allowing records of phone calls — but not actual conversations — to be collected without a judge issuing a warrant. Multiple laws require a court order for so-called “transactional’” records of electronic communications, but the 2001 Patriot Act lowered the standard for such an order in some cases, and in others made records accessible using FBI administrative subpoenas called “national security letters.” (Read the ruling.²)

A debate is brewing among legal and technology scholars over whether there should be privacy protections when a wide variety of transactional data are brought together to paint what is essentially a profile of an individual’s behavior. “You know everything I’m doing, you know what happened, and you haven’t listened to any of the contents” of the communications, said Susan Landau, co-author of a book on electronic privacy and a senior engineer at Sun Microsystems Laboratories. “Transactional information is remarkably revelatory.”

Ms. Spaulding, the national-security lawyer, said it’s “extremely questionable” to assume Americans don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy for data such as the subject-header of an email or a Web address from an Internet search, because those are more like the content of a communication than a phone number. “These are questions that require discussion and debate,” she said. “This is one of the problems with doing it all in secret.”

Gen. Hayden, the former NSA chief and now Central Intelligence Agency director, in January 2006 publicly defended the activities of the Terrorist Surveillance Program after it was disclosed by the New York Times. He said it was “not a driftnet over Lackawanna or Fremont or Dearborn, grabbing all communications and then sifting them out.” Rather, he said, it was carefully targeted at terrorists. However, some intelligence officials now say the broader NSA effort amounts to a driftnet. A portion of the activity, the NSA’s access to domestic phone records, was disclosed by a USA Today article in 2006.

The NSA, which President Truman created in 1952 through a classified presidential order to be America’s ears abroad, has for decades been the country’s largest and most secretive intelligence agency. The order confined NSA spying to “foreign governments,” and during the Cold War the NSA developed a reputation as the world’s premier code-breaking operation. But in the 1970s, the NSA and other intelligence agencies were found to be using their spy tools to monitor Americans for political purposes. That led to the original FISA legislation in 1978, which included an explicit ban on the NSA eavesdropping in the U.S. without a warrant.

Big advances in telecommunications and database technology led to unprecedented data-collection efforts in the 1990s. One was the FBI’s Carnivore program, which raised fears when it was in disclosed in 2000 that it might collect telecommunications information about law-abiding individuals. But the ground shifted after 9/11. Requests for analysis of any data that might hint at terrorist activity flooded from the White House and other agencies into NSA’s Fort Meade, Md., headquarters outside Washington, D.C., one former NSA official recalls. At the time, “We’re scrambling, trying to find any piece of data we can to find the answers,” the official said.

The 2002 congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks criticized the NSA for holding back information, which NSA officials said they were doing to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens. “NSA did not want to be perceived as targeting individuals in the United States” and considered such surveillance the FBI’s job, the inquiry concluded.

FBI-NSA Projects

The NSA quietly redefined its role. Joint FBI-NSA projects “expanded exponentially,” said Jack Cloonan, a longtime FBI veteran who investigated al Qaeda. He pointed to national-security letter requests: They rose from 8,500 in 2000 to 47,000 in 2005, according to a Justice Department inspector general’s report last year. It also said the letters permitted the potentially illegal collection of thousands of records of people in the U.S. from 2003-05. Last Wednesday, FBI Director Robert Mueller said the bureau had found additional instances in 2006.

It isn’t known how many Americans’ data have been swept into the NSA’s systems. The Treasury, for instance, built its database “to look at all the world’s financial transactions” and gave the NSA access to it about 15 years ago, said a former NSA official. The data include domestic and international money flows between bank accounts and credit-card information, according to current and former intelligence officials.

The NSA receives from Treasury weekly batches of this data and adds it to a database at its headquarters. Prior to 9/11, the database was used to pursue specific leads, but afterward, the effort was expanded to hunt for suspicious patterns.

Through the Treasury, the NSA also can access the database of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift, the Belgium-based clearinghouse for records of international transactions between financial institutions, current and former officials said. The U.S. acknowledged in 2006 that the CIA and Treasury had access to Swift’s database, but said the NSA’s Terrorism Surveillance Program was separate and that the NSA provided only “technical assistance.” A Treasury spokesman said the agency had no comment.

Through the Department of Homeland Security, airline passenger data also are accessed and analyzed for suspicious patterns, such as five unrelated people who repeatedly fly together, current and former intelligence officials said. Homeland Security shares information with other agencies only “on a limited basis,” spokesman Russ Knocke said.

NSA gets access to the flow of data from telecommunications switches through the FBI, according to current and former officials. It also has a partnership with FBI’s Digital Collection system, providing access to Internet providers and other companies. The existence of a shadow hub to copy information about AT&T Corp. telecommunications in San Francisco is alleged in a lawsuit against AT&T filed by the civil-liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, based on documents provided by a former AT&T official. In that lawsuit, a former technology adviser to the Federal Communications Commission says in a sworn declaration that there could be 15 to 20 such operations around the country. Current and former intelligence officials confirmed a domestic network of hubs, but didn’t know the number. “As a matter of policy and law, we can not discuss matters that are classified,” said FBI spokesman John Miller.

The budget for the NSA’s data-sifting effort is classified, but one official estimated it surpasses $1 billion. The FBI is requesting to nearly double the budget for the Digital Collection System in 2009, compared with last year, requesting $42 million. “Not only do demands for information continue to increase, but also the requirement to facilitate information sharing does,” says a budget justification document, noting an “expansion of electronic surveillance activity in frequency, sophistication, and linguistic needs.”

Meet the influenza A virus– but keep your cells away

Last month, we reported on the current U.S. flu season and witnessed the worst flu ever. This week, KnowledgeNews HQ has been invaded by some sort of virus, which doesn’t seem like the flu but isn’t pleasant either. Naturally, we’re fighting back with knowledge–specifically, an assault on viruses.

Viruses exist to nab your cells and use them for their own reproductive purposes. They have to, because a virus is nothing more than a few strands of rogue DNA (or rogue RNA, DNA’s single-stranded cousin) wrapped in a protein coat to keep out the draft.

They are not cells, and they have none of the internal structures that cells use to go about the business of life, which is, generally, to make more life. No, viruses are just genetic material looking for a free ride–looking to hijack a host cell and make its machinery do the virus’s bidding.

Rule for Viral Success #1:
Mutation, Mutation, Mutation

With so little to call their own, how have these biological pirates survived for so long? The answer lies in two traits that give viruses superb evolutionary advantages: superfast reproduction and genetic mutations.

Viruses live to reproduce. Although they must do this within host cells, once inside, viruses replicate with enough abandon to shame a rabbit. They quickly reprogram the machinery that cells use to copy their own DNA and use it to spit out copy after copy of themselves.

Genetic mutations add insult to injury. With so much reproduction going on, viruses can mutate almost as fast as they propagate. And massive mutation means that each new generation of viral invaders stands a good chance of gaining some new survival or targeting advantage.

Rule for Viral Success #2:
Pick a Likely Victim

Viruses invade all kinds of cells–plant cells, animal cells, fungi, even bacteria. Yet each virus tends to have a very specific M.O. Which cells look like likely victims to a virus depends on the unique proteins found on the virus’s protein coat and the protein receptors found on the poor target cell.

Some viruses recognize the general receptors that occur on many different kinds of cells. The virus for rabies, for example, can invade so many different kinds of cells that it can span species, infecting rodents, dogs, and humans.

Other viruses are more restricted and can invade only specific kinds of cells. The common cold virus, for example, can invade only the cells lining the human upper respiratory tract. It’s a picky thief.

Rule for Viral Success #3:
Make It an Inside Job

Viral entry mechanisms are as diverse as viruses themselves, which is why viruses often elude treatment. Some enter a target cell by binding to a specific receptor and passing through the host cell membrane to the cell interior. Others don’t need to enter the cell, but simply attach to the surface and use a needle-like structure to inject their DNA right in.

Once viral genes are inside, the virus begins its cycle of replication. It exploits the host cell’s supplies and machinery, forcing it to copy viral genes and synthesize more viral protein coats. Then, these two components come together to form copies of the virus that emerge from the host cell.

Sometimes they “bud” off the cell, like bubbles on top of a simmering stew. At other, more violent times, copies simply fill the cell until it can hold no more. It explodes, releasing its viral hoard into the surrounding area.

Either way, the viral progeny go on to infect new cells–and the cycle starts again. Disease symptoms can and do result from this cellular damage. Most often, though, the sickness you feel is the result of your immune system’s response to the foreign invader. And make no mistake, it will respond.

Rule for Viral Success #4:
Avoid the Cops

Your immune system’s first-responders act like beat cops on patrol 24/7. If they see anything amiss while walking the body’s beat, they make arrests. One kind of cellular cop, the phagocytes, will engulf strange viruses and digest them. Another kind, natural killer cells, recognizes suspect changes on the surface of infected cells and releases chemicals to disintegrate both virus and cell alike.

After spotting the infection, your body can launch a more specific and intensive attack. Proteins called antibodies surround, bind to, and neutralize viruses and other invaders in your bloodstream. Killer T cells mercilessly destroy infected cells and halt systemic infection. Both help your body remember the infection and mount a faster response to the same invader next time.

Still other players merit mention. When a cell does get infected with a virus, sometimes it manages to secrete small proteins called interferons that serve to warn neighboring cells of an imminent viral invasion. These “Paul Revere” proteins work by encouraging neighboring cells to synthesize proteins that can interfere with viral replication.

–Michael Himick and Christina Catron

The ghosts of campaigns past

Voters in Ohio, Texas, Vermont, and Rhode Island go to the polls on Tuesday to choose their preferred presidential candidates from both major parties. With 444 Democratic delegates at stake, and 265 Republican ones, it’s a big day for both parties.

But what if you’re fed up with all of your current political party options? What it you want to tell Republicans and Democrats alike to take a hike? And what if you don’t like Ralph Nader, or smaller groups like the Greens, the Libertarians, or the Constitution Party, either.

Never fear. We’ve scoured American history to find you four more major political party options. If only you’d been born in another time, you might have found a home in one of these other, now defunct, packs of partisans. Then again, a quick look back might convince you that your current options really aren’t the worst imaginable ones.

Anti-Masonic Party

Born: 1826
Died: 1838
Most members became: Whigs

Mission: To stop the purported subversion of America’s public institutions by the secretive society of Freemasons, to which President Andrew Jackson belonged (Anti-Masons were generally anti-Jacksonians). The party got its start in a scandal following the mysterious disappearance of a New York bricklayer, who was purportedly preparing to reveal the Freemasons’ secrets.

Claim to fame: First “third party” in U.S. history. It was also the first party to hold a national nominating convention and to present voters with a party platform.

Perfect for: People who distrust Microsoft, the CIA, or any other secretive organization that might just be bent on total world domination.

Free-Soil Party

Born: 1848
Died: 1854
Most members became: Republicans

Mission: To prevent the spread of slavery into territories acquired by the United States in the Mexican War (1846-48). In 1846, Pennsylvania congressman David Wilmot introduced his “Wilmot Proviso,” which would have banned slavery from the southwest. The proviso never passed Congress, but it helped launch the Free-Soil Party, whose members believed in “free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men.”

Claim to fame: The Free-Soilers won multiple congressional seats in 1848 and helped swing that year’s presidential election to Whig candidate Zachary Taylor. During the 1850s, the budding Republican Party, which adopted the Free-Soil mission as one of its major planks, largely absorbed the party.

Perfect for: Decent slavery-hating human beings–especially those who know how to farm.

Know-Nothing Party

Born: 1849
Died: 1860
Most members became: Republicans in the North,
Democrats in the South

Mission: To prevent “foreigners” and Catholics–basically, the newly arrived immigrants of the time–from gaining equal rights. In 1849, the anti-immigrant Order of the Star Spangled Banner set up shop in New York City. Soon the secretive order was opening new branches all over the United States. When asked about the organization, members were told to reply that they knew nothing (hence the name).

Claim to fame: Perhaps the largest and most politically effective organization of xenophobes and anti-Catholics in U.S. history. In 1855, 43 members of Congress were Know-Nothings (insert your own joke about how many members of Congress know nothing now). The party was ultimately undone by the same sectarian strife that led to the Civil War.

Perfect for: Racists, xenophobes, and other people who actually know nothing.

Bull Moose Party

Born: 1912
Died: 1916
Most members became: Republicans, when the party’s central figure, Teddy Roosevelt, rejoined the GOP

Mission: To enact the direct election of senators, women’s suffrage, controls on monopolies, restrictions on child labor, and tariff reform. The party formed when progressive Republicans split with the more conservative wing of the GOP, led by then-president William Howard Taft.

Claim to fame: Fought for progressive policies that, for the most part, everyone else has since taken up. The Bull Moosers nominated Teddy Roosevelt for president in 1912 and won 25 percent of the popular vote. That was more than enough to split the GOP, and Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson won.

Perfect for: People who are highly progressive by early 20th-century standards (or those who advocate the return of Teddy Roosevelt to politics).

–Steve Sampson

Not far from the Kenyan border Zoom in | Zoom out

The U.S. military launched what it called “a deliberate, precise strike against a known terrorist and his associates” in Somalia on Monday. The attack destroyed at least one building in the remote southern town of Dobley, just a few miles from the Kenyan border.

The town had reportedly fallen into the hands of Islamic extremists–allies of the Islamic militias who seized much of southern Somalia in 2006, only to be driven back by Somali and Ethiopian forces.

That still-simmering conflict has helped bring Somalia to the brink of “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world,” according to the UN’s refugee agency–worse even than the crisis in Darfur. How has it come to this? Let’s review Somalia’s sad story, from the nation’s ancient origins to the start of the ongoing chaos nearly two decades ago.

Somalia is located on the Horn of Africa, just across the Gulf of Aden from the Arabian Peninsula. People have occupied its beachfront property for ages. Ancient Egyptians traded along the Horn’s shores. So did Greeks and medieval Arabs. In the 10th century, Chinese merchants arrived and reportedly took home exotic animals for the emperor’s menagerie.

Today’s Somalis claim descent from Arab immigrants who settled along the coast more than 1,000 years ago. Scholars debate when and how they actually arrived and moved inland, but there’s no question that Somali clans were well established in much of modern Somalia by the 16th century.

The clans are still central to Somali society. Each traces its ancestry to a single father figure, and each is divided into sub-clans that don’t always get along. Still, all the clans share a common language (Somali), religion (Islam), and culture. In fact, Somali culture extends beyond Somalia’s borders, which were largely drawn by Europeans.

The Scramble for Somalia

Europeans began arriving in force after the opening of the Suez Canal in Egypt in 1869. Suddenly, the Somali coast lay along a strategically important shipping route, and the British, Italians, and French arrived to promote their interests.

The French set up shop around the Somali port of Djibouti, in an area that later became the independent nation of that name. The British established “British Somaliland” in the northwest, while the Italians moved into the south. Not to be outdone, Ethiopia–then a regional power–assumed control in the Somali-inhabited Ogaden region in the west. Disputes followed, and borders were drawn without asking the locals.

Around the turn of the 20th century, Mohammed Abdullah Hassan–whom the British called the “Mad Mullah”–launched a rebellion against the colonizers. He and his followers, called “dervishes,” survived attacks by the British, the Italians, and the Ethiopians before finally falling to the Brits in 1920. Even then, pockets of Somali resistance continued.

Unscrambling Somalia

During World War II, the Italians briefly took British Somaliland, only to see the British return to retake “their” Somaliland, plus Italian Somaliland and Ogaden, too. In 1949, the Italians returned to administer Italian Somaliland as a UN trust territory, but not before many Somalis had begun longing for their own independent, pan-Somali state.

In 1960, the British and Italians left, and British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland joined to form the United Republic of Somalia. Almost immediately, the new nation became embroiled in border conflicts over Somali-inhabited lands in northern Kenya and eastern Ethiopia. A military buildup followed, even as internal tensions mounted between the former British and Italian regions.

In 1969, a bodyguard from a rival clan assassinated Somalia’s president, and the military assumed power. The commander of the army, Mohamed Siad Barre, became president–and, before long, dictator. The coup was restyled a “revolution,” as “Comrade Siad” announced his pursuit of an Islam-friendly version of “scientific socialism.” Yet socialism never really took root in Somalia, and rival clans and Islamic leaders soon resented the Comrade’s rule.

Somalia Rescrambled

In 1974, Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie fell. Three years later, Siad Barre retook the Somali-inhabited Ogaden region. At first, the Soviets tried to mediate the dispute. Then they shifted their support to Ethiopia (which has 77 million people to Somalia’s 9 million). Somalia’s Soviet arms shipments stopped, while Ethiopia got military advisors and Cuban troops. The United States shifted its support from Ethiopia to Somalia, but not before Ogaden was back in Ethiopian hands.

After the defeat in Ogaden, officers from a rival clan tried to topple Siad Barre. They failed, but the threat they posed prompted the dictator to start making government appointments based on perceived clan loyalty. The government and military became less competent, clan rivalries increased, and guerrilla attacks began. As the 1980s wore on, opposition groups became more powerful, and Siad Barre responded with increasingly repressive measures.

By the end of the decade, clan militias had seized much of the country. Last-ditch efforts at political reform failed to appease them, and in January 1991, a united opposition front captured the capital, Mogadishu. Siad Barre fled, and the militias turned on each other. In the next two years, 50,000 people died in factional fighting, and some 300,000 Somalis starved. Meanwhile, the former British Somaliland effectively seceded, calling itself, simply, “Somaliland.” Somalia hasn’t had a functional central government since.