Most Recent Posts

With the highly anticipated Syria speech behind him, the path ahead for President Obama's effort to get congressional authorization of military strikes in Syria is no easier than before. In fact, post-speech, it seems more obstacle-strewn and steeper than ever.

The speech put Congress no closer to voting to authorize strikes. Even the timing of when Congress will hold votes is now an open question. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., postponed a planned Wednesday test vote and set no new date. House GOP leaders never announced a date for a vote and perhaps now won't have to.

The problem for the president is that whatever uncertain impetus there was for Congress to approve military strikes, it was slowed by Russia's proposal that the Assad regime place its chemical weapons under international supervision and that the UN be involved.

The paradox is that it was the big stick of threatened U.S. military strikes that apparently led Syria to officially acknowledge, for the first time, its possession of chemical weapons.

Now Obama wants the even bigger stick of a congressional authorization to keep pressure on Syria.

But that would mean a congressional vote. And many lawmakers are absolutely thrilled that there's an alternative to casting politically risky Syria votes that could come back to haunt them. (Another paradox is that the Russians gave both the Syrians and Congress an escape route.)

So, the congressional thinking goes, why not wait until the diplomacy string plays out especially since every major poll shows sizable majorities of Americans oppose military strikes against Iraq? (Give diplomacy a chance was the recurring theme in much of the congressional reactions after the speech.)

That means Obama and his national security team face days, perhaps weeks, of the challenge of countering this attitude that Congress need not act on an authorization until diplomacy has run its course.

What Obama needs now as much as anything else is more lawmakers like the bipartisan group of congressional leaders — including Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who have supported his request. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the House Minority Whip, represents that view. He told a group of journalists Tuesday before the president's speech:

"I think it's important that we give the president credibility as the leader of our country, as the principal person for making foreign policy as well as the commander-in-chief... I don't think there's any doubt that the failure to do so will weaken our country, create a more dangerous international environment and to some degree undermine the president of the United States."

The gap between the 1 percent and the 99 percent is growing, according to an analysis of IRS figures by an international group of university economists, and it hasn't been so wide since 1928.

The incomes of the very wealthiest 1 percent of Americans increased by 31.4 percent from 2009 to 2012. By contrast, the bottom 99 percent saw their earnings in the same period go up by just 0.4 percent. In 2012, the top 1 percent collected 19.3 percent of all household income and the top 10 percent took home a record 48.2 percent of total earnings, The Associated Press reports.

The result, according to the analysis by economists from the University of California, Berkeley, the Paris School of Economics and Oxford University, who looked at 1913 onward, is the broadest income gap between super-rich and everyone else since just before the Great Depression.

The AP says:

"The top 1 percent of American households had pretax income above $394,000 last year. The top 10 percent had income exceeding $114,000.

"The income figures include wages, pension payments, dividends and capital gains from the sale of stocks and other assets. They do not include so-called transfer payments from government programs such as unemployment benefits and Social Security.

"The gap between rich and poor narrowed after World War II as unions negotiated better pay and benefits and as the government enacted a minimum wage and other policies to help the poor and middle class.

"The top 1 percent's share of income bottomed out at 7.7 percent in 1973 and has risen steadily since the early 1980s, according to the analysis."

Apple unveiled its replacement for the iPhone 5 — one for the top end of the market that features an innovative new fingerprint security device, a faster processor and longer battery life; and a second budget phone that will retail for as low as $99.

CEO Tim Cook was joined by other Apple executives at the Cupertino, Calif., headquarters for the long-anticipated and hyped announcement of the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c.

The iPhone 5s will include Touch ID, a new home button that reads a user's fingerprint to unlock the phone instead of relying on a cumbersome pass code. It includes a new, 64-bit processor, called the A7, which Apple says will be "up to twice as fast" as the A6 processor in the current iPhone 5.

The 5s will be available in silver, gold and "space gray," and provide battery life "as good as or better than the iPhone 5" — 250 standby hours as opposed to the 225 standby hours for the iPhone 5.

The iPhone 5s also features an advanced camera and a "motion coprocessor" for sports and exercise applications. The 16 gigabyte version will sell for $199; the 32 gigabyte for $299; and a 64-gigabyte version for $399. The iPhone 5s will release on Sept. 20.

The new device is 56 times as fast as the original iPhone released in June 2007, Cook said.

The iPhone 5c will largely match the capabilities of the current iPhone 5, but at a lower price. It will sport a plastic case with the option for a variety of colors. A 16 gigabyte version of the iPhone 5c will sell for just $99, while a 32-gigabyte version will retail for $199.

Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide marketing at Apple, said the new iPhone 5s is "the most forward-looking phone we have ever created."

The budget 5c, which still uses the A6 processor, will be available for preorder on Sept. 13 in five colors — green, blue, yellow, pink or white.

Cook called the phone "absolutely gorgeous," and "more fun and colorful" than any other iPhone.

Apple's new iOS 7 operating system will be available for free download on Sept. 18, and will be compatible with all devices that are iPhone 4 or more advanced. Craig Federinghi, head of software at Apple, said downloading the iOS 7 will be "like getting an all new device."

With increasingly stiff competition from smartphones running Google's Android operating system — especially Samsung's Galaxy line, Apple will be banking on success for its newly unveiled line.

The cheaper iPhone 5c, seems to be aimed partly at the overseas market, where the iPhone's premium price tag has turned off cost-conscious consumers. NPR's Krishnadev Calamur, writing for the Parallels blog, says Apple has been losing marketshare in China. As Krishnadev notes, China represents the world's largest smartphone market, but the less expensive Samsung models and a phone made by Xiaomi, "a company that's dismissed by some as an Apple knockoff," have been making steady inroads.

The first note I sent out after Apple announced it was including a fingerprint scanner in the new iPhone 5s was to Charlie Miller.

Miller, who learned how to hack at the National Security Agency and now works in security for Twitter, has hacked connected cars, wireless connections and NFC devices. But what he's best known for — what he seems to enjoy more than almost anything else — is hacking into Apple.

So I was curious. If Apple is rolling out a fingerprint scanner as a way to replace passwords, exactly how long would it be until Miller got to work trying to figure out how to exploit the system?

It is undeniable that passwords are only a half-effective form of security. They are a pain. Apple says roughly half of iPhone users don't even bother to set them up. Your password could be guessed, broken with brute force or stolen.

No one will mourn the end of the password, which no doubt is why Apple is pinning its hopes for the 5s to a fingerprint scanning system, called Touch ID, that could make passwords obsolete.

Apple spent more than $350 million to buy AuthenTec last year. AuthenTec owned a number of security patents, including some covering fingerprint scans.

But Apple isn't the first smartphone manufacturer to try this — and fingerprint scanning isn't foolproof.

In 2011 Motorola release a phone with a scanner. Joshua Topolsky, then writing for Engadget, had this to say:

"As far as truly unique hardware goes, the fingerprint scanner seems fairly novel — but in practice it's a little frustrating. It does work as advertised, but being told to re-swipe your finger if it doesn't take when you're trying to get into the phone quickly can be a little bothersome. Unless you really need the high security, a standard passcode will suffice for most people."