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GPS for the Web A reader response in the October 2006 issue of Family Tree Magazine caught my eye:It astonishes me that a magazine such as yours would publish an article telling its readers of the many resources available on a "fresh-faced" Cyndi's List <cyndislist.com> without warning them that the site has not been seriously updated since mid-2003 ("Upping the Ante," June 2006).  By looking at the new, temporarily uncategorized links, you'll see that Cyndi Howells hasn't been moving these linkst into her main index for almost three years.Well that might explain why I haven't been successful getting Family Matters added to the list. My point is . . .  Why depend on an out-dated technology when you can use the online version of a GPS system to maintain your own set of research waypoints throughout the Internet.  And, you can easily share them with others - either in a research group or one-to-one.  You can do all this and much more with Diigo.  Diigo is different from other social bookmarking systems in that it allows you to add your own sticky notes to your bookmark and share those notes with others if you wish.  It's easy to select a page or a bit of text and email that information to someone.  And, because your bookmarks are managed on Diigo's servers, your bookmarks and notes are available to your from any computer.  It gets better.  Diigo is a free service.  Once you have created you account, download and install the appropriate toolbar (available for Foxfire, Internet Explorer and Flock) or bookmarklet and you're ready to go.  If you already use other social bookmarking platforms - like del.icio.us or My Web - you can set your toolbar options to automatically create bookmarks there too. Diigo is a researcher's dream.  The email forwarding alone is worth its weight in gold!  Stop by the Diigo site and see for yourself.

Welcome Ontario family history researchers! If your roots are in Ontario, or earlier in Canada West or Upper Canada, you've come to the right place. Here you will find all the resources you need to trace your family tree and learn about the lives and times of your ancestors.

The Under Secretary's rebuttal of the IG's report is withering. It takes the IG's report apart, brick by brick, and shows it to be false in every material respect. Much of the Under Secretary's response is devoted to bureaucratic matters; e.g., the Inspector General was simply wrong in asserting that the work in question was carried out by the Under Secretary for Policy's office. On the merits, the Under Secretary points out that the IG has no expertise to determine that the effort to re-evaluate the intelligence gathered by the CIA and other agencies was "improper," even though it was both legal and directed by the Secretary of Defense: The work found "inappropriate" was an exercise in alternative thinking that the second most senior civilian in this Department directed his subordinates to prepare and brief to the most senior official of this Department. The latter, after receiving the draft briefing, directed that it be shared with the [Director of Central Intelligence]. When the Deputy National Security Advisor requested the briefing, the Deputy Secretary's office directed that it be given to him. These are the activities that the Draft Report characterizes as "inappropriate," because it considers them to be "production" and "dissemination" of an "alternative intelligence assessment" contradicting assessments of the "chartered-intelligence community." If the OIG actually believes that it was inappropriate for the Deputy Secretary of Defense to have some non-[intelligence community] staff members do a critical assessment of some [intelligence community] work on a subject of major significance for national security, inappropriate for the Secretary of Defense to share the OSD work with the [Director of Central Intelligence], and inappropriate for the Deputy Secretary to share the work with the Deputy National Security Advisor when requested by the latter, the OIG should say so directly instead of finding fault with subordinate OSD offices and staff members who did as they were instructed to do.

For some time, there have been claims of Iran's direct involvement in attacks against Iraqi and U.S. troops, but without the presentation of sufficient actual evidence to persuade Congress or the American public at large. Congress - Members of both parties and key staff - have been very reluctant to trust any such claims ever since the Iraqi WMD intelligence debacle. That might change after today, when U.S. officials on the ground in Iraq - not just at the CIA or the Pentagon in Washington - revealed reliable evidence of Iran's direct involvement, from the highest levels in the government, in the attacks.