Included in Ventura County Treasurer Steven Hintz's email warning that the county's website had been hacked was this phrase:

We think the real scam (if this is more than a simple attempt to produce chaos) will begin with a follow-up email seeking personal information to correct some mistake in the records.

While all signs indicate that this is a run-of-the-mill phishing scheme, in which hackers attempt to trick victims into providing sensitive information, we should keep in mind that entities in foreign countries are interested in probing American websites for vulnerabilities in preparation for a potential cyber attacks. It's a virtual certainty that's not the case here, but, generally speaking, governments and companies should be aware of the cyber danger posed by our enemies abroad.

Monday, the Los Angeles Times concluded that a virtual war was a real threat. In a feature article, it described how lax security standards by county water employees allowed a white-hat hacker to break into the system.

The weak link: County employees had been logging into the network through their home computers, leaving a gaping security hole. Officials of the urban water system told Maiffret that with a few mouse clicks, he could have rendered the water undrinkable for millions of homes.

What else is vulnerable? Everything.

The weaknesses that he found in California exist in crucial facilities nationwide, U.S. officials and private experts say.

The same industrial control systems Maiffret's team was able to commandeer also run electrical grids, pipelines, chemical plants and other infrastructure. Those systems, many designed without security in mind, are vulnerable to cyber attacks that have the potential to blow up city blocks, erase bank data, crash planes and cut power to large sections of the country.

While Al Queda doesn't seem to have the capability to pull off such an attack, China and Russia do, according to the Times.

A 2007 article from The Times of UK noted that "China's cyber army is preparing to march on America."

Chinese military hackers have prepared a detailed plan to disable America's aircraft battle carrier fleet with a devastating cyber attack, according to a Pentagon report obtained by The Times.

The article stated that China's intent is to achieve "electronic dominance" over each of its global rivals.

Last year, China rerouted a large portion of the world's internet traffic.

For 18 minutes in April, China's state-controlled telecommunications company hijacked 15 percent of the world's Internet traffic, including data from U.S. military, civilian organizations and those of other U.S. allies.

Look at the chaos produced by last year's "fat finger" that caused the Dow to drop 1,000 points. Imagine if a hacker was able to duplicate that. The chaos it would generate would be enough to throw us off our footing and put us at a serious disadvantage for any military engagements. Back to the LA Times article:

CIA Director Leon E. Panetta told Congress recently that he worried about a cyber Pearl Harbor. Yet many who follow the issue believe that's what it will take to force Americans to awaken to the threat.

A big part about being a conservative is using your common sense. Yes, you take information from experts and other authorities (like the government) into account, but you mix it with your own knowledge and experience, throw in some history, and then see if something passes the smell test.

For example, we are concerned about high levels of public spending because common sense tells us that going deeper and deeper into debt is a bad thing. Academics and politicians tell us it's sustainable, but we look at our own families and businesses and realize that you can't get away with it forever.

Recently I asked an elderly person why in the world they didn't think inhaling smoke was a health risk. People said it was safe, and we really didn't think about it was the reply. I think they fell victim to old-school propaganda from tobacco companies. They uncritically believed the ads.

With the public backlash against smoking over the last couple of decades, we've seen a repeat of the propaganda techniques aimed at stopping smoking.

Stopping smoking is great, but it can leave the realm of common sense. On Wednesday, Simi Valley High Students took part in an anti-smoking exercise.

At 12:15 p.m. Wednesday, 101 Simi Valley High School students dropped to the gymnasium floor in a configuration of the number 101, to represent the approximate number of people in California who die every day from smoking cigarettes.

The kids were wearing black with a 101 on their shirts, to mourn the deaths from smoking in the presentation commemorating what is known as Kick Butts Day, an anti-smoking day.

Tammy Harter, the school's health education department chair, tobacco cessation adviser and organizer of the event, announced on microphone: "Every day in California, California alone, over 101 Californians die of their own smoking. Twelve more die of somebody else's smoking."

Over four thousand Californians die each year due to second-hand smoke? That doesn't pass the smell test, considering only 3,500 die annually due to car accidents.

Who is putting out this propaganda? This is an event to bring awareness to youth about the dangers of smoking. I'm fine with that. However, if you dig a little deeper, we see that Kick Butts Day is a carefully orchestrated PR campaign by a well-connected lobbying group.

The group is a 501(c)(3) called the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and it doesn't just raise of awareness of health problems associated with tobacco. It also pushes for higher cigarette taxes, more spending of public monies on tobacco prevention and cessation programs, and laws to prohibit smoking in workplaces and the public.

Our children are doing the dirty work during school hours of faceless lobbyists who are pushing for higher taxes and more spending. Thanks to the propaganda, they're more than willing to do it, just like how it convinced children early in the 20^th century to take up smoking.

During the Bush Administration, the New York Times published at least 47 front-page stories about Abu Ghraib--including 32 in a row at one point. That scandal exploded when pictures of prisoners in humiliating positions became public.

How many front-page articles will the Times publish on leaked photos of the American "kill team" that posed for trophy photos with murdered civilians?

My guess is not many, considering the scandal is exploding during the Obama Administration. The Times is careful to note that the murders were "isolated from officers" and the product of drug use--not any sort of top-down institutional problem, which is probably true. But starting with Abu Ghraib Front Page Article #3, the Times was reporting "Iraqi jail abuse was encouraged," "command errors aided Iraq abuse," soldiers were "ill-prepared" and "overwhelmed," and abuse was "widespread."

Should this scandal be pinned to Obama? No, this sick sort of thing happens in war. The same is true with Abu Ghraib. The story here is why the New York Times isn't making as big of a deal of the civilian murders as it did with the lesser Abu Ghraib scandal.

Millions of Japanese earthquake/tsunami survivors are running out of water. Grocery store shelves are bare. Workers are struggling to keep nuclear reactors from melting down.

The same can--no, it will--happen here. Hello, we live in earthquake country...

Please prepare your family and equip your home for natural disasters. It must be all the fear in my conservative brain, but a giant earthquake is on its way here. Nobody knows when, but we know it's coming.

So why not drop by Costco today and get some spare food and water? Buy some Top Ramen. It's cheap (and comes in 17 delicious flavors!). Keep your shoes and a flashlight by the bed. Always know which piece of furniture in each room provides the best cover during an earthquake. Check your smoke alarms and make sure you have a fire extinguisher nearby. Secure items that can fall on your head. Have batteries, candles, and a radio on hand.

Many supplies can be purchased in an emergency survivor kit; a company in Moorpark sells such items.

Dare I say arm yourself? During calamitous periods, civilization temporarily breaks down and looters may run rampant.

Should you buy iodide? California pharmacies report they are running out of the radiation anti-absorption pills--the run is probably due to speculation that winds might blow radiation to California from Japan. While this is unlikely, we do have two nuclear power plants within 120 miles of us--in San Onofre (of Naked Gun fame) south of here and Avila Beach north of here.

The Ventura County Star had a great article on the safety precautions taken at the Avila Beach plant. Problems from either plant are extremely unlikely, but hey, why not shell out a few bucks for some pills, just in case.

Ventura and Oxnard are potential tsunami targets. According to the Star:

The state produces maps of where a worst-case tsunami would hit the county the hardest. Those areas include Ventura's Pierpont and Keys neighborhoods, as well as Silverstrand and Hollywood beaches in Oxnard. Such a tsunami would cause the water to rise around 10 feet, said Dale Carnathan, manager of the tsunami program in the Ventura County Sheriff's Department Office of Emergency Services.

There is one more lurking danger on the horizon--meltdown. Not nuclear, but economic. Japan's stock market has already shed 15 percent since the earthquake and tsunami, sending shockwaves around the globe. We absorbed the tech bubble collapse. We absorbed 9/11. We absorbed Katrina. We absorbed the real estate bubble. Each hit made us weaker and we won't be able to take much more. The greatest threat to our security might not be a natural disaster at all.

After two years of hand-wringing that Tea Partiers are angry, violent, and unhinged--without much proof-- the Left is notably silent about the excesses of the union protests in Wisconsin. Now, Republican senators are receiving death threats.

The elite media was all too eager to blame the Giffords shooting on Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh for their "heated rhetoric"--so who on the Left can we blame for this?

Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your families will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit that you have created.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow said that Governor Scott Walker lied about Wisconsin's budget deficit, and to the extent there is one, it was caused by the GOP.  That's the same claim (which was proven false by Politifact) that the crazy person who sent the threatening email made. Is Rachel Maddow to blame for inciting violence? If we use the standard the Left applied to conservatives, then yes.

The email continues.

We feel that you and the people that support the dictator have to die.

In February, Rep. Keith Ellison--the co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus--said Walker "is basically taking up the posture of a dictator."

Should he resign immediately for inciting violence? If we use the Left's standard on heated rhetoric, then yes.

We have all planned to assult [sic] you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head. However, we decided that we wouldn't leave it there. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the message to you since you are so "high" on Koch and have decided that you are now going to single handedly make this a dictatorship instead of a demorcratic [sic] process.

Now every liberal blogger that called Walker a "Koch whore" should be rounded up by the DHS, if we use the Left's standard against it, because they obviously stirred up hatred with their vitriol.

Do you see how silly it is to blame political pundits for the actions of a crazy person from "their side"? We would shut down all political speech. Suddenly, nobody would be able to speak their mind for fear of some nut doing something crazy in the name of a cause.

Rachel Maddow and Keith Ellison have not incited violence. But they would have been fine if Fox News was shut down over the Giffords shooting, even though the news organization had nothing to do with it. They'd be fine if Rush Limbaugh was taken off the air, even though he's innocent as well.

One side is asking for more political speech, the other is trying to limit it. Which side will you stand on?

No, there's no such thing as illegal aliens to the Star--at least you wouldn't think so by reading its coverage of the biggest social shift in the United States in decades. Twenty million illegal immigrants didn't come across the border--but 20 million "undocumented" ones did. Consider this excerpt from an article called "County's Latino population continues to increase."

He suspects the Census Bureau did a better job in 2010 than in the past at reaching out and counting Latinos, including undocumented immigrants. The 2010 Census did not ask for a person's legal status. A 2006 study by the Urban Institute estimated there were as many as 50,000 undocumented immigrants in Ventura County.

"Illegal aliens" is too offensive, so everyone caved an now we use "undocumented immigrants" or "undocumented workers." Continuing that trend, what term will be pressured to use next? Undocumented citizens?

To its credit, sometimes the Star uses "illegal immigrants," which is a fair term. It's accurate.

But "undocumented" is often a lie--many times illegal aliens have plenty of documentation; it's just stolen or fraudulent. In other words, it's illegal.

The root of all this wordplay obviously is to stifle debate on illegal immigration. If we can't agree on a label, or if we agree on a label that minimizes the problem, it's tough to discuss it.

The Star is, in effect, taking sides when it uses the preferred language of one side of the illegal immigration debate.

A school district board member resorted to an ad-hominem attack against State Senator Tony Strickland during a phone conversation with one of his staffers, according to a source close to the Republican legislator.

The staffer said the caller identified herself as Ventura Unified School District Board Member Mary Haffner, and she wanted Strickland to support Governor Brown's proposed five-year tax increase.

After hearing the senator's anti-tax increase position, Haffner apparently said, "We all know he isn't the sharpest tool in the shed and everyone in Ventura knows it."

Strickland staked out a high-profile position as a deficit hawk, serving as the co-chairman of the newly formed Taxpayers Caucus, the members of which pledged to oppose any tax increases without corresponding tax cuts.

The insult is fairly mild, but still--is denigrating an elected representative to one of his staffers the best way for a school board member to behave?

Haffner did not respond to an e-mail that requested confirmation of the exchange, and thus passed on an opportunity to set a good example by owning up to or disavowing the insult, if she did in fact say it. That would have been something positive I could report on, especially with the growing tension nationwide between public employee unions and Republicans, a tension that will soon hit California and Ventura County.

Amusingly, while I was looking up her contact information to ask her if she wanted to comment on this story, I noticed that the main website listed on her campaign's Facebook page is a blog about a porn magazine.

That's right, it takes you right to "The Playboy Blog," which features articles such as Playboy Goddesses, Playboy: Art or Pornography, and The Interesting History of the Playboy Bunny Costume. Interesting indeed!

Additionally, her Students for Mary Haffner group page also accidentally features a link to the same porn magazine blog.

Now, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed...

...but I wouldn't think elected officials would have something like that for all the public to see, especially on a page geared toward students, especially if said official was fond of questioning the intelligence of other public officials.

Obviously, Haffner didn't know about this or she would have changed it immediately. Her domain name probably expired and it was picked up by someone who has an extreme interest in Playboy Magazine. There's a good chance she's already fixed it by the time you read this.

But somehow, I don't think this sort of thing would happen to Senator Strickland, despite what union callers might say to his staffers about his intelligence.

Liberals love to spend public money on cleaning the environment and taking care of the poor. Often, that pits them against business owners and taxpayers. For example, Ventura was eager to ban plastic bags and install parking meters to make the city more "environmentally sustainable." That's an easy choice for liberals to make.

What happens, though, when the poor trample on the environment? What does the environmentally conscious city do when homeless people set up permanent camps in a river bed?

Considering that Ventura faces daily environmental fines of $25,000, it's not much of a choice. Get the tractors and say goodbye, homeless people.

Not surprisingly, that upsets liberal homeless activists like the pastor of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Ventura.

The Rev. Jan Christian of Unitarian Universalist Church echoed the call for a year-round shelter. She voiced frustration that the city continues to pour thousands of dollars into cleanup efforts like Tuesday's, rather than using the money, time and energy for permanent solutions.

"This is a shell game. No one argues that many of these people will be back here," she said. "We can all do better than this."

I think we can do better too, but the solution is to let charities such as churches help the homeless, instead of churches asking the government to spend more of their dwindling dollars.

Chances are you've never heard of the Koch brothers, even though they run the second-largest private company in the United States--a company whose growth has outpaced Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. They keep a pretty low profile, which is hard to dowhen your pictures are above Oprah's in Forbes' list of the 400 richest Americans.  Despite their enormous success and vast wealth, Charles and David Koch are quiet philanthropists, donating hundreds of millions of dollars to museums and cancer research facilities. But it's their patronage of free-market capitalist think tanks and grassroots organizations that make them two of the founding fathers of the highly effective tea party movement.

A central theme to the movement is a vast reduction of government intrusion into personal liberties and restoration of laissez faire capitalism, something that is very close to the Kochs' hearts. While the tea parties only caught fire in 2009, the Koch brothers spent considerable time and money over the last 30 years paving the tea parties' way to the national scene.

Both brothers are libertarians--David, the second richest man in New York after Michael Bloomberg, even ran on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1980 as vice-president. Three years earlier, Charles Koch co-founded the well-known libertarian think tank the Cato Institute, which pumps out position papers and commentators promoting free market ideals on a national level. David serves on the Board of Directors, a position he also holds in the Reason Foundation.

In 1984, the brothers founded Citizens for a Sound Economy, whose mission was "to fight for less government, lower taxes, and less regulation." They populated the CSE board of directors with executives from their company, think tanks, and charitable foundations. Koch Foundation President Wayne Gable, Cato Institute Director David Padden, and Cato Institute Advisor Walter Williams all served on the board.