Here’s a freebie from HarperCollinsPublishers.  “The Undecided Voter’s Guide to the Next President” highlights the backgrounds and positions of the current presidential candidates.  Here’s basic information on each candidate (their family, education, accomplishments, employment and government service) and a synopsis of their positions on key issues.

Mark Halperin, the author, covers the Republicans in Part 1.  He includes the current candidates and “other possibilities” like;

• Rudy Giuliani
• John McCain
• Mitt Romney
• Fred Thompson
• Sam Brownback
• Newt Gingrich
• Mike Huckabee
• Ron Paul. 

In Part 2 he highlights the Democrats including

• Hillary Clinton
• John Edwards
• Barack Obama
• Joe Biden
• Chris Dodd
• Dennis Kucinich
• Bill Richardson

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Here’s a semi-scientific study of indentity theft incidents at major US banks.  This is significant for a number of reasons.  First, the author had to use the “Freedom of Information Act” to gain access to complaint data submitted to the FTC.  (In my view, this information should have been made public as it was received.)  Second, the FTC does NOT track the complaints in a meaningful way that would help consumers, appearing more like a road block than a doorway to information.  Third, no other watch dog groups appear to be collecting or correlating similar data.

In this era of “customer-centric” focus and awareness of identity theft, it appears the FTC does not view the public at large as the “customer”.  Rather, they argue that complaints are “private” matters not normally available for public review.

From the author:  There is no reliable way for consumers, regulators, and businesses to assess the relative incidence of identity fraud at major financial institutions. This lack of information prevents more vigorous competition among institutions to protect accountholders from identity theft. As part of a multiple strategy approach to obtaining more actionable data on identity theft, the Freedom of Information Act was used to obtain complaint data submitted by victims in 2006 to the Federal Trade Commission. This complaint data identifies the institution where impostors established fraudulent accounts or affected existing accounts in the name of the victim. The data show that some institutions have a far greater incidence of identity theft than others. The data further show that the major telecommunications companies had numerous identity theft events, but a metric is lacking to compare this industry with the financial institutions.

Source: Chris Hoofnagle, “Measuring Identity Theft at Top Banks (Version 1.0)” (February 26, 2008). Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. Law and Technology Scholarship (Selected by the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology). Paper 44. http://repositories.cdlib.org/bclt/lts/44