When 9NEWS asked Beauprez campaign manager John Marshall why he believed they are the same man he said, "In federal criminal databases, the guy's information matches up."

Marshall also told 9NEWS the FBI numbers are the same.

The governor's race was thrown into a frenzy Friday when the Colorado Bureau of Investigation began probing whether Bob Beauprez's campaign illegally accessed an FBI criminal database for attack ad ammunition.

There can be little doubt that the "federal criminal database" to which Marshall referred, and about which Chochan speculated, is the NCIC database. The NCIC database contains FBI numbers and A numbers and it is highly unlikely that the Beauprez campaign could have obtained Medina's or Ramo's FBI numbers or A numbers from any other source. In addition, because California's criminal record information is not publicly available, the Beauprez Campaign's information must have come from NCIC or some other non-public source. According to Schrager, Marshall claims to have received this information through a Freedom of Information Act request. As you are aware, a person may obtain only his own NCIC database information via FOIA.

...Exacerbating the seriousness of the potential violation by the Beauprez Campaign is the fact that they have used information that may have been illegally obtained for political purposes, to attack Bill Ritter. In the process, they have broadcast protected information to millions of people through their television ad buy.

The former director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives authorized hundreds of thousands of dollars of questionable expenditures on a new ATF headquarters, personal security and other items, and he violated ethics rules by ordering 20 employees to help his nephew prepare a high school video project, according to an exhaustive report released today.

Carl J. Truscott, who previously served as head of President Bush's security detail at the Secret Service, also took several questionable trips with excessive numbers of accompanying ATF agents, including a $37,000 journey to London in September 2005 accompanied by eight other ATF employees, according to the report.

Truscott also ordered two female administrative staffers to prepare meals for visiting guests and required one of the employees to announce, "Lunch is served."

These and other findings by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine follow Truscott's abrupt resignation in August amid growing questions about his conduct.

The Washington Post reported in February that Truscott had allegedly authorized or proposed hundreds of thousands of dollars of unnecessary plan changes and upgrades to ATF's new 438,000-square-foot headquarters, which is behind schedule and millions over budget. Truscott took an unusually intense interest in the details of the project, holding regular staff meetings to discuss floor tiles, shower curtains and other details, The Post reported.

Fine's 157-page report confirms these allegations and many more, concluding that Truscott frequently broke regulations or exercised poor judgment in making decisions that had a serious impact on the ATF's operational budget, at a time when the agency was considering cutbacks in vehicles, bulletproof vests and other basics.

Charles Taylor, wealthy businessman and banker, owns at least 14,000 acres of prime land in western North Carolina. He's also the local (Republican) congressman. So when he steers federal dollars to his district, sometimes he helps himself, too.

Last year, Mr. Taylor added $11.4 million to a big federal transportation bill to widen U.S. Highway 19, the main road through Maggie Valley, a rural resort town in the Great Smoky Mountains. His companies own thousands of acres near the highway there and had already developed a subdivision called Maggie Valley Leisure Estates.

Mr. Taylor also got $3.8 million in federal funds for a park now being built in downtown Asheville with fountains, tree-shaded terraces and an open-air stage. It's directly in front of the Blue Ridge Savings Bank, flagship of his financial empire.

...The Republican lawmaker is one of at least a half-dozen House members whose public actions in directing special-interest spending known as earmarks have also benefited their private interests or those of business partners, according to congressional, corporate and real-estate records.

...the growth of earmarks and the secrecy that shrouds the practice inevitably raises questions of self-dealing. Earmarking has been at the center of the influence-peddling and corruption probes that have shaken public confidence in Congress this year. The practice also played a central role in the case against former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. The California Republican was imprisoned after pleading guilty to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from defense firms in exchange for earmarks and other favors.

The growth of earmarking points to a shift in the way Congress works. Most federal spending originates in requests by departments and agencies. The Transportation Department might seek funds to build a highway interchange, for example, or the Pentagon might ask for new tanks. The spending proposals are then put into legislation which must win approval by Congress.

Earmarks are different because lawmakers can directly insert them into spending bills, often without public scrutiny. Many lobbyists and corporations have discovered in recent years that one of the fastest ways to get the spending they desire is to approach an individual lawmaker of either party on the House or Senate appropriation panel about an earmark. That has fed the growth in earmarks to an estimated $47.4 billion last year from $19.5 billion a decade earlier, according to the Congressional Research Service.

...Among those receiving funding from earmarks sponsored by Mr. Taylor are nonprofit groups that he helped create and that are run by business partners and supporters. The largest of these, the Education and Research Consortium of the Western Carolinas, has received more than $30 million from Mr. Taylor's earmarks in recent years, according to the consortium's Web site. The consortium is run by a former top executive of his bank, who is Mr. Taylor's nephew. Several of the nonprofits list addresses in the Art Deco tower in Asheville's central Pack Square, where Mr. Taylor's own business ventures are based.

...Every one of Congressman Taylor's earmarks in the last transportation bill was for a project near property that either he or one of his companies owns," says Erich Zimmermann, who studied the bill's special-interest spending for the nonpartisan Washington group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Legislation passed by Congress mandating the fencing of 700 miles of the U.S. border with Mexico has sparked opposition from an array of land managers, businesspeople, law enforcement officials, environmentalists and U.S. Border Patrol agents as a one-size-fits-all policy response to the nettlesome task of securing the nation's borders.

Critics said the fence does not take into account the extraordinarily varied geography of the 2,000-mile-long border, which cuts through Mexican and American cities separated by a sidewalk, vast scrubland and deserts, rivers, irrigation canals and miles of mountainous terrain. It also seems, they say, to ignore advances in border security that don't involve construction of a 15-foot-high double fence and to play down what are expected to be significant costs to maintain the new barrier.

And, they say, the estimated $2 billion price tag and the mandate that it be completed by 2008 overlook 10 years of legal and logistical difficulties the federal government has faced to finish a comparatively tiny fence of 14 miles dividing San Diego and Tijuana.

...the fence, originally estimated at $14 million, incurred huge cost overruns and logistical and legal hurdles. It took $39 million to build the first nine miles and the fence has yet to be finished. For a decade, litigation has delayed construction of 3.5 miles of the structure because environmental groups have opposed a federal plan to lop the tops off two mesas and pour 5.5 million cubic feet of dirt into a valley, called "Smuggler's Gulch," to flatten the terrain. Environmental groups lost the case when the Department of Homeland Security invoked a law exempting it from federal and state regulations in the interest of national security. DHS recently appropriated an additional $35 million to complete the fence -- for a total of $74 million or more than $5 million a mile.

When the younger Bush was elected in 2000, Republicans gained unified control of the White House, the House and, for most of the last six years, the Senate.

Yet what majority control produced was lavish farm subsidies; the Medicare drug bill, which is the biggest entitlement expansion since the Great Society; enormous funding increases for Cabinet departments Republicans once pledged to eliminate; highway bills larded with bridges to nowhere; and a galaxy of special spending earmarks for individual lawmakers' pet projects -- along with an invasion of Iraq.

"Starting with George W. Bush, it's been all downhill," said William Niskanen, chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute and a former Reagan official. "The growth of federal spending has been the highest since Lyndon Johnson, this is the first Republican war in over a century in which the ground combat lasted more than a few days, we've had an erosion of our civil liberties ... it's really a very sad story."

Rumsfeld Shift Lets Army Seek Larger Budget

The defense secretary is allowing the Army to approach White House budget officials by itself to argue for substantial increases in resources.

U.S. AND IRAQI FORCES CLASHED with Shiite militiamen, killing 30 in the southern city of Diwaniyah in a battle sparked by a raid on the home of a Mahdi Army leader, accused of killing Sunnis in spiraling sectarian violence. (Complete coverage) 9:54 a.m.

• Afghans will decide within a year whether to abandon the international community's efforts and instead support resurgent Taliban militants, NATO's top commander in the nation said. 10:02 a.m.

U.S. Casualties in Iraq Reach Two-Year High

Sharp rise in numbers of wounded troops grimly reflects the degree to which the United States has taken the lead in staving off a full-scale civil war.

• Bomb Kills 14 in City Bush Touted as Safe