Bush Social Security Plan Would Not Fully Close Financing Gap

Investor's Business Daily

Monday, May 2, 2005
Bush Social Security Plan Would Not Fully Close Financing Gap

BY JED GRAHAM

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

President Bush sought to shake up the Social Security debate Thursday night by touting a plan to protect low earners' benefits by enacting steep cuts for high earners.

The idea would ensure that people who work hard won't retire in poverty and would "solve most of the funding challenges facing Social Security," Bush said.

The prime-time news conference afforded him a second chance to take his ideas for reforming Social Security straight to a national audience in a bid to lift at-best lukewarm public support. Bush used the opportunity to try and dispel fears raised by critics of his agenda and to at least partly fill in one of the biggest blanks in his Social Security plan — how he would restore solvency.

"A variety of options are available to solve the rest of the problem, and I will work with Congress on any good-faith proposal that does not raise the payroll tax rate or harm our economy," Bush said.

The White House later released a fact sheet saying the progressive benefit formula backed by the president would solve about 70% of Social Security's financing shortfall.

That may underestimate the challenge ahead, experts said. That is because any Social Security legislation may well have to meet two tests: restoring the program to sustainable solvency and wiping out its $4.1 trillion, 75-year shortfall.

Bush's plan appears to fall far short of clearing that latter hurdle. And that doesn't factor in the challenge of making good on the IOUs in the so-called trust fund.

The difficulty with closing the 75-year gap comes because of the personal accounts Bush proposes.

While the accounts can be created so as not to worsen the long-term finances of Social Security, they do create a cash-flow challenge in the shorter run.

Consider how the accounts would interact with Social Security's finances. As people fund them with a share of payroll taxes that would otherwise have gone to the trust fund, their future benefits fall in tandem.

A Long, Long Loan

The transaction is similar to a loan that'll be paid off in the form of smaller benefit checks. So at the end of that 75-year actuarial window, millions of people still in the work force or recently retired won't have received enough smaller checks to cover the cost of their diverted payroll taxes.

The progressive benefit formula touted by Bush is the brainchild of Robert Pozen, chairman of MFS Investment Management and a Democratic member of the president's 2001 Social Security panel.

Pozen's idea is a gentler version of the panel's indexing idea, under which initial retirement benefits would only keep up with inflation, rather than keep pace with wage growth as they do currently.

Under Pozen's plan, the benefits of the bottom 30% of wage earners (about $25,000 and below) would still see benefits rise with real pay growth. But benefits for top earners wouldn't rise at all in inflation-adjusted terms. Initial benefits for midlevel earners would grow at a pace between inflation and wages.

Average earners (about $36,500) would see a 28% benefit cut by 2075. The highest earners would face a 42% cut.

But there would be across-the-board benefit cuts without any Social Security reform. After the so-called trust fund runs dry in 2041, the government would be able to pay only 74% of scheduled benefits; by 2079, it could pay just 68%.

The crunch really begins in 2017, when Social Security turns cash-flow negative and the government starts redeeming the Treasuries — IOUs to itself — in the trust fund.

Like Bush, Pozen supports personal accounts to let individuals seek a higher return to compensate for cuts in promised benefits. His plan includes an option for individuals to fund accounts with 2% of payroll.

Social Security's chief actuary found Pozen's plan would restore sustainable solvency within 75 years. But the plan would close only half of the 75-year financing gap. So it would need an infusion of $1.9 trillion in present value over more than four decades to reach solvency.

In an interview, Pozen said the politics make it "just too hard" to get the 75-year gap down to zero. He maintains it isn't necessary to do so, as long as the borrowing ends and solvency is reached within 75 years.

Ed Lorenzen, executive director of Centrists.org, which seeks bipartisan policy-making, said, "You need both 75-year solvency and sustainable solvency to be credible."

While the president's plan isn't an exact replica of Pozen's, the differences suggest it will be harder to fund his plan.

He offers a protection against poverty that appears more generous, and his plan protects all future benefits for the disabled, unlike Pozen's, says Brookings Institution senior fellow Peter Orszag. Bush prefers accounts that let workers contribute 4% of payroll, which creates bigger cash-flow issues.

Orszag figures that Bush's plan may wipe out only 40% of the 75-year shortfall.

"There's a huge chunk that is missing," Orszag said. All the options for filling the gap "involve pain."

For all the questions, some think Bush did boost the chances for Social Security reform Thursday night.

Lorenzen said Bush's support may help strengthen the hands of Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Robert Bennett, R-Utah, as they seek a consensus. Both have incorporated Pozen's ideas into their plans.

Michael Tanner, director of the Cato Institute Project on Social Security Choice, said Bush's support of a specific solvency plan will put pressure on Democrats to come up with their own plan.

"He didn't hit a home run, but there's a man on base," Tanner said.

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TV media echoed Bush spin on Social Security benefit cuts

mediamatters.org/

TV media echoed Bush spin on Social Security benefit cuts

Television news coverage of President Bush's April 28 press conference offered several misleading claims about Bush's proposed Social Security benefit cuts. Cable and network anchors and correspondents: 1) falsely suggested that benefit cuts would affect only high-income workers; 2) mischaracterized cuts in promised benefits as "slower increase[s] in benefits"; and 3) erroneously suggested that low-income workers will receive greater benefits under Bush's proposal than they are promised under the current system.

Ignoring middle-class benefit cuts

While television news reports acknowledged that Bush called for benefits cuts for "wealthier workers" or "higher-income" earners, many failed to report that these cuts would also impact lower-middle and middle-class workers. As Media Matters for America has noted, the Bush proposal would likely cut the level of guaranteed benefits promised under the current Social Security system for all workers making over $20,000 a year -- or just above the poverty threshold for a family of four with two children under 18 -- while leaving guaranteed benefit levels for those making under $20,000 unchanged.


* NBC White House correspondent Norah O'Donnell reported that Bush's proposal "could mean, in the future, a cut of benefits for more wealthy Americans." [MSNBC, Hardball, 4/28/05]
* Fox News chief Washington correspondent Jim Angle claimed Bush's plan will "make sure that they [benefits] go up as much as possible for the poor and ... reduce the increase in benefits for the wealthy." Angle later claimed that Bush's proposal will be "benefiting the poor, making this a system that tilts much more in favor of the poor and cutting the increase in benefits for the wealthy who can most afford it." [Fox News, press conference coverage, 4/28/05]
* Fox News Washington managing editor Brit Hume claimed that Bush's proposal involves "benefits which are diminished for the upper income people and enhanced perhaps or at least higher for lower income people." Hume then suggested that those who will be affected by this proposal include "Ross Perot and Bill Gates," but failed to note that anyone earning $20,000 or more a year is also in that group. [Fox News, press conference coverage, 4/28/05]
* Fox News co-host Steve Doocy claimed that under Bush's proposal, "people who make a lot of dough will not wind up with as large a benefit as people at the bottom of the economic food chain." [Fox News, FOX & Friends, 4/29/05]
* CBS White House correspondent Bill Plante reported that Bush's plan "would reduce future benefits for the highest wage earners, but leave them as they are for those who make the least." By Plante's definition, the "highest wage earners" who would face benefit cuts include those making over $20,000 a year. [CBS, Early Show, 4/29/05]
* CNN co-host Jack Cafferty claimed that Bush proposed "reducing long-term benefits for the more affluent members of this society." Cafferty later reported that Bush proposed cutting "future benefits for wealthier retirees," and criticized newspaper headlines that suggested -- accurately -- that the benefits would be more widespread than Cafferty claimed: "Headlines in The New York Times and The Washington Post this morning scream that President Bush wants to cut Social Security benefits. Granted, he was talking about future benefits for wealthier retirees, but don't be fooled -- Social Security is called the third rail of politics for a reason." [CNN, American Morning, 4/29/05]

Mischaracterizing benefit cuts as a slowdown of benefit increases

Cable news channels adopted Bush's characterization of his proposed benefit cuts as a proposed slowdown in the rate at which benefit levels go up. In fact, Bush proposed an actual cut in promised benefits for all but the lowest income workers, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

* CNN host Wolf Blitzer reported that Bush "did make a case ... that lower-income Social Security recipients would get more increases more rapidly than the higher income Social Security recipients." [CNN, press conference coverage, 4/28/05]
* Fox News' Jim Angle claimed that under Bush's proposal "everyone would get an increase in benefits, but the poor under this approach would get a bigger increase, and the wealthy, who have other ways of saving for retirement, would get less. It is as simple as that." [Fox News, press conference coverage, 4/28/05]
* CNN co-host Bill Hemmer reported: "The president says his proposal for Social Security would increase benefits faster for low-income workers than for wealthier ones." [CNN, American Morning, 4/29/05]
* CNN co-host Soledad O'Brien and conservative San Francisco radio host Jeff Katz had this exchange during the "Gimme A Minute" segment:

O'BRIEN: Last night, the president proposing during his news conference that Social Security benefits for lower income Americans increase more than for higher earning Americans. The headlines this morning say Social Security is being cut. Headlines wrong, Jeff?

KATZ: Headlines are incredibly wrong. Social Security is not being cut. [CNN, American Morning, 4/29/05]

* Los Angeles Times columnist Ron Brownstein reported that Bush "endors[ed] this notion that benefits in the future should grow faster for low- income people than middle and upper-income people as a way to close that long-term financing gap." [CNN, American Morning, 4/29/05]
* CNN host Carol Costello claimed that Bush proposed that "benefits for lower-income people should grow at a faster rate." [CNN, American Morning, 4/29/05]

Claiming low-income workers would receive greater benefits than currently promised

Pundits on all three cable news channels falsely suggested that low-income workers would receive greater Social Security benefits under Bush's proposal than they are promised under the current Social Security system. In fact, according to the CBPP report, under the plan developed by Robert C. Pozen, upon which the Bush proposal is reportedly based, "low-earners would continue to receive the Social Security benefits promised under current law, which are based on a formula that uses 'wage indexing.'"

* MSNBC host Chris Matthews echoed Bush's false claim that his plan will provide "extra help to those most in need" by asserting that "the less wealthy people who retire would be able to get what he [Bush] called extra benefits." [MSNBC, Hardball, 4/28/05]
* Fox News host Brit Hume claimed that under Bush's proposal for means testing, benefits would be "enhanced, perhaps ... for lower-income people." [Fox News, press conference coverage, 4/28/05]
* CNN anchor Carol Costello reported that Bush "says benefits for lower-income people should grow at a faster rate," but failed to note that his proposal would not actually increase their benefits from what is currently promised. [CNN, American Morning, 4/29/05]
* CNN host Jack Cafferty asserted that Bush's plan involves "preserving the benefits or maybe even increasing them at a greater rate for the poor among us." [CNN, American Morning, 4/29/05]

— J.C., R.S.K., & A.S.

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If only Senate filibusters were this enlightening

Frist Protest at Princeton Is Lesson in Art of the Filibuster

By Charles Babington and Mike Allen
Monday, May 2, 2005; A04

If only Senate filibusters were this enlightening.

Princeton University students and faculty have been talking round-the-clock to protest the legislative strategy of a famous alumnus and benefactor, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). In what some might consider an act of ingratitude -- even by college students' standards -- protesters have lectured, read and generally droned on outside the Frist Campus Center, built with $25 million from the senator's family.

The speakers are protesting Frist's threat to change Senate rules to ban filibusters of judicial nominees.
washingtonpost.com
Democrats have used the parliamentary delaying tactic to block confirmation votes for 10 of President Bush's appellate court nominees.

The campus talk-a-thon started Tuesday and continued into the weekend. Some protesters honored Senate history by reading from phone books, but many were more high-minded. They read from biographies of federal judicial nominees, poetry, the Constitution and Shakespeare's plays.

Physics professor Chiara Nappi lectured on the origin and behavior of elementary particles. "I support the efforts of these students in defending the rights of the minority party and attacking conservative attempts to reduce civil liberties," she told the campus newspaper, the Princetonian. "I disagree with what Frist is trying to do, and because he has strong ties to Princeton, we have the duty to take a stand."

Besides, Nappi said, "perhaps I will convince students to study more physics." Try that in the Senate cloakroom.
Ethics Minutiae

With Democrats among the lawmakers rushing to update incomplete or erroneous travel disclosures, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) referred yesterday to missing reports as "technicalities on reporting" and said those should not be confused or equated with larger ethical issues.

One of Pelosi's aides did not report a trip to South Korea last year with a group that had registered as a foreign agent, which would make it ineligible to pay for trips for lawmakers and their aides. Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (Md.), the second-ranking Democrat in the House, also has recently filed paperwork that had been missing for past trips.

Pelosi, asked by George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "This Week" about her staff's disclosure violations, said that her own "reporting has always been complete and in a timely fashion."

"The staff didn't have the same experience in traveling, and so some of the filing was done -- was overdue when it was filed," she said.

But then Pelosi went on to refer to disclosure requirements as "technicalities," and criticized Republican leaders for replacing the chairman, two members and two top aides on the ethics committee, formally known as the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.

"Do not fall into the Republican trap of equating technicalities on reporting -- timing of reporting with not upholding an ethical standard of the House," she said. "I don't get into anybody's ethical issues. That's for the ethics committee to do. But I do have a responsibility to uphold an ethical standard, and when the Republicans gutted the ethical process, purged the committee, firing the chairman and firing the staff, then that became an issue that we all had to play a role in."
Parties Get Head Start on '08 Race

Is it too early to talk about '08?

A new poll of Republican Party insiders gives the early edge in the race for its 2008 presidential nomination to one of its least well-known potential candidates: Sen. George Allen (Va.).

National Journal asked 85 GOP members of Congress, party officials and strategists to predict who would win the party's nod in three years. Allen, a former Virginia governor who is little known outside the mid-Atlantic region, took the top spot, edging Sen. John McCain (Ariz.). Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.) came in third, followed by, in descending order, former New York City mayor Rudoph W. Giuliani, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Sen. Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and New York Gov. George E. Pataki.

Allen, at a lunch Friday with reporters and editors of The Washington Post, said that he would leave poll interpretation to the pundits and that he is focused on winning reelection in 2006. "You can never predict the future." But he added this when asked whether he believes he is qualified to be president: "Common-sense Jeffersonian principles that work so well for Virginia, I think, make this country more competitive when applied to the national level as well, whether that's advocated by me or somebody else."

The 90 Democratic insiders surveyed were much more in agreement on who would win their party's nomination, giving the overwhelming edge to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.). Former senator John Edwards (N.C.) came in second, followed by outgoing Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner, Sens. Evan Bayh (Ind.) and John F. Kerry (Mass.).

The rest of the top 10? New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark and former vice president Al Gore.

Researcher Brian Faler contributed to this report.

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Ad campaign to help GOP in judicial confirmation fight

USA TODAY

Ad campaign to help GOP in judicial confirmation fight

WASHINGTON (AP) — An organization with strong Republican ties intends to spend $1.5 million on television commercials over next two weeks to help Senate GOP leaders in a showdown over President Bush's judicial nominees.

The group, Progress for America, "will also run $350,000 of radio ads on Christian stations," according to a memo describing the plans.


The effort underscores the political stakes in a struggle that revolves immediately around seven controversial appeals court nominees — but also has implications for any Supreme Court vacancy that occurs during Bush's term.

Democrats blocked 10 of the president's first-term appeals court nominees by filibuster, a parliamentary tactic that requires supporters to post 60 votes to assure a final vote.

The president renominated seven of the 10 after he won re-election. Democrats say they are prepared to block some or all of them again on grounds that they are too conservative to warrant lifetime appointments to the bench.

Republicans have responded by threatening to use their majority to ban juidicial filibusters.

"Senate Democats have abused the rules and refused to even allow a vote," says the television ad produced for Progress for America. "So courtrooms sit empty, while thousands of Americans have their cases delayed."

Progress for America scheduled news conference for Monday to unveil its plans, and officials declined to discuss them in advance. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the material to be made public.

The ad praises two of Bush's seven stalled nominees, Janice Rogers Brown and Priscilla Owen. It says it's the job of a senator to vote, adding, "Urge your senators to vote, up or down."

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, criticized the ad. "Apparently no one at Progress For America has studied the Constitution or a U.S, history book, because their advertising campaign is intended to undermine a carefully chosen system of check and balances that has served this country well for more than 200 years," he said.

Reid and Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee both outlined proposed compromises on the issue last week. At the same time, the two are trying to line up the votes needed to prevail in a showdown over doing away with filibusters on judicial nominations. There are 55 Republicans in the Senate, two of whom have publicly announced plans to side with the Democrats on the issue.

A relatively small number of senators is believed undecided or even vulnerable to political pressure on the issue, and the ad campaign is targeted toward those who are.

Progress for America intends to advertise in a half-dozen low-cost states in the coming week, Alaska, Arkansas, Maine, Nebraska, North Dakota and Rhode Island according to the memo. GOP Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island has announced plans to vote with the Democrats while Republican Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are publicly uncommitted. Some Republicans also have expressed concern about Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski's willingness to follow the party leadership on the issue.

The ad campaign includes $750,000 for one week of statewide broadcast and cable advertising in the six states, to be followed by a week of national cable television commercials.

Including its web site advocacy and other measures, Progress for America claims it will spend $3 million over the next two weeks.

The organization has previously advertised in favor of Bush's proposal for voluntary personal accounts under Social Security. It spent several million dollars last year in an independent effort to help Bush win a second term.

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Bush: Cut Retirement Benefits for Middle Class

Apparently, "middle-income" workers are classified as those earning between $25,000 and $90,000. Bush proposes cutting benefits by 25% for "middle-income" workers currently under 55 years old.


USA Today

Bush takes on still more political risk
By Linda Feldmann, The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON — George W. Bush is a well-known risk-taker — and well-known for not giving up when he has a bee in his bonnet.

As with Iraq, so with Social Security, the president has made clear that he is pressing ahead in his goal of dramatic change. Even though his much-vaunted "60-day, 60-stop" barnstorming campaign to sell the public on Social Security reform has ended, the events continue without a break.

On Tuesday, Bush will hold a "conversation on strengthening Social Security" at a Nissan manufacturing plant in Canton, Miss., and on Wednesday, Social Security will be the focus when he appears at the Latino Coalition's Small Business Conference here in Washington.

The only alteration will be the message: He has heightened public attention to Social Security's eventual shortfalls and made his pitch for "voluntary personal retirement accounts." Now, despite solid Democratic opposition to his plan and slippage in polls, Bush is ready to start addressing the system's solvency issue with a plan to reduce benefits for 70% of future retirees, while keeping low-income workers out of poverty.

"He doesn't have anything to lose," says John Zogby, an independent pollster. "But oddly enough, he still could emerge a winner on this by compromise, by being the guy who moved the dime on the issue. We're talking about indexing according to inflation, we're talking about raising the retirement issue. Those were equally third-rail pieces of Social Security, and now they're on the table, at least."

Indeed, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center agrees that Bush has succeeded at least in putting Social Security on the public's radar screen. A center poll in February found that three-quarters of Americans want the government to act on the system's eventual shortcomings either right away or in the next few years.

But if Bush must ultimately compromise on private accounts — most likely, give up on them — then that could doom any deal. Democrats face criticism for having "no plan," but in fact, individual members have proposals, and Senate aides have been formulating proposals on future financing for Social Security if the president is willing to drop personal accounts carved out of Social Security payroll taxes.

Analysts noted that in his press conference last Thursday night, Bush did not issue any ultimatums requiring that legislation include personal accounts. Such a move could kill any chance of reform, as it did for President Clinton when he demanded early in his presidency that healthcare reform must result in universal coverage.

Bush seemed to choose his words carefully. When asked if he would consider it a success for Congress to pass legislation without personal accounts, he came close to, but at least did not threaten, a veto. Such accounts have "got to be a part of a comprehensive package," he said.

Mike Tanner, a booster of personal accounts at the libertarian CATO Institute, does not believe Bush would sign a bill without personal accounts. But "one would never reach him," he adds. "House Republicans, among others, would never accept that."

Severe polarization on Capitol Hill makes it all the more difficult for the two parties to find common ground. So ultimately, on his No. 1 domestic goal, Bush may wind up famous for advancing the conversation but not radically changing the way Social Security works. In last week's press conference, held during TV prime time in the White House's ornate East Room to lure network coverage, Bush made news by unveiling the "spinach" portion of his Social Security plan: benefit cuts.

The president's proposal is known as "progressive indexing," and would leave benefits intact for low-income workers but phase in cuts for workers earning $25,000 or more. The plan would not apply to current workers age 55 or older, and would address about 70% of the projected shortfall in Social Security.

For workers earning $90,000 or more, the limit on income that faces payroll taxes, their benefits would be cut by 37%. Middle-income workers would lose 25% of their benefits.

According to the Pew survey, a majority of Americans support the idea of limiting "benefits for wealthy retirees." But Bush has so far not embraced another concept that Pew found 60% support for: raising the cap on taxable income. Economic-conservative activists oppose such a change, which they see as a tax increase.

Among opponents of Bush's Social Security plans, reaction to the latest move came as no surprise. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D) of California called it "the single biggest cut in Social Security benefits for the middle class in history."

John Rother, the top lobbyist for AARP, does not expect any change in approach (i.e., opposition) by the seniors lobby.

"He came out for specific benefit cuts that were widely understood as something he favored anyway," says Mr. Rother. But at least, he added, "the awareness of Social Security's fiscal challenges has increased."

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Suit reheats Washington election debate

USA TODAY
Suit reheats Wash. election debate
By Laura Parker, USA TODAY

WENATCHEE, Wash. — The Chelan County Courthouse is a three-hour drive and mountain range away from all those liberals in Seattle who keep Washington on the blue-state side of the political ledger.

Despite the remote locale, this conservative community soon will be the site of a historic court battle to determine who won Washington's governor's race in the fall.

Democrat Christine Gregoire took office in January, after a third count of 2.8 million ballots overturned two previous counts that gave the election to Republican Dino Rossi.

But the Republican Party is suing to have the election, the closest in state history, set aside. The suit claims that so many illegal ballots ended up in the final count that Gregoire's whisker-thin, 129-vote margin would disappear if those ballots were discarded. The trial is scheduled to begin May 23.


In a hearing Monday, the judge will consider how to assess ballots cast by felons, as well as provisional ballots that were counted without being validated beforehand.

In filing the lawsuit in Chelan County, where not a single Democrat holds an elective office, GOP lawyers were looking for a more receptive ear — somewhere other than King County, where Seattle is.

"The Republicans decided to mainly get out of King County to make sure they have a fair chance," says Clyde Ballard of East Wenatchee, a former GOP speaker of the state House.

A state divided

The Republican Party's choice of counties, which voted 63% for Rossi, underscores the deep divisions in state politics. Eastern Washington is fruit orchards, wheat fields and sagebrush. Residents here have more in common with Idaho next door than they do with the urban counties that surround more Democratic Seattle near the Cascade Range.

This spring, the state Senate took up a favorite of eastern Washington lawmakers — seceding and establishing the 20 eastern counties, which all voted for Rossi, as the 51st state.

Washington is not the only state where rural regions quarrel with the population centers that dominate them. Counties in northern California periodically campaign to become part of Nevada. Last year, residents of Killington, Vt., angry at the state's method of financing education, endorsed a plan to secede and be annexed to New Hampshire, where their taxes might be lower.

Few people here take secession seriously, especially not on the west side of the Cascades, where most of Washington's population lives. The local joke is: What would eastern Washington be without western Washington? Answer: poor.

"This is silly. It's political theater. It's kerosene on a candle. It will make a big poof, but there is not any fuel to sustain it," says Walt Crowley, director of HistoryLink.org, a Web site about the state. "For every dollar in transportation taxes the rural counties pay, they get about $7 back. They can't seem to do that math."

The election challenge is focused on King County, which aggravates divisions in the state. The county has 1 million voters, compared with the 650,000 voters in all of eastern Washington combined, and Gregoire outpaced Rossi in King County by 150,000 votes.

Republicans complained in court papers about how King County's election was run. Former U.S. senator Slade Gorton, who lost his seat in a squeaker in 2000, recently declared that King County "has the worst elections administration" anywhere in the country.

Ballots scrutinized

Republican lawyers have drawn a list of 1,335 ballots cast by dead people and felons, as well as provisional ballots they allege should have been disqualified. The majority of those were cast in King County.

"You've got over a thousand illegal votes," says Harry Korrell, the Republicans' lawyer.

But several things are working against the GOP, not the least of which is Gregoire has been in office for four months.

Chelan County Judge John Bridges did not bow to GOP pressure to rush the case to a swift conclusion. But neither did he accede to the Democrats' efforts to drag it out.

"He's reasonable and fair," says Kel Groseclose, a Methodist minister here. "He has a lot of common sense."

Groseclose got to know the judge when he challenged the validity of a recent mayoral election because Wenatchee's newly elected mayor lived outside the city limits. Bridges overturned the mayoral election. His ruling was upheld by the state Supreme Court. The recount case probably will be decided by that court, too.

Bridges has ruled that he does not have the authority to call a new gubernatorial election. Should he set aside last fall's election, the Legislature would have to call a new one. Until then, the lieutenant governor would serve.

What's next?

Democrats say in court papers that the Republican list is inaccurate.

David Olson, University of Washington political scientist, says he expects Bridges to reject the GOP's analysis of the felon votes. "It's too confusing. Some felon voters have had voting rights restored. It is surrounded with so much uncertainty, the court is not going to accept it," he says.

After the recounts, Rossi got some sympathy from voters. Stuart Elway, a Seattle pollster, says that when Gregoire took office, 56% of voters did not consider her the legitimate winner.

But that was then. A new Elway Poll last month indicates voters have moved on. Two-thirds say they accept the result and don't want a new election.

Rossi now risks losing that voter goodwill, says Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics: "At a certain point, people expect you to yield gracefully."

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Vietnam marks 30 years since war's end

USA TODAY

Vietnam marks 30 years since war's end

By Steve Komarow, USA TODAY

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — Fireworks, a parade, musical shows and the country's first laser light display marked the 30th anniversay Saturday of the fall of this city, the former Saigon, to the North Vietnamese army.

But the celebration was light on dogma from the Communist dictatorship and instead focused on economic prosperity. To further fuel strong industrial growth, its leaders say they are ready to strengthen ties with the United States and other countries that once fought to preserve South Vietnam as a separate, Western-leaning country.



( Related: More on the fall of Saigon
http://www.usatoday.com/news/graphics/fallsaigon30/flash.htm )

Vietnam wants "to strengthen relations with countries that took part in the Vietnam War," said Prime Minister Phan Van Khai, in a speech Friday kicking off the celebrations.

A two-month North Vietnamese offensive culminated on April 30, 1975, when North Korean tanks crashed through the gates of South Vietnam's Presidential Palace. The end came amid a frantic American evacuation to ships offshore. The war cost the United States 58,000 lives. Many times that many Vietnamese were killed in the fighting.

Saturday's ceremonies were held on the road outside the palace, now a museum, where those tanks traveled 30 years earlier. Veterans of the Communist campaign were on hand to watch, beneath giant posters of Ho Chi Minh, their late leader. Marchers wore the red shirts with yellow stars of the Vietnam Communist regime and the honored guest was Raul Castro, brother of Cuba's dictator, Fidel Castrol.

"I was listening to the radio with my family and heard that Saigon had been liberated. I was very happy because for many years we weren't free. After 30 years we have rebuilt our country. Our land is safe and secure and I think the future will be better for my children," said To Thanh Nghia, 51, a government worker marching in the parade.

The focus on economic growth, however, was reflected in many of the elaborately-decorated floats. They depicted industries and consumerism. Young women in matching blue outfits pushed shopping carts filled with goods. A giant replica of a Vietnam Airlines jet reflected the country's push for tourism and floats sponsored by banks sported the logos of Western credit cards.

Vietnam, an economic basket case for years after the war, has been actively courting outside investment in its industries, notably textiles and clothing. Last year's economic growth was 7.7%, one of the fasted in the world. The signs of new prosperity are most apparent in Ho Chi Minh City, where new glass-walled skyscrapers have transformed the skyline.

This summer will mark 10 years since the United States and Vietnam re-established diplomatic relations. The United States bought $5 billion in Vietnamese goods last year and American warships have visited its harbors.

Michael Marine, the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, says he hopes for even closer ties between the two countries. But he says remaining obstacles include the Communist regime's continued repression of political debate.

"The government of Vietnam continues to be intolerant of political dissent and significantly restricts freedom of speech, the press, assembly and association," Marine said in a speech at Texas Tech University in advance of the anniversary.

Contributing: Wire reports

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Angry at Rulings, Some Judge the Judges

ABC News
Angry at Rulings, Some Judge the Judges
Unpopular Decisions, Personal Grudges Bring Judges Under Fire -- Figuratively and Literally

- When Terri Schiavo died, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, issued a forceful warning to certain judges.

"We will look," he said, "at an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the president."

From the most powerful leaders in Congress, including DeLay, to television ads run by conservative groups and their well-organized allies, judges are under withering attack in a new and escalating front in the culture wars.

"There's a level of invective and venom that's unprecedented historically," said Jeffrey Rosen of the George Washington University Law School. "There have been plenty of times when Congress has threatened the judiciary with impeachment, with bills to overturn its decisions. But the hatred and the desire to get a new judge if you don't like the results of the old judge seems to be new in some way."

One of the most recent symbols of this outrage is the Terri Schiavo case. The refusal in late March of judges -- liberal and conservative -- to bend to the will of Congress prompted DeLay to issue this blunt threat.

"We're going to start hearings on the definition of good behavior that's in the Constitution, as it comes to impeaching judges," DeLay said.


DeLay's conservative allies are willing partners in an ongoing campaign to impeach, recall or otherwise pressure judges with whom they disagree.

"They don't want to take direction," said David Barton of Wallbuilders, a group that seeks to draw attention to the religious roots of U.S. government. "As we've seen in recent weeks, they don't even want to take criticism.

When asked if judges should be independent, Barton added, " 'Independent' is an interesting thing, because if independent means unaccountable, that's wrong. We have no unaccountable branch."

The judiciary, according to the Constitution, represents an equal branch of government that by design is supposed to interpret the law, not bend the politics or passions of the moment.

"I completely agree that as a coordinate branch of government the judiciary is appropriately subject to criticism," said Kenneth Starr, a former judge who is dean of the Pepperdine University Law School, and was the independent counsel on the Whitewater investigation of the Clintons.

"But where we do, in fact, step over the line, in my judgment, is when we say, or our political leaders say, that we so fervently disagree that we think that impeachment is appropriate or necessary, when those judges are -- whether right or wrong -- exercising their independent judgment, under article three of the Constitution."

Activists Battle Judges

Over the years, only seven judges have actually been impeached in the House and convicted in the Senate. Most were for criminal misconduct.

But across the country, activists are attempting to oust judges who have issued rulings they believe are incorrect.

In Sacramento, opponents of gay rights are collecting petitions to recall a state Superior Court judge who upheld California's expansion of legal benefits for domestic partners. California Superior Court judges are elected by the voters, but a recall effort goes beyond simply trying to vote a judge out of office.

"He's making decisions for me that are supposed to represent the values of the voters of Sacramento County, and he's not," said Craig Deluz of the Judge Recall Committee. "And so, my main focus is on making sure we get him out of office."

But supporters of Judge Loren McMaster, who is not permitted to speak on specific cases, note that an appeals court has unanimously upheld his ruling.

"Any recall attempt on a sitting judge, based upon a decision that they have made, in my opinion, is an act of intimidation over judges," said Glen Craig, the former Republican sheriff of Sacramento County. "I mean literally, any group -- you pick a group: pick police, for example; police unions, very powerful, lots of money -- suppose they took on every judge that rendered a decision or a sentence that they didn't like.

"I would hate to live in a society where judges sitting there are fearful of being recalled, based upon an honest decision, a good-faith decision based upon the law," he added.

When a federal judge in Kentucky ruled displays of the Ten Commandments in public buildings are unconstitutional -- in a case now before the U.S. Supreme Court -- activists at a Washington conference called on Congress to remove her and any others who ruled the same way.

"The conservative charge that the courts are running amok and thwarting the will of the American people is flatly wrong," Rosen said. "Polls suggest that on all the great issues that people are all excited about, abortion, affirmative action, school prayer, the court is basically in tune with the views of a narrow majority of the American people."

'Nut File'

California appellate judge Alfred Goodwin -- who was appointed by President Nixon -- knows something about political pressure.

"I'm probably the first person since Adolf Hitler to be unanimously denounced by the United States Senate," he said.

In 2002, Judge Goodwin ruled that requiring students to say "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional -- a decision that was upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals before being overruled by the U.S Supreme Court. Within hours of Goodwin's decision, he was attacked from the Senate floor.

"I hope the Senate will waste no time in throwing this back in the face of this stupid judge," said Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va.

"This decision is just nuts," said then-Sen. Tom Daschle, D-Neb.

The judge also received more than 10,000 letters protesting his decision.

"We filled one room in the San Francisco courthouse with that mail," Goodwin said.

But he accepts that criticism is part of the job -- even the occasional threat.

"My secretary keeps a 'nut file,' " Goodwin said. "When I get letters offering to kill me, I just give them to my secretary and say, 'Put it in the nut file.' "

Violence

Sometimes, though threats turn real. The recent murders of a judge in Atlanta, and the husband and mother of a federal judge in Chicago were apparently tied to personal grievances, not hot-button social issues. Yet, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, recently ruminated about a possible link.

Cornyn mulled a possible "connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions, yet are unaccountable to the public -- that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in violence."

Cornyn later backed off those remarks. But Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, citing an increase in threats, recently said, "I don't think the harsh rhetoric helps. I think it energizes people who are a little off-base to take actions that maybe they wouldn't otherwise take."

But other justices appeared to take the harsh criticism in stride, including Anthony Kennedy, the one some conservative activists call "the poster boy for impeachment."

"We learn of threats in different ways, often with letters -- and when we get those, we immediately turn them over to our people," Kennedy said. "It's healthy. It's very important. That's the democratic dialogue that makes democracy work."

For activists demanding more conservative rulings, it may be ironic that a clear majority of federal judges across the country have now been appointed by Republican presidents, including seven of the nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.

But with several of those justices in poor health and nearing retirement, the red-hot rhetoric over judges may soon get even more overheated.

ABC News' Chris Bury originally reported this story for "Nightline" on April 21, 2005.

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Abu Ghraib guard England to be sentenced this week

Yahoo! News
Abu Ghraib guard England to be sentenced this week

By Adam Tanner

U.S. Army reservist Lynndie England, who was shown holding a naked Iraqi on a leash at Abu Ghraib prison, will hear her sentence this week after she pleaded guilty to most of the abuse charges against her.

Pfc. England, 22, became the face of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal by posing in some of the most inflammatory photos from the prison, which embarrassed the military and touched off an international furor.

She was photographed holding a naked detainee on a leash and pointing at the genitals of a naked male prisoner while smiling and smoking a cigarette. She also posed beside naked prisoners in a human pyramid.

The Pentagon has cleared all but one of the top five commanders at Abu Ghraib of any wrongdoing, despite concern that a drive to squeeze information out of detainees initiated at a high level created the atmosphere in which the abuses could occur.


One commander, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, was relieved of her command and given a written reprimand.

Faced with overwhelming evidence because of the photos, England will plead guilty to seven of nine charges on Monday before a Fort Hood, Texas, military court, her lawyer Capt. Jonathan Crisp told Reuters.

England could face a maximum sentence of 11 years, down from 16 1/2 years but Crisp said he hoped she would receive a lesser punishment after the court hears evidence about her mental deficiencies.

"Justice is being done based on the evidence that has been brought forward at this point," he said. "The government has certainly been more amenable as of late than they were initially. I think they recognize her ultimate role in this is not what it was initially thought to be. She was a pawn."

AMERICAN REPUTATION

The abuse photos were a major blow to America's reputation worldwide at a time when many nations already distrusted U.S. intentions in Iraq.

The most serious remaining charge against England is one count of indecent acts, which carries a maximum of five years in prison. A second indecency charge, of committing an indecent act with her boyfriend Charles Graner, has been dropped, Crisp said.

In January, a military tribunal sentenced Graner to 10 years for his role in the scandal. Graner, the father of England's baby born in October, contended he had been following orders to soften up prisoners for military intelligence.

England made similar arguments, including one in describing the leash incident, in which she said shed was tethered to a mentally ill prisoner who had smeared his body with feces.

"I was instructed by persons in higher rank to stand there and hold this leash and look at the camera," she told KCNC television in Denver last year.

Such arguments failed to convince the jury in Graner's trial. Witnesses testified that the naked Iraqi prisoners stacked naked into a pyramid and later forced to masturbate had no military intelligence value.

Members of England's military police unit say she was not authorized to be in the "hard site" area where the abuses took place but was a frequent visitor to see her lover Graner.

"There was absolutely no reason why she was there for any kind of mission or administrative duties," said one member of her unit who did not want to be named.

"Before he got mobilized, at the unit, she was really a very favorable soldier," he said. "After this relationship began with him, you know, things deteriorated rapidly."

Crisp said Graner would testify during the penalty phase of England's trial. "You're going to learn about the power differentials, the manipulations and things along those lines and how her mental history plays into that," he said.

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Republican Chairman Exerts Pressure on PBS, Alleging Biases

The New York Times
May 2, 2005
Republican Chairman Exerts Pressure on PBS, Alleging Biases
By STEPHEN LABATON, LORNE MANLY
and ELIZABETH JENSEN

This article is by Stephen Labaton, Lorne Manly and Elizabeth Jensen.

WASHINGTON, May 1 - The Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is aggressively pressing public television to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias, prompting some public broadcasting leaders - including the chief executive of PBS - to object that his actions pose a threat to editorial independence.

Without the knowledge of his board, the chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, contracted last year with an outside consultant to keep track of the guests' political leanings on one program, "Now With Bill Moyers."

In late March, on the recommendation of administration officials, Mr. Tomlinson hired the director of the White House Office of Global Communications as a senior staff member, corporation officials said. While she was still on the White House staff, she helped draft guidelines governing the work of two ombudsmen whom the corporation recently appointed to review the content of public radio and television broadcasts.


Mr. Tomlinson also encouraged corporation and public broadcasting officials to broadcast "The Journal Editorial Report," whose host, Paul Gigot, is editor of the conservative editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. And while a search firm has been retained to find a successor for Kathleen A. Cox, the corporation's president and chief executive, whose contract was not renewed last month, Mr. Tomlinson has made clear to the board that his choice is Patricia Harrison, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee who is now an assistant secretary of state.

Mr. Tomlinson said that he was striving for balance and had no desire to impose a political point of view on programming, explaining that his efforts are intended to help public broadcasting distinguish itself in a 500-channel universe and gain financial and political support.

"My goal here is to see programming that satisfies a broad constituency," he said, adding, "I'm not after removing shows or tampering internally with shows."

But he has repeatedly criticized public television programs as too liberal overall, and said in the interview, "I frankly feel at PBS headquarters there is a tone deafness to issues of tone and balance."

Pat Mitchell, president and chief executive of PBS, who has sparred with Mr. Tomlinson privately but till now has not challenged him publicly, disputed the accusation of bias and was critical of some of his actions.

"I believe there has been no chilling effect, but I do think there have been instances of attempts to influence content from a political perspective that I do not consider appropriate," Ms. Mitchell, who plans to step down when her contract expires next year, said Friday.

Robert Coonrod, who stepped down as corporation president in July 2004, has known Mr. Tomlinson about 20 years and considers him a good friend. "I believe that his motives are exactly what he says they are," he said. Mr. Tomlinson is "trying to help the people in public broadcasting understand why some people in the conservative movement think PBS is hostile to them and, two, imbue public broadcasting with the notion of balance because he thinks that long term it's a winner in getting Congressional support."

"Whether people like the way he goes about it or not is a different issue," Mr. Coonrod added.

Though PBS's ratings have stabilized lately after several years of decline, the network has faced criticism that much of its programming - shows like "Antiques Roadshow" and "Masterpiece Theater" - is little different from what can be found on cable television. Though a huge bequest to National Public Radio from the estate of Joan Kroc, widow of the founder of McDonald's, has furthered the independence of public radio, corporate support and state financing for public television have slipped in recent years, making the nearly $400 million in federal money annually funneled through the corporation increasingly important.

Nor have administration officials and lawmakers been shy about challenging certain programming. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, for example, earlier this year publicly denounced a program featuring a cartoon rabbit named Buster who visited a pair of lesbian parents.

The corporation is a private, nonprofit entity financed by Congress to ensure the vitality of public television and radio. Tension is hardwired into its charter, where its mandate to ensure "objectivity and balance" is accompanied by an exhortation to maintain public broadcasting's independence. Mr. Tomlinson said that in his view, objectivity and balance meant "a program schedule that's not skewed in one direction or another." Some corporation board members say that complaints about ideological pressure are premature.

Beth Courtney, president and chief executive of Louisiana Public Broadcasting and one of three non-Republicans on the nine-member board, said there had been no chilling of journalistic efforts. "What we should look for are the real actions," she said. "We shouldn't speculate about people's motivations."

But Mr. Tomlinson's tenure has brought criticism that his chairmanship has been the most polarizing in a generation. Christy Carpenter, a Democratic appointee to the board from 1998 to 2002, said partisanship was "essentially nonexistent" in her first years. But once Mr. Tomlinson, a former editor in chief of Reader's Digest, joined in September 2000 and President Bush's election changed the board's political composition, the tenor changed, she said.

"There was an increasingly and disturbingly aggressive desire to be more involved and to push programming in a more conservative direction," said Ms. Carpenter, who is now a vice president of the Museum of Television and Radio. One of the more disturbing developments, she added, was a "very vehement dislike for Bill Moyers."

It is not a shock that Mr. Moyers's work exercised Mr. Tomlinson. He is a reliable source of agitation for conservatives, who complain that "Now" under Mr. Moyers (who left the show last year and was replaced by David Brancaccio) was consistently critical of Republicans and the Bush administration. Days after the Republicans gained control of the Senate in the 2002 elections, Mr. Moyers - an aide in the Lyndon B. Johnson administration and a former newspaper publisher who has been associated with PBS since the 1970's - said the entire federal government was "united behind a right-wing agenda" that included "the power of the state to force pregnant women to give up control over their own lives."

In December 2003, three months after he was elected chairman, Mr. Tomlinson sent Ms. Mitchell of PBS a letter outlining his concerns. " 'Now With Bill Moyers' does not contain anything approaching the balance the law requires for public broadcasting," he wrote.

Shortly after, Mr. Tomlinson hired a consultant to review Mr. Moyers's program; one three-month contract cost $10,000. The reports Mr. Tomlinson saw placed the program's guests in categories like "anti-Bush," "anti-business" and "anti-Tom DeLay," referring to the House majority leader, corporation officials said. The reports found the guests were overwhelmingly anti-Bush, a conclusion Mr. Moyers disputed.

Mr. Moyers said on Friday that he did not know a content review was undertaken but that he was not surprised. "Tomlinson has waged a surreptitious and relentless campaign against 'Now' and me," he said, dismissing complaints that he is biased. Mr. Moyers left "Now" to write a book but is back on public television as host of the series "Wide Angle."

Mr. Tomlinson said he conducted the content review on his own, without sending the results to the board or making them public, because he wanted to better understand complaints he was hearing without provoking a storm. "If I wanted to be more destructive to public broadcasting but score political points, I would have come out with this study a year and a half ago," he said.

Recently, PBS refused for months to sign its latest contract with the corporation governing federal financing of national programming, holding up the release of $26.5 million. For the first time, the corporation argued that PBS's agreeing to abide by its own journalistic standards was not sufficient, but that it must adhere to the "objectivity and balance" language in the charter. In a January letter to the leaders of the three biggest producing stations, in New York, Boston and Washington, the deputy general counsel of PBS warned that this could give the corporation editorial control, infringing on its First Amendment rights and possibly leading to a demand for balance in each and every show.

The corporation said it had no such plans, and the contract was finally signed about a month ago.

Mr. Tomlinson did help get one program, "The Journal Editorial Report," on the air as a way of balancing "Now." Ms. Mitchell backed the program, but public broadcasting officials said Mr. Tomlinson was instrumental in lining up $5 million in corporate financing and pressing PBS to distribute it.

Public television executives noted that Mr. Gigot's show by design features the members of the conservative editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, while Mr. Moyers's guests included many conservatives, like Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition; Richard Viguerie, a conservative political strategist; and Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

Mr. Tomlinson said that it was his concerns about "objectivity and balance" that led to the creation of a new office of the ombudsman at the corporation to issue reports about public television and radio broadcasts. But the role of a White House official in setting up the office has raised questions among some public broadcasting executives about its independence. In March, after she had been hired by the corporation but was still at the White House as director of the Office of Global Communications, Mary Catherine Andrews helped draft the office's guiding principles, set up a Web page and prepare a news release about the appointment of the new ombudsmen, officials said.

Ms. Andrews said she undertook the work at the instruction of top officials at the corporation. "I was careful not to work on this project during office hours during my last days at the White House," she said.

Mr. Tomlinson has also occasionally worked with other White House officials on public broadcasting issues. Last year he enlisted the presidential adviser Karl Rove to help kill a legislative proposal that would change the composition of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's board by requiring the president to fill about half the seats with people who had experience in local radio and television. The proposal was dropped after Mr. Rove and the White House criticized it.

Mr. Tomlinson said he understood the need to reassure liberals that the traditions of public broadcasting, including public affairs programs, were not changing, "that we're not trying to put a wet blanket on this type of programming."

But his efforts to sow goodwill have shown that what he says he tries to project is sometimes read in a different way. Last November, members of the Association of Public Television Stations met in Baltimore along with officials from the corporation and PBS. Mr. Tomlinson told them they should make sure their programming better reflected the Republican mandate.

Mr. Tomlinson said that his comment was in jest and that he couldn't imagine how remarks at "a fun occasion" were taken the wrong way. Others, though, were not amused.

"I was in that room," said Ms. Mitchell. "I was surprised by the comment. I thought it was inappropriate."

Stephen Labaton reported from Washington for this article, Lorne Manly from New York and Elizabeth Jensen from Columbus, Ohio.

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Desperate White House Wife, Episode 1: The Ranch Hand

The New York Times
May 2, 2005
WHITE HOUSE LETTER
Desperate White House Wife, Episode 1: The Ranch Hand
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON

When Laura Bush wisecracked at the White House Correspondents' Association's annual dinner on Saturday night that she was a "desperate housewife" married to a president who was always sound asleep by 9 p.m., the popular first lady accomplished two things. She brought down a very tough house, and she humanized her husband, whose sagging poll numbers are no match for her own.

Judging from the laughter in the Washington Hilton ballroom at Mrs. Bush's words - "George's answer to any problem at the ranch is to cut it down with a chain saw, which I think is why he and Cheney and Rumsfeld get along so well" - Mrs. Bush has a future in political stand-up comedy.

Whether her cheeky one-liners will shore up her husband as he struggles with Social Security, gas prices and combative Democrats is another question entirely.

But her zingers showed how much the White House relies on her to soften her husband's rough edges at critical moments, much as she did with her extensive travels and fund-raising in the 2004 campaign.

"The deprecation of her husband was eye-popping," said Kenneth M. Duberstein, a chief of staff in Ronald Reagan's White House, who had a front-row seat at the dinner. "Every husband and wife who hears the story that she told about him last night, that he's asleep at 9 p.m., can relate to that. And if you can get people to relate to you as president, it's a step forward. Last night George Bush became more likable because of his wife."

Mrs. Bush made fun of not only her husband (and Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld) but also her mother-in-law, the former first lady Barbara Bush, whom she likened to Don Corleone in "The Godfather." In front of 2,500 guests, she described time spent at her in-laws' summer home in Maine like this: "First prize, 3 days' vacation with the Bush family. Second prize, 10 days."

White House officials cast Mrs. Bush's performance as an attempt at fun, not a political calculation, although they said the idea came from one of the more shrewd political animals at the White House, President Bush. "Honest, the president just said: 'Why don't you try to do it this time? Let's mix it up a little bit,' " Susan Whitson, the first lady's press secretary, said after the dinner. "This was the first opportunity that she's had to show the press corps and the rest of the world that side of her."

The first lady's lines were written by Landon Parvin, a longtime Washington speechwriter who does jokes for Mr. Bush and who wrote both comedy and serious speeches for Ronald Reagan. More to the point, Mr. Parvin wrote the lyrics to "Secondhand Clothes," the song-and-dance routine that Nancy Reagan performed to the tune of "Secondhand Rose" at the 1982 Gridiron dinner in Washington.

That performance, which lampooned the first lady's taste in designers, was a hit after a string of public relations disasters, from Mrs. Reagan's supervision of the purchase of a $200,000 set of White House china to the trunkloads of dresses she took for a week of partying at the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana. Press coverage of Mrs. Reagan was subsequently more positive, and "Secondhand Clothes" is still cited as a reason.

In Mrs. Bush's case, playing off "Desperate Housewives" was a natural, even though Ms. Whitson said that Mrs. Bush had never actually seen the racy ABC hit show. Ms. Whitson said the first lady had heard about the characters and plot from the Bush twins, Jenna and Barbara, who are fans, and was planning to watch the entire first season on a DVD she has at home.

Ms. Whitson said Mr. Parvin sat down with the first lady some weeks ago to work out ideas. He then wrote a script and helped Mrs. Bush with her timing and delivery over several days of rehearsals, including one run-through shortly before the dinner. The first lady went on right after dessert, as Mr. Bush was at the lectern launching into the traditional presidential stand-up routine, in this case rehashing some of his worst jokes from the 2004 campaign.

Mrs. Bush suddenly got up and "interrupted" her husband, saying, "Not that old joke; not again." Then she added, as the audience laughed: "I've been attending these dinners for years and just quietly sitting there. I've got a few things I want to say for a change."

Ms. Whitson said that while Mr. Bush was in on the setup, he did not know what his wife would say. He reacted mostly by cackling with a beet-red face, including when his wife said, "George, if you really want to end tyranny in the world, you're going to have to stay up later."

Mr. Parvin, who said in an interview before the dinner that writing a speech about the Iran-contra scandal was a lot easier than humor, termed self-deprecating jokes essential for presidents. As a joke writer, he said that his most important task was to meld personality and topicality.

"First of all, you get the person's character in your head," he said. "But a lot depends on what's going on at the time. It's just a feeling that's in the air. So you take that feeling and distill it down to lines that reflect the perception of that person's character."

Or as Mrs. Bush noted on Saturday night about her husband and the ranch in Texas: "George didn't know much about ranches when we bought the place. Andover and Yale don't have real strong ranching programs. But I'm proud of George. He's learned a lot about ranching since that first year when he tried to milk the horse. What's worse, it was a male horse."

Mr. Cheney did not escape the first lady, either. "It's always very interesting to see how the ranch air invigorates people when they come down from Washington," she said. "Recently, when Vice President Cheney was down, he got up early one morning, he put on his hiking boots and he went on a brisk 20- to 30-foot walk."

Mr. Parvin said there was an advantage to writing for presidents and, by extension, their wives - because it's easier to get a laugh. "I noticed it first with Reagan," Mr. Parvin said. "Reagan would come into the East Room, and he would have a little throwaway line, and it would get a laugh, and it wouldn't have gotten a laugh with most people. What it did was break the tension. It's the unexpected, I guess. People don't expect presidents to be funny."

Guests at the White House press dinner said the unexpected was a big part of Mrs. Bush's success. "It came as a complete surprise, and she knocked everybody's socks off," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who attended the dinner as a guest of The New York Post.

As for the political benefit to the president, Mr. Schumer said: "It's not going to make everybody say, 'We're for Social Security privatization now.' But around the edges, it helps."

Mr. Parvin, 56, who writes mostly for Republicans but also for Democrats he likes, like Bill Clinton's friend Vernon Jordan, agreed that presidential humor was "not important" in the scheme of things.

On the other hand, it can't hurt. "Everybody wants to do well," Mr. Parvin said. "Someone said humor is like standing up naked in front of an audience, then turning around and saying, 'What do you think?' "

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President Bush's Unqualified Nominees

President Bush's Unqualified Nominees

The Republican leadership have committed to change the rules of the Senate to approve these unqualified nominees – but the vast majority of Americans oppose this unprecedented and dangerous scheme.


Find out more about each of these nominees by clicking on their picture at the link below and let everyone know why they are not qualified.

http://www.tedkennedy.com/unqualified

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The Nuclear Option

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Is that the new Pope?

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In GOP We Trust

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Chalabi

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Co-Co-Co-Co-Coulter

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Old Kiss Up Kick Down

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Yeeehaaawwww

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Third Rail

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Security Issues Force a Review at Ground Zero

The New York Times
May 1, 2005
Security Issues Force a Review at Ground Zero
By PATRICK D. HEALY and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

Security concerns outlined last month by the New York Police Department have set off a serious reassessment of plans for the World Trade Center site. People involved in the rebuilding effort say that the revisions that need to be made to the site's most prominent feature, the Freedom Tower, could delay the start of construction from several months to a year.


As a result, the lead developer at the site, Larry Silverstein, has proposed seeking public financing - possibly hundreds of millions of dollars - to pay for addressing the Police Department's security concerns. Such a development would be a significant shift for a project that has relied largely on private insurance money.

In addition, the Police Department's most recent security analysis has moved those involved in the rebuilding effort to examine yet again what might be done to safeguard the site and the people visiting it, if plans go forward to reopen the area's street grid.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the agency set up to direct the rebuilding, had each hired security consultants to assess the safety of the plans for the site. But it is clear that the Police Department's assessment was more disturbing.

Indeed, interviews in the past week show that David Childs, the lead designer of the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, has already begun rethinking fundamental elements of what is planned to be the successor to the twin towers: its precise location on the 16-acre site - long planned for the northwest corner - and its distance from heavily traveled West Street.

The redesigned tower is expected to look different from the current model familiar to the public, but it is too early to characterize the extent of the changes, according to a person who has been briefed on the development team's concerns.

It is clear, however, that three and a half years after the 9/11 attack, and 16 months after the tower's design was unveiled, police officials, unintentionally or not, have set off a storm of blame and accusations.

George E. Pataki, who views the Freedom Tower as his greatest legacy as governor, is said by state officials to be angry with the police, and some of those officials have accused the department of having been late in laying out the scope of its concerns. They say the effect could unduly worry New Yorkers and possible tenants of the buildings. Mr. Pataki did not reply to an interview request.

At the same time, some state and development officials are angry at the Bloomberg administration, saying it should have delivered the police concerns earlier, but may have been distracted by its proposal for a stadium for the Jets on the Far West Side of Manhattan.

Daniel L. Doctoroff, the deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding, dismissed that assertion as silly and said that the city and the police had devoted enormous time to assessing the site's security with the latest intelligence and counterterrorism data.

"This is a remarkably complex security question, and every time you turn one dial, you end up turning many other dials on the security issue," Mr. Doctoroff said.

Mr. Pataki said last November that major work on the foundation for the Freedom Tower would begin in February this year, with steel and concrete to arrive last month.

Neither has happened; the tower was to be completed by 2009.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly would not be interviewed about the department's security assessment, a multipage document that was given to Mr. Silverstein and the development agency on April 8. Other officials involved in the security discussions said that the department had raised concerns since at least last summer, but that the other camps involved in planning had not provided detailed information on which to make an assessment.

Paul J. Browne, the department's deputy commissioner for public information, said, "We understand that the Police Department's security concerns will be addressed in any redesign."

According to state officials who have reviewed the department's concerns, the police, most simply, do not see the tower as a normal commercial building; from the police's point of view, the officials say, the tower would replace the trade center, felled by terrorists, with a patriotic symbol that could be a new target. Heightening the concern is the fact that hundreds of uninspected 18-wheel trucks would rumble by the tower daily.

That the police concerns are only now front and center, though, has exasperated senior development officials, many of whom fear that the mere public discussion of security worries could damage what they regard as a hard-won optimism about the site's future.

"I don't want to say the police have been irresponsible, but where were they until this month?" said John C. Whitehead, a Pataki ally and chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. "I wish they had called attention to the seriousness of the problems earlier, rather than at this late stage."

All of the principals involved at ground zero, from the politicians to the builders, remain keenly determined to make the Freedom Tower as secure as possible. But the degree of concern about the site's vulnerability clearly varies, and almost everyone involved in the rebuilding effort wonders if there ever could be a perfect formula for balancing security needs with civic ambitions at a site that has been attacked twice.

The police, for their part, want the tower built to conform with security criteria based on standards used by the Department of Defense and other federal agencies, which would require the tower to be as much as 100 feet away from the street.

The site plan now calls for a minimum distance of 25 feet. The desire for greater distance is based on an analysis of the impact of a large blast.

Over the last year, according to state officials involved in the project, security specialists at the Police Department suggested some provocative but relatively impractical ideas: ideally moving the Freedom Tower some 200 feet away from the street, for example, or moving the tower to another part of the site altogether.

A government official involved in the security deliberations, echoing others, suggested that "basically nothing can satisfy" the police. But the official also acknowledged that the Freedom Tower inescapably required a security plan unlike that for almost any other building in the United States, given the site's hallowed ground and history.

"Here's the dilemma," the official said. "If you put too much security into the building, it's going to look like Fort Knox and no one will rent it. If you don't put enough, it could end up with catastrophic results."

The arguments over the months have included thinking imaginatively about security. Last summer, government officials at ground zero spoke with former security specialists from MI-5, Britain's domestic intelligence service, who advised that future attacks by terrorists would most likely come not in the form of a truck bomb, but rather with biological or chemical weapons.

"These guys were laughing at us, at the idea that Jersey barriers and bollards would protect the tower when terrorists have become more sophisticated," said one official involved in the redevelopment project.

Some have already begun to reimagine: Daniel Libeskind, the master planner for the site, has drawn up new sketches on his own to show that the tower could be moved between 40 and 140 feet from West Street/Route 9A in order to solve police concerns.

Mr. Libeskind played down the significance of the redesign, which will be done by Mr. Childs.

Not surprisingly, some people involved in the rebuilding are urging calm, suggesting that security was inevitably going to cause delays for a grand civic project with so many elements, including a memorial for Sept. 11 victims, a performing arts center, and new office towers.

"It's all been very quiet, as it should be, because these are very delicate matters and you don't want to advertise them to the world," Robert Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, an influential private research group, said of the behind-the-scenes security discussions. "But it's all coming to a head around the design of the Freedom Tower."

Depending on who is talking, security concerns have loomed over the site since late 2001, and were discussed in fits and starts for years, competing for attention with other issues, like the memorial competition.

But in the last several months, as the start of construction neared, the security talks intensified.

"The police would say, 'Based on our knowledge and our intelligence, we think you can do more to make the building safer,' " said one official involved in the security discussions. "We would say, 'Tell us what.' The cops would say, 'We're not engineers.' We would say, 'O.K., tell us what we need to tell our engineers to protect against.' And it became this long, drawn-out back and forth."

The talks came to a head at a one point several weeks ago when the parties met with officials of the Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs to discuss its proposed 40-story headquarters, just to the northwest of the Freedom Tower.

Stunning many in the room, Goldman representatives showed a film of a vehicle, packed with more than 10,000 pounds of explosive material, blowing up and leaving a huge crater. While some participants viewed the film as an insensitive move by Goldman, it also prompted discussion about the amount of explosives that the buildings would be protected against. At that moment, the talks moved toward clearer standards for "hardening" buildings to blasts.

One government official said that as the police concerns became more apparent, the breadth of their issues took many people aback.

In addition to the distance from the street, the official said, "there is the strength of the glass, the strength and the thickness of the concrete walls."

"The way the building is constructed will determine how many casualties there will be if a bomb of X size is blown off at Y location," the official said.

Just how radical the revisions to the tower will be is far from clear. Some officials said the altered design, in the end, might not look different to the eye.

But it is also possible that changes could be so significant that a new environmental impact statement might be needed, according to one person who has been briefed on some redesign elements.

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U.S. Recruits a Rough Ally to Be a Jailer

The New York Times
May 1, 2005
U.S. Recruits a Rough Ally to Be a Jailer
By DON VAN NATTA Jr.

Seven months before Sept. 11, 2001, the State Department issued a human rights report on Uzbekistan. It was a litany of horrors.

The police repeatedly tortured prisoners, State Department officials wrote, noting that the most common techniques were "beating, often with blunt weapons, and asphyxiation with a gas mask." Separately, international human rights groups had reported that torture in Uzbek jails included boiling of body parts, using electroshock on genitals and plucking off fingernails and toenails with pliers. Two prisoners were boiled to death, the groups reported. The February 2001 State Department report stated bluntly, "Uzbekistan is an authoritarian state with limited civil rights."

Immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, however, the Bush administration turned to Uzbekistan as a partner in fighting global terrorism.

The nation, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia, granted the United States the use of a military base for fighting the Taliban across the border in Afghanistan. President Bush welcomed President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan to the White House, and the United States has given Uzbekistan more than $500 million for border control and other security measures.

Now there is growing evidence that the United States has sent terror suspects to Uzbekistan for detention and interrogation, even as Uzbekistan's treatment of its own prisoners continues to earn it admonishments from around the world, including from the State Department.

The so-called rendition program, under which the Central Intelligence Agency transfers terrorism suspects to foreign countries to be held and interrogated, has linked the United States to other countries with poor human rights records. But the turnabout in relations with Uzbekistan is particularly sharp. Before Sept. 11, 2001, there was little high-level contact between Washington and Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, beyond the United States' criticism.

Uzbekistan's role as a surrogate jailer for the United States was confirmed by a half-dozen current and former intelligence officials working in Europe, the Middle East and the United States. The C.I.A. declined to comment on the prisoner transfer program, but an intelligence official estimated that the number of terrorism suspects sent by the United States to Tashkent was in the dozens.

There is other evidence of the United States' reliance on Uzbekistan in the program. On Sept. 21, 2003, two American-registered airplanes - a Gulfstream jet and a Boeing 737 - landed at the international airport in Tashkent, according to flight logs obtained by The New York Times.

Although the precise purpose of those flights is not known, over a span of about three years, from late 2001 until early this year, the C.I.A. used those two planes to ferry terror suspects in American custody to countries around the world for questioning, according to interviews with former and current intelligence officials and flight logs showing the movements of the planes. On the day the planes landed in Tashkent, the Gulfstream had taken off from Baghdad, while the 737 had departed from the Czech Republic, the logs show.

The logs show at least seven flights were made to Uzbekistan by those planes from early 2002 to late 2003, but the records are incomplete.

Details of the C.I.A.'s prisoner transfer program have emerged in recent months from a handful of former detainees who have been released, primarily from prisons in Egypt and Afghanistan, and in some cases have alleged they were beaten and tortured while being held.

The program was created in the mid-1980's as a way for the C.I.A. to transfer crime suspects arrested abroad to their home countries. After Sept. 11, the C.I.A. used it to send prisoners suspected of being senior leaders of Al Qaeda to a half-dozen countries for detention. American intelligence officials estimate that the United States has transferred 100 to 150 suspects to Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Uzbekistan.

A senior C.I.A. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he would not discuss whether the United States had sent prisoners to Uzbekistan or anywhere else. But he said: "The United States does not engage in or condone torture. It does not send people anywhere to be tortured. And it does not knowingly receive information derived from torture."

Ilkhom Zakirov, a spokesman for the Uzbekistan Foreign Ministry in Tashkent, also declined to comment on whether Uzbekistan accepted terror suspects from the United States. He declined to address the accusations from human rights groups. But human rights activists say that because Uzbekistan's record is well known, it raises questions about why the C.I.A. would send suspects there.

"If you talk to anyone there, Uzbeks know that torture is used - it's common even in run-of-the-mill criminal cases," said Allison Gill, a researcher for Human Rights Watch who is working inside Uzbekistan. "Anyone in the United States or Europe who does not know the extent of the torture problem in Uzbekistan is being willfully ignorant."

Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, said he learned during his posting to Tashkent that the C.I.A. used Uzbekistan as a place to hold foreign terrorism suspects. During 2003 and early 2004, Mr. Murray said in an interview, "C.I.A. flights flew to Tashkent often, usually twice a week."

In July 2004, Mr. Murray wrote a confidential memo to the British Foreign Office accusing the C.I.A. of violating the United Nations' Prohibition Against Torture. He urged his colleagues to stop using intelligence gleaned in Uzbekistan from terrorism suspects because it had been elicited through torture and other coercive means. Mr. Murray said he knew about the practice through his own investigation and interviews with scores of people who claimed to have been brutally treated inside Uzbekistan's jails.

"We should cease all cooperation with the Uzbek security services - they are beyond the pale," Mr. Murray wrote in the memo, which was obtained by The Times.

Mr. Murray, who has previously spoken publicly about prisoner transfers to Uzbekistan, said his superiors in London were furious with his questions, and he was told that the intelligence gleaned in Uzbekistan could still be used by British officials, even if it was elicited by torture, as long as the mistreatment was not at the hands of British interrogators. "I was astonished," Mr. Murray said in an interview. "It was as if the goal posts had moved. Their perspective had changed since Sept. 11."

A Foreign Office spokesman declined to address Mr. Murray's allegations. Last year, Mr. Murray resigned from the Foreign Office, which had investigated accusations that he mismanaged the embassy in Tashkent. An inquiry into those allegations was closed without any disciplinary action being taken against him.

The strategic partnership between Washington and Tashkent, based initially on the Americans' use of Uzbekistan's military base, was formalized at a March 2002 Oval Office meeting between President Bush and President Karimov. Muhammad Salih, the leader of Uzbekistan's pro-democracy Erk Democratic Party, who is living in exile in Germany, said the relationship had strengthened Mr. Karimov's hand.

"It's been a great opportunity for Karimov," Mr. Salih said. "But President Bush has to also think about human rights and democracy. If he wants to have a collaboration on antiterror matters, he should not close his eyes on other things that Uzbekistan is doing, like torture."

At a news conference last month, President Bush was asked what Uzbekistan could do in interrogating a suspect that the United States could not.

"We seek assurances that nobody will be tortured when we render a person back to their home country," Mr. Bush said.

The State Department and human rights groups have continued to report on human rights abuses against Uzbeks in prison.

The State Department's latest human rights report on Uzbekistan, issued in February, said: "Torture was common in prisons, pretrial facilities, and local police and security service precincts." In addition, the State Department report noted that in 2003 the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture "concluded that torture or similar ill-treatment was systematic."

Amnesty International and other groups have documented specific cases. In the summer of 2002, Amnesty International reported, Fatima Mukhadirova, a 62-year-old Tashkent shopkeeper, was sentenced to six years of hard labor after denouncing the government for the death of her son, Muzafar Avozov, in a Tashkent prison.

An independent examination of photographs of the body, conducted by the University of Glasgow, showed that Mr. Avozov died after being immersed in boiling water, human rights groups reported. The examination said his head had been beaten and his fingernails removed.

Human rights activists pressed for Ms. Mukhadirova's release. She was freed shortly before a planned visit by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld in February 2004.

Human rights activists say that the United States has a difficult balancing act to maintain in its dealings with Uzbekistan.

"The relationship between the U.S. and Uzbekistan is problematic," Ms. Gill of Human Rights Watch said. "It can be useful that the U.S. is powerful enough to push for certain concessions. That being said, the U.S. should not be saying that Karimov is a partner, is an ally, is a friend. The U.S. should send the message that Uzbekistan won't be considered to be a good ally of the United States unless it respects human rights at home."

The delicate diplomatic balance played out in the early spring of 2004, after a series of suicide bombings in Tashkent killed 47 people, many of them Uzbek police officers. The government cracked down against people on religious grounds, setting off international condemnation.

Three months later, despite the urgings of the Uzbek foreign minister, Sodik Safoyev, the State Department said it would cut $18 million in military and economic aid to Uzbekistan because of its failure to improve its human rights record.

But the next month, on Aug. 12, 2004, Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs, visited Tashkent. He met with President Karimov and other officials, and he announced that the Pentagon would provide an additional $21 million to help Uzbekistan in its campaign to remove its stockpile of biological weapons.

General Myers said the United States had "benefited greatly from our partnership and strategic relationship with Uzbekistan."

While he noted that there were genuine concerns about Uzbekistan's human rights record, General Myers said: "In my view, we shouldn't let any single issue drive a relationship with any single country. It doesn't seem to be good policy to me."

Souad Mekhennet contributed reporting from Frankfurt for this article, and Stephen Grey from London.

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Abramoff Breaks Silence About Investigations

washingtonpost.com
Abramoff Breaks Silence About Investigations

By David Finkel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 1, 2005; A07

Jack Abramoff, the Washington lobbyist who is under federal investigation for his lobbying activities on behalf of Indian tribes and is a central figure in separate probes into alleged ethical improprieties by his close friend House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), has begun publicly defending himself after months of silence.

In an interview with Time magazine, portions of which have been posted on the magazine's Web site in advance of tomorrow's publication date, Abramoff said the tribes that hired him for help with casino licensing applications and paid him tens of millions of dollars got their money's worth.


"The return on investment for these tribes, and all my clients, is far better than anything they or we could have imagined," Abramoff said. ". . . They realize that spending millions to save billions is just good business."

Abramoff called his Indian clients "sophisticated business people" in the interview, which is in stark contrast to terms he used in private e-mails, first disclosed in The Washington Post in its ongoing examination of Abramoff, in which he called them "stupid" and "moronic." In other e-mails, released by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, he referred to them as "idiots," "troglodytes" and "monkeys."

"I regret that in the heat of the locker room atmosphere of the lobbying world, I sometimes, rarely -- but sometimes -- I resorted to language more common to a drill sergeant or a football coach," Abramoff told Time. "Many of my e-mails have been maliciously taken out of context, another effort by those assaulting my career. As a result, I've been portrayed as a cynical barbarian preying on the very clients I was charged to defend."

Abramoff is being investigated in connection with allegations of kickbacks and influence peddling by the Interior and Justice departments and by two Senate committees.

In another article, published in today's New York Times Magazine, Abramoff called himself "an aggressive advocate for people who engaged me," and said, "I did this within a philosophical framework, and a moral and legal framework. And I have been turned into a cartoon of the greatest villain in the history of lobbying."

The Times article goes on to characterize Abramoff's life as "in shambles." A Washington delicatessen he opened in 2002 has closed. A private religious school he founded in 2001 in Columbia also has closed, and some of its teachers are suing him for unpaid wages. He also is being sued by a Louisiana tribe he represented, which seeks the return of $32 million it paid Abramoff and a business partner, public relations consultant Michael Scanlon.

DeLay was the one topic Abramoff would not talk about in any detail. Asked by the Times about his relationship with the man who once referred to Abramoff as "one of my closest and dearest friends," Abramoff answered by talking in general terms about the life of a Washington lobbyist. "There are probably two dozen events and fund-raisers every night," he said. "Lobbyists go on trips with members of Congress, socialize with members of Congress -- all with the purpose of increasing one's access to the decision makers.

"That is not unusual," he continued. "They've been made to seem unusual with me. Perhaps because they haven't pulled e-mails to see the various fund-raisers and golfing outings that [other lobbyists] have been engaged in."

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Cuomo warns of "tyranny of the majority"

USA TODAY

Cuomo warns of "tyranny of the majority"

NEW YORK (AP) — If Republicans rewrite Senate rules to more easily end filibusters, the country will experience "exactly the kind of 'tyranny of the majority' that James Madison had in mind," former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo said Saturday.

Cuomo, in the Democratic Party's weekly radio address, said Senate Republicans "are threatening to claim ownership of the Supreme Court and other federal courts, hoping to achieve political results on subjects like abortion, stem cells, the environment and civil rights that they cannot get from the proper political bodies."

"How will they do this? By destroying the so-called filibuster, a vital part of the 200-year-old system of checks and balances in the Senate," Cuomo said.

"The Republicans say it would assure dominance by the majority in the Senate," he said. "That sounds democratic until you remember that the Bill of Rights was adopted, as James Madison pointed out, to protect all of Americans from what he called the 'tyranny of the majority.'"


"It sounds nearly absurd when you learn that the minority Democrats in the Senate actually represent more Americans than the majority Republicans do," Cuomo said.

Democrats have blocked 10 of President Bush's appellate court choices through filibuster threats. Under current Senate rules, 60 votes are needed in the 100-member body to end a filibuster. Republicans are threatening to use their majority to change the rules and require only a simple majority vote to end a filibuster.

"The Republican senators should instead start working with the Democrats to address all the serious problems of this country in the proper forums — in the Congress and in the presidency — leaving the judges to be judges instead of a third political branch controlled by the whim of the politicians in power," Cuomo said.

Cuomo, who was leading in Democratic polls in late 1991 when he pulled the plug on a possible presidential bid, lost the New York governorship in 1994 as he sought a fourth term against current Republican Gov. George Pataki. He later turned down a chance to be considered by President Clinton for a Supreme Court seat.

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