Judging This Court

washingtonpost.com
Judging This Court

By George F. Will
Wednesday, June 8, 2005; A21

With the parties warring over the composition of the federal judiciary, and with a Supreme Court vacancy perhaps impending, Americans should use the court's end-of-term decisions as whetstones on which to sharpen their sense of the ambiguities in the categories -- "liberal," "conservative," "activist," "practitioner of judicial restraint" -- used when judges are discussed. Consider the case arising from the destruction, by agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration, of Diane Monson's homegrown marijuana plants, a case about which the court's two most conservative justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, disagreed.

Monson, and another woman using homegrown marijuana recommended by her doctors, sought an injunction against enforcement of the federal Controlled Substances Act. Both said they had a right to their plants under California's Compassionate Use Act. Passed overwhelmingly by referendum in 1996, that act allows marijuana use by individuals whose doctors recommend it for the relief of pain or nausea. But this law -- 10 other states have similar ones -- runs contrary to the federal statute.

The two women argued against enforcement of that law, saying that the private use of homegrown marijuana has nothing to do with interstate commerce; hence Congress has no constitutional power to regulate it. On Monday the Supreme Court disagreed. In a 6 to 3 ruling, the court held that Congress's claim to exclusive regulatory authority over drugs, legal and illegal, fell well within its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce. This was predictable, given what the court said 63 years ago about an Ohio farmer's 239 bushels of homegrown wheat.


That, used for food, seeds and feed for livestock, was raised and used entirely on Roscoe Filburn's farm. None of it entered intrastate, let alone interstate, commerce. So Filburn argued that although the 239 bushels exceeded his production quotas under the federal Agricultural Adjustment Act, they were none of the federal government's business, and he refused to pay the stipulated penalty.

A unanimous Supreme Court disagreed, arguing that the cumulative effect of even minor and local economic activities can have interstate consequences. The court said even a small quantity of grain "supplies a need of the man who grew it which would otherwise be reflected by purchases in the open market. Homegrown wheat in this sense competes with wheat in commerce." That said, clearly Congress's power under the Commerce Clause is vast enough to permit Congress to decide that the use of even homegrown marijuana can affect the interstate market.

Writing for Monday's majority, Justice John Paul Stevens, perhaps the most liberal justice, was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Anthony Kennedy. Scalia concurred separately. Stevens said that one does not need "a degree in economics to understand why a nationwide exemption" for large quantities of marijuana cultivated for personal use could have a "substantial impact on the interstate market" for a commodity that Congress aims to "conquer." Scalia, responding to the two women's and the court minority's invocation of states' sovereignty, cited a previous court ruling that Congress may regulate even when its regulation "may pre-empt express state-law determinations contrary to the result which has commended itself to the collective wisdom of Congress."

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a former Arizona state legislator, dissented, echoing Justice Louis Brandeis's judgment that federalism is supposed to allow a single state to be a "laboratory" to "try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." Her dissent was joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who wrote the court's opinion in a 1995 case that conservatives mistakenly hoped would signal substantial inhibitions on Congress in the name of federalism. In that case, the court overturned, as an invalid exercise of the power to regulate commerce, a federal law regulating the possession of guns near schools.

Thomas, the justice least respectful of precedents, joined O'Connor's dissent and also dissented separately, disregarding many precedents giving almost infinite elasticity to the Commerce Clause. He said that the women's marijuana was never bought or sold, never crossed state lines and had no "demonstrable" effect on the national market for marijuana: "If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything," including "quilting bees, clothes drives and potluck suppers." Thus "the federal government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers." But that has been the case at least since 1942.

In Monday's decision, which of the justices were liberal, which were conservative? Which exemplified judicial activism, which exemplified restraint? Such judgments are not as easy as many suppose.

georgewill@washpost.com

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Poll: Bush Performance Ratings Plummet

ABC News
Poll: Bush Performance Ratings Plummet
Concerns on Iraq and Domestic Policy Underlie a Rising Political Alienation
Analysis by Gary Langer

Jun. 7, 2005 - The corrosive effects of the war in Iraq and a growing disconnect on political priorities have pushed George W. Bush's performance ratings -- notably on terrorism -- to among the worst of his career, casting a pall over his second term and potentially over his party's prospects ahead.

For the first time, most Americans, 55 percent, say Bush has done more to divide than to unite the country. A career-high 52 percent disapprove of his job performance overall, and, in another first, a bare majority rates him unfavorably on a personal level. Most differ with him on issues ranging from the economy and Social Security to stem-cell research and nuclear power.

Iraq is a major thorn. With discontent over U.S. casualties at a new peak, a record 58 percent say the war there was not worth fighting. Nearly two-thirds think the United States has gotten bogged down in Iraq, up 11 points since March. Forty-five percent go so far as to foresee the equivalent of another Vietnam.

Fifty-two percent, the first majority to say so, think the Iraq war has failed to improve the long-term security of the United States, its fundamental rationale. As an extension -- and perhaps most hazardously in political terms -- approval of Bush's handling of terrorism, the base of his support, has lost 11 points since January to match its low, 50 percent in June 2004 when it was pressured both by the presidential campaign and the kidnapping and slaying of American Paul Johnson in Saudi Arabia.

All these underscore a broad sense of lost promise for the president: In January, 55 percent of Americans expected Bush to do a better job in his second term than in his first. Today, vastly fewer, 30 percent, say in fact he's doing so.

And even though they remain staunchly supportive, the letdown in expectations is biggest in Bush's own back yard, among Republicans.

Parties and Politics

These views are accompanied by a sense of alienation not just from the president but from both parties in Washington. Disapproval of Congress, at 54 percent, is its highest in more than six years, and six in 10 Americans say Bush and the Republicans, who control both Houses, are not making good progress in solving the nation's problems.

About as many also say neither Bush nor the Republicans are concentrating on what's important to them personally. And the Democrats in Congress barely fare better: Fifty-three percent say they're not concentrating on the right issues either.

On balance, Americans now slightly favor the Democrats over the Republicans, by 46 percent-41 percent, in trust to deal with the country's problems, the first Democratic advantage in this question, however slight, in ABC/Post polls since 9/11. Nonetheless, the Democrats seem to have capitalized only marginally at best on the current discontent. Fifty-six percent of Americans disapprove of the job performance of both parties in Congress, and both have seen their basic favorability ratings slide to about the 50-50 mark.

The impact on the still far-off 2006 mid-term elections is hardly clear. Whatever their views of Congress, Bush and the political parties, 61 percent approve of the way their own representative in Congress is handling his or her job. That is well above the low of 49 percent shortly before the earth-shaking midterms of 1994.

Current sentiment may give the Democrats an opportunity, but it's one they haven't yet seized to any notable extent. For Republican candidates, meanwhile, these results suggest the safest course may be at a respectful distance from the president.

Social Security

Among specific domestic issues, Social Security may best underscore Bush's difficulties. In terms of public attitudes, his assiduous sales campaign has come to naught: Sixty-two percent disapprove of his work on Social Security.

Support for a stock-market option, once the most attractive component of Bush's proposals, is stuck at about 50-50. And if establishing a stock-market option means reducing the growth of guaranteed benefits, support falls steeply, to just 27 percent.

Moreover, Americans perceive pain, but without gain, from the president's plans. Fifty-six percent think Bush's proposals would decrease the total amount of retirement income most seniors receive. Yet even more, 63 percent, do not believe the plan would improve the long-term financial stability of Social Security.

Young adults are more receptive than others to Bush's proposals; in particular, among those under 30 years old, 71 percent like the idea of a stock-market option. But even in this group, support falls to 40 percent if establishing a stock-market option required reducing the rate of growth in guaranteed benefits. And 57 percent of young adults think Bush's proposals would not improve the system's long-term finances.

More Issues

Handling the retirement system isn't the only domestic issue on which Bush has trouble. Ratings of the economy have grown a bit less sour -- 44 percent positive, up seven points from April -- and most people are optimistic about the economy in the year ahead. Yet a majority, 58 percent, disapproves of how Bush is handling it, one point from his career worst in March 2004.

Most, 55 percent, also disapprove of Bush's handling of the issue of stem-cell research, an issue he has chosen to highlight recently. And on energy policy, the public divides on allowing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- and by 64 percent-34 percent broadly oppose building new nuclear power plants. That represents a drop in support for more nuclear plants since 2001, contrary to Bush's efforts to promote their construction.

Another result underscores the conundrum Bush faces as 9/11 grows more distant: His success in preventing another terrorist attack on U.S. soil tends to move the issue down as a public priority. Just 12 percent call it the top issue facing the country, compared with 30 percent who cite the economy; 24 percent, Iraq; 16 percent, health care; and 13 percent, Social Security.

In what's likely a related result, Americans now divide, 50 percent-46 percent, on whether, as it conducts the war on terrorism, the United States is or is not doing enough to protect the rights of American citizens. In 2002 and 2003 polls, by contrast, anywhere from 61 percent to 74 percent said it was doing enough.

Previous polling has indicated that Americans are willing to sacrifice some rights and privacy in times of national crisis, but then tend to demand an end to any such intrusions as the crisis passes. To the extent that's beginning to occur, it opens the door for further skepticism about administration policy.

Faves

In a basic measure of personal popularity, 48 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Bush overall, 51 percent unfavorable, the first time he's gotten a majority unfavorable rating, however slightly.

Of two other political figures tested, Hillary Rodham Clinton has a rating of 51 percent-46 percent, favorable to unfavorable, marginally better than Bush's, but hardly powerful. Better overall is Sen. John McCain, with 57 percent favorable, 32 percent unfavorable. McCain, a Republican, and Clinton, a Democrat, are possible candidates for president in 2008.

McCain's favorability crosses ideological and party lines in a way Bush's and Clinton's do not -- a good profile for a general election campaign, but not necessarily for winning primaries. Indeed, reflecting his 2000 campaign difficulties, McCain is weaker among conservatives (48 percent favorable) than among moderates or liberals (63 percent and 62 percent, respectively), and conservatives account for a disproportionate share of Republican primary voters. Clinton, by contrast, is much more popular among liberals (75 percent favorable) than among moderates (55 percent) or conservatives (31 percent).

Groups

Roughly equal numbers of Americans in this survey identify themselves as Republicans (31 percent) and Democrats (30 percent). These groups very sharply differ on many of these issues; it's the center -- independents -- where some of Bush's negatives turn into majorities.

Overall, for instance, while 84 percent of Republicans approve of Bush's performance, just 38 percent of independents (and 21 percent of Democrats) agree. And intensity is greater on the negative side: Among all Americans, 38 percent disapprove "strongly" of Bush's performance, compared with 27 percent who approve strongly.

Ideology tells a similar story: Bush has 68 percent approval from conservatives, but that drops to 44 percent among moderates, and further among liberals, to 24 percent.

There are other gaps, including a huge regional difference: Sixty percent of Southerners approve of Bush's work, compared with 32 percent in the Northeast, and 44 percent in the Midwest and West alike.

On terrorism, the decline in Bush's ratings since April occurred among men (approval down 12 points) and non-whites (down 20 points). It's also fallen twice as far among independents, down 14 points, as among Democrats or Republicans.

As noted, the biggest letdown in expectations of Bush's second-term performance has been among Republicans: In January, 82 percent thought he'd do a better job; today, 44 percent say he is -- 38 points fewer. The letdown is 24 points among independents, and 17 points among Democrats, who had particularly low expectations.

Another result describes the increasing narrowness of Bush's support. The only population groups in which majorities say he's concentrating on issues that are important to them personally are Republicans, evangelical white Protestants, conservatives and better-off Americans, those with household incomes of $75,000 a year or more.

Methodology

This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by telephone June 2-5, 2005, among a random national sample of 1,002 adults. The results have a three-point error margin. Sampling, data collection and tabulation by TNS of Horsham, Pa.

Go to this link:
http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/983a1TermII.pdf
for a PDF version with full questionnaire and results.

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Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming

The New York Times
June 8, 2005
Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.


In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.

The dozens of changes, while sometimes as subtle as the insertion of the phrase "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties," tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust.

Mr. Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the office that helps devise and promote administration policies on environmental issues.

Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the "climate team leader" and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer with a bachelor's degree in economics, he has no scientific training.

The documents were obtained by The New York Times from the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit legal-assistance group for government whistle-blowers.

The project is representing Rick S. Piltz, who resigned in March as a senior associate in the office that coordinates government climate research. That office, now called the Climate Change Science Program, issued the documents that Mr. Cooney edited.

A White House spokeswoman, Michele St. Martin, said yesterday that Mr. Cooney would not be available to comment. "We don't put Phil Cooney on the record," Ms. St. Martin said. "He's not a cleared spokesman."

In one instance in an October 2002 draft of a regularly published summary of government climate research, "Our Changing Planet," Mr. Cooney amplified the sense of uncertainty by adding the word "extremely" to this sentence: "The attribution of the causes of biological and ecological changes to climate change or variability is extremely difficult."

In a section on the need for research into how warming might change water availability and flooding, he crossed out a paragraph describing the projected reduction of mountain glaciers and snowpack. His note in the margins explained that this was "straying from research strategy into speculative findings/musings."

Other White House officials said the changes made by Mr. Cooney were part of the normal interagency review that takes place on all documents related to global environmental change. Robert Hopkins, a spokesman for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, noted that one of the reports Mr. Cooney worked on, the administration's 10-year plan for climate research, was endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences. And Myron Ebell, who has long campaigned against limits on greenhouse gases as director of climate policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian group, said such editing was necessary for "consistency" in meshing programs with policy.

But critics said that while all administrations routinely vetted government reports, scientific content in such reports should be reviewed by scientists. Climate experts and representatives of environmental groups, when shown examples of the revisions, said they illustrated the significant if largely invisible influence of Mr. Cooney and other White House officials with ties to energy industries that have long fought greenhouse-gas restrictions.

In a memorandum sent last week to the top officials dealing with climate change at a dozen agencies, Mr. Piltz said the White House editing and other actions threatened to taint the government's $1.8 billion-a-year effort to clarify the causes and consequences of climate change.

"Each administration has a policy position on climate change," Mr. Piltz wrote. "But I have not seen a situation like the one that has developed under this administration during the past four years, in which politicization by the White House has fed back directly into the science program in such a way as to undermine the credibility and integrity of the program."

A senior Environmental Protection Agency scientist who works on climate questions said the White House environmental council, where Mr. Cooney works, had offered valuable suggestions on reports from time to time. But the scientist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because all agency employees are forbidden to speak with reporters without clearance, said the kinds of changes made by Mr. Cooney had damaged morale. "I have colleagues in other agencies who express the same view, that it has somewhat of a chilling effect and has created a sense of frustration," he said.

Efforts by the Bush administration to highlight uncertainties in science pointing to human-caused warming have put the United States at odds with other nations and with scientific groups at home.

Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who met with President Bush at the White House yesterday, has been trying to persuade him to intensify United States efforts to curb greenhouse gases. Mr. Bush has called only for voluntary measures to slow growth in emissions through 2012.

Yesterday, saying their goal was to influence that meeting, the scientific academies of 11 countries, including those of the United States and Britain, released a joint letter saying, "The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action."

The American Petroleum Institute, where Mr. Cooney worked before going to the White House, has long taken a sharply different view. Starting with the negotiations leading to the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty in 1997, it has promoted the idea that lingering uncertainties in climate science justify delaying restrictions on emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe gases.

On learning of the White House revisions, representatives of some environmental groups said the effort to amplify uncertainties in the science was clearly intended to delay consideration of curbs on the gases, which remain an unavoidable byproduct of burning oil and coal.

"They've got three more years, and the only way to control this issue and do nothing about it is to muddy the science," said Eileen Claussen, the president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a private group that has enlisted businesses in programs cutting emissions.

Mr. Cooney's alterations can cause clear shifts in meaning. For example, a sentence in the October 2002 draft of "Our Changing Planet" originally read, "Many scientific observations indicate that the Earth is undergoing a period of relatively rapid change." In a neat, compact hand, Mr. Cooney modified the sentence to read, "Many scientific observations point to the conclusion that the Earth may be undergoing a period of relatively rapid change."

A document showing a similar pattern of changes is the 2003 "Strategic Plan for the United States Climate Change Science Program," a thick report describing the reorganization of government climate research that was requested by Mr. Bush in his first speech on the issue, in June 2001. The document was reviewed by an expert panel assembled in 2003 by the National Academy of Sciences. The scientists largely endorsed the administration's research plan, but they warned that the administration's procedures for vetting reports on climate could result in excessive political interference with science.

Another political appointee who has played an influential role in adjusting language in government reports on climate science is Dr. Harlan L. Watson, the chief climate negotiator for the State Department, who has a doctorate in solid-state physics but has not done climate research.

In an Oct. 4, 2002 memo to James R. Mahoney, the head of the United States Climate Change Science Program and an appointee of Mr. Bush, Mr. Watson "strongly" recommended cutting boxes of text referring to the findings of a National Academy of Sciences panel on climate and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that periodically reviews research on human-caused climate change.

The boxes, he wrote, "do not include an appropriate recognition of the underlying uncertainties and the tentative nature of a number of the assertions."

While those changes were made nearly two years ago, recent statements by Dr. Watson indicate that the admnistration's position has not changed.

"We are still not convinced of the need to move forward quite so quickly," he told the BBC in London last month. "There is general agreement that there is a lot known, but also there is a lot to be known."

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Bush’s Downing Street Answer Raises More Questions

thinkprogress.org
Bush’s Downing Street Answer Raises More Questions

Thanks to the activity of the many bloggers who have argued strenuously that President Bush be asked about the Downing Street Memo, a question finally got asked this afternoon. Blair jumped to answer the question before Bush could get a chance. And he proceeded to deliver the talking point of the day: the Downing Street Memo was written before the U.S. went to the U.N. Your first question might be: what does that have to do with anything? Answer: nothing. Either the intelligence was being fixed or it wasn’t.

President Bush, for his part, never rejects the idea that the intelligence was being fixed around his policy of attacking Iraq. (Wouldn’t that be the most damaging claim you’d want to rebut?) Instead, Bush takes the same tact as Blair and emphasized that he hadn’t gone to the U.N. at the time the memo was written. Bush’s argument appears to be that, because the administration had not yet gone to the U.N., there’s no way he could have already decided to attack Iraq.

Upon closer examination, however, the U.N. process itself strongly indicated that Bush had already made up his mind. Consider:


1) Bush never wanted to go the U.N. in the first place to get Resolution 1441

Ex: Bush derided any talk of delaying for UN resolution, saying opponents were waiting “for somebody else to act”
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/iraq/bal-te.bush14sep14,1,4848849.story?coll=bal-iraq-storyutil&ctrack=1&cset=true

2) Bush claimed the resolution never prevented him from attacking Iraq

Ex: Bush: “[T]he resolution does not prevent us from doing what needs to be done.”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/11/20021113-1.html

3) After claiming he would get a 2nd resolution before attacking Iraq, Bush recognized he had little support for it and instead dashed off to war with his “coalition of the willing”

Ex: Bush said he would ask countries to “show their cards” by calling for a vote on a 2nd U.N. resolution, but he dropped that call after seeing little support.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030306-8.html

4) Bush made it clear the U.N. wouldn’t impact his timeline

Ex: Bush: “This is a matter of weeks, not months. Any attempt to drag the process on for months will be resisted by the United States.”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030131-23.html

originally published Jun 7, 2005 6:55PM

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Senate panel OKs sweeping FBI subpoena powers

Reuters

Senate panel OKs sweeping FBI subpoena powers
Tue Jun 7, 2005 9:37 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday sided with the White House by proposing broad new subpoena powers for the FBI to use in counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations, officials said.

After hours of secret deliberations, the oversight panel voted 11-4 to send to the full Senate a proposal that would give the FBI the power to subpoena without judicial approval a wide range of personal documents ranging from health and library records to tax statements.

The bill would add the subpoena powers to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs federal investigations of foreign intelligence and terrorist activities. Officials said the FBI already exercises the same subpoena powers in criminal investigations.

The legislation approved by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence also would make permanent intelligence-related sections of the USA Patriot Act that are scheduled to expire at the end of the year.

Top administration officials including President Bush, have called for administrative subpoena power as an investigative tool to combat terrorism.

But rights activists such as the American Civil Liberties Union have warned that the new powers pose a chilling threat to the constitutional rights of individuals.


Tuesday's vote sent the measure to the Senate floor. But the Senate Judiciary Committee, which also has oversight authority on the Patriot Act and related legislation, was expected to assume control of the measure as part of its own reauthorization proceedings.

Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, the intelligence committee's chairman, issued a statement saying the legislation had been approved with "strong bipartisan support" from the seven Democrats and eight Republicans on the panel.

The committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, said he supported the measure, even though he criticized the new subpoena power as overly broad.

"The use of this new subpoena power should be the exception, not the rule. Regrettably, the bill places no such restriction on the issuance of administrative subpoenas," Rockefeller said in a statement.

Roberts and Rockefeller said the bill would provide more safeguards under a provision of the Patriot Act that allows federal authorities to subpoena business records.

Congressional officials have predicted that administrative subpoena powers would render the Patriot Act's more narrowly defined business records provision obsolete within a year.

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Katherine Harris to Run for Senate in 2006

ABC News
Katherine Harris to Run for Senate in 2006
Fla. Rep. Katherine Harris to Run for Senate in 2006 Against Bill Nelson
By BRENDAN FARRINGTON
The Associated Press

Jun. 8, 2005 - Republican Rep. Katherine Harris, who as Florida's secretary of state was both praised and vilified for her part in the 2000 presidential recount, said Tuesday she will run for the Senate next year against Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson.

Her announcement brings a major name to the race along with the potential to attract huge infusions of cash from Republicans and Democrats alike because she is such a polarizing figure.

"The time has come to launch a campaign for the U.S. Senate," Harris told The Associated Press.

Harris, 48, is serving her second term in Congress. She is considered a top fundraiser and is a popular figure among Republicans.

But she is also despised by some Democrats for her role in overseeing the recount that ultimately gave Florida and the White House to George W. Bush over Al Gore. And her entry into the race could galvanize Democratic voters and contributors.


She considered running for the Senate last year after Democrat Bob Graham announced his retirement, but decided to sit it out. Republicans feared a Harris candidacy would produce a big turnout among angry Democrats and hurt President Bush's chances of carrying Florida and its crucial 27 electoral votes.

Harris' entry into the 2006 race should make it a lightning rod for money and national attention, analysts said. It also is expected to boost voter turnout in a state that had 4.26 million registered Democrats and 3.89 million registered Republicans as of October.

"Democrats would turn out in force for Bill Nelson in any event, but they will turn out in greater numbers because they don't like Katherine Harris," said Aubrey Jewett, a University of Central Florida political science professor. "But Republicans are going to turn out in greater numbers for her because she is seen as a hero."

Nelson is considered a moderate with the ability to attract crossover voters. He has focused on issues including opposition to oil drilling off Florida's Gulf Coast and support of the space program a priority of his ever since he rode aboard the shuttle Columbia in 1986, when he represented Florida in Congress.

Republicans have said they believe Nelson is beatable. An April poll of 1,044 likely voters from both parties showed 35 percent would like to see Nelson win a second term while 37 percent said they would prefer another person. He received approval from 50 percent of those polled, while 17 disapproved and a third didn't know.

"Sen. Nelson is very vulnerable and this race will continue to attract the attention of a lot of candidates for that reason," said National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Brian Nick. The committee "is committed to winning this seat and will put in the necessary resources to do so."

In 2000, while Harris was Florida secretary of state, Bush won a 537-vote victory over Gore after a dispute that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. While Democrats accused Harris of partisanship in her handling of the recount, she became the darling of GOP activists and got elected to Congress in 2002.

In an interview with The Associated Press earlier this year, Harris said of her handling of the recount: "Every decision we made was totally based in law."

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Hillary Clinton Slams Bush Administration

CBS 2 - New York News | cbsnewyork.com
Hillary Clinton Slams Bush Administration

* Says Administration Is Intent On Abusing Power

Jun 7, 2005 1:10 pm US/Eastern

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized the Bush administration’s record on unemployment, women’s rights and the environment, saying it is “intent upon consolidating and abusing power.”

“We are living in a time when the other side doesn’t want us to see the facts. Facts are inconvenient—facts about global warming, facts about mercury in the air, facts about people staying unemployed longer,” said Clinton, considered a Democratic contender for the presidency in 2008.

The former first lady spoke Monday at a New York Women for Hillary breakfast, which raised $250,000 for her 2006 Senate re-election campaign. She leads potential GOP Senate opponents 2-to-1 in recent polls.

“There has never been an administration, I don’t believe, in our history more intent upon consolidating and abusing power to further their own agenda,” she said of President Bush, “Whether it’s the right to organize and be part of the American labor movement ... whether it’s the right to be able to be have a choice when it comes to the most private and intimate decisions that a woman has to make, whether it is to protect the environment -- whatever it is that we slowly but surely built up during the 20th century, this current administration and their allies in Congress want to turn the clock back on all of that,” Clinton said.


A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee compared Clinton’s comments to recent criticism by Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean.

“It’s too bad that New York’s senator is now taking her cues from someone who thinks personal attacks are a substitute for an agenda,” RNC press secretary Tracey Schmitt said.

Clinton and her aides maintain that her focus is on winning a second Senate term in 2006, not chasing the White House in 2008. But Republicans say her sights clearly are on the presidency.

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John Kerry: 'D Stood For Distinction'

CBS 2 - New York News | cbsnewyork.com
John Kerry: 'D Stood For Distinction'

* Kerry’s Yale Grades Were Similar To Bush’s

Sen. John F. Kerry’s grade average at Yale University was virtually identical to President Bush’s record there, despite repeated portrayals of Kerry as the more intellectual candidate during the 2004 presidential campaign.

Kerry had a cumulative average of 76 and got four Ds his freshman year—in geology, two history courses and political science, The Boston Globe reported Tuesday.

His grades improved with time, and he averaged an 81 his senior year and earned an 89 -- his highest grade—in political science as a senior.

“I always told my dad that D stood for distinction,” Kerry said in a written response to reporters’ questions. He said he has previously acknowledged focusing more on learning to fly than studying.


Under Yale’s grading system in effect at the time, grades between 90 and 100 equaled an A, 80-89 a B, 70-79 a C, 60 to 69 a D, and anything below that was a failing grade.

In 1999, The New Yorker magazine published a transcript showing Bush had a cumulative grade average of 77 his first three years at Yale, and a similar average under a non-numerical rating system his senior year.

Bush’s highest grade at Yale was an 88 in anthropology, history and philosophy. He received one D in his four years, a 69 in astronomy, and improved his grades after his freshman year, the transcript showed.

Kerry, a Democrat, previously declined to release the transcript, which was included in his Navy records. He gave the Navy permission to release the documents last month, the Globe reported.

Kerry graduated from Yale in 1966, Bush in 1968.

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Did the Mainstream Media Get the Memo?

huffingtonpost.com
Rep. John Conyers: Did the Mainstream Media Get the Memo?

For the past few weeks, I and others on this blog (including its propreitor) have lamented the lack of mainstream media coverage of the Downing Street Minutes [which has been reported on numerous times here at "The Truth About Political Stuff" http://political-stuff.blogspot.com ]. Looking in from the outside of the networks and newspapers, we have been left to surmise just what the problem really is. On a story with constitutional implications, with life and death consequences, there was first silence. Then, there was a story here and there, but no meaningful, dogged and sustained coverage. What gives?

First, this morning, I came across an insightful column on this matter from a reporter named Jefferson Morley on Washingtonpost.com. For those of you who still get our news from a paper copy with a cup of coffee, don't bother -- it isn't in the Post today, just online. Mr. Morley's beat is covering the foreign press for the Post.

A couple of quotes from his column (and then on to the startling part): "It's not hard to see why this remarkable document, published in The Times on May 1 (and reported in this column on May 3), continues to attract reader interest around the world." At the end: "Far from being a dud, the Downing Street Memo may generate more stories to come." Great column. And why couldn't I read this in the Post this morning?

Mr. Morley answered my question later in the day, in an online chat at Washingtonpost.com. The exchanges with readers speak for themselves and I urge you to read the chat in its entirety. A few stunners:

When asked why there has been so little coverage of the Downing Street Minutes here in the United States, Morley replies: "I think some combination of cynicism, complacency and insulation has stifled the instincts of very good reporters. I also think there is also a failure of leadership at the senior editorial level. The issues raised by the Downing Street minutes are very serious. To pursue them is to invite confrontation. This means that 'beat' reporters cannot realistically pursue the story. I say all this way of explanation, not rationalization. There are several natural followup stories to the Downing Street memo that we should be pursuing right now."


Later he says: "I think its because the Washington press corps is oriented around "news" as generated by the White House and the executive branch. When it comes to Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, the White House and the Congress have settled on the following narrative: that the U.S. government had every reason to fear the nexus of Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, that the intelligence community agreed that Hussein had WMD and therefore war was not only justified but necessary.

The Downing Street Memo invites the thought that maybe that was illusory, that in fact people in the Bush administration were having meetings dedicated to figuring how, as Richard Dearlove said, 'fix the facts and the intelligence.' I think its hard to journalist's born and bred in the ways of Washington to contemplate the implications."

This is a stunning account of the way our media has slid backwards from the days of Woodward and Bernstein. I'll let his candid remarks speak for themselves on that.

I would simply ask: after the abject failure of the media to expose the myth of WMD and Iraq, the cheerleading coverage of "embedded" reporters, and the transmission of propaganda to the American people (see Jessica Lynch story, Pat Tillman's tragic death, and the toppling of Saddam's statue), aren't we owed some good, sustained and thorough reporting on this?

A reader asks whether a Post reporter will ask about the Downing Street Minutes during the joint Bush-Blair appearances in Washington this week. Morley's reply: "If Post reporters don't ask Blair about the memo, they have abdicated responsibility in my view."

What more can I add to that?

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WSJ falsely claimed Democratic senators joined Bolton in exaggerating Syria weapons threat

mediamatters.org
WSJ falsely claimed Democratic senators joined Bolton in exaggerating Syria weapons threat

In an effort to defend John R. Bolton from charges that he overstated the threat of Syria's weapons of mass destruction, a June 6 Wall Street Journal editorial claimed that his Democratic critics in the Senate endorsed the same claims as Bolton when they voted for 2003 legislation on Syria. But the 2003 Syria Accountability Act quoted language about Syria's weapons programs that the intelligence community had officially vetted and released to the public, while Bolton, President Bush's nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, planned to make allegations in 2003 congressional testimony that went beyond what the intelligence community supported, according to The New York Times.

The Journal attacked Sens. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-DE) and Christopher Dodd (D-CT), both critics of Bolton who claimed he intended to exaggerate the threat posed by Syria's weapons programs:

As it happens, Messrs. Dodd and Biden both voted in favor of the 2003 Syrian [sic] Accountability Act. That law explicitly cites an unclassified CIA report that Syria "already holds a stockpile of the nerve agent sarin but apparently is trying to develop more toxic and persistent nerve agents. ..." The law also notes that "Syria also is developing an offensive [biological weapons] capability." We guess this means our Democratic friends are also guilty of overstating the evidence on Syria.

In fact, though the full text of Bolton's controversial draft statement on Syria is not publicly available, news reports indicate that his claims went considerably beyond what the intelligence community supported. The 2003 Syria Accountability Act quoted an unclassified CIA report stating that Syria had chemical agents and was probably developing offensive biological weapons capabilities. By contrast, "The C.I.A. specifically rejected an assertion in a classified section of Mr. Bolton's prepared testimony saying Syria had a biological and chemical weapons program that threatened regional security in the Middle East," the Times reported on April 29, citing intelligence officials' testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.


Bolton's planned testimony provoked resistance from Robert L. Hutchings, then-director of the National Intelligence Council (NIC). The NIC drafts National Intelligence Estimates, which "contain the coordinated judgments of the Intelligence Community" and that the NIC calls the "most authoritative written judgments concerning national security issues." Hutchings "directed his staff in 2003 to strongly resist assertions that John R. Bolton sought to make about Syria's weapons programs," the Times reported.

A May 10 Times article quoted Hutchings saying that in his approach to Syria, Bolton "took isolated facts and made much more of them to build a case than I thought the intelligence warranted," and engaged in "a sort of cherry-picking of little factoids and little isolated bits that were drawn out to present the starkest-possible case."

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Russert failed to correct Mehlman's claim that 9-11 Commission, Senate report "totally discredited" Downing Street Memo

mediamatters.org
Russert failed to correct Mehlman's claim that 9-11 Commission, Senate report "totally discredited" Downing Street Memo

On the June 5 edition of NBC's Meet the Press, moderator Tim Russert questioned but failed to correct Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman's claim that the "findings" of the Downing Street Memo, a secret British intelligence memo suggesting that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to support its case for war in Iraq, "have been totally discredited by everyone who's looked at it," including the 9-11 Commission and the Senate.

In fact, neither the 9-11 Commission nor the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence addressed the Bush administration's use of pre-war intelligence.

In the same appearance, Russert also failed to correct Mehlman when he made the misleading claim that the Bush administration "is the first administration ever that has funded with federal dollars embryonic stem cell research. In fact, Bush's stem cell policy replaced a less restrictive set of rules issued by the Clinton administration, though those rules had yet to take effect.



When Russert raised the issue of the Downing Street Memo's contention that, in the Bush administration's push for war in Iraq, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," Mehlman replied: "Tim, that report has been discredited by everyone else who's looked at it since then. Whether it's the 9-11 Commission, whether it's the Senate, whoever's looked at this has said there was no effort to change the intelligence at all." When Russert noted "I don't believe that the authenticity of this report has been discredited," Mehlman reiterated: "I believe that the findings of the report, the fact that the intelligence was somehow fixed, have been totally discredited by everyone who's looked at it."

The Senate Intelligence committee's report examined the creation of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which was the intelligence community's most comprehensive and authoritative statement about Iraq. But the committee decided at the outset not to investigate the Bush administration's use of intelligence, including public statements by administration officials, in the first phase of its investigation.

Though the committee initially planned to conduct the second phase of its investigation following the 2004 election, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) indicated in March that the committee's investigation into whether the administration misrepresented intelligence judgments in its public statements would be indefinitely postponed, because of administration officials' insistence that "they believed the intelligence, and the intelligence was wrong." "[W]e sort of came to a crossroads, and that is basically on the back burner," Roberts said.

The 9-11 Commission report said even less about the Bush administration's use of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war. The 567-page report focuses entirely on issues surrounding the September 11 terrorist attacks, addresses Iraq only in the context of Al Qaeda and September 11, and does not assess the accuracy or honesty of the Bush's public statements about the Iraqi threat.

Other official reports have similarly avoided the question of whether the Bush administration politicized intelligence. The Robb-Silberman commission's report on intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction noted: "[W]e were not authorized to investigate how policymakers used the intelligence assessments they received from the Intelligence Community." The Duelfer report presented the results of the Iraq Survey Group's hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq following the invasion but did not compare these findings either with Bush's prewar statements to the public or with the prewar assessments of the intelligence community.

The British inquiry into prewar assessments of Iraq's weapons program, known as the Butler report, determined that Bush's 2003 State of the Union address claim that the "British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" was "well-founded," but did not examine the administration's other uses of intelligence. But despite the report's findings, Bush's statement clearly contradicted the judgments of the U.S. intelligence community: in a statement released in July 2003, then-CIA Director George Tenet said agency officials "differed with the British dossier on the reliability of the uranium reporting."

Beyond the Downing Street Memo, other evidence indicates that the Bush administration misused intelligence. For example, as Media Matters for America has documented, accounts by Bush administration and U.N. intelligence officials and consultants, documented by CBS News, the Associated Press, and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, indicate that the administration and CIA were aware at the time that much of the information provided in former Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 5, 2003, speech to the United Nations Security Council was suspect.

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China Orders All Web Sites to Register

ABC News
China Orders All Web Sites to Register
Chinese Authorities Orders All Web Sites, Blogs to Register With Government or Face Closure
By ELAINE KURTENBACH
The Associated Press

Jun. 7, 2005 - Authorities have ordered all China-based Web sites and blogs to register or be closed down, in the latest effort by the communist government to police the world of cyberspace.

Commercial publishers and advertisers can face fines of up to 1 million yuan ($120,000) for failing to register, according to documents posted on the Web site of the Ministry of Information Industry.

Private, noncommercial bloggers or Web sites must register the complete identity of the person responsible for the site, it said. The ministry, which has set a June 30 deadline for compliance, said 74 percent of all sites had already registered.

"The Internet has profited many people but it also has brought many problems, such as sex, violence and feudal superstitions and other harmful information that has seriously poisoned people's spirits," the MII Web site said in explaining the rules, which were quietly introduced in March.

All public media in China is controlled by the state, though limits on the Internet have tended to lag behind as advances in technology and the Web's rapid spread outstripped Beijing's ability to keep tabs on users and service providers.

China has more than 87 million Internet users, the world's second largest online population after the United States.

The government has long required all major commercial Web sites to register and take responsibility for Internet content at least 54 people have been jailed for posting essays or other content deemed subversive online.


But blogs, online diaries, muckraking Web sites and dissident publishing have been harder to police. According to cnblog.org, a Chinese Web log host company, the country has about 700,000 such sites.

Now, however, the government has developed a new system to track down and close those caught violating the rules, the ministry said.

"There's a 'Net Crawler System' that will monitor the sites in real time and search each Web address for its registration number," said one document listing questions and answers about the new rules. "It will report back to the MII if it finds a site thought to be unregistered."

The press advocacy group Reporters Without Borders protested the new rules, saying they would force people with dissenting opinions to shift Web sites overseas, where mainland Chinese users might be unable to access them due to government censorship filters.

The Paris-based group said that in May, many bloggers in China received e-mail messages telling them to register to avoid having their blogs declared illegal.

"Those who continue to publish under their real names on sites hosted in China will either have to avoid political subjects or just relay the Communist Party's propaganda," the rights group said. "This decision will enable those in power to control online news and information much more effectively."

The latest restrictions follow many others. Authorities have closed down thousands of Internet cafes the main entry to the Web for many Chinese unable to afford a computer or Internet access.

They've also installed surveillance cameras and begun requiring visitors to Shanghai Internet cafes to register using their official identity cards all in an effort to keep tabs on who's seeing and saying what online.

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Judge Upholds Democrat's Win in Washington

ABC News
Judge Upholds Democrat's Win in Washington
Judge Upholds Democrat's Win in Race for Governor of Washington State; Republican Ends Challenge
By REBECCA COOK
The Associated Press

Jun. 7, 2005 - Gov. Christine Gregoire said she burst into tears in her office, surrounded by her senior staff, after watching a judge 125 miles away uphold her victory in last fall's governor's election, ending the legal fight over the closest gubernatorial race in U.S. history.

"It's an emotional day, it's an emotional moment," said Gregoire, a Democrat who has held office for five months under a cloud of uncertainty. "I'm ready to move on. I want the state of Washington to be served by a full-time governor who is not being distracted by anything other than serving the citizens."

Defeated GOP candidate Dino Rossi said he would not appeal.


"With today's decision, and because of the political makeup of the Washington State Supreme Court, which makes it almost impossible to overturn this ruling, I am ending the election contest," Rossi said at his campaign headquarters in Bellevue.

The election decided by an amazingly narrow margin of 129 votes out of 2.9 million cast included 1,678 illegally cast ballots, Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges found.

But in a ruling issued in his Wenatchee courtroom, Bridges rejected GOP claims that the election was stolen through errors and fraud, and said Republicans had failed to prove that Rossi would have won had the illegal votes been disregarded.

"Unless an election is clearly invalid, when the people have spoken their verdict should not be disturbed by the courts," Bridges said. Nullifying the election, he said, would be "the ultimate act of judicial egotism and judicial activism."

The judge threw out only a few illegally cast votes, which raised Gregoire's margin of victory to 133.

The Republicans were hoping the judge would nullify the election and then either declare Rossi the winner outright or open the way for a new election in the fall.

"I continue to believe that mounting this election challenge, and shining the lights on the various problems of our election system, was the right thing to do," Rossi said at a late afternoon news conference.

It's been widely speculated that Rossi will run for the U.S. Senate next year, if not governor in 2008. But he offered no clues Monday, saying "I'm definitely not going anywhere ... We'll see you again."

Rossi, a real estate agent and former state senator, was considered a long shot last November against Gregoire, who was Washington's attorney general.

Rossi won the first count by 261 votes, then watched his lead shrink to 42 in a machine recount. In a hand recount completed in late December, Gregoire was pronounced the winner by 129 votes the smallest margin of victory in percentage terms of any statewide election in the nation's history. Five days before Gregoire's inauguration, Rossi sued to contest the election.

Since then, Washington's residents have awaited the final word on their governor.

Preschool teacher Karen Servey, 54, was in the state Capitol leading a school trip tour when she heard of the judge's ruling.

"I was relieved," she said, sitting in the Senate's public gallery. "I think it would have cost the taxpayers a lot of money to go through another election process."

Shaun Gravatte, who also voted for Gregoire, disagreed. "It was too close," he said. "Of course there should be a revote."

Monday's ruling came after a two-week trial that turned over flaws and quirks in election departments around the state.

The Republicans argued that large numbers of votes were illegally cast by felons or cast in the names of dead people; that there were errors in the counting of ballots; and that there was stuffing of the ballot box and destruction of ballots. They concentrated their attacks on Seattle's heavily Democratic King County, the state's most populous.

While Republicans characterized the problems as "sinister," Democrats described them as innocent mistakes that happen in every county, in every election.

Bridges acknowledged that the state's election system is flawed, but said he's not the person to fix it.

"The voters are in a position to demand of their legislative and executive bodies that remedial measures be taken immediately," he said.

On the Net:

Video of the trial is available at: http://www.tvw.org

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Preventing ID Theft

ABC News
Mellody Hobson: Preventing ID Theft
How Can You Protect Your Financial Identity?
By MELLODY HOBSON

Jun. 7, 2005 - The announcement from Citigroup that it lost 3.9 million customer data files should cause all of us to take pause about the safety of our financial identity. This announcement comes only a couple of months after Bank of America lost information on 1.2 million customers. While there is nothing you can do to prevent your financial institution from losing computer data storage tapes, there are a number of proactive measures you can take to protect your identity.


1) Do not count on corporate America to notify you.
Only one state (California) has laws that require a company to notify individuals if their personal information has been possibly stolen. Therefore, you need to be proactive in monitoring your credit history.

2) Keep an eye on your credit.
Take advantage of the recent law that allows consumers to order a free copy of their credit report (will make it to the East Coast this spring). According to the Public Interest Research Group, one in four credit reports has errors that are serious enough to disqualify consumers from opening a bank account, purchasing a home home or evening getting a job! Citigroup is encouraging its customers to enroll in a free credit monitoring service for 90 days.

3) Take proactive steps with anything personal you do online.
For example, when paying your bills online, it is vital to make sure your computer is armed with the most up-to-date anti-virus software as well as some type of security or firewall protection. Most sites require a password and PIN which only work when your Internet browser is secure and up-to-date.

4) Do not leave your footprints.
Do not check the box that says save password and delete the cookies from your browser often. When banking online, do not save your information. You would not leave your drivers license and bank account information with a teller when you visit a bank, so do not leave this information on the Internet!

5) Consider identity theft insurance.
The major credit bureaus are now offering identity-theft insurance for around $100 a year. For example, Equifax will provide you with unlimited credit reports, alert you to major changes in your history and provide $20,000 worth of identity-theft insurance. Additionally, policy holders will have a special hotline they can call if their identity is stolen and are also entitled to up to $4,000 for lost salary in case you have to take a leave of absence to fix any credit-related issues. Before you sign up for this insurance, contact the provider of your homeowner's insurance as you may already be covered if your identity is stolen.

Citigroup on Monday said the lost data files only affect accounts with CitiFinancial. If you have one of these accounts and are concerned your identity may have been compromised, you should call your local CitiFinancial branch. Additionally, you can call the dedicated hotline Citi has set up at 1-866-452-2484.

How To Avoid Being 'Phished'

Do not use Web links in a suspicious e-mail to access a Web page. Instead, call the company or type the main Web address directly into your browser.

Do not disclose personal information online unless it is over a secure connection. You know a Web site is secure if it begins with https:// rather than http://.

Download a free Web browser toolbar that will alert you if you try to access a known phishing Web site. The Anti-Phishing Working Group recommends Earthlink's ScamBlocker, which can be downloaded for free at http://www.earthlink.net/earthlinktoolbar.

Check your credit card and bank statements and other online accounts regularly to ensure there are no discrepancies.

Make sure your computer has the most up-to-date security patches.

If you receive phishing e-mails, forward the entire message, header included, to the following places:

1) Anti-Phishing Working Group: reportphishing@antiphishing.com
2) Federal Trade Commission: sapm@uce.gov

Additionally, you should file a complaint with the Internet Fraud Complaint Center of the FBI (www.ifccfbi.gov) and notify the company that has been victimized.

Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Capital Management (arielmutualfunds.com) in Chicago, is Good Morning America's personal finance expert. Ariel associates Matthew Yale and Aimee Daley contributed to this report.

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Letter to Pres Bush Concerning the "Downing Street Minutes"

Letter to Pres Bush Concerning the "Downing Street Minutes"

As you may know, 89 Members of Congress, led by Rep. John Conyers, Jr., submitted a Letter to Pres Bush Concerning the "Downing Street Minutes" on May 5, 2005. That letter has not yet been responded to. There is now a petition asking President Bush to "publicly respond to these questions as promptly as possible" and, as of this writing, over 150,000 citizens have signed it.

To read the letter and sign the petition, click below to get to the link.


Here is the link to the letter and petition:
http://johnconyers.campaignoffice.com/index.asp?Type=SUPERFORMS&SEC={422D9DF8-7BED-48D2-8702-EA7BE2878006}

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Experts Warn of Intelligence Confusion

Yahoo! News
Experts Warn of Intelligence Confusion

By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer

Overlapping responsibilities among U.S. intelligence agencies could lead to failures in assessing terror threats, experts said Monday in examining changes at the CIA and FBI since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Part of the problem stems from the continued lack of a reliable information-sharing system within the intelligence community, according to panelists led by a member of the 9/11 Commission that investigated missteps leading to the attacks.

"There's a real vulnerability," former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh said during the two-hour discussion — the first of eight panels hosted this summer by the commission.

"The collection of intelligence, and even its analysis, is not worth much if it's not able to be translated into a realistic threat assessment that provide guidance for the application of resources designed to prevent terrorism," Thornburgh said.


Commission member Jamie S. Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general, said, "We clearly need greater clarity as to who is doing what."

The panel discussions will culminate July 25 with a privately financed report card on how the government has responded to the commission recommendations issued last summer. The 10-member, bipartisan commission interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, including President Bush, and reviewed more than 2 million documents before issuing its weighty report last July.

Monday's panel focused on reforms at the CIA and the FBI's counterterror unit to prevent future attacks. Though experts said both agencies have made progress, they agreed many more steps need to be taken.

The FBI, in particular, faces an array of challenges, including high personnel turnover and a low internal regard for counterterror analysts, said John Gannon, a former CIA official.

"Within FBI, if you are not an agent, you are furniture," Gannon said.

The panel also criticized the FBI's failed Virtual Case File computer system that was supposed to improve greatly the management of terrorism and other criminal cases.

"I think that we have been taken aback collectively by the failure of the Virtual Case File," Gorelick said. Thornburgh called the system "an unmitigated failure." An FBI spokesman declined to comment.

Despite congressional mandates, intelligence agencies still struggle to share information with each other, Gannon said.

"You don't go to work every day in the intelligence community with the idea, 'What can I share?' It's 'What can I protect?'" he said. "And that is the idiom of the business. So if you want information to be shared, it has to be very clear to people what authorities they do have to share."

Relatives of Sept. 11 victims accused the FBI and CIA of intentionally refusing to share intelligence that could have thwarted the attacks.

"The ongoing myth that the CIA's failure to communicate with the FBI was some sort of institutional failure that is readily fixable by intelligence community reforms is a notion that is whimsical at best and extremely harmful to our nation at worst," said a statement by the Sept. 11 Advocates.

Each of the seven upcoming commission panels will focus on a specific aspect of homeland defense, including protection against weapons of mass destruction, border and transportation security measures and foreign policy and diplomatic relations.

• __

On the Net:

9/11 Public Discourse Project: http://www.9-11pdp.org/

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Fox News Admits It's In Bed With Karl Rove

newshounds.us
Fox News Admits It's In Bed With Karl Rove

Did you know that Fox News is a "private channel"? That's what Fox's London bureau chief, Scott Norvell said in an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal Europe on May 20, 2005. He also wrote this:

"Even we at Fox News manage to get some lefties on the air occasionally, and often let them finish their sentences before we club them to death and feed the scraps to Karl Rove and Bill O'Reilly."

Here's more from Slate.


Comment: What unmitigated arrogance. (l) If Fox thinks it's a "private channel" it should get its butt off the public airwaves owned by each and every citizen of this country. (2) I'm glad Fox has finally admitted it cuts off, talks over, and generally makes "lefties" look bad when they appear there. We've been writing about that for a year now, and Outfoxed illustrated it, all while Fox innocently denied doing any such thing. (3) No, people don't always "know what they're getting." We get endless letters here from people who absolutely insist that Fox News is the only "fair and balanced" network on television. That's the danger of Fox. Fox brainwashes people while it simultaneously convinces them that it's "fair and balanced." If Fox wants to make sure people "know what they're getting," it should immediately drop the "fair and balanced" line and come up with something new, like "Watch Fox. We Propagandize for the Radical Right."

It looks like we News Hounds, and a lot of other people, have had Fox's number for quite some time now. Thank you Mr. Norvell for confirming it. Now that the truth is out, maybe we can get on with making sure everyone knows "what they're getting" when they watch your "news."

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Estate Tax Malarkey

factcheck.org
Estate Tax Malarkey

Misleading ads exaggerate what the tax costs farmers, small businesses
and "your family."

Summary

In TV and radio ads two conservative groups greatly overstate the
burden that the federal estate tax puts on heirs to a family farm or
business.

One ad claims the federal estate tax "can bury your family in crippling
tax bills," which is untrue for nearly all of those who will see the
ad, including the large majority of farm and business owners. Both ads
claim the estate tax is a "double tax," which is only partly true, and
mostly false when it comes to very wealthy families.



We take no position on whether the estate tax should or should not be
repealed permanently. The claims made in these one-sided ads, however,
present a misleading picture of who is actually affected by the tax.


Go to the link below for the entire article:

http://www.factcheck.org/article328m.html

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Nixon's henchmen lecture us on ethics

EDITOR's NOTE:
If you or someone you know are not old enough to have actually lived through the Nixon administration and the Watergate scandal, you need to read this article or pass it along to those you know who have no clue of context.

Let me bring a specific paragraph from the below article to the front here:

Lost in the wailings of Nixon's men is the one thing Americans need to know to understand Felt's dilemma. Felt couldn't go to his boss. J.Edgar Hoover had just died and Nixon had replaced him with an unqualified Nixon loyalist - L.Patrick Gray III, who proved his worth by destroying documents and slipping others to officials running the White House cover-up. Felt couldn't go to the attorney general; John Mitchell was attorney general when he presided over the Watergate break-in planning and, after leaving to run Nixon's campaign, was replaced by a Nixon loyalist not trusted by many FBI hands. Felt couldn't go to Congress - the Senate Watergate Committee didn't exist yet. Felt certainly couldn't go to Nixon or all the president's henchmen.

-R

-----------

Newsday.com
Nixon's henchmen lecture us on ethics

Colson and Liddy worked the cable news circuit, expressing moral indignation that the former FBI deputy director was Deep Throat.
BY MARTIN SCHRAM

Martin Schram is a Washington-based syndicated columnist.

June 6, 2005

History's latest con happened right before our eyes Tuesday night. We thought we'd settled in to watch the nonstop cable news when suddenly our television screen was transformed into Alice's looking glass.

All reality was backward. But perhaps only the old-timers in our midst knew it. For millions of viewers were not even born when those faces that just popped up in the looking-glass/screen were all the president's men, once in power and then in disgrace, more than three decades ago.

Richard Nixon's ex-convicts - who did jail time for their crimes against democracy and then profited from their crimes by writing books and becoming celebrities - had returned to work one more con. Nixon's former senior White House assistant, Charles Colson, and the Nixon team's burglar-in-chief, G. Gordon Liddy, worked the cable news circuit, expressing moral indignation that the FBI's former deputy director, W. Mark Felt, was Deep Throat.

He was the source who had blown their cover by feeding facts to the Washington Post's Bob Woodward - truths that helped land many in jail and drove Nixon from office.


"I was shocked because I worked with him closely," Colson said on MSNBC. "And you would think the deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, you could talk to with the same confidence you could talk to a priest." Then on CNN: "I was shocked, because ... I talked to him often and trusted him with very sensitive materials. So did the president. To think that he was out going around in back alleys at night looking for flowerpots, passing information to someone, it's . . . not the image of the professional FBI that you would expect."

Ah, image. Conjure Colson, with Nixon and others in the Oval Office, as Nixon orders a burglary at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

Meanwhile on CNN, Liddy tells Paula Zahn: "I view him [Felt] as someone who violated the ethics of the law enforcement profession." Then, back on MSNBC, Liddy brags that not only had he plotted the burglary of the Democratic Party's Watergate offices but, "I planned the Brookings break-in." It wasn't done, Liddy said - "too expensive."

When the face of Nixon's speechwriter Pat Buchanan appeared on our looking-glass/screens, some viewers might have expected a refreshing, ruminative literary perspective about Felt and the Watergate era. Then Buchanan spoke: "I think he's a snake."

"Here is an individual," Buchanan explained, "sneaking around at night leaking things to damage the president of the United States in the middle of a campaign. And I don't see what is heroic about ... that."

The sound you hear is the sound of one journalistic mind boggling because this was never about heroics, just a helping hand. Those of us who were journalists investigating Watergate - and there were many, from a score of news organizations in addition to The Washington Post - understand the importance of having the FBI's No. 2 man on call and willing to confirm things we'd heard yet couldn't quite prove.

Lost in the wailings of Nixon's men is the one thing Americans need to know to understand Felt's dilemma. Felt couldn't go to his boss. J.Edgar Hoover had just died and Nixon had replaced him with an unqualified Nixon loyalist - L.Patrick Gray III, who proved his worth by destroying documents and slipping others to officials running the White House cover-up. Felt couldn't go to the attorney general; John Mitchell was attorney general when he presided over the Watergate break-in planning and, after leaving to run Nixon's campaign, was replaced by a Nixon loyalist not trusted by many FBI hands. Felt couldn't go to Congress - the Senate Watergate Committee didn't exist yet. Felt certainly couldn't go to Nixon or all the president's henchmen.

So he helped his young reporter friend, Bob Woodward. And, three decades later, these Nixon criminals popped up on our looking-glass/screens, doing their shtick. They wailed like pro wrestlers pounding the mat in feigned pain.

But occasionally even they told the truth. As when Liddy, who went from jail to Hollywood and black-bag jobs to talk radio, said on MSNBC: "There's great life after Watergate."

Colson and Liddy worked the cable news circuit, expressing moral indignation that the former FBI deputy director was Deep Throat.

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Breaking News: Court Rules Against Pot for Sick People

Breaking News: Court Rules Against Pot for Sick People
Jun 6, 10:56 AM EDT

By GINA HOLLAND
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal authorities may prosecute sick people whose doctors prescribe marijuana to ease pain, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, concluding that state laws don't protect users from a federal ban on the drug.

The decision is a stinging defeat for marijuana advocates who had successfully pushed 10 states to allow the drug's use to treat various illnesses.

Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the 6-3 decision, said that Congress could change the law to allow medical use of marijuana.

The closely watched case was an appeal by the Bush administration in a case involving two seriously ill California women who use marijuana. At issue was whether the prosecution of pot users under the federal Controlled Substances Act was constitutional.

Under the Constitution, Congress may pass laws regulating a state's economic activity so long as it involves "interstate commerce" that crosses state borders. The California marijuana in question was homegrown, distributed to patients without charge and without crossing state lines.


Stevens said there are other legal options for patients, "but perhaps even more important than these legal avenues is the democratic process, in which the voices of voters allied with these respondents may one day be heard in the halls of Congress."

California's medical marijuana law, passed by voters in 1996, allows people to grow, smoke or obtain marijuana for medical needs with a doctor's recommendation. Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state have laws similar to California.

In those states, doctors generally can give written or oral recommendations on marijuana to patients with cancer, HIV and other serious illnesses.

In a dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said that states should be allowed to set their own rules.

"The states' core police powers have always included authority to define criminal law and to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens," said O'Connor, who was joined by two other states' rights advocates: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas.

The legal question presented a dilemma for the court's conservatives, who have pushed to broaden states' rights in recent years. They earlier invalidated federal laws dealing with gun possession near schools and violence against women on the grounds the activity was too local to justify federal intrusion.

O'Connor said she would have opposed California's medical marijuana law if she were a voter or a legislator. But she said the court was overreaching to endorse "making it a federal crime to grow small amounts of marijuana in one's own home for one's own medicinal use."

The case concerned two Californians, Angel Raich and Diane Monson. The two had sued then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, asking for a court order letting them smoke, grow or obtain marijuana without fear of arrest, home raids or other intrusion by federal authorities.

Raich, an Oakland woman suffering from ailments including scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea, fatigue and pain, smokes marijuana every few hours. She said she was partly paralyzed until she started smoking pot. Monson, an accountant who lives near Oroville, Calif., has degenerative spine disease and grows her own marijuana plants in her backyard.

In the court's main decision, Stevens raised concerns about abuse of marijuana laws. "Our cases have taught us that there are some unscrupulous physicians who overprescribe when it is sufficiently profitable to do so," he said.

The case is Gonzales v. Raich, 03-1454.

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The Mobility Myth

The New York Times

The Mobility Myth
By BOB HERBERT

The war that nobody talks about - the overwhelmingly one-sided class war - is being waged all across America. Guess who's winning.

A recent front-page article in The Los Angeles Times showed that teenagers are faring poorly in a tight job market because of the fierce competition they're getting from older workers and immigrants for entry-level positions.

On the same day, in the business section, the paper reported that the chief executives at California's largest 100 companies took home a collective $1.1 billion in 2004, an increase of nearly 20 percent over the previous year. The paper contrasted that with the 2.9 percent raise that the average California worker saw last year.

The gap between the rich and everybody else in this country is fast becoming an unbridgeable chasm. David Cay Johnston, in the latest installment of the New York Times series "Class Matters," wrote, "It's no secret that the gap between the rich and the poor has been growing, but the extent to which the richest are leaving everybody else behind is not widely known."

Consider, for example, two separate eras in the lifetime of the baby-boom generation. For every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent of the population between 1950 and 1970, those in the top 0.01 percent earned an additional $162. That gap has since skyrocketed. For every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent between 1990 and 2002, Mr. Johnston wrote, each taxpayer in that top bracket brought in an extra $18,000.

It's like chasing a speedboat with a rowboat.


Put the myth of the American Dream aside. The bottom line is that it's becoming increasingly difficult for working Americans to move up in class. The rich are freezing nearly everybody else in place, and sprinting off with the nation's bounty.

Economic mobility in the United States - the extent to which individuals and families move from one social class to another - is no higher than in Britain or France, and lower than in some Scandinavian countries. Maybe we should be studying the Scandinavian dream.

As far as the Bush administration is concerned, the gap between the rich and the rest of us is not growing fast enough. An analysis by The Times showed the following:

"Under the Bush tax cuts, the 400 taxpayers with the highest incomes - a minimum of $87 million in 2000, the last year for which the government will release such data - now pay income, Medicare and Social Security taxes amounting to virtually the same percentage of their incomes as people making $50,000 to $75,000. Those earning more than $10 million a year now pay a lesser share of their income in these taxes than those making $100,000 to $200,000."

The social dislocations resulting from this war that nobody mentions have been under way for some time. But the Bush economic policies have accelerated the consequences and intensified the pain.

A big problem, of course, is that American workers have been hurting badly for years. Revolutionary improvements in technology, increasingly globalized trade, the competition of low-wage workers overseas and increased immigration here at home, the decline of manufacturing, the weakening of the labor movement, outsourcing and numerous other factors have left American workers with very little leverage to use against employers.

Many in the middle class are mortgaged to the hilt, maxed out on credit cards and fearful to the point of trembling that all they've worked for might vanish in a downsized minute.

The privileged classes, with the Bush administration's iron cloak of protection, avoid their fair share of taxes, are reluctant to pay an honest dollar for an honest day's work (the federal minimum wage is still a scandalous $5.15 an hour), refuse to fight in their nation's wars, and laugh all the way to their yachts.

The American dream was about expanding opportunities and widely shared prosperity. Now we have older people and college grads replacing people near the bottom in jobs that offer low pay, no pensions, no health insurance and no vacations.

A fellow named Mark McClellan, who was bounced out of a management position when Kaiser Aluminum closed down in Spokane, Wash., told The Times in the "Class Matters" series: "I may look middle class. But I'm not. My boat is sinking fast."

E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com

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- ON THIS DAY -

nytimes.com

- ON THIS DAY -

On June 6, 1944, the D-Day invasion of Europe took place during World War II as Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France.

On June 6, 1968 Sen. Robert F. Kennedy died at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, a day after he was shot by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan.



http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20050606.html

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Biden Urges U.S. to Take Steps to Close Prison at Guantánamo

The New York Times

Biden Urges U.S. to Take Steps to Close Prison at Guantánamo
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON, June 5 (AP) - A leading Senate Democrat said Sunday that the United States needed to move toward shutting down the military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

"This has become the greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world," said the senator, Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, on the ABC News program "This Week." "And it is unnecessary to be in that position."

A Pentagon report released Friday cited cases in which American guards at Guantánamo Bay mishandled the Koran, and last month, Amnesty International called the detention center for terrorism suspects "the gulag of our time," a charge Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld dismissed as "reprehensible."

Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is planning hearings this month on the treatment of detainees at the camp.

Mr. Biden, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, proposed that an independent commission take a look at Guantánamo Bay and make recommendations. "But the end result is, I think we should end up shutting it down, moving those prisoners," he said. "Those that we have reason to keep, keep. And those we don't, let go."

He added, "I think more Americans are in jeopardy as a consequence of the perception that exists worldwide with its existence than if there were no Gitmo."


Guantánamo Bay has about 540 detainees. Some have been there more than three years without being charged with a crime. Most were captured on battlefields in Afghanistan and were sent to Guantánamo Bay in hope of extracting useful intelligence about Al Qaeda.

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Members of Sept. 11 Panel Press for Information on Terror Risk

The New York Times
Members of Sept. 11 Panel Press for Information on Terror Risk
By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, June 5 - Members of the Sept. 11 commission, fearing that the Bush administration and Congress will never act on some of their recommendations, are joining together almost a year after completing their final report to press the White House for information showing whether the government has done enough to prevent another catastrophic terrorist attack, commission officials said.

The officials said the 10 commissioners, acting through a private group they founded last summer, will present a letter within days to Andrew H. Card Jr., President Bush's chief of staff, asking the White House to allow the group to gather detailed information from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies about the government's recent performance in dealing with terrorist threats.

Commissioners say they want the information to prepare for a series of public hearings scheduled to begin here on Monday and to draft a privately financed report that will evaluate the government's counterterrorism policies in the wake of the commission's final report last July.

The moves, which may not be welcome at the White House or among Congressional leaders, represent an unusual effort by members of a high-profile federal commission to retain their political viability and to lobby for their recommendations long after their official investigation came to an end.

"We're going to ask a lot of questions," said Thomas H. Kean, who was chairman of the Sept. 11 commission and is now a board member of the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, a private educational and lobbying group. "There are a lot of our recommendations that have not been implemented."

Mr. Kean said that with terrorist groups threatening new attacks on American soil, "we don't have a lot of time left to act."


The 9/11 Public Discourse Project has scheduled eight public hearings on the government's counterterrorism efforts; the hearing on Monday will focus on the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., the targets of the sharpest criticism in the commission's final report last year.

Mr. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, said that although witness lists for the other hearings have not been completed, he would not rule out a request for public testimony from senior administration officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director.

Told of the private group's plans to approach the White House, a White House spokeswoman, Christie Parell, said Sunday: "We appreciate the work the commission did. We have acted on the vast majority of their recommendations and welcome their continued involvement. We look forward to receiving the letter."

Over its lifespan, the Sept. 11 commission repeatedly clashed with the Bush administration, which had originally opposed its creation, especially over the panel's access to important White House documents and to witnesses. The battles were especially pitched because of their timing, in the middle of Mr. Bush's campaign for a second term.

With their public hearings and their plans for a new report, the Sept. 11 commission is, to a degree, back in business.

The five Democrats and five Republicans who made up the panel are returning together to the public stage - this time, solely as private citizens and without subpoena power - to investigate the government's response to terrorist threats. The 9/11 Public Discourse Project, which has a small staff based in Washington, is underwritten by several prominent private foundations, including the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

John F. Lehman, a Republican member of the panel and a former secretary of the Navy, said he hoped the White House would cooperate with the former commissioners in their renewed investigation "because we have the same objectives - they should see us as a valuable resource outside of the system."

The former commissioners have the enthusiastic support of groups representing the families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington.

"I applaud this," said Mary Fetchet of New Canaan, Conn., whose son was killed in the attacks and who is founding director of a family group called Voices of September 11th. "Typically a federal commission writes a report, makes its recommendations and there's no follow-through."

Members of the commission readily acknowledged that they no longer had any authority to force the Bush administration to hand over information or to make witnesses available, and they have no expectation that they will re-create the fireworks of their public hearings last year, when senior administration officials were subjected to hours of often hostile questioning under oath and on live network television. (The hearing on Monday is scheduled to be broadcast live on C-Span 2, the cable network.)

"We don't have that subpoena power anymore," said Jamie S. Gorelick, a Democratic commissioner who was deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration and who will moderate Monday's hearing, which will be held at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, a scholarly organization partly financed by the federal government. "We are looking in from outside."

But Mr. Kean said he was hopeful that the White House would cooperate and that some senior administration officials might be willing to answer questions in public if only to demonstrate their commitment to preventing new terrorist attacks.

"Some of them may be eager to do that," he said.

The hearings are expected to culminate later this year in a report that the 9/11 Public Discourse Project has described as a "report card" on its "unfinished agenda."

The Sept. 11 commission, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, went out of business last August after releasing a unanimous final report the month before demonstrating that incompetence and turf battles among the nation's intelligence agencies, notably the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., prevented the government from acting before Sept. 11, 2001, on intelligence suggesting an imminent Qaeda attack.

The report, which became a national bestseller, came after a year of public hearings at which Mr. Rumsfeld, Ms. Rice and others were harshly questioned about intelligence failures before Sept. 11. Its conclusions resulted in legislation that enacted the panel's key recommendation: creation of the job of director of national intelligence, an official who would have the authority to force cooperation among long-feuding spy agencies.

But many of the report's other recommendations have not been acted on, including its call for an overhaul of Congressional intelligence oversight, for the establishment of unified radio frequencies allowing emergency workers around the country to communicate; and for the appointment of a federal civil liberties board to prevent constitutional abuses by intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

In an interview on Friday in his offices at Drew University in Madison, N.J., where he will step down as president this month, Mr. Kean said that he had been gratified by many of the actions of Mr. Bush and Congress in responding to the commission's recommendations, especially the creation of the intelligence director's job and the appointment of John D. Negroponte, the former American ambassador to the United Nations and to Iraq, to the post.

"He's met with us, and we were very pleased with the questions he asked and with his approach to the job," Mr. Kean said.

Mr. Kean, who was once seen as a candidate for the intelligence job that went to Mr. Negroponte, has rebuffed suggestions that he return to politics. In January, he accepted a new job as chairman of the board of trustees of the multibillion-dollar Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton, N.J.

While insisting that he saw "the glass as half full" in the government's response to the Sept. 11 report, Mr. Kean said he was disturbed that so many other recommendations had not been acted on, especially the commission's call for an expanded American effort to secure international stores of nuclear materials, especially in the nations of the former Soviet Union.

"There's no greater danger to this nation than a terrorist group acquiring these materials," Mr. Kean said. He said he was also alarmed that there had been little movement by the government in creating the unified radio frequencies for police and fire departments around the country - "that's almost a scandal."

The civil liberties board was created under the law adopted by Congress last year that also established the job of director of national intelligence, but the White House has offered no hint that it is close to naming members of the board.

"I'm very disappointed that the president has not yet seen fit to appoint the board, which is included in the very legislation he signed into law," said Richard Ben-Veniste, the former Watergate prosecutor and a Democratic member of the Sept. 11 commission.

Mr. Ben-Veniste, who is scheduled to lead one of the public hearings next month, specifically on civil liberties issues, said prisoner abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at the American military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, demonstrated the need for the board.

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Texas Gov. Signs Bill at Church School

ABC News
Texas Gov. Signs Bill at Church School
Texas Governor Signs Bill at Church School That Limits Late-Term Abortions; Hundreds Protest
By JAMIE STENGLE
The Associated Press

Jun. 6, 2005 - In a ceremony filled with religious references, Gov. Rick Perry signed a bill at a church school gymnasium Sunday that imposes more limits on late-term abortions and requires minors to get written parental consent for abortions.

The signing came as several hundred demonstrators some opposed to the signing of a bill on church property protested outside.


"It has been a tragedy of unspeakable consequences that for decades activist courts denied many Texas parents their right to be involved in one of the most important decisions their young daughter could ever make whether to end the life that was growing inside her," Perry told a crowd of about 1,000 people gathered at the Calvary Christian Academy. "For too long, a blind eye has been turned to the rights of our most vulnerable human beings that's the unborn in our society."

During the 90-minute program, Perry also signed a resolution to amend the Texas Constitution by banning same-sex marriages. However, that signature was only ceremonial since voters must approve the proposed ban in November.

"A nurturing home with a loving mother and loving father is the best way to guide our children down the proper path," he said.

Texas already had a parental notification bill, approved in 1999. The new, tougher measure requires a parent to provide written consent for unmarried girls under 18. The bill also restricts doctors from performing abortions on women who have carried a child for more than 26 weeks unless having the baby would jeopardize the woman's life or the baby has serious brain damage.

Before Perry spoke, several pastors received standing ovations and shouts of "Amen!" from the crowd as they touted the two measures being signed by Perry.

"It seems to me that people of the great state of Texas will be silent no more," said Rod Parsley, of the Center for Moral Clarity in Ohio. "Folks in this room understand, God is still watching."

The ceremony brought out about 350 protesters carrying signs. They included opponents of the ban on same-sex marriage, including two with posters reading "Hate is not a family value" and "God values all families."

Others were there to protest the use of church property for a bill signing.

"It hurts that he can cheapen politics and religion by this kind of maneuver and people can think it's OK," said Karin Cagle, a 45-year-old from Fort Worth who carried a sign saying "Separate church and state Keep America great."

But Pastor Larry White of Our Savior Lutheran Church in Houston said the gathering inside the church school was about life, family and marriage.

"There are those that would drive people of faith from the public square if they could," White said.

Perry spokeswoman Kathy Walt said many of the critics "would object to this bill-signing if it were in a public school, a library, a Wal-Mart parking lot or any other venue, because they oppose pro-life and pro-family issues."

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