Politics Alleged In Voting Cases; Justice Officials Are Accused of Influence

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Politics Alleged In Voting Cases
Justice Officials Are Accused of Influence

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer

The Justice Department's voting section, a small and usually obscure unit that enforces the Voting Rights Act and other federal election laws, has been thrust into the center of a growing debate over recent departures and controversial decisions in the Civil Rights Division as a whole.

Many current and former lawyers in the section charge that senior officials have exerted undue political influence in many of the sensitive voting-rights cases the unit handles. Most of the department's major voting-related actions over the past five years have been beneficial to the GOP, they say, including two in Georgia, one in Mississippi and a Texas redistricting plan orchestrated by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) in 2003.

The section also has lost about a third of its three dozen lawyers over the past nine months. Those who remain have been barred from offering recommendations in major voting-rights cases and have little input in the section's decisions on hiring and policy.

"If the Department of Justice and the Civil Rights Division is viewed as political, there is no doubt that credibility is lost," former voting-section chief Joe Rich said at a recent panel discussion in Washington. He added: "The voting section is always subject to political pressure and tension. But I never thought it would come to this."

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and his aides dispute such criticism and defend the department's actions in voting cases. "We're not going to politicize decisions within the department," he told reporters last month after The Washington Post had disclosed staff memoranda recommending objections to a Georgia voter-identification plan and to the Texas redistricting.

The 2005 Georgia case has been particularly controversial within the section. Staff members complain that higher-ranking Justice officials ignored serious problems with data supplied by the state in approving the plan, which would have required voters to carry photo identification.

Georgia provided Justice with information on Aug. 26 suggesting that tens of thousands of voters may not have driver's licenses or other identification required to vote, according to officials and records. That added to the concerns of a team of voting-section employees who had concluded that the Georgia plan would hurt black voters.

But higher-ranking officials disagreed, and approved the plan later that day. They said that as many as 200,000 of those without ID cards were felons and illegal immigrants and that they would not be eligible to vote anyway.

One of the officials involved in the decision was Hans von Spakovsky, a former head of the Fulton County GOP in Atlanta, who had long advocated a voter-identification law for the state and oversaw many voting issues at Justice. Justice spokesman Eric W. Holland said von Spakovsky's previous activities did not require a recusal and had no impact on his actions in the Georgia case.

Holland denied a request to interview von Spakovsky, saying that department policy "does not authorize the media to conduct interviews with staff attorneys." Von Spakovsky has since been named to the Federal Election Commission in a recess appointment by President Bush.

In written answers to questions from The Post, Holland called allegations of partisanship in the voting section "categorically untrue." He said the Bush administration has approved the vast majority of the approximately 3,000 redistricting plans it has reviewed, including many drawn up by Democrats.

Holland and other Justice officials also emphasize the Bush administration's aggressive enforcement of laws requiring foreign-language ballot information in districts where minorities make up a significant portion of the population. Since 2001, the division has filed 14 lawsuits to provide comprehensive language programs for minorities, including the first aimed at Filipino and Vietnamese voters, he said.

"We have undertaken the most vigorous enforcement of the language minority provisions of the Voting Rights Act in its history," Holland said.

Some lawyers who have recently left the Civil Rights Division, such as Rich at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and William Yeomans at the American Constitution Society, have taken the unusual step of publicly criticizing the way voting matters have been handled. Other former and current employees have discussed the controversy on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

These critics say that the total number of redistricting cases approved under Bush means little because the section has always cleared the vast majority of the hundreds of plans it reviews every year.

The Bush administration has also initiated relatively few cases under Section 2, the main anti-discrimination provision of the Voting Rights Act, filing seven lawsuits over the past five years -- including the department's first reverse-discrimination complaint on behalf of white voters. The only case involving black voters was begun under the previous administration and formally filed by transitional leadership in early 2001.

By comparison, department records show, 14 Section 2 lawsuits were filed during the last two years of Bill Clinton's presidency alone.

Conflicts in the voting-rights arena at Justice are not new, particularly during Republican administrations, when liberal-leaning career lawyers often clash with more conservative political appointees, experts say. The conflicts have been further exacerbated by recent court rulings that have made it more difficult for Justice to challenge redistricting plans.

William Bradford Reynolds, the civil rights chief during the Reagan administration, opposed affirmative-action remedies and court-ordered busing -- and regularly battled with career lawyers in the division as a result. During the administration of George H.W. Bush, the division aggressively pushed for the creation of districts that were more than 60 percent black in a strategy designed to produce more solidly white and Republican districts in the South.

These districts were widely credited with boosting the GOP in the region during the 1994 elections.

Rich, who worked in the Civil Rights Division for 37 years, said the conflicts in the current administration are more severe than in earlier years. "I was there in the Reagan years, and this is worse," he said.

But Michael A. Carvin, a civil rights deputy under Reagan, said such allegations amount to "revisionist history." He contended that the voting section has long tilted to the left politically.

Carvin and other conservatives also say the opinions of career lawyers in the section frequently have been at odds with the courts, including a special panel in Texas that rejected challenges to the Republican-sponsored redistricting plan there. The Supreme Court has since agreed to hear the case.

"The notion that they are somehow neutral or somehow ideologically impartial is simply not supported by the evidence," Carvin said. "It hasn't been the politicos that were departing from the law or normal practice, but the voting-rights section."

In Mississippi in 2002, Justice political appointees rejected a recommendation from career lawyers to approve a redistricting plan favorable to Democrats. While Justice delayed issuing a final decision, a panel of three GOP federal judges approved a plan favorable to a Republican congressman.

The division has also issued unusually detailed legal opinions favoring Republicans in at least two states, contrary to what former staff members describe as a dictum to avoid unnecessary involvement in partisan disputes. The practice ended up embarrassing the department in Arizona in 2005, when Justice officials had to rescind a letter that wrongly endorsed the legality of a GOP bill limiting provisional ballots.

In Georgia, a federal judge eventually ruled against the voter identification plan on constitutional grounds, likening it to a poll tax from the Jim Crow era. The measure would have required voters to pay $20 for a special card if they did not have photo identification; Georgia Republicans are pushing ahead this year with a bill that does not charge a fee for the card.

Holland called the data in the case "very straightforward," and said it showed statistically that 100 percent of Georgians had identification and that no racial disparities were evident.

But an Aug. 25 staff memo that recommended opposing the plan disparaged the quality of the state's information and said that only limited conclusions could be drawn from it.

"They took all that data and willfully misread it," one source familiar with the case said. "They were only looking for statistics that would back up their view."

Mark Posner, a former longtime Civil Rights Division lawyer who teaches election law at American University, noted that Justice could have taken as many as 60 more days -- rather than seven hours -- to issue an opinion because of the new data.

Staff writer Thomas B. Edsall and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

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Closed-Door Deal Makes $22 Billion Difference; GOP Negotiators Criticized for Change In Measure on HMOs

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Closed-Door Deal Makes $22 Billion Difference
GOP Negotiators Criticized for Change In Measure on HMOs

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer

House and Senate GOP negotiators, meeting behind closed doors last month to complete a major budget-cutting bill, agreed on a change to Senate-passed Medicare legislation that would save the health insurance industry $22 billion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The Senate version would have targeted private HMOs participating in Medicare by changing the formula that governs their reimbursement, lowering payments $26 billion over the next decade. But after lobbying by the health insurance industry, the final version made a critical change that had the effect of eliminating all but $4 billion of the projected savings, according to CBO and other health policy experts.

That change was made in mid-December during private negotiations involving House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.), Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and the staffs of those committees as well as the House Energy and Commerce Committee. House and Senate Democrats were excluded from the meeting. The Senate gave final approval to the budget-cutting measure on Dec. 21, but the House must give it final consideration early next month.

The change in the Medicare provision underscores a practice that growing numbers of lawmakers from both parties want addressed. More than ever, Republican congressional lawmakers and leaders are making vital decisions, involving far-reaching policies and billions of dollars, without the public -- or even congressional Democrats -- present.

The corruption scandal involving Republican former lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the bribery plea of former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.) have prompted calls for a restructuring of lobbying rules and congressional practices that make lobbying easier.

A prime target for changes are the closed-door negotiations known as conference committees, where members of the House and Senate hash out their differences over competing versions of legislation. House and Senate Democrats last week proposed that all such conference committees meet in the open and that any changes be made by a vote of all conferees.

"It happens in the dead of night when lobbyists get a [Republican lawmaker] in the corner and say, 'We've got to have this,' " said Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark (Calif.), the Democrats' point man on Medicare issues. "It's a pattern that just goes on and on, and at some point the public's going to rise up."

Grassley disputed the CBO's interpretation of the change as "ridiculous," dismissing what appears to be a major insurance industry victory as merely a mistake in CBO calculations, not a substantive policy change. He said he accepted the policy change because he "didn't see a big difference from the Senate position and the conference position."

But other lobbyists and aides said too much important work is being done in these closed-door conclaves. That is especially true with the budget-cutting bill containing the change in the Medicare reimbursement formula that is nearing final passage.

"I have worked many [budget] bills, and this was the most closed that I've ever seen," said one prominent Republican health care lobbyist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing his access to Congress.

Another health care lobbyist, not involved with the issue, said the result was a major victory for health insurers: "That's a $22 billion difference; $22 billion is a lot of money."

If no one can say which lawmakers made the change, there is no doubt who instigated it. Last month, as House and Senate negotiators sat down to finalize the budget-cutting bill, the insurance industry moved to thwart the Senate's "risk adjustment" provision.

"It is our understanding that CBO is scoring significant savings from this new adjustment," officials from America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) wrote in urgent talking points sent to Capitol Hill. "The savings . . . are best viewed as a new and unanticipated payment reduction."

Since managed-care companies first began working through Medicare in the 1990s, the government has recognized an issue in the way the companies are paid for their participation. Private insurers attract healthier seniors than the traditional government-run Medicare system, so their payment rates -- based on the elderly population as a whole -- exceed the actual cost of treatment.

In 2003, the government began lowering payments to Medicare HMOs to account for their healthier population of beneficiaries. But to keep those HMOs from fleeing the system, the Bush administration added a "hold harmless" payment that negated that cut.

The White House intended to phase out that payment through 2010, a plan written into law by the version of the budget-cutting bill that passed the Senate in November. But to secure those savings, the Senate also required yearly audits to account for "coding creep" or "upcoding" that health policy experts say physicians and hospitals working for the HMOs have used that, wittingly or unwittingly, make their patients appear sicker than they are.

The insurance industry lobby has denied such a problem exists, saying that the huge savings that CBO and other health care analysts have projected would never materialize. Even so, the industry fought the changes tooth and nail, said health care aides in the House and Senate.

Karen Ignani, chief executive of AHIP, said the industry would have liked the yearly audit provision to be removed. Instead, it got what the CBO sees as a strict time limit. According to the final bill language, the results of a risk adjustment analysis are to be "incorporated into the risk scores only for 2008, 2009 and 2010."

The original Senate measure was supposed to reduce payments to Medicare HMOs by $2.9 billion in 2010, $3.3 billion in 2012 and $4.5 billion in 2015. Now, CBO scorekeepers think savings will peak at $2.9 billion in 2010. By 2012, the government will be paying the HMOs $100 million more than now scheduled, and $900 million more by 2014.

Republican aides involved in the change dismiss its significance, saying the CBO is reading too much into it. The Bush administration had planned to phase out "hold harmless" payments through 2010, and negotiators wanted to make the audit adjustments coincide with that time frame, the aides said.

Grassley agreed: "If CBO continues to say there needs to be a legislative requirement to conduct the analyses past 2010, then I look forward to passing legislation continuing the reports and achieving even bigger budget savings."

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Campaign Finance Law May Have A Loophole; Some Issue Ads Could Be Exempt, Justices Say

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Campaign Finance Law May Have A Loophole
Some Issue Ads Could Be Exempt, Justices Say

By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer

The Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion yesterday that suggests some political advertisers may eventually be entitled to an exemption from regulations imposed by the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.

In an unsigned opinion issued six days after the justices heard oral arguments in the case, the court threw out a 2004 federal court ruling that had barred all challenges to a key provision of the law by corporate or union advertisers.

The justices said that the decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court in Washington was a misinterpretation of the Supreme Court's 2003 decision upholding the law, which is also known as the McCain-Feingold law, named after its two Senate sponsors, John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.).

The court ordered the three-judge panel to redo the case and say specifically which kinds of corporate-paid ads may qualify for an exemption.

Yesterday's ruling leaves the law unchanged through the 2006 election cycle. But it creates the real possibility that the courts could later devise a loophole for many corporate or union advertisements. The challengers get a second try in the courts now; if that produces a broad definition of exempt advertising, then the McCain-Feingold provision could be significantly undercut, election law analysts said.

The decision also avoided a potentially sticky situation in which the court, without the departing Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, would have tied 4 to 4 on the merits of the case. Although the justices' votes in the conference after last week's oral arguments are not known, their past opinions on campaign finance, plus the comments during argument of the new chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr., suggested that such an even split was likely.

In that event, the lower court's ruling would have been affirmed -- but without creating a binding precedent. Or, the Supreme Court would have had to rehear the matter -- with the vote of only one justice -- O'Connor's likely replacement, Samuel A. Alito Jr. -- still in play.

"This is a delaying tactic by the Supreme Court," said Richard L. Hasen, a professor of election law at Loyola University in Los Angeles. "However, with the Supreme Court changing and the realistic potential that the new justices will be more sympathetic" to critics of campaign finance regulation, yesterday's decision "could be the opening salvo in a battle to scale back the regulation of campaign finance."

At issue in the case, Wisconsin Right to Life Inc. v. Federal Election Commission , No. 04-1581, was the claim by a Wisconsin antiabortion group that ads it wanted to broadcast in the state during the 2004 election were not covered by McCain-Feingold. The ads would have urged the public to tell Feingold, who was up for reelection, not to support a filibuster of President Bush's judicial nominees.

The law requires that corporations and labor unions not use their general funds to buy "electioneering communications" that run in the days just before an election. Instead, they must buy the messages with money raised according to federal contribution limits and disclosure requirements.

As defined by the law, an "electioneering communication" includes any ad that mentions the name of a candidate. This definition, which was meant to do away with unregulated "sham" issue ads said to be influencing too many races, was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2003.

But some corporations, including ideologically motivated groups such as Wisconsin Right to Life, say that the definition violates their First Amendment right to broadcast non-election-related grass-roots lobbying ads such as their proposed messages about Feingold, and that the content of political ads must be considered case by case. This position was backed by the AFL-CIO and the American Civil Liberties Union.

The three-judge panel dismissed Wisconsin Right to Life's lawsuit, saying it was foreclosed by the Supreme Court's 2003 ruling upholding McCain-Feingold. But in yesterday's opinion, read by Roberts, the court said that ruling "did not purport to resolve future as-applied challenges" -- the legal term for case-by-case challenges.

Separately yesterday, the court steered clear of another dispute over campaign finance rules for state judicial elections. Without comment or public dissent, the justices declined to hear an appeal by the chairperson of the Minnesota Board on Judicial Standards, who was asking them to uphold ethics rules banning personal fundraising or partisan activity by judicial candidates. Instead, the justices let stand a federal appeals court ruling that struck down the rules as a violation of free speech.

The case was Dimick v. Republican Party of Minnesota , No. 05-566.

And in the latest sign that its move in favor of states' rights may have stalled, the court ruled 5 to 4 that state agencies do not have sovereign immunity from efforts by federal bankruptcy trustees to recover debtors' assets that have been transferred to the agencies.

In a series of recent 5 to 4 rulings, the court's conservative majority had insulated the states from lawsuits for monetary damages under various federal laws. But yesterday, O'Connor joined the court's four liberal justices in supporting federal authority.

The case was Central Virginia Community College v. Katz , No. 04-885.

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White House Got Early Warning on Katrina

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White House Got Early Warning on Katrina

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer

In the 48 hours before Hurricane Katrina hit, the White House received detailed warnings about the storm's likely impact, including eerily prescient predictions of breached levees, massive flooding, and major losses of life and property, documents show.

A 41-page assessment by the Department of Homeland Security's National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC), was delivered by e-mail to the White House's "situation room," the nerve center where crises are handled, at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29, the day the storm hit, according to an e-mail cover sheet accompanying the document.

The NISAC paper warned that a storm of Katrina's size would "likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching" and specifically noted the potential for levee failures along Lake Pontchartrain. It predicted economic losses in the tens of billions of dollars, including damage to public utilities and industry that would take years to fully repair. Initial response and rescue operations would be hampered by disruption of telecommunications networks and the loss of power to fire, police and emergency workers, it said.

In a second document, also obtained by The Washington Post, a computer slide presentation by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, prepared for a 9 a.m. meeting on Aug. 27, two days before Katrina made landfall, compared Katrina's likely impact to that of "Hurricane Pam," a fictional Category 3 storm used in a series of FEMA disaster-preparedness exercises simulating the effects of a major hurricane striking New Orleans. But Katrina, the report warned, could be worse.

The hurricane's Category 4 storm surge "could greatly overtop levees and protective systems" and destroy nearly 90 percent of city structures, the FEMA report said. It further predicted "incredible search and rescue needs (60,000-plus)" and the displacement of more than a million residents.

The NISAC analysis accurately predicted the collapse of floodwalls along New Orleans's Lake Pontchartrain shoreline, an event that the report described as "the greatest concern." The breach of two canal floodwalls near the lake was the key failure that left much of central New Orleans underwater and accounted for the bulk of Louisiana's 1,100 Katrina-related deaths.

The documents shed new light on the extent on the administration's foreknowledge about Katrina's potential for unleashing epic destruction on New Orleans and other Gulf Coast cities and towns. President Bush, in a televised interview three days after Katrina hit, suggested that the scale of the flooding in New Orleans was unexpected. "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did anticipate a serious storm," Bush said in a Sept. 1 interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."

The reports echo warnings given around the same time by Max Mayfield, head of the National Hurricane Center, who began sounding the alarm when forecasters first placed Katrina on a collision with the Gulf Coast on the evening of Aug. 26. But the FEMA and NISAC reports provided much more detail and covered a wider range of possible consequences, from damaged ports and oil terminals to spikes in energy prices.

The White House declined to comment yesterday on the specifics of the reports but noted that the president has repeatedly acknowledged his displeasure with preparations for Katrina. "No one was pleased with the response by the government -- federal, state or local," spokesman Trent Duffy said. "We have already taken steps to be better prepared for future hurricanes, as you saw in the response to the hurricanes that followed Katrina."

The disclosure of the reports comes as the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee prepares to convene new hearings today into the federal government's performance during Katrina. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), the committee's ranking Democrat, responded to the documents in a statement saying the administration's failure to fully heed the warnings of its analysts "compounded the tragedy."

"Two to three days before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, it became clear that it would be the 'Big One' everyone has been talking about for years," Lieberman said.

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Photos of Bush With Abramoff Are Withheld

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Photos of Bush With Abramoff Are Withheld
White House Calls Pictures Irrelevant to Ethics Inquiry

By Jim VandeHei and Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writers

Several White House officials have been briefed about pictures of President Bush and Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff taken since 2001 but will not release them on grounds that they are not relevant to the ongoing money-for-favors investigation, aides said yesterday.

"Trying to say there's more to it than the president taking a picture in a photo line is just absurd," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters. Bush, he said, does not recall meeting Abramoff and did not do any favors for the disgraced lobbyist.

Abramoff, who recently pleaded guilty in the growing bribery and corruption scandal, was with Bush about a dozen times when pictures were taken by the official White House photographer or other participants over the past five years, according to a source familiar with Abramoff's legal situation. Abramoff, this source said, displayed at least five of them on his office desk and has told people the president talked about his children's names as well as personal details about their schooling during one encounter.

The source said Abramoff has more than half a dozen photos with Bush, including one of the two men shaking hands, but has no intention of releasing them. The existence of the Bush-Abramoff photos was first reported by Washingtonian magazine, which reviewed five photos but was not permitted to publish them.

No evidence has emerged thus far suggesting Bush had a close relationship with Abramoff or that he or any of his top White House aides did anything to improperly assist his clients, according to people familiar with the investigation. Several lower-level administration officials, however, have been caught up in the scandal, including the top procurement official. The federal probe is expected to zero in on Abramoff's dealing with the Interior Department as it unfolds in coming months.

But public photographs could damage Bush's efforts to insulate himself from a scandal that has scorched numerous other Republicans. A vivid image of Bush shaking hands and smiling with Abramoff would provide fuel for news coverage and commentary, even if such "grip-and-grin" shots are commonplace for most politicians.

Jennifer Palmieri, a former Clinton communications aide, said, "If TV is showing a picture of George Bush and Jack Abramoff, it immediately brings the poster boy for abuse into the Oval Office."

The photos "change the dynamic to the extent that the White House lets it change the dynamics," said Mark Corallo, a veteran GOP communications official who is advising White House senior adviser Karl Rove in the CIA leak case. To minimize possible damage, Corallo said, the White House should release all of the photos immediately, explain how the photos are part of the normal meet-and-greet with supporters and show how Bush was a victim of Abramoff's schemes.

Mary Matalin, an informal White House adviser, said the photos should not be released and that, if they are, voters are savvy enough to realize the images are not evidence of a Bush role in the scandal. A top White House aide said it would set a terrible precedent if the president were to release photos from private events.

But Democrats said that precedent is established. In 1997, congressional and public pressure forced the Clinton White House to release videotapes of Bill Clinton hosting meet-and-greet coffees with big contributors.

Abramoff was no stranger to the Bush White House. He had served as one of Bush's top fundraisers and assisted the Interior Department during the president's transition to power in 2000.

The source familiar with Abramoff's situation said the lobbyist has not provided investigators any evidence the president was aware of any issues or interested in helping him. The source said most of the assistance to Abramoff came from Interior officials and elsewhere.

Abramoff's lobbying team did discuss contacting an official in the White House office of intergovernmental affairs in 2002 when trying to get Congress to approve funds for a tribal school, e-mails obtained by The Washington Post show. But it is not clear if the official was helpful.

Former chief procurement officer David H. Safavian was charged in September with lying to federal officials about his dealings with the lobbyist in connection with Abramoff's efforts to gain access to property administered by the General Services Administration. A second high-ranking administration official, former deputy Interior secretary J. Steven Griles, has also come under scrutiny in the probe. Griles, who was offered a job by Abramoff, has said he did not try to intercede on behalf of Abramoff's clients, but e-mails released by a Senate committee show numerous contacts between Griles and Abramoff or his associates.

In May 2001, several of Abramoff's tribal clients joined state legislators at a White House event arranged by Grover Norquist, an anti-tax lobbyist and friend of Abramoff. In an interview, Norquist said he does not recall Abramoff being at the White House session.

Several former Abramoff associates said the lobbyist boasted and apparently overstated his access to powerful politicians, including Bush. When Susan Ralston, Abramoff's former secretary, was hired by Rove, the lobbyist told associates he got her the job. Other officials said it was Ralph Reed, a former lobbyist who is running for governor in Georgia and has been tainted by the scandal, who helped her make the move.

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Army stretched to breaking point

USA TODAY
Study: Army stretched to breaking point

WASHINGTON (AP) — Stretched by frequent troop rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has become a "thin green line" that could snap unless relief comes soon, according to a study for the Pentagon.

Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who wrote the report under a Pentagon contract, concluded that the Army cannot sustain the pace of troop deployments to Iraq long enough to break the back of the insurgency. He also suggested that the Pentagon's decision, announced in December, to begin reducing the force in Iraq this year was driven in part by a realization that the Army was overextended.

As evidence, Krepinevich points to the Army's 2005 recruiting slump — missing its recruiting goal for the first time since 1999 — and its decision to offer much bigger enlistment bonuses and other incentives.

"You really begin to wonder just how much stress and strain there is on the Army, how much longer it can continue," he said in an interview. He added that the Army is still a highly effective fighting force and is implementing a plan that will expand the number of combat brigades available for rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The 136-page report represents a more sobering picture of the Army's condition than military officials offer in public. While not released publicly, a copy of the report was provided in response to an Associated Press inquiry.

Illustrating his level of concern about strain on the Army, Krepinevich titled one of his report's chapters, "The Thin Green Line."

He wrote that the Army is "in a race against time" to adjust to the demands of war "or risk 'breaking' the force in the form of a catastrophic decline" in recruitment and re-enlistment.

Col. Lewis Boone, spokesman for Army Forces Command, which is responsible for providing troops to war commanders, said it would be "a very extreme characterization" to call the Army broken. He said his organization has been able to fulfill every request for troops that it has received from field commanders.

The Krepinevich assessment is the latest in the debate over whether the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have worn out the Army, how the strains can be eased and whether the U.S. military is too burdened to defeat other threats.

Rep. John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat and Vietnam veteran, created a political storm last fall when he called for an early exit from Iraq, arguing that the Army was "broken, worn out" and fueling the insurgency by its mere presence. Administration officials have hotly contested that view.

George Joulwan, a retired four-star Army general and former NATO commander, agrees the Army is stretched thin.

"Whether they're broken or not, I think I would say if we don't change the way we're doing business, they're in danger of being fractured and broken, and I would agree with that," Joulwan told CNN last month.

Krepinevich did not conclude that U.S. forces should quit Iraq now, but said it may be possible to reduce troop levels below 100,000 by the end of the year. There now are about 136,000, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.

For an Army of about 500,000 soldiers — not counting the thousands of National Guard and Reserve soldiers now on active duty — the commitment of 100,000 or so to Iraq might not seem an excessive burden. But because the war has lasted longer than expected, the Army has had to regularly rotate fresh units in while maintaining its normal training efforts and reorganizing the force from top to bottom.

Krepinevich's analysis, while consistent with the conclusions of some outside the Bush administration, is in stark contrast with the public statements of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and senior Army officials.

Army Secretary Francis Harvey, for example, opened a Pentagon news conference last week by denying the Army was in trouble. "Today's Army is the most capable, best-trained, best-equipped and most experienced force our nation has fielded in well over a decade," he said, adding that recruiting has picked up.

Rumsfeld has argued that the experience of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has made the Army stronger, not weaker.

"The Army is probably as strong and capable as it ever has been in the history of this country," he said in an appearance at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington on Dec. 5. "They are more experienced, more capable, better equipped than ever before."

Krepinevich said in the interview that he understands why Pentagon officials do not state publicly that they are being forced to reduce troop levels in Iraq because of stress on the Army. "That gives too much encouragement to the enemy," he said, even if a number of signs, such as a recruiting slump, point in that direction.

Krepinevich is executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a non-profit policy research institute.

He said he concluded that even Army leaders are not sure how much longer they can keep up the unusually high pace of combat tours in Iraq before they trigger an institutional crisis. Some major Army divisions are serving their second yearlong tours in Iraq, and some smaller units have served three times.

Michael O'Hanlon, a military expert at the private Brookings Institution, said in a recent interview that "it's a judgment call" whether the risk of breaking the Army is great enough to warrant expanding its size.

"I say yes. But it's a judgment call, because so far the Army isn't broken," O'Hanlon said.

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http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-01-24-army-study_x.htm?csp=34

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Democrat blasts Bush before State of the Union

Reuters
Democrat blasts Bush before State of the Union

By Donna Smith

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday urged President George W. Bush to "swagger" less and show more honesty and humility in his annual State of the Union speech to the nation next week.

In a speech at a liberal think tank, Reid gave a scathing assessment of the state of the nation under Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress.

"Republicans run good campaigns, but when it comes to actually governing and protecting Americans, they have a record of incompetence," Reid told an audience at the Center for American Progress.

Reid's speech was part of an effort to lay the groundwork for the November congressional election in which Democrats hope to win control of Congress or at least shrink the Republican majority.

Reid took aim at the president's national security record, saying Bush "must unite the nation behind our most important goal -- keeping our people and way of life safe. We need to hear honesty and humility from the commander in chief, not swagger from the campaigner-in-chief."

Bush is to deliver his State of the Union address before Congress on January 31 and lay out his priorities for the year. He is expected to talk about national security and suggest expansion of tax-free "Health Savings Accounts" to help people pay medical expenses.

Reid accused Bush of making promises in past State of the Union speeches and doing the opposite. In 2003, Reid said, Bush promised not to pass the nation's current bills on to the next generation.

Noting that the government will breach the $8.184 trillion debt limit next month, Reid accused Bush of "bankrupting our country and placing an enormous tax on our children and grandchildren, simply so he can hand out tax breaks to special interests and the wealthy."

The White House has asked Congress to raise the credit limit by mid-February, saying the Treasury would have to take extraordinary measures to keep paying bills for everything from Social Security and national defense. Since 2002, Congress has raised the debt ceiling by $2.2 trillion.

Reid also urged Bush to offer a plan to fix the new Medicare prescription drug program for the elderly. Since the plan was launched on January 1, many poor and elderly people have been snagged by problems that have made it difficult for them to get their prescription costs covered.

About half of the states have stepped in to pay the costs of people who have run into problems. The drug plan relies on private insurers, pharmacies and healthcare companies to provide coverage to Medicare's 42 million beneficiaries.

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White House accused of foot-dragging in Katrina probe

Reuters
White House accused of foot-dragging in Katrina probe

By Donna Smith

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the top Democrat on the Senate panel investigating the government's botched response to Hurricane Katrina, on Tuesday accused administration officials of failing to cooperate and trying to run out the clock on the congressional probe.

"The problems begin at the White House, where there has been a near total lack of cooperation that has made it impossible, in my opinion, for us to do the thorough investigation we have a responsibility to do," Lieberman said in a hearing held by the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

The Connecticut Democrat said the administration has delivered few of the documents requested by the committee and hindered it's ability to obtain information from agencies involved in preparing and responding to the hurricane.

"There's been no assertion of executive privilege; just a refusal to answer," Lieberman said.

"My staff believes that (the Department of Homeland Security) has engaged in a conscious strategy of slow walking our investigation in the hope that we would run out of time to follow the investigation's natural progression to where it leads."

The committee has held several hearings on Katrina and chairman Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, said it is entering the final phase of the probe. The next few hearings will focus on the "most troubling aspects" of the response to the hurricane, which devastated Gulf coast states and flooded New Orleans.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan insisted the administration was cooperating with the probe. "There are thousands of documents that have been provided to the committee, there are numerous administration officials who have gone before the committee and testified," he said.

But Lieberman said key documents were missing that could explain why a Department of Homeland Security warning about the potential dangers of the storm went unheeded.

A Federal Emergency Management Agency document dated August 27 -- two days before the storm hit -- warned of the potential for heavy damage, widespread power outages and possible flooding in New Orleans.

Lieberman said the White House received the report several hours before the storm made landfall.

"What happened to that report?" he asked. "Why was the President left so uninformed that he said four days later: 'I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.'"

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US "outsourced" torture: investigator

Reuters
US "outsourced" torture: investigator

By Jon Boyle

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - The United States flew detainees to countries where they would be tortured and European governments probably knew about it, the head of a European human rights investigation said on Tuesday.

But Swiss senator Dick Marty said in a preliminary report for the Council of Europe human rights watchdog that he had found no irrefutable evidence to confirm allegations that the CIA operated secret detention centers in Europe.

His report kept pressure on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency over the charges that it flew prisoners through European airports to jails in third countries, but Washington denied any wrongdoing and critics said the report contained nothing new.

"There is a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of 'relocation' or 'outsourcing of torture'," Marty told the 46-nation Council, based in the eastern French city of Strasbourg.

"It is highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware."

At the State Department in Washington, spokesman Sean McCormack dismissed the report as "same old reports wrapped up in some new rhetoric. There's nothing new here."

The September 11 attacks on U.S. landmarks sparked a U.S. global war on terrorism against al Qaeda and led to the invasion of Iraq. Public opinion has hardened in Europe since deadly bomb attacks in London last July and in Madrid in March, 2004.

But the allegations about the CIA, first made by newspapers and human rights groups late last year, have put pressure on the United States and European governments to explain their actions and those of their secret services.

Marty said it had been proved that "individuals have been abducted, deprived of their liberty and transported to different destinations in Europe, to be handed over to countries in which they have suffered degrading treatment and torture."

He estimated more than 100 people had been subject to the process known as "rendition."

NO "SMOKING GUN" ON SECRET JAILS

Romania, Poland, Ukraine, Kosovo, Macedonia and Bulgaria have faced accusations that the CIA used detention centers on their soil.

Marty acknowledged there was no firm evidence of detention centers in Europe similar to the one at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where hundreds of people judged by the U.S. military to be illegal combatants are held without charge.

But he said U.S. media had faced government pressure not to publish further accusations, and he expected newly received European satellite and flight data to boost his investigation.

The United States has not denied or confirmed the existence of secret detention centers.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told reporters in Paris he had not seen Marty's report but "the government acts in accordance with the law and with respect to the sovereignty of host countries in which it operates."

"The authorities are free to investigate what they want to investigate but we should not allow ourselves to be distracted from the need to identify, prevent and protect against terrorist acts of violence," he added.

The State Department's McCormack insisted the United States "does not torture," respects the sovereignty of European allies and does not transfer suspects to countries where there is reasonable expectation they might be subjected to torture without first seeking assurances they will not be tortured.

There may be differences between Europe and America on these issues, but "we are fighting the same fight, we share the same core values. And what we need is discussion and dialogue about how to deal with the issues that confront us," McCormack told a news briefing.

He said if Europeans had more questions on this issue, the United States would try to answer them.

Denis MacShane, a British member of parliament and former minister for Europe, told reporters Marty's report "has more holes than a Swiss cheese." A British government spokesman said there seemed to be no new facts.

European Security Commissioner Franco Frattini urged EU members to cooperate fully with Marty's probe but said it was too early to draw conclusions.

Poland said the report left no "basis for thinking such camps or prisons existed on Polish territory."

(Additional reporting by Ingrid Melander in Brussels, Kate Baldwin in London and Paul Carrel in Paris)

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Law Firm's Defamation Claim Found to Trump Critics' Internet Anonymity

Law.com
Law Firm's Defamation Claim Found to Trump Critics' Internet Anonymity
Shannon P. Duffy, The Legal Intelligencer

Ruling on one of the most important First Amendment issues of the day, a Philadelphia judge has ruled that a valid defamation claim trumps any right to speak anonymously on the Internet.

In his 19-page opinion in Klehr Harrison Harvey Branzburg & Ellers v. JPA Development Inc., Common Pleas Judge Albert W. Sheppard Jr. ordered the operator of two now-defunct Web sites to turn over the identities of the anonymous authors of comments on the sites that allegedly defamed a Philadelphia law firm.

Sheppard chose not to apply tests developed by New Jersey and Delaware courts, relying instead on Pennsylvania's existing discovery rules for guidance.

In the suit, the Klehr Harrison firm complains that its reputation was severely disparaged by comments on the two sites that falsely accused its lawyers of being "thieves," committing "fraud" and "lying" to a judge.

According to court papers, the Internet sites were operated by Gerasimos "Jerry" Pantelidis and focused on discussions of a real estate dispute involving the Barclay Hotel in which Pantelidis was pitted against a mortgage company.

Pantelidis had purchased the Barclay in a bankruptcy court sale, and a mortgage company owned by Michael Karp had loaned Pantelidis about $8 million.

A dispute later arose when Karp's company threatened to foreclose on the mortgage due to its fears that Pantelidis was not making sufficient progress in his renovation efforts.

Pantelidis, in a suit against Karp, claims he was satisfying all of the mortgage agreement's requirements, but because of the foreclosure threat, he was forced to sell the hotel at a wholesale price to developer Allan Domb.

The litigation between Pantelidis and Karp is ongoing, and a nonjury trial that began last year is set to resume Jan. 30.

But a new lawsuit began when Klehr Harrison, which represents one of Karp's companies, claimed that Pantelidis was defaming the firm on two Internet sites.

Sheppard has ruled that numerous statements on the Internet sites are "defamation per se" because they amount to accusations of criminal conduct.

One of the sites, according to court papers, included a link to a "guest book" that contained numerous anonymous comments, many of which sharply criticized Klehr Harrison.

Pantelidis has testified that he was the administrator of the guest book site and controlled its contents.

But when lawyers for Klehr Harrison demanded to know the identities of the anonymous commentators, lawyers for Pantelidis refused to turn them over, arguing that disclosure of their identities would violate their constitutional right to engage in anonymous speech.

Sheppard sided with Klehr Harrison and ordered that the identities of all comment authors be disclosed.

Pantelidis appealed that ruling, and Sheppard has now handed down an opinion explaining his reasoning.

Sheppard found that courts have adopted a variety of approaches in tackling the issue of anonymous speech on the Internet.

In Dendrite International v. Doe, the New Jersey Superior Court held in 2001 that there is a "well established First Amendment right to speak anonymously."

In Dendrite, a public corporation brought a defamation action against numerous John Doe defendants for messages posted on an Internet bulletin board that accused the company and its president of altering accounting methods to overstate revenue.

The company sought limited discovery for the purposes of ascertaining all of the John Does' identities, but the New Jersey Superior Court denied the request and announced a three-prong test.

Under the test, a defamation plaintiff seeking the identities of anonymous Internet subscribers must show it has taken efforts to notify the anonymous posters that they are the subject of an application for an order of disclosure; identify to the court statements made by the posters; and establish a prima facie cause of action for defamation against the posters.

If the test is met, the Dendrite court said, the trial court must "balance the defendant's First Amendment right of anonymous free speech against the strength of the prima facie case presented and the necessity for the disclosure of the anonymous defendant's identity to allow the plaintiff to proceed."

The Dendrite standard was adopted in a modified form by the Delaware Supreme Court in its 2005 decision in Doe v. Cahill in which the plaintiff, an elected official, complained about anonymous postings on an Internet blog that impugned his leadership abilities.

Expressing more concern for the rights of anonymous Internet speakers, the Cahill court warned that "there is reason to believe that many defamation plaintiffs bring suit merely to unmask the identities of anonymous critics."

The Cahill court retained the notification provision of the Dendrite test, as well as the provision that requires the plaintiff to set forth a prima facie cause of action against the anonymous poster.

But the court made the test significantly more difficult for plaintiffs by holding that the identities of anonymous defendants may not be disclosed unless the plaintiff can "support his defamation claim with facts sufficient to defeat a summary judgment motion."

Now Sheppard has decided to apply neither the Dendrite nor the Cahill test, finding instead that Pennsylvania's existing discovery rules provide adequate guidance.

Sheppard took his cue from a law review article by Professor Michael S. Vogel of the University of Illinois College of Law titled: "Unmasking 'John Doe' Defendants: The Case Against Excessive Hand-Wringing over Legal Standards" published in 2004 in the Oregon Law Review.

In the article, Vogel complained that courts were rushing to apply new standards to discovery issues related to anonymous posters to the Internet.

"The threat to core First Amendment free speech rights from too readily identifying anonymous speakers is real, and should be taken seriously by the courts. At the same time, however, the new standards offer little real protection for anonymous speech beyond what the courts can provide under existing rules," Vogel wrote.

Sheppard agreed, saying, "the implementation of new standards for cases involving plaintiff's efforts to learn the identities of anonymous Internet posters will likely do more harm than good."

Instead, Sheppard said, "this court believes that a balancing of John Does' First Amendment rights against the plaintiff's rights to the information sought is built into our commonwealth's existing civil procedure."

As a result, Sheppard decided that the defense request for a protective order is governed by Pennsylvania Rule of Evidence 4011, which prohibits discovery that is sought "in bad faith" or would "cause unreasonable annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, burden or expense to the deponent or any person or party."

Sheppard found there was "no evidence that [the] plaintiff has sought the identities of the anonymous posters (or poster) in bad faith."

Turning to the question of whether the discovery would cause the defendants unreasonable burden, Sheppard found that he was forced to consider the anonymous posters' First Amendment rights.

Sheppard found that courts "have repeatedly held that the right to speak anonymously is subsumed within the constitutional right to speak freely."

Nonetheless, Sheppard found that free speech "is not absolute," and that "defamatory and libelous speech enjoys no constitutional protection."

Sheppard concluded that since many of the anonymous statements in the "guest book" amounted to defamation per se, they are not entitled to First Amendment protection.

"While the posters are undeniably entitled to First Amendment rights, the defamatory per se statements are not entitled to First Amendment protection," Sheppard wrote.

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Bush's Colon - Or the Neutering of Karl Rove

huffingtonpost.com
Bush's Colon - Or the Neutering of Karl Rove
Larisa Alexandrovna

So Karl Rove, the overly hyped boy-genius (Give any criminal enough money and power and they automatically qualify for genius level. Go figure.) of the Republican Reich unveils his campaign strategy for the upcoming mid-term elections. Rove does not seem to realize, however, that le jig is up and that he stands holding his little wee wee against the backdrop of the most corrupt administration in US history, an infestation so serious that it may be the final blow to the healthy body of US democracy.

Spreading like the worst kind of sickness, the culture of corruption has permeated into the pores of open and honest government, in every branch and at every level. Standing at the nucleus of this pathetic sepsis, Karl (along with his Ken doll) thinks the GOP can regurgitate the rot and sell it again, as though every GOP talking point, party platform issue, and campaign promise is not already infected.

Let the Hooking Begin

Karl says: "The GOP's progress during the last four decades is a stunning political achievement"

Reality: Maybe, but the Big Brain neglects to mention that the GOP's stunning failures in the last five years, coupled with corruption, greed, and power lust, have undone anything ever accomplished by this party that is currently closer to Mussolini than it is to Reagan or Eisenhower.

Let's run down memory lane for the Rove-blitz gang:

-On the Economy: Under the Republican Corporatist motto of compassionate luxury, they have managed to take down the entire US economy, and no amount of "four decades of achievement" blah blah will undo what they have so brazenly done.

For Rove and his ownership- of- society Klan, fiscal responsibility and the rule of law are just so "pre-911." As always, heir Rove is prepared to rape and exploit a national tragedy for political gain, again and without conscience.

"Republicans have a post 9/11 worldview" to account for lack of anything else to say, Rove coos to his purchased army of supporters.

If man was devolving into a psychotic pit of rotted plasma, Rove would be the Alpha of such grime.

But how does this little worldview balance the pillaging of the entire US economy earned on the backs of taxpayers (the godly and ungodly alike) in order to attack a nation - Iraq - that had nothing to do with 9/11 nor posed any threat to US national security whatsoever? Is this the waltz of the fiscally deranged?

Or how does a "post 9/11 worldview" resolve the no bid contracts to Halliburton, or the lost $8.8 billion dollars gone missing all magic like?

How does this new and improved uber worldview justify once again bankrupting the US treasury to pay for the criminal negligence of appointing yet another Bush Pioneer to a position of importance that he is not remotely qualified for? This appointment in particular, one of life and death and national security is no small thing and yet a horse whisperer for the Saudi stable is charged with a budget that goes poof in the night (like all Bush Pioneer run US agencies), thousands upon thousands are killed, and the rest of the nation is left paying for yet another Halliburton no bid contract!

Then again losing a city is not the only historical first for this gang, when one considers that another Bush Pioneer and fellow K street money launderer was literally handcuffed and frog-marched straight to jail when just the day before he was heading the White House procurement office (d'oh).

Fiscal criminality anyone?

Perhaps it is best that the GOP venture away from the topic of Economy as quickly as possible and move to something they have had better success with. How about the much hyped National Security?


-On National Security: Well, unless you have been kept in a cave for the last five years while doped up on a drip mixture of Fox News and crack cocaine, there is no question that the Republican Party has made a mockery of national security, even a sport of it.

Silly Karl, aren't you under investigation for the outing of a covert CIA officer working on WMD (you know, those things that make mushroom clouds and the fable of an excuse to justify invading Iraq?) in order to silence a critic of the White House? Maybe next year they can have Rove call in from prison to provide a lecture on ethics and National Security? Or perhaps "Dick Cheney's, Dick Cheney" can take time off from his trial for obstructing the investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame and explain the "post-911" Republican world view, just for shits and giggles even?

That aside, just what giant leaps toward securing the nation has this uber patriotic bunch made?

Well, they have used the Pentagon to infiltrate Quakers, the IRS to collect party affiliation information, the NSA to spy on everyone, the FBI to monitor the ACLU, PETA, and Greenpeace, and Homeland Security to track Texas Democrats . We can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that no Quakers, members of the ACLU, Greenpeace, or PETA will ever highjack a plane and smash it into a building.

Oh, but our borders, food supply, nuclear and chemical plants, cargo, emergency response, and every conceivable thing imaginable that would in fact secure our nation - NADA! Well bravo, Mr. Rove, and what will be your next trick? Nuking Los Angeles and calling it "Balancing the Moral Paradigm"?

Of course torturing innocent people by the thousands and then letting them go without ever holding a trial would produce the kind of enemy that a pre-911 world would have never imagined and only a GOP post-911 view could have created in its deranged power lust.

Thanks for passing the Patriot Act, however, which has made possible just how many arrests and convictions of terrorists? Ah huh, national security my ass!

If the Economy or National Security will not work or pass the red face test, perhaps an oldie but goodie known to lift sagging GOP poll numbers may do the trick?

-On The War on Terror: The Republican majority has created many more terrorists than ever existed before, united them under one flag of purpose, and garnered them world support. Something no doubt to lead a party platform with.

But to be fair, the Republican-led shock and awe did make a pit stop to Afghanistan in the uber heroic post 9-11 juggernaut, and managed with the grace of a bank robber to reinstate the Taliban and reclaim the heroin trade. (See HERE, and HERE). Osama who? Maybe they will have better luck when they next invade a country, which seems to be relatively soon.

But aside from this staggering array of "accomplishments" there have been some setbacks for the Greed Oil Party, namely, Greed, Oil, and Partying at the expense of everything else - and bribery not just for lobbyists either, but for anyone with a wallet.

One if by land, two if by sea, three of by greed:

Bribery of the President, the Speaker of the House by a foreign nation (Buy the issue of Vanity Fair if you can, because you will not find the full article online), the House Majority leader by a foreign nation, and in general a large part of the Republican syndicate in Congress, are all just blips, smallish scandals really, nothing that will take away from the "freedom is on the march" slogan for 2006 of which Karl no doubt dreams.

What about bribing columnists and reporters? What about just fabricating news altogether? Is any of this a party platform list of accomplishments to be proud of?

How about bribing church leaders to abuse the public trust for political gains? Or aside from all the bribery Republicans can buy, what about faking evidence, lying to Congress, and misleading a nation into war?
How digestible is this much post-911 patriotism?

Then again, Karl might role out another gay-bashing campaign to bring out the hate voters. He can even have the gay members of the Republican party wield the holy hate sword against their own in despicable hypocrisy. Yet we do know so much more now about the nature of the GOP gay agenda and its peddlers, including so much more about just who is gay and who is not gay, that I wonder if such a move would be wise?

After all, it is not every election cycle that the head of the RNC wheels out his homophobic agenda while at the same time bedding cute guys and defending the presence of a gay male hooker posing as a journalist and sitting only 10 feet from the President of the United States. Maybe that California congressman or those other few in various states would prefer to avoid the whole gay hate thing, given their own sexual preferences?

In any case, helluva job Rovie. Oh, and go ahead, bring on your post-911 worldview. Point for Point, your post 9-11 bullshit will be reinserted back where it belongs.

Bet on it!!

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Bush Looks An Awful Lot Like A Monkey

huffingtonpost.com
Bush Looks An Awful Lot Like A Monkey
Bob Cesca

The right-wing talking heads have been hitting this "Bin Laden sounds like [insert Democratic name here]" talking point around the clock since the audio recording was released last week. The point seems to be that Bin Laden hates America; Bin Laden sounds like [Democrat]; therefore [Democrat] hates America.

So in the interest of perpetuating the same line of reasoning, let's review an equally ridiculous equation.

I give you... the infamous "President Bush Looks Like A Monkey" montage (be kind to us, historians of the future).



Okay sure. He looks monkeyesque. But that doesn't mean he's literally a monkey. And when news of a monkey hits the mainstream media, has Chris Matthews wasted valuable spittle and airtime remarking, "You know that monkey looks an awful lot like George W. Bush (spit, spit, spit)."?

How fired would more progressive MSNBC hosts like Keith Olbermann or Ron Reagan be if they reported on the dwindling mountain gorilla population in Africa and followed it up with a comment like, "By the way, Bush kind of looks like a monkey and those apes in Africa are losing ground much like Bush's approval ratings. Get it? Bush is like a monkey."

Comparing Bin Laden to Democrats shouldn't be the milieu of pundits -- it's the milieu of right-wing comedians and satirists like, um... shoot. I can't think of any funny conservatives. Larry the Cable Guy? No wait. He's not funny. Never mind. The milieu of right-wing bloggers and commenters then. Maybe extremists like Michael Savage. Or Glenn Beck who's so extreme he'd never make it to cable news -- oh crap.

But it's grotesquely irresponsible for any semi-reputable member of the mainstream media to make this comparison considering how far removed they are from the context of satire. Either comparison: Bin Laden or Monkey. And as we all know, pundits say a lot of irresponsible things so it's really not much of a shocker to hear something like this from the mouths of Matthews, Hannity, and Scarborough. But there are very few if any human beings on this planet who could justifiably be compared to someone as evil as Osama Bin Laden.

The talking point -- wherever it originated -- was meant to paint Democrats and progressives as being in league with Bin Laden. It's an out-loud whisper campaign. The sort of thing designed to be heard by casual or uniformed viewers who might mix up the details in translation. If "Bin Laden sound like the Democrats" is repeated enough it'll eventually evolve into, "Did you hear? The Democrats are as evil as Bin Laden and they want to kill us all!" The same way John McCain's adopted children became an "illegitimate black child." The same way Max Cleland's opposition to the Bush administration in 2002 begat "Cleland is similar to Bin Laden and Saddam" which begat "Cleland is as evil as Bin Laden and Saddam!" which begat "Senator Saxby Chambliss."

So I don't expect any of the offending pundits to apologize to Michael Moore or Howard Dean or Nancy Pelosi. What I do expect to hear sometime between 7PM and midnight Monday night on either Fox or MSNBC is, "Bush looks an awful lot like a monkey!" Fair and balanced, right?

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Lawmakers say they will press Bush on spying

USA TODAY
Lawmakers say they will press Bush on spying

WASHINGTON (AP) — Several lawmakers said Sunday they will press President Bush to justify his decision to allow domestic eavesdropping, rebuffing GOP suggestions their criticism of broad executive authority puts the nation at risk.

During the Sunday talk shows, lawmakers were responding to efforts by White House aide Karl Rove to make national security the top partisan issue in the November midterm elections. Rove made the comments about the time that new audiotape warnings by Osama bin Laden were released, threatening an upcoming attack on the U.S.

"I think Karl Rove made a big mistake last Friday to use this issue as his opening salvo to Republican operatives," said Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee.

"The terrorists aren't going to check our party registration before they blow us up. ...We're under attack as America," she said on ABC's This Week.

"The NSA's terrorist surveillance program is targeted at al-Qaeda communications coming into or going out of the United States," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said in a statement later Sunday. "It is a limited, hot pursuit effort by our intelligence community to detect and prevent attacks."

He accused Democrats of making "misleading and outlandish charges about this vital tool that helps us do exactly what the 9/11 Commission said we needed to do connect the dots."

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., appearing on Fox News Sunday, said the new threats emphasize a greater need for Bush to fully consult with lawmakers from both parties on the best strategy for spy programs within the confines of the law.

"Do I think that the president's leadership has been worthy of support of our party and our leadership? Yes," McCain said.

But McCain questioned efforts to paint Democrats as weak on national security.

"There's too many good Democrats over there who are as concerned about national security and work just as hard as I do," McCain said.

On Friday, Rove outlined a blueprint for Republicans to prevail in the midterm elections, suggesting that Democrats have undermined anti-terror efforts by questioning Bush's authority to allow wiretapping without getting court approval first.

Bush has cited a congressional resolution passed after Sept. 11, 2001 that authorized him to use force in the fight against terrorism as allowing him to order the program. The program allows eavesdropping of international phone calls and e-mails of people deemed a terror risk.

Several lawmakers from both parties, including McCain and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, have questioned the program's legality because Bush did not get court approval nor fully consult with Congress. Specter's committee will hold a hearing Feb. 6.

On Sunday, some Republicans echoed Rove's anti-terror themes, arguing that Bush should have broad power even if the 2001 congressional resolution did not expressly authorize or otherwise notify lawmakers of the domestic spying.

Sen. George Allen, R-Va., who is considered a possible 2008 presidential contender, said there are many security measures he doesn't know — and shouldn't know — because it could risk alerting the enemy.

"Neither did I know what sort of intercepts or communications of financial assistance or other things that I don't know about," he said.

Allen cited in particular the new bin Laden tape which surfaced last week as evidence that the terror cells might exist in the U.S. and might be preparing to attack should law enforcement officials let their guard down.

"I find nothing wrong with having a hearing. This maybe ought to be something that you would ratify — yes, the president has this authority," Allen said on CNN's Late Edition.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. said Rove is being divisive by seeking to exploit the terror threat for political gain. Wartime should not give a president unchecked authority, he said on ABC's This Week.

"You know, Osama bin Laden is going to die of kidney failure before he's killed by Karl Rove and his crowd," Kerry said. "We're prepared to eavesdrop wherever and whenever necessary in order to make America safer. But we need to put a procedure in place to protect the constitutional rights of Americans."

Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-01-22-spying-program_x.htm

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'Blue' States Tackling Energy On Their Own; Federal Efficiency Rules Fall Short

washingtonpost.com
'Blue' States Tackling Energy On Their Own
Federal Efficiency Rules Fall Short, Some Say

By Justin Blum
Washington Post Staff Writer

Democratic-leaning states increasingly are regulating energy use and emissions, working around a GOP-controlled federal government that state officials say has not done enough.

The states are creating energy efficiency requirements for light bulbs and household appliances, limiting power plant and automobile output linked to global warming, and requiring the use of renewable energy, such as wind and solar.

Leading the effort are "blue" states that voted Democratic in the 2004 presidential election. Even some of those states that have Republican governors, such as California and Connecticut, are making their own rules.

"In a way, the left is controlling that agenda," said Amy Myers Jaffe, associate director of the energy program at Rice University in Houston. "They're just implementing it at the community and state level."

Jaffe and other analysts said some of the policies would have to be adopted nationally to have a significant impact on the environment and energy consumption. But with other policies, such as the auto emissions limits, they said a sufficient number of big states are adopting regulations to make a significant difference nationally. "If all these giant-population states do this, does it matter that we don't have a national policy?" Jaffe asked.

Seven states that voted Democratic in 2004's presidential election have signed on to a regional plan to restrict power plant emissions. Eleven states that went Democratic have adopted, or are in the process of adopting, automobile tailpipe emissions requirements, which face a court challenge before they can be implemented. Nine of the 10 states that have adopted appliance efficiency regulations also voted Democratic.

Requirements that a portion of electricity come from renewable sources have caught on beyond the Democratic-leaning states. Seven states that went Republican in 2004 have joined 13 Democratic-leaning states and the District of Columbia in setting those rules.

Though the new regulations are not necessarily partisan, the activists behind them say their adoption requires lawmakers and constituents who are concerned about global warming and energy-conservation -- issues that Democrats often emphasize.

The Bush administration welcomes state efforts "as long as they do not put Americans out of jobs or move emissions from one state to another or one country to another," said Michele St. Martin, a spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

State officials say their constituents are demanding new limits on pollution and energy consumption. "What is frustrating is that these things aren't being done on a national basis," said Maine Gov. John E. Baldacci (D).

In some cases, states complain that the federal government has failed to take steps required by law.

The Energy Department has not decided if it should implement some new rules for appliance energy efficiency or update some old ones, for example, even though legal deadlines have passed for numerous appliances, such as home furnaces and boilers. The department says it is working on improving its performance.

Some Republican lawmakers in Washington defended their record on energy matters, noting that they approved an energy bill last year designed to increase energy supplies and promote cleaner energy sources. Lawmakers said they support allowing states to chart their own course, though they may disagree with some of the measures.

"Unless we get involved in a situation . . . where we make it almost impossible for there to be an automobile market in the United States, I don't see anything wrong with the states being involved," said Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

States are having an impact in a number of ways.

Aggressive action at the state level has forced manufacturers to agree to some national efficiency requirements for appliances. After several states moved to regulate ceiling fans, for instance, manufacturers agreed to national standards to avoid the expense and hassle of customizing products for individual states.

But there are still a number of state appliance restrictions for which there are no federal rules, creating costly complications for manufacturers. The 10 states that have passed their own energy efficiency standards do not always agree on which appliances should be covered or what the standards should be.

California is the only state with separate standards for hot tubs and pool pumps. Only Massachusetts has rules for residential furnaces, boilers and the fans inside. California has standards for televisions, DVD players and recorders, and New York has taken initial steps toward making its own rules for the same products.

The state-by-state standards are "absolutely a nightmare for our members," said Keith McCoy, the National Association of Manufacturers' vice president of resources and environmental policy in Washington. "They create a patchwork of regulatory compliance issues."

Industry has supported some state measures that require energy generation by renewable sources. Even politically conservative states such as Texas have signed on, at least partially because supporters think the new rules could have a positive impact on the environment without creating a negative one on the economy.

With the regional power plant emissions plan, seven Northeastern states have agreed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Environmentalists had lobbied heavily for the measure as a way to limit the release of gasses linked to global warming.

The electric industry opposes the power plant restrictions, saying the result could be a loss of manufacturing jobs to countries where the cost of producing electricity is lower. The industry argues that states acting alone cannot have a significant impact on worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.

"There's not really anything that can be done locally or at a state level or local level to put a significant dent in greenhouse gasses," said Bill Fang, the climate issue director for the Edison Electric Institute, an industry group in Washington.

Another group of states has targeted automobiles, a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. The rules limiting the amount of carbon dioxide and other gasses that can come out of tailpipes would go beyond federal regulations already in place.

Automakers, which are suing to have the rules overturned, say the restrictions would push up prices and reduce sales.

But local officials -- tired of waiting on the federal government to beef up its own pollution-control rules -- say they have acted prudently in attempting to take charge of what comes out of the tailpipes and smokestacks in their states.

"The federal standards are simply not good enough," said Gina McCarthy, commissioner of Connecticut's Department of Environmental Protection. "If we can't get the federal government to act, then we have to take action in any way we can."

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Democrats assail Republicans on ethics

Reuters
Democrats assail Republicans on ethics

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats accused Republicans on Saturday of using "doublespeak" and abusing their power in order to help special interest groups.

With Republicans burdened by the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said in the weekly Democratic radio address that years of controlling both the White House and Congress had corrupted the Republican Party.

"There is a price to pay for this Republican abuse of power and it can be seen in the present state of our union," Reid said. "Special interests and the well-connected have been rewarded by Republicans while everyone else has been left behind."

The scandal theme is likely to play a role in the run-up to the November congressional elections. Abramoff entered guilty pleas in a wide-ranging bribery investigation that has prompted calls by both parties for reform.

The scandal has implicated at least one member of Congress, Republican Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio, and some former aides to Rep. Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican who stepped down as majority leader.

Reid accused Republicans of using "doublespeak" to sell their agenda.

"When they wanted to let energy companies release more pollution into the air, they called it the 'Clear Skies Initiative,'" he said. "When they wanted to let loggers cut down more trees and weaken environmental laws, they called it the 'Healthy Forests Initiative.'

"My favorite Republican doublespeak is when they wanted to give tax breaks to their special interest friends even though it meant adding more than $50 billion to our deficit, they called their effort the 'Deficit Reduction Act,'" he said.

Reid's harsh criticism followed an apology he made this week to Republicans senators for a news release outlining reports of ethical problems, singling out individual senators.

Reid apologized for the tone of the document released by his office, saying it went too far.

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The Dishonest Economic Fantasies Screwing Over Ordinary Americans

huffingtonpost.com
The Dishonest Economic Fantasies Screwing Over Ordinary Americans
David Sirota

In my book Hostile Takeover that comes out this Spring, [Editor's note: You can order it now from this link: Hostile Takeover by David Sirota ] I make the point that if you want to really understand the political/media Establishment's bias on economic issues, you have to look at what dishonest, highly-questionable assumptions are regularly portrayed as concrete factual axioms. The biggest and most dangerous assumption that we can see from our current political/media Establishment - and that we can see in today's newspapers - is the one that basically says the so-called "free" market is the only way to address society's challenges (I put "free" in quotes because many supposedly "free" market policies like our current trade deals are chock full of highly restrictive protections for Big Money interests - these policies are not "free" market, they are corporate socialism). These assumptions also portray anyone who challenges this "free" market fundamentalism as out of the mainstream, even as polls show most Americans question that fundamentalism). We see these biased assumption everywhere, and they come not from a Republican or Democratic bias in the media, but from an overall economic bias from the entire Establishment.

To understand this bias and how pervasive it is even in the so-called "liberal" media bastions, let's take a second and look at the New York Times coverage of economic "globalization," both present and past. We can use the Times not to single it out (these trends can be seen in most Establishment media/political communication outlets), but because the paper is arguably the most important news outlet in the world. And because it is widely considered left-of-center, it is a good indicator that these innate biases are not exclusively in right-wing media, but parroted throughout the Establishment - from left to right.

The first place to look at the Times is in the writing of the paper's most famous and revered columnist, Thomas Friedman, who is (incredibly) portrayed on chat shows as either an objective centrist, or even slightly left of center. Yet he is the man who recently urged America to basically eliminate or drastically cut Medicare and Social Security; the man who chastises other countries for having strong worker protections; the man whose entire book, The World is Flat, is one giant glossy justification for shipping U.S. jobs overseas and driving wages into the ground; the man who, thanks to his unflagging efforts to shill for corporate America's agenda, gets billed by elitist rag sheets like Fortune Magazine as "The Oracle of the Global Century." Thanks to the Times, Friedman has become so influential that politicians (including Democrats) regularly regurgitate his exact language when endorsing the outsourcing of U.S. jobs.

But the bias of its top columnist pales in comparison to the more troubling bias of the Times' "news" reporting - more troubling because it is billed as objective journalism. For instance, take a look at the disdainful tone with which the paper addresses the recent election of working class populists in Latin America. The paper labeled as "radical" one Latin American leader's proposal to reject corporate-written trade policies that have driven his country into sustained poverty - trade policies that polls show the American public opposes. Now that that leader has won office, the paper today continues to try to marginalize the opposition to these trade policies, once again reasserting that free market fundamentalism is, unquestionably, the only possible prescriptions that should be pursued in any economic realm, no matter what.

This propensity to venerate ultraconservative free market fundamentalism as a law of nature can also be seen in the paper's domestic reporting. Just look at the Times today, where it enlisted a writer from the neoconservative New Republic to write a supposedly "objective" review of a book by former Clinton economic adviser Gene Sperling justifying "free" trade policies. Sperling, of course, has every right to push his ideas, because he does not try to hide the fact that he was one of the main architects of neoliberal economic thinking. And his book clearly has some good ideas. What is troubling is that the Times pretends to be "objective" in covering his book, and yet couches Sperling's very subjective, neoliberal opinions as assumed, concrete, unquestionable fact. Just look at these excerpts, not from the book, but from the Times piece in the reporter's supposedly objective voice:

"Democrats have little to lose and everything to gain by embracing the hallmarks of a dynamic economy like freer trade...Yet while Sperling appears to chide both sides equally, his book functions primarily as a useful reproach to progressives who believe that ideological purity requires rejecting market-friendly means...Sperling's ideas are unfailingly sound."

The assumptions by the Times in this passage are so preposterous they can be seen only as rank, deliberate dishonesty in pursuit of a well-defined economic agenda. As mentioned above, polls have consistently shown the public's growing opposition to America's current corporate-written trade policy. America's trade deficit continues to skyrocket, real wages continue to stagnate and higher paying jobs are shipped overseas - all aided and abetted by a corporate-written economic and trade policies that actually encourage these trends. Yet the Times states as fact that the Democratic Party - the party that desperately needs to start winning the very working-class constituencies decimated by these policies - has nothing to gain by articulating anything other than more "free" trade.

Similarly, polls show that on major economic issues like energy and health care, the public rejects free market fundamentalism, and wants the government to play a strong role regulating the market. Parts of the economy with strong market intervention by the government such as publicly-owned energy facilities and Medicare have managed to provide quality services to the general public, while helping stabilize the economy. Yet the Times states as fact that progressives are rightfully "reproached" for demanding anything other than free market fundamentalism, and offers not even a mention of all the factual data about wage, pension and health care cuts encouraged by neoliberal trade/economic policies that clearly call into question all the assumptions. Instead, we are simply told that Sperling's prescriptions are "unfailingly sound."

Remember, this is not out of the ordinary. The Times has, for years, genuflected to ultra-right economic policy and touted its supposedly incredible virtues as fact, even as evidence is presented to the contrary. To see what I mean, let's go back to November 18, 1993 - the day after the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Economic experts, labor leaders, consumer advocates, environmental groups and courageous Democrats in Congress all provided hard evidence that the deal would be a disaster, yet here is how the Times portrayed the pact's passage on its front page:

"Bill Clinton pressed on [in pursuit of the pact], growing more rather than less committed as the days passed. Abandoned by two of the three top Democratic leaders in the House, opposed by usually reliable Democrats in the trade unions and by some important leaders of minority groups and environmental organizations, he kept shoving more and more chips into the pot on an issue that few Americans really understood...It was the most important achievement of his Presidency...Mr. Clinton retreated early on Bosnia, on Haiti, on homosexuals in the military, on important elements of his economic plan; he seemed ready to compromise on all but the most basic provisions of his health-care reforms. Critics started asking whether he had a bottom line on anything. On the trade accord, he did, and that question won't be asked much for a while [after] the President's smashing success...free trade would not be quite so free as it might have been, but more walls came down this week than went up...at least Mr. Clinton has gained credibility, through his tenacity on the trade pact, that will help him in the months ahead. 'This is a great victory,' said Robert S. Strauss, the longtime Democratic power broker."

In short, all the facts and evidence of what was accurately predicted to come (stagnating wages, cross-border environmental degradation, exploitation of worker rights, exporting of good-paying American jobs, etc.) was shoved to the side, substituted by a glowing Times narrative of a "smashing success." A President who was willing to capitulate on everything else was lauded for having the supposed courage required to stand with Big Money interests in screwing over ordinary Americans and pushing more ultra-right-wing neoliberal economics.

Let me be very clear - we can have a debate about all of these core economic issues, and people like Gene Sperling have some good points to make on the neoliberal side. But they have points to be made within the context of a debate. And that's the core problem: when you look at the discourse between politicians or the news coverage of these economic issues, you barely ever see a debate at all, and when you do, the side arguing against the free market fundamentalism and for the positions supported by the majority of ordinary Americans is automatically portrayed by the Establishment as marginal.

What's really going on is obvious: the political/media Establishment is trying to dishonestly create the perception that it is just a fact that the Big Money position on key economic issues (ie. corporate-written trade deals and neoliberal economics) has resulted and always will result in major benefits to society. The Establishment does this even though almost every factual indicator about these policies of import to ordinary people - real wages, trade deficits, health care & retirement benefit levels - are on the negative swing. Oh sure, corporate profits continue to skyrocket - but the indicators that actually matter to the vast majority of hard working Americans in their day-to-day lives are not.

The most interesting question of all is why? Why would the Establishment so deliberately bias its economic coverage? For politicians, the answer is easy - the more they toe the corporate line, push economic policies that screw over ordinary citizens and pad Big Money's bottom line, the more our corrupt, pay-to-play political process rewards them with huge wads of campaign cash. For the media, it is more complex, having partly to do with the fact that the media is owned by corporations with a huge incentive to push ultraconservative economic policies and partly to do with the fact that in today's journalist-as-celebrity era, many of the most important opinion-setting reporters are upper-crust elites who never have to deal with the consequences of the economic prescriptions they push.

The result, as I argue in my upcoming book, is an intense propaganda system that destructively distorts reality and an America that increasingly tunes out the media and politics altogether. The public is not stupid - the public knows that what they read, see and hear from the Establishment is often highly-biased fiction divorced from the average citizen's daily economic challenges, and deliberately designed to make anyone who questions the Establishment's economic agenda feel marginalized. My book shows how these policies are the result of a hostile takeover of our government by Big Money interests. And in doing so, the book aims to be an average citizen's guide to decoding all this B.S. - because the first step towards changing the media/political system is understanding in a very fundamental way how it is being used by the Establishment to wage a merciless class war against ordinary people.

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Not Now, I'm Eavesdropping

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A Great Recruiting Tool

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You're Offering The Americans A Truce?

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As Elections Near, Officials Challenge Balloting Security; In Controlled Test, Results Are Manipulated in Florida System

washingtonpost.com
As Elections Near, Officials Challenge Balloting Security
In Controlled Test, Results Are Manipulated in Florida System

By Zachary Goldfarb
Special to The Washington Post

As the Leon County supervisor of elections, Ion Sancho's job is to make sure voting is free of fraud. But the most brazen effort lately to manipulate election results in this Florida locality was carried out by Sancho himself.

Four times over the past year Sancho told computer specialists to break in to his voting system. And on all four occasions they did, changing results with what the specialists described as relatively unsophisticated hacking techniques. To Sancho, the results showed the vulnerability of voting equipment manufactured by Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, which is used by Leon County and many other jurisdictions around the country.

Sancho's most recent demonstration was last month. Harri Hursti, a computer security expert from Finland, manipulated the "memory card" that records the votes of ballots run through an optical scanning machine.

Then, in a warehouse a few blocks from his office in downtown Tallahassee, Sancho and seven other people held a referendum. The question on the ballot:

"Can the votes of this Diebold system be hacked using the memory card?"

Two people marked yes on their ballots, and six no. The optical scan machine read the ballots, and the data were transmitted to a final tabulator. The result? Seven yes, one no.

"Was it possible for a disgruntled employee to do this and not have the elections administrator find out?" Sancho asked. "The answer was yes."

Diebold and some officials have criticized Sancho's experiments and said his conclusions about the vulnerability of electronic voting systems are unfounded.

What Sancho did "is analogous to if I gave you the keys to my house and told you when I was gone," said David Bear, a Diebold spokesman. As Bear sees it, Sancho's experiment involved giving hackers "complete unfettered access" to the equipment, something a responsible elections administrator would never allow.

Questions about the security of electronic voting machines have been circulating widely in recent years. But many of the concerns have been dismissed as the fantasies of Internet conspiracy theorists or sore-loser partisans who could not accept that their candidates simply got fewer votes. Critics have not demonstrated that any real elections have had returns altered by the manipulation of electronic voting systems.

But the questions raised by Sancho, who has held his post since 1989, show how the concerns are being taken more seriously among elections professionals.

"While electronic voting systems hold promise for improving the election process," the Government Accountability Office said in a report to Congress last year, there are still pressing concerns about "security and reliability . . . design flaws" and other issues.

The questions about electronic balloting have become widespread as states and counties move to upgrade equipment, as required by the 2002 Help America Vote Act. The law and new state regulations were enacted to make voting more accessible and more accurate, a response to the controversy generated by the contested outcome in Florida in the 2000 presidential election.

Since the federal law was passed, though, a hodgepodge of federal and state requirements and debates over the best technology have complicated the task of upgrading. In a recent survey by the National Association of Secretaries of State, 17 of 43 states that responded said they expected to miss a congressionally imposed Jan. 1, 2006, deadline to upgrade voting systems. Election officials have repeatedly clashed with voting-machine manufacturers.

In Connecticut, for example, Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz said she would scrap her plans to replace her state's lever machines after the company she planned to buy from "misrepresented" itself in negotiations about how accessible the machines would be for people with disabilities.

In Miami-Dade County, Fla., the elections chief -- the third in five years -- is thinking about tossing out touch-screen systems installed after 2000. The concern is that they do not leave a paper trail that auditors could examine in a disputed election and are expensive to use.

In California, the secretary of state recently asked Hursti to investigate whether Diebold machines the state was considering had similar vulnerabilities.

The events that set in motion Hursti and Sancho meeting, and a new wave of concern over today's voting technologies, started in 2003, when a Seattle-based activist named Bev Harris released thousands of Diebold documents she said she found on an unsecured portion of the company's Web site. Some computer scientists said the documents showed Diebold's systems were vulnerable to attack. Today, more than 800 jurisdictions use their technology, Harris said.

She wanted to find a way to test whether those vulnerabilities could be exploited. Sancho volunteered his equipment to be tested by experts Harris would select.

Harris recruited computer expert Herbert Thompson, and on Feb. 14, 2005, in Tallahassee, Thompson met with Sancho and tried to crack the Diebold system remotely. The first attempt failed. On a second attempt, by directly accessing a computer where the votes are counted in a final tally, he manipulated returns. They used a local high school election for the experiment.

In May, two more tests were held, this time with Hursti present. Using a device bought for about $200, he was able to easily alter the final vote by changing the program stored on the memory card.

"You have to admit these systems are vulnerable and act accordingly," Hursti said.

Diebold took a dim view of the experiments. On June 8, a senior company lawyer faxed Sancho: "You have willfully and intentionally allowed the manipulation of memory cards related to your elections. . . . We believe this to have been a very foolish and irresponsible act."

The response frustrated Sancho. "More troubling than the test itself was the manner in which Diebold simply failed to respond to my concerns or the concerns of citizens who believe in American elections," he said. "I really think they're not engaged in this discussion of how to make elections safer."

He is also critical of state officials who he believes should have caught the vulnerabilities earlier. He said that vendors such as Diebold have too much influence in the administration of elections, a view that resonated with Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, the founder of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition. Sancho is "truly an advocate for voters," she said. "What he is doing in Leon County goes completely against the grain of county election commissioners elsewhere, who are allowing vendors to dictate how to run their own elections."

Johns Hopkins University computer sciences professor Avi Rubin, who is leading a group that has received a $7.5 million grant from the National Academy of Sciences to research election technology, said the vulnerabilities of electronic systems -- including new touch-screen voting machines -- point to the need for a paper trail in any election. "The more I see, I say we need voting to rely on paper," he said. About 26 states require paper ballots, according to Verified Voting, an advocacy group.

Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for Florida's secretary of state, said in the end the integrity of any voting system must be protected by the local officials who administer elections. "Machines are designed and certified to operate in a secure environment and under secure procedures that each supervisor puts in place and follows directly," she said.

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TIME magazine says Bush photographed with Abramoff

Reuters
TIME magazine says Bush photographed with Abramoff

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - At least five photos show U.S. President George W. Bush with the lobbyist at the center of a corruption scandal, TIME magazine reported on Sunday.

The White House has tried to play down any contact with Jack Abramoff, who pleaded guilty to fraud charges this month and agreed to help prosecutors in a congressional corruption investigation.

TIME did not publish the photographs, saying its source refused to provide them for publication. Most look like those taken at presidential receptions, it said.

The White House has said Bush does not know Abramoff and does not recall meeting him, and that the lobbyist attended two Hannukah receptions and a few staff-level meetings at the White House.

"Mr. Abramoff admitted being involved in outrageous wrongdoing," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said on Sunday.

"The president does not recall meeting him. We have previously indicated, however, it would not be surprising if the president met him at some of the widely attended events we know they both attended," she said. "The president has taken tens upon thousands of pictures at such events."

TIME said in one photograph Bush appears with Abramoff and Raul Garza, then chairman of the Kickapoo Indians, which owned a casino in Texas and were represented by the lobbyist. It also included several other unidentified people.

TIME quotes White House spokeswoman Erin Healy as saying that available records show Abramoff was not at the event attended by Garza.

Another photo shows Bush shaking hands with Abramoff in front of a window and a blue drape, the magazine said. The photo carries Bush's signature, which may have been machine-made, it said.

Three other photos show Bush, Abramoff and one of the lobbyist's sons, the magazine said.

Prosecutors are investigating whether members of Congress gave the lobbyist and his clients favorable treatment in return for campaign contributions or gifts. The scandal broke as Republicans try to retain control of Congress in mid-term elections in November.

Republican Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio, who has denied wrongdoing, is under investigation in the scandal. Rep. Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican who stepped down as majority leader, has been under a cloud due to his association with Abramoff.

The Republican National Committee has said Bush's re-election campaign was giving to charity $6,000 in contributions linked to Abramoff.

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