Patriot Act includes crackdown on meth use

USA TODAY
Patriot Act includes crackdown on meth use

WASHINGTON (AP) — Suffer from springtime allergies? You could be among the first affected by the USA Patriot Act poised for final congressional passage this week.

Besides terrorism, the bill takes aim at the production of methamphetamine, a highly addictive drug that cannot be manufactured without a key ingredient of everyday cold and allergy medicines. The bill would impose new limits next month for how much relief a person can buy over the counter.

And beginning Sept. 30, it'll take a flash of ID to buy that medication.

The legislation sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. and Jim Talent, R-Mo., would blanket the nation with one policy that would put medicines containing pseudoephedrine behind the counter and out of the reach of meth cooks.

"If we leave it up to local jurisdiction, we're simply going to move the problem from one jurisdiction to another without addressing the root cause," said Fresno, Calif., Police Chief Jerry Dyer.

Pass a state or local law cracking down on methamphetamine production, set off a cycle that goes something like this:

The black market price of cold tablets needed to make the drug skyrockets, driving the meth makers to the jurisdiction next door. There, they buy it in bulk — legally, cheaply, anonymously.

That is, until that state or city gets tough on meth with new laws of its own.

Rather than wait for localities to stitch together a patchwork of anti- meth policies, the provision of the Patriot Act would leave meth producers nowhere to run but out of the country. It takes aim at the meth trade's weakest point — the supply of pseudoephedrine.

Beginning 30 days after President Bush signs the law, expected sometime this week, purchase limits go into effect. One person would be limited to buying 300, 30-mg pills in a month or 120 such pills in a day. The measure would make an exception for "single-use" sales — individually packaged pseudoephedrine products.

Many retailers, such as Kmart, Walgreens, Target and Wal-Mart, have already adopted guidelines to limit customer access to cold products or to limit their sales.

Similar state and local restrictions have caused seizures of meth labs to plunge by double-digit percentages in such states as Arkansas, Oregon and Missouri.

At the same time, drug agents began finding more meth from Mexican cartels on the street.

Still, closing down domestic meth labs is of unique urgency to public health and safety, law enforcement officials said.

The drug is made in clandestine labs with battery acid, drain cleaner or other chemicals that help turn the cold and allergy medicine into powder.

One quart of ether, another ingredient, holds the explosive power of several sticks of dynamite, said Sgt. Jason Grellner of the Franklin County, Mo., Narcotics Enforcement Unit, which has seized 600 meth labs since 1998 in a jurisdiction of 100,000 people.

Wading into the toxic soup of a meth lab puts officers in situations for which they are not necessarily trained, Grellner said.

"They have to know the job of a hazardous-waste chemist. They have to have the mindset of a firefighter. They have to be a natural-resources worker," Grellner said. "Wearing that many hats is a safety concern."

And an abandoned lab becomes an environmental hazard, pointed out Dyer.

"They were leaving the chemicals and equipment out in the open and vacating the property," Dyer said. "They found out that we started to trace down suspects with that equipment. Now they are burying these same items underground."

Oklahoma provides evidence that driving out meth labs doesn't mean getting rid of meth. Oklahoma's meth lab seizures have fallen 90% since April 2004, when it became the first state to ban over-the-counter sales of everyday cold and allergy medications.

At the same time, seizures of smokeable Mexican meth known as "crystal ice" rose nearly fivefold, from 384 cases in the 15 months before the law to 1,875 since.

"We're going to see trafficking by Mexican cartel organizations, on a much larger scale," Grellner said.

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Decades later, Marines hunt Vietnam-era deserters

USA TODAY
Decades later, Marines hunt Vietnam-era deserters
By Bill Nichols, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — In the summer of 1965, Marine Cpl. Jerry Texiero quietly disappeared from his California base, plagued by personal demons and a mounting opposition to the Vietnam War.

Forty years later, in the summer of 2005, Texiero — now known as Gerome Conti — was taken into custody by police in Tarpon Springs, Fla., after the Marine Corps tracked him down.

Thirty years after the war ended, hundreds of Vietnam-era deserters are still on the loose. Conti's attorneys, Louis Font and Tod Ensign, say the Pentagon, and the Marine Corps in particular, are cracking down on long-term cases in an effort to warn current-day troops in Iraq against deserting.

"My view is that the Marines are trying to send a message to people in the ranks today that they, too, will be required to participate in a war, whether they think it's illegal or immoral," Font says. (Related story: 8,000 desert during Iraq war)

Marine spokesman Capt. Jay Delarosa says there was nothing unusual about the treatment of Conti.

However, the Marine official in charge of bringing in deserters said after Conti's arrest that his office was being more aggressive.

Chief Warrant Officer James Averhart, who has commanded the Marine Corps Absentee Collection Center since September 2004, told the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times that he had ordered cold cases reopened and that his squad had caught 27 deserters in his first 11 months on the job, a rate he suggested was higher than those of his predecessors. The Corps last month updated that number to 33 cases.

"I have a different leadership style than the guys who have had this job. My job is to catch deserters. And that's what I do," Averhart told the newspaper.

Delarosa said Averhart would not answer questions from USA TODAY. Asked whether the Marine Corps stands by Averhart's comments, Delarosa said, "I wasn't involved in that particular interview with CWO Averhart." He added that the Marine Corps has "discouraged most requests for interviews because CWO Averhart has been frequently misquoted."

Will Van Sant, who wrote the Times article, says the Marines never contacted him after it appeared.

Conti, 65, says he was surprised. "I thought they couldn't possibly be looking for me anymore. I would think they would have stopped looking for anybody who had been gone as long as I had."

Conti was held for five months — four in solitary confinement — then given an other-than-honorable discharge in January. If he had been court-martialed and convicted, he could have faced three years in the brig and a dishonorable discharge.

Left: U.S. Marine Corps; Right: Ft. Worth Star-Telegram via AP
The photo on the left shows Ernest Johnson Jr. as he looked in 1969. On the right is the same man, now going by the name Ernest "Buck" McQueen.

Another long-term Marine deserter, Ernest "Buck" McQueen, was arrested in Fort Worth in January. McQueen was Ernest Johnson Jr. when he left Camp Lejeune, N.C., in November 1969 because of concerns about going to Vietnam. McQueen, 55, also was discharged without disciplinary action.

McQueen says he didn't take a new name to hide. His Social Security card says "McQueen." He says he was born Ernest Johnson Jr., but when his biological father left, his mother raised her son by her married name, McQueen. When he joined the Marines, he says, they insisted he go by Ernest Johnson Jr.

The government drafted men for the armed forces during wartime from the Civil War until 1973. Conti and McQueen enlisted.

In 1974, President Ford offered clemency to Vietnam draft resisters and deserters. Only 27,000 of 350,000 eligible applied. The offer expired on April 1, 1975. In 1977, President Carter pardoned those who dodged the war by not registering or fleeing the country. Neither Conti nor McQueen applied for the Ford pardon. Both spent decades hiding their past from families and employers. McQueen kept his military experience from two wives and two children, and even Conti's best friend in Florida, Elaine Smith, knew nothing of his history with the Marines.

McQueen says he had been in the Marines for nearly two years when he learned of the My Lai massacre in 1968, when hundreds of Vietnamese civilians were killed by U.S. soldiers. "I saw photos of guys with ears on their chains. I lost my desire to be a part of it."

Conti says his decision to desert was a combination of lingering emotional scars from a childhood lived in foster homes and concerns about stories he also was hearing about Vietnam.

Special Agent Tom Lorang of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) says most older desertion cases are filed away after an initial investigation is completed, although some are re-examined.

Except for the Marine Corps, military officials say long-term cases normally are closed when deserters voluntarily come back in or are stopped by civilian law officials, not through efforts to track them down.

That's not Conti's or McQueen's story. Conti says he was told his file was reopened and his fingerprints were run through a national database. He was in the database because he had been convicted of fraud and theft in 1998. He was on probation and paying restitution when the Marines caught up with him.

McQueen, a carpenter, says his former brother-in-law was called by Marine investigators, and he told them where to find him. "This kind of ... put me in a financial bind," says McQueen, who had been doing carpentry for a church when he was seized.

Conti has returned to his job selling boats, which his employer kept open for him while he was locked up.

"They just need to declare amnesty for everybody from a certain time back or from certain conflicts," says Elaine Smith, Conti's friend. "These guys ... just had issues, as we all did back in the '60s."

Military officials maintain that those who deserted the service are liable under law, no matter how unpopular a war was. "We actively investigate all cases of desertion," says Fred Hall, a spokesman for the Naval Personnel Command. "For each of the active deserters we have on our rolls — 1,190 as of 31 Jan. '06 — there is a federal warrant out for their arrest."

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8,000 desert during Iraq war

USA TODAY
8,000 desert during Iraq war
By Bill Nichols, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — At least 8,000 members of the all-volunteer U.S. military have deserted since the Iraq war began, Pentagon records show, although the overall desertion rate has plunged since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

Since fall 2003, 4,387 Army soldiers, 3,454 Navy sailors and 82 Air Force personnel have deserted. The Marine Corps does not track the number of desertions each year but listed 1,455 Marines in desertion status last September, the end of fiscal 2005, says Capt. Jay Delarosa, a Marine Corps spokesman.

Desertion records are kept by fiscal year, so there are no figures from the beginning of the war in March 2003 until that fall.

Some lawyers who represent deserters say the war in Iraq is driving more soldiers to question their service and that the Pentagon is cracking down on deserters.

"The last thing they want is for people to think ... that this is like Vietnam," says Tod Ensign, head of Citizen Soldier, an anti-war group that offers legal aid to deserters. (Related story: Marines hunt Vietnam-era deserters)

Desertion numbers have dropped since 9/11. The Army, Navy and Air Force reported 7,978 desertions in 2001, compared with 3,456 in 2005. The Marine Corps showed 1,603 Marines in desertion status in 2001. That had declined by 148 in 2005.

The desertion rate was much higher during the Vietnam era. The Army saw a high of 33,094 deserters in 1971 — 3.4% of the Army force. But there was a draft and the active-duty force was 2.7 million.

Desertions in 2005 represent 0.24% of the 1.4 million U.S. forces.

Opposition to the war prompts a small fraction of desertions, says Army spokeswoman Maj. Elizabeth Robbins. "People always desert, and most do it because they don't adapt well to the military," she says. The vast majority of desertions happen inside the USA, Robbins says. There is only one known case of desertion in Iraq.

Most deserters return within months, without coercion. Commander Randy Lescault, spokesman for the Naval Personnel Command, says that between 2001 and 2005, 58% of Navy deserters walked back in. Of the rest, the most are apprehended during traffic stops. Penalties range from other-than-honorable discharges to death for desertion during wartime. Few are court-martialed.

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Democrats Struggle To Seize Opportunity; Amid GOP Troubles, No Unified Message

washingtonpost.com
Democrats Struggle To Seize Opportunity
Amid GOP Troubles, No Unified Message
By Shailagh Murray and Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writers

News about GOP political corruption, inept hurricane response and chaos in Iraq has lifted Democrats' hopes of winning control of Congress this fall. But seizing the opportunity has not been easy, as they found when they tried to unveil an agenda of their own.

Democratic leaders had set a goal of issuing their legislative manifesto by November 2005 to give voters a full year to digest their proposals. But some Democrats protested that the release date was too early, so they put it off until January. The new date slipped twice again, and now House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) says the document will be unveiled in "a matter of weeks."

Some Democrats fear that the hesitant handling is symbolic of larger problems facing the party in trying to seize control of the House and Senate after more than a decade of almost unbroken minority status. Lawmakers and strategists have complained about erratic or uncertain leadership and repeated delays in resolving important issues.

The conflict goes well beyond Capitol Hill. The failure of congressional leaders to deliver a clear message has left some Democratic governors deeply frustrated and at odds with Washington Democrats over strategy.

Party leaders, for example, have yet to decide whether Democrats should focus on a sharply negative campaign against President Bush and the Republicans, by jumping on debacles such as the administration's handling of the Dubai port deal -- or stress their own priorities and values.

There is no agreement on whether to try to nationalize the congressional campaign with a blueprint or "contract" with voters, as the Republicans did successfully in 1994, or to keep the races more local in tone. And the party is still divided over the war in Iraq: Some Democrats, including Pelosi, call for a phased withdrawal; many others back a longer-term military and economic commitment.

"It could be a great year for Democrats," said Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), but the party must present a more moderate face and distinguish itself more clearly from the GOP on issues such as ethics. "The comment I hear is 'I'd really like to vote for you guys, but I can't stand the folks I see on TV,' " Cooper said in a telephone interview from Nashville.

On issues such as explaining that former lobbyist Jack Abramoff's work "was a 110 percent Republican operation," Cooper said, "we're not making nearly as much headway as we should." Abramoff has pleaded guilty in a corruption scandal.

The Democratic leaders in Congress -- Pelosi and Sen. Harry M. Reid (Nev.) -- are the party's chief strategists and architects of the agenda, which they view as a way to market party ideas on energy, health care, education and other issues. They have held countless meetings to construct the right list, consulting with governors, mayors and just about every Democratic adviser in town.

"By the time the election rolls around, people are going to know where Democrats stand," Reid said.

But many in the party have their doubts. On Feb. 27, Reid and Pelosi appeared before the Democratic Governors Association. At one point in the conversation, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, noting that the two leaders had talked about a variety of themes and ideas, asked for help. Could they reduce the message to just two or three core ideas that governors could echo in the states?

According to multiple accounts from those in the room, Reid said they had narrowed the list to six and proceeded to talk about them. Pelosi then offered her six -- not all the same as Reid's. Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski said later: "One of the other governors said 'What do you think?' and I said 'You know what I think? I don't think we have a message.' "

Others, including Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) and Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) -- who head the Senate and House campaign efforts -- believe the November election will turn mainly on how voters view Republicans. Schumer is leading the Democratic attack on the port deal, excoriating the administration for jeopardizing national security -- a realm in which Republicans have held the advantage with voters.

He and Emanuel have sought to delay the agenda's release to allow Democratic attacks to hold the stage with minimum distraction. "When you're in the opposition, you both propose and oppose," Emanuel said. "But fundamentally, this is going to be a referendum on [Republican] stewardship."

Also dividing Democratic strategists is the question of what lessons to take from the Republican landslide of 1994, when the GOP won the Senate and picked up 54 House seats, wiping out 40 years of Democratic rule. Some Democrats associate that breakthrough with the House Republicans' "Contract With America," a list of proposals on policy and government.

"We should take a page from their book" and have "an overarching theme" similar to the 1994 contract, said Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.).

Many of his colleagues agree, but not Reid. "We're not going to do a 'Contract With America,' " Reid said in an interview. He noted that the GOP document received scant attention when it was presented a few weeks before the 1994 election, and political historians say it played a minor role in the outcome. "There's a great mythology about the contract," Reid said.

Even the party's five-word 2006 motto has preoccupied congressional Democrats for months. "We had meetings where senators offered suggestions," Reid said. "We had focus groups. We worked hard on that. . . . It's a long, slow, arduous process."

That slogan -- "Together, America Can Do Better" -- was revived from the 2004 presidential campaign of Sen. John F. Kerry. It was the last line of Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's response to President Bush's State of the Union address, and Reid, Pelosi and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean have used it in speeches. But there is an effort afoot to drop the word "together." It tests well in focus groups and audiences, Democratic sources said, but it makes the syntax incorrect.

Governors privately scoff at the slogan. They also say the message coming from congressional leaders has been too relentlessly negative. "They want to coordinate. They want to collaborate. That's all good," said one Democratic governor who declined to be identified in order to talk candidly about a closed-door meeting. "The question is: Coordinate or collaborate on what? People need to know not just what we're against but what we're for. That's the kind of message the governors are interested in developing at the national level."

Reid spokesman Jim Manley said congressional Democrats have spent the past year redefining the debates over terrorism and Iraq and have prepared the ground for a shift to a more positive message that will focus on energy, health care and homeland security, all areas in which the governors would concur, he predicted. "We've had an unprecedented level of cooperation," he said.

Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly added: "At the end of the day, I think everyone will be on board."

Perhaps the Democrats' greatest dilemma is how to respond to the Iraq war. It looms as the biggest question mark over Bush's administration and the Republican lawmakers who have backed him on the conflict almost without question.

Congressional Democrats have been split over the war since 2002, when many voted to authorize military action. The ground shifted last November when Rep. John P. Murtha (Pa.), a leading Democratic voice on military matters, called for U.S. troops to be withdrawn as soon as possible. Two weeks later, Pelosi endorsed his stance.

Although Pelosi said she was not speaking for her caucus, some colleagues complained that she was handing Republicans a gift by enabling them to tag Democrats as soft on terrorism and forcing Democratic candidates to explain whether they agreed with their House leader.

There is little question that the political landscape looks promising for Democrats. A Feb. 9 poll by the Pew Research Center found that Democrats lead Republicans 50 to 41 percent in a generic ballot.

But congressional Democrats have some key deficiencies. For instance, they lack the hard-charging, charismatic figurehead that Gingrich represented for the House GOP in 1994. But the Democrats have an abundance of presidential hopefuls, and their agendas sometimes differ from those of Reid, Schumer, Pelosi and Emanuel.

For instance, Sen. Russell Feingold (Wis.) tried to filibuster the renewal of the USA Patriot Act, a move opposed by most of his Senate colleagues, including Reid. Kerry (Mass.) led an unsuccessful filibuster attempt against Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s confirmation as a Supreme Court justice. The best-known Democrat is Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), whose plans for a 2008 presidential bid leave many of her colleagues wary of how her famous but divisive presence might affect them.

"There are lots of skeptics," Schumer conceded. But the polls look better and better, he stressed. "There may be some inside-the-Beltway babble, but it's not affecting the voters," said Schumer, who wants the agenda delayed again -- until summer.

Staff writer Dan Balz contributed to this report.

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Americans Doubt That the United States Effort in Iraq Is Improving; Public Concerned Civil War in Iraq a Real Possibility

ABC News
Americans Doubt That the United States Effort in Iraq Is Improving
Public Concerned Civil War in Iraq a Real Possibility
Analysis by JON COHEN

March 6, 2006 — - The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll shows broad public concern about civil war in Iraq and a sharp spike in public doubt that the United States is making progress there, both in terms of restoring civil order and establishing a democratic Iraqi government.

Sampling, data collection and tabulation for this poll were done by TNS.

The changes have not had much impact on views on how long U.S. forces should remain in Iraq. But they completely reverse gains in public optimism about Iraq that immediately followed the parliamentary elections there in December.

Civil War?

Given the current unrest, 80 percent of Americans think it's likely that the Shiite-Sunni conflict will lead to civil war in Iraq. And a record 56 percent think the United States is not making significant progress in restoring civil order there -- up 19 points from its level shortly after the December election.

Americans also now evenly divide, 49 percent to 48 percent, on whether the United States is making progress in establishing a democratic government in Iraq.

After the December elections, in contrast, Americans, by a 2-1 ratio, had seen progress on the political front.

Civil War in Iraq

Likely 80%
Unlikely 17%

Despite these glummer views on progress in Iraq, views on the U.S. troop commitment are little changed. As was the case in December, a narrow majority supports decreasing the level of U.S. forces in Iraq, but fewer than two in 10 support an immediate withdrawal of all troops.

Methodology

This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by telephone with 1,000 adults interviewed during March 2-5. The results have a three-point error margin. Sampling, data collection and tabulation by TNS of Horsham, Pa.

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Mr. Bush's Asian Road Trip

The New York Times
Mr. Bush's Asian Road Trip

There is a lot of good a president can do on a visit to another country: negotiate treaties that enhance American security, shore up a shaky alliance, generate good will in important parts of the world. Unfortunately, President Bush didn't do any of those good things on his just-completed visit to Pakistan and India and may have done some real harm.

The spectacularly misconceived trip may have inflicted serious damage to American goals in two vital areas, namely, mobilizing international diplomacy against the spread of nuclear weapons and encouraging Pakistan to take more effective action against the Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters operating from its territory.

The nuclear deal that Mr. Bush concluded with India threatens to blast a bomb-size loophole through the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It would have been bad enough on its own, and disastrously ill timed, because it undercuts some of the most powerful arguments Washington can make to try to galvanize international opposition to Iran's nuclear adventurism.

But the most immediate damage was done on Mr. Bush's next stop, Pakistan.

Washington is trying to persuade Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani military dictator, to defy nationalist and Islamic objections and move more aggressively against Pakistani-based terrorists. This is no small issue because both Osama bin Laden and the Taliban's leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, are now believed to operate from Pakistani soil.

But sticking Mr. Musharraf with the unwelcome task of explaining to Pakistanis why his friend and ally, Mr. Bush, had granted favorable nuclear terms to Pakistan's archrival, India, while withholding them from Pakistan left him less likely to do Washington any special, and politically unpopular, favors on the terrorism front.

It's just baffling why Mr. Bush traveled halfway around the world to stand right next to one of his most important allies against terrorists — and embarrass him. India and Pakistan are military rivals that have fought each other repeatedly. They have both developed nuclear weapons outside the nonproliferation treaty, which both refuse to sign. When India exploded its first acknowledged nuclear weapons eight years ago, Pakistan felt obliged to follow suit within weeks.

So when Mr. Bush agreed to carve out an exception to global nonproliferation rules for India, it should have been obvious that Pakistani opinion would demand the same privileged treatment, and that Mr. Musharraf would be embarrassed by Mr. Bush's explicit refusal to provide it.

Mr. Bush was right to say no to Pakistan. It would be an unthinkably bad idea to grant a loophole to a country whose top nuclear scientist helped transfer nuclear technology to leading rogue states. Granting India a loophole that damages a vital treaty and lets New Delhi accelerate production of nuclear bombs makes no sense either.

Mr. Bush should have just stayed home.

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South Dakota bans most abortions

Reuters
South Dakota bans most abortions
By Michael Conlon

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The Republican governor of South Dakota on Monday signed a law banning nearly all abortions in the state, directly challenging the U.S. Supreme Court's legalization of the practice 33 years ago.

The action cleared the path for a legal battle that will take years to resolve, Gov. Mike Rounds predicted, and forces on both sides of the issue immediately began to mobilize.

Abortion foes hope to use the South Dakota law to eventually bring the issue back to the high court, where they believe conservatives added to the bench by President George W. Bush and others who may join it in the future could weaken or dismantle the court's landmark Roe v. Wade decision of 1973.

The measure, passed by the state legislature on February 24, would "eliminate most abortions in South Dakota," Rounds said in approving the law.

NARAL Pro-Choice America, which backs abortion rights, put an emergency appeal for money on its Web site, urging its supporters to help with a costly battle.

"This law is a monumental setback for women in South Dakota and across the country," said Nancy Keenan, president of the group. "Anti-choice politicians in 11 other states are pushing similar bans. President Bush has created a climate with his judicial appointments in which anti-choice lawmakers feel emboldened ..."

David Bereit, executive director of the American Life League, called the South Dakota development "tremendously encouraging news."

He predicted the law and similar measures emerging in other states would "accelerate the appeals process" and bring the matter back before the high court.

Backers of the legislation "believe that abortion is wrong because unborn children are the most vulnerable and most helpless persons in our society. I agree," Rounds said.

"Because this new law is a direct challenge to the Roe v. Wade interpretation of the Constitution, I expect this law will be taken to court and prevented from going into effect this July. That challenge will likely take years to be settled."

BAN COVERS CASES OF RAPE, INCEST

The law bans abortion in almost all cases, punishing doctors who perform one with five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. It bans abortion even in cases where a woman is pregnant as a result of rape or incest, or if giving birth would damage the health of the mother.

It creates a narrow exemption in cases in which a physician's effort to save a pregnant woman's life results in the accidental death or injury of her fetus.

No suits against the law were filed immediately. But Planned Parenthood, which operates the sole abortion clinic in South Dakota where about 800 of the procedures are performed each year by doctors from neighboring Minnesota, said it was preparing a challenge.

"All options are being considered at this time," said Kate Looby, state director for the group. The governor, she said, "cares more about politics than about the reproductive freedom of women in South Dakota."

Looby said: "Our doors remain open. We will not be closing, hopefully never."

She said the group was looking at how best to take on the law in court and at the possibility of putting the matter up for a statewide referendum. She said a majority vote against it would prevent the law from taking effect.

"Abortion has never been put before the voters before. I don't think they can win on either count," countered Troy Newman, head of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue in Wichita, Kansas.

"The timing couldn't be better and reflects the momentum the pro-life movement has today," Newman said. "It's a grass-roots movement that's propelling the legislatures, the governor, the president, and ultimately the Supreme Court to nullify the permissive abortion laws."

Even before Rounds signed the measure into law, backers in South Dakota said am anonymous donor had pledged $1 million to help the state fend off legal challenges to it.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Stern)

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US gasoline, diesel fuel retail prices soar

Reuters
US gasoline, diesel fuel retail prices soar: gov't
By Tom Doggett

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. drivers saw gasoline prices soar an average 7.7 cents a gallon over the last week, while truckers paid the most for diesel fuel since November, the government said on Monday.

The national price for regular unleaded gasoline jumped to $2.33 a gallon, up 33 cents from a year ago and the highest level in a month based on the federal Energy Information Administration's survey of service stations.

The price increases in many cities were much higher, skyrocketing more than 19 cents a gallon in just one week in Chicago and more than 16 cents in Cleveland.

The average diesel fuel price paid by truckers increased 7.4 cents to $2.55 a gallon, up 38 cents from a year earlier and the most expensive since November 14, the EIA said.

The rising pump prices arrived as the busy spring driving season gets under way. They reflect expensive crude oil based on traders concerns about potential disruptions in world crude oil supplies.

U.S. crude oil, which accounts for about half the cost of making gasoline, fell on Monday after OPEC members signaled they would not cut oil production levels when the cartel meets this meek.

Crude for delivery in April fell $1.26 to $62.41 at the New York Mercantile Exchange.

In the EIA's latest weekly survey, the West Coast had the most expensive gasoline, with the price up 3.9 cents at $2.42 a gallon. Los Angeles topped the survey of cities, with gasoline up 5.6 cents at $2.51 a gallon.

The Gulf Coast states had the cheapest gasoline at $2.25 a gallon, up 9.3 cents. Among major cities, Houston had the best deal at the pump, but it was still up 3.5 cents at $2.14 a gallon.

The EIA report also showed prices, rounded to the nearest penny, up 19.1 cents at $2.46 in Chicago; up 4.8 cents at $2.41 in Miami; up 16.2 cents at $2.38 in Cleveland; up 3 cents at $2.30 in New York City; up 5.7 cents at $2.28 in Seattle and up 3.8 cents at $2.21 in Boston.

Truckers on the West Coast paid the most for diesel at $2.71 a gallon, up 8.8 cents from last week. The Gulf Coast states had the cheapest diesel at $2.50 a gallon, up 5.6 cents.

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US government near to debt limit

BBC NEWS
US government near to debt limit

US Treasury Secretary John Snow has told Congress to raise the government's credit limit in order to avoid having some of its operations shut down.

The government needs Congressional authority to borrow and the total accumulated debt is now close to its limit of $8.2 trillion (£4.7 trillion).

If the limit is not increased, the government could find it difficult to pay debts or borrow money.

Congress is expected to agree to an extension, averting any debt crisis.

Massive deficits

In a letter to Congress, Mr Snow said he has already taken "prudent and legal actions" to avoid reaching the debt limit.

These include tapping the civil service pension funds and using the $15bn in the Exchange Stabilisation Fund, a reserve held for smoothing out volatile movements in the value of the dollar in currency markets.

But the Treasury has warned that such measures will only postpone the credit deadline until mid-March, when an extension will be needed.

This is the fourth time George W Bush's administration has asked Congress to raise the government debt limit.

His administration has produced a series of massive deficits, brought on by the post dot-com recession, tax cuts, the September 11 attacks and wars and reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The US government has never defaulted on its debts, and to do so would destroy its credit rating and raise the cost of any future borrowing.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/business/4780844.stm

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Court upholds campus military recruiting law

Reuters
Court upholds campus military recruiting law

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that universities that get federal funds must allow military recruiters on campus, even if their law schools oppose the Pentagon's policy prohibiting openly gays and lesbians from serving.

The high court upheld as constitutional a federal law dating back to 1994 that allows the government to withhold money from universities that deny military recruiters the same access to campuses given to other employers.

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New book examines legal questions of preemptive war

Reuters
New book examines legal questions of preemptive war
By Jason Szep

BOSTON (Reuters) - If U.S. officials overhear talk of a planned murder or rape while eavesdropping on a telephone call under President George W. Bush's domestic spying program, what can they do -- within the law -- to stop it?

"We don't know," said Harvard law professor and celebrated defense lawyer Alan M. Dershowitz. "Plainly we would not want them to ignore it" but no laws have been written to govern how the information can be used in court, he said.

"We wouldn't even know where to look to find the law because there is no law," Dershowitz, one of the nation's best-known defenders of civil rights, told Reuters in an interview.

In his new book, "Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways", Dershowitz supports preventive counter-terrorism measures -- from wiretapping to profiling, mass inoculation, targeted extrajudicial killings and preemptive military action -- to head off attacks by suicide bomber and other terrorists.

But he says the Bush administration is bending the rules by failing to draw legal boundaries around those measures. Never shy of controversy, Dershowitz is sending each U.S. Senator and Congressman a copy of his book to spur debate on the issue.

"I want to make sure we play by the rules," said Dershowitz, who has successfully defended some of America's most unpopular defendants including O.J. Simpson in his 1994 murder trial.

"The first thing you have to do is get an acceptable jurisprudence indicating when it is appropriate to do these things and when it's appropriate not to do these things.

"We also have to demand accountability, to require the government to keep records of every single call, e-mail and fax that they monitor -- how many innocent people's conversations are being overheard and how many acts of terrorism have in fact been prevented," he said.

"We just have no idea what the answers are to those questions at this point in time," said Dershowitz, 67, who joined Harvard University's faculty at age 25 and became the school's youngest full law professor at age 28.

PREEMPTIVE DETENTION, FREE SPEECH

Democrats and some Republicans have also questioned the legality of the Bush administration spying program that has intercepted international e-mails and phone calls of U.S. residents in recent years without court warrants, and whether it violates the constitutional right to privacy.

The White House and its Republican allies in Congress contend Bush had authority to order the program under the Constitution and a 2001 congressional authorization to use military force against Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.

Dershowitz agrees with the use of preemption against threats like al Qaeda, including detention, preemptive restraint of free speech and even preemptive war with Iran if it appears to be arming itself with nuclear weapons.

"Obviously it is not unreasonable to act preemptively because you can't use a deterrent theory against suicide bombers. You can't tell them if we catch you, we are going to kill you. They welcome death. So you have to act preemptively, that is not unreasonable," he said.

"But it is unreasonable to monitor hundreds of thousands of conversations. It might not be unreasonable to monitor hundreds of conversations. It's a matter of degree. That's what a civilized society always does: it creates matters of degree, it draws lines and that is what we have been failing to do."

Dershowitz, who opposed the war in Iraq which he considers less dangerous than Iran, is already working on his next book: a look at whether the United States has abused the U.S. Constitutions's Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate oneself in an investigation during its war on terrorism.

"We are changing the Fifth Amendment in a very dangerous way in the war on terrorism. We are now saying that it doesn't prevent us from coercing information it only prevents us from using that information in criminal trials. So it fits in very neatly to what I have done before," said Dershowitz, who has written nearly a book a year since he began teaching.

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Do You Know How Your Vote Will Be Counted?

commondreams.org
The Washington Spectator
Do You Know How Your Vote Will Be Counted?
by Warren Stewart

The troubling truth about voting in America today is that a majority of the electorate casts their ballots on computers that run software that is hidden from public view and lacks any independent means of verification. The process by which our votes are cast and counted is controlled by private corporations to an extent that threatens the foundations of democracy.

Last September, the Government Accountability Office released a report on the security and reliability of electronic voting machines. The report, which detailed the findings of a nine-month study, said that "concerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes." The GAO reported that it had confirmed instances of "weak security controls, system design flaws, inadequate system version control, inadequate security testing, incorrect system configuration, poor security management, and vague or incomplete voting system standards."

While acknowledging that efforts were under way to improve the situation, the report warned that "these actions are unlikely to have a significant effect in the 2006 federal election cycle." Not exactly reassuring.

And the situation has hardly improved in the months since. In many states, it is still unclear what kind of voting machines will be used in primaries only a few months away. Running elections has always been a daunting and largely unappreciated job performed by state and county officials. But the challenges they face in 2006 are unprecedented, and many have their fingers crossed hoping their experiments with voting technology will work out.

In the wake of the 2000 election debacle, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which authorized $3.8 billion to help states upgrade voting equipment and establish statewide voter registration databases. HAVA established the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), which was given the task of developing guidelines to assist states in spending federal funds on voting systems and with establishing a new process for certifying voting equipment.

All this was supposed to have happened in time for the 2004 elections, but George W. Bush didn't nominate the EAC commissioners until the fall of 2003, and Congress appropriated just a fraction of the agency's intended budget in its first fiscal year. As a result, new guidelines were only released in December 2005 and plans for the new testing and certification process are just now taking shape.

With all the delays, almost every state applied for a waiver of the original 2004 deadline for HAVA compliance, until the first federal election in 2006. While some states long ago completed their voting system upgrades, many are still scrambling to meet the requirements.

A Boon for the Voting Biz —HAVA marked the first time that the federal government had ever provided funding for the administration of elections, and it was recognized as an unprecedented sales opportunity for the voting industry. With such an opportunity unlikely to occur again, there was little incentive to develop "better" machines and every incentive to sell as many machines as possible, especially if those machines required expensive ongoing programming and maintenance. Voting machine manufacturers were eager to promote Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines, particularly the new "touch-screen" models, as the solution to all the problems ever faced by an election official. Few of those officials had the technological or financial resources to evaluate, independently, the merits of the industry's multimillion-dollar marketing campaign, and officials in many states erroneously believed that HAVA required them to replace all of their voting equipment with paperless DREs.

Experience has now demonstrated what the voting industry no doubt knew in 2002: elections using DREs are significantly more expensive—and therefore more lucrative for vendors—than those using paper ballots.

And while they're more expensive, they are not necessarily better. Even before HAVA set off a spending frenzy for new equipment, computer scientists and public interest groups were voicing serious criticism of electronic voting machines. In 2003, Johns Hopkins and Rice University researchers concluded that the software used in electronic voting systems lacked "even the most minimal security standards," and warned that "as a society, we must carefully consider the risks inherent in electronic voting, as it places our very democracy at risk." That same year, ninety scientists from universities and laboratories across the nation signed a "Resolution on Electronic Voting," stating that "computerized voting equipment is inherently subject to programming error, equipment malfunction, and malicious tampering."

YOUR INVISIBLE VOTE—Fundamental to the argument against electronic voting is that there is no opportunity to observe the counting of votes. When using DREs, the recording and counting of votes is performed by software—software that is considered "proprietary" by the voting machine vendors, and that is therefore kept secret even from election officials. Not only is the software secret, but the process by which it is tested and the results of that testing are also secret. The laboratories that test the software and hardware are paid by the vendors, but of course all these financial transactions are—you guessed it—secret.

So perhaps its not surprising that there are hundreds of reported incidences of malfunctioning electronic voting machines in every election cycle—and those are just the errors that have been identified. After all, we are talking about computers. And they are computers that sit in warehouses for 364 days a year and then face maximum use for thirteen hours in an election. If my laptop freezes, I risk losing unsaved changes to whatever I'm writing. When an electronic voting machine malfunctions, it is the integrity of democracy that is lost. The absence of a complete meltdown of the system is little comfort. Electronic voting is inherently non-transparent. You simply have to trust the machines.

In November 2004, over 50 million Americans—almost 40 percent of all voters—cast their ballots on machines that offered no independent means of verification. There's no way to know if their votes were recorded as the voter intended.

THE FIGHT FOR REFORM—Before the ink on HAVA was dry, legislation was being written at the federal level to amend it so that safeguards could be put in place against the demonstrated security risks posed by electronic voting. In particular Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ) introduced the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act, a bill that would mandate that all voting systems produce or require the use of a permanent paper record of every vote. It would also require a random hand-counted audit of 2 percent of the ballots cast in federal elections as back-up verification for the accuracy of electronic tabulation. Holt's bill would also prohibit the use of undisclosed software and wireless-communication devices in voting machines.

But even though the bill has over 160 bipartisan co-sponsors, Representative Bob Ney (R-OH), until recently the powerful chairman of the House Administration Committee, had kept it buried without a hearing for three years, along with every other election reform proposal. Ney, one of the principal authors of HAVA, was recently forced to resign his chairmanship as a result of his link to the Abramoff investigation. Election reform activists are hopeful that that the new chairman Vernon Ehlers (R-MI) will be more open to reform. Ehlers was responsible for the language in HAVA requiring improved voting system testing standards and certification—improvements that have not yet been implemented due to all the delays.

While efforts to provide election safeguards have been stalled at the federal level, significant legislation has been successful in many states. Over half the states now require a voter-verified paper record of every vote, and a dozen states have provisions for a mandatory additional hand count of a percentage of the votes. Similar legislation is pending in several states during the current legislative session. Several have also addressed the problem of proprietary voting software by requiring at least a limited disclosure of source codes. Most of these new laws take effect in 2006.

DRAMAS ARE UNFOLDING—A bafflingly complex situation is developing in the country right now as this year's elections grow near. It has arisen as a result of intersecting federal mandates and new state laws; untested voting equipment; inevitable partisan politics; and, not least, a testing and certification process that is heavily influenced by the vendors that fund it. There is a drama unfolding in every state, with many states trying out their new voting systems by "beta-testing" it, while in other states it is still unclear what equipment voters will see when they go to the polls.

Connecticut and New York are both in much the same situation relative to the deadlines for HAVA compliance, though they followed different paths to get there. Both states have used old-style mechanical-lever machines for decades. Last year, they both passed requirements for using voter-verified paper records and mandatory audits. After a controversial procurement process Connecticut was on the verge of signing a contract with the Danaher Corporation last December, until the state became aware that Danaher's equipment had not yet been submitted for federal certification, as the company had represented, and therefore could not be used, according to state law.

As a result, Connecticut has started over. Given that the process is unlikely to be completed in time for upcoming elections, the state has announced its intention of employing its trusty lever machines yet again in those elections. Whether or not this will require the state to return $33 million in federal funds earmarked for replacing those machines and face additional penalties remains to be seen.

There are suggestions that New Yorkers will once again be using the familiar lever machines as well. New York has yet to certify any voting systems for counties to purchase, and it looks unlikely that they will be able to do so in time for the primaries. The state has also failed even to begin work on a voter-registration database, and it is in danger of losing more than $230 million in federal funds. Stay tuned.

In Pennsylvania a pitched battle is being waged, with vendors intent on selling paperless DREs to one of the few large states that do not yet require a voter-verified paper trail. Activists and county governments are fighting back against bringing in dubious machines. The situation became even more fraught recently when a judge ruled that HAVA did not take precedence over the state constitution's requirement that counties hold a public referendum to approve changes in voting systems—even though the state's Department of Elections had been saying that it did. No such referendums have been held, so far, so counties across the state are now in limbo, pending the state's appeal and the likelihood of similar legal actions. Stay tuned here too.

Maryland, along with Georgia, was one of the first states to adopt paperless touch-screen voting systems statewide. Like Georgia, Maryland has had its share of problems, with concerned citizens pointing to the use of uncertified software in elections in 2002 and 2003, and thousands of lost votes on machines in Baltimore County in 2004. After failing in the state legislature last session, bills that would require voting machines to provide voter-verified paper records have considerably more momentum in this session. The governor recently issued a blistering attack on the state's election administration and stated his strong support of a paper trail requirement. His move has set off a lively exchange of political accusations that threaten to deflect from the real issues of the integrity and accuracy of the elections. It remains to be seen by what method voters in Maryland will cast their votes this year.

Earlier in the year, New Mexico's governor convinced the legislature to adopt a voting system that uses paper ballots and verifies them through the use of a machine that does an "optical scan." In such a system the paper ballots are marked by the voter, either manually or through a ballot-marking device for voters with disabilities, resulting in a ballot that is inherently voter verified and allows for the possibility of counting votes without the use of any software. (While optical scanners would initially count the ballots, they can be counted by hand in the state's mandatory audit or in a recount.) Details of deadlines and funding for the new plan have not been worked out, so stay tuned here as well.

Then there's California, where on the Friday before the Presidents' Day weekend, the secretary of state ended months of speculation by "conditionally" re-certifying both the Diebold AccuVote-OS optical-scan and Accu-Vote TSx touchscreen voting systems for use in the state. It is doubtful that this is the last word in the saga concerning the use of Diebold's machines in California, one that dates back to not long after Diebold got into the election business in 2002. The conditional re-certification relied heavily on the report of state advisory panel of computer scientists. It concluded unequivocally that the presence of interpreted code in Diebold's software was in violation of federal standards. While the report's authors reasoned that increased security procedures could lower the risks of using interpreted code, California's election code does require that voting systems meet those standards as a prerequisite to state certification.

In a letter to Diebold published along with the certification documents, the secretary of state said that the company must substantially modify its software in order to be certified, and asked it to report back in a week about the feasibility of such modifications. Even though a complete overhaul of Diebold's voting software, if it is even possible, would take years of work, Diebold machines are likely to be used to record and count votes in the state of California this year. Legal challenges to this situation seem inevitable, and the dust is far from settled. So, again, please stay tuned.

To be fair, there are states whose new equipment has been delivered on time to their county clerks, who are busy training and preparing for this year's elections. But most of those states will be employing at least some of their equipment for the first time. Thomas Jefferson said that "eternal vigilance is the price of freedom," and this is certainly a year when vigilance is required. More than ever before, we need to pay attention to how are votes are cast—and counted.

Warren Stewart is the Director of Legislative Issues and Policy at VoteTrust USA, a non-partisan national organization that advocates for election integrity and e-voting reform.

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Breach notification laws: When should companies tell all? Privacy experts, lawyers differ on whether more laws would help

computerworld.com
Breach notification laws: When should companies tell all?
Privacy experts, lawyers differ on whether more laws would help
News Story by Jaikumar Vijayan

MARCH 02, 2006 (COMPUTERWORLD) - While there appears to be growing industry consensus that security breach notification laws have forced companies to take more responsibility for the data they own, there is little agreement on exactly when companies should be required to notify consumers when a data breach occurs.

Ranged on one side of the debate are those who want alerts for any breach involving the potential exposure of sensitive data. On the other side are those who say that a higher disclosure threshold is needed to avoid overnotification and needless costs.

“We clearly have a responsibility to safeguard customer information,” said Kirk Herath, chief privacy officer and associate general counsel at Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. in Columbus, Ohio. “If we lose information, it’s our responsibility to inform consumers because that’s the only way they can protect themselves.”

However, many existing state laws have “hair-triggers” when it comes to disclosure requirements, he said. “I really think the standard for disclosure should be a clear risk of danger or harm to the consumer.”

But others argue that allowing companies to decide when to disclose a breach is unworkable.

“Breaches should not be tied to the potential criminal use of the information,” said Christopher Pierson, a lawyer with Lewis & Rocca LLP in Phoenix. “I find it highly unlikely that IT professionals, company officials or lawyers would be able to examine the intent of a criminal that has yet to be identified.”

The debate comes at a time when there are growing calls for a national breach disclosure law that would preempt a patchwork of laws in more than 40 states that are already in place or proposed. Many of those state laws specify different triggers for notifications and set varying requirements on what must be disclosed, to whom and when.

California, for instance, uses an “acquisition standard” that requires companies to notify consumers each time their data has been acquired by an unauthorized person. Other states, including Delaware, Arkansas and Florida, require companies to notify consumers of breaches only if the companies believe there’s a reasonable risk of harm. Some states exempt companies that encrypt their data from disclosures; others don’t.

Despite the compliance headaches caused by such disparities, the laws appear to be forcing companies to pay more attention to how they handle confidential data, said John Pescatore, an analyst at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc.

“The good news with these laws is that security incidents are more public and more visible -- and that’s really motivating companies to do a better job of protecting data,” said Kirk Nahra, a board member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, a York, Maine-based association of IT security and privacy workers.

But while there’s value in telling consumers about security breaches that pose a real risk of identity theft or fraud, little is gained by overnotification, said Nahra, who is also a partner at Wiley Rein & Fielding LLP, a Washington-based law firm. “There are some laws that if you read them would require notice in ridiculous situations.”

The random theft or loss of a laptop or tape containing confidential data, for instance, is likely to pose less of a risk than a more targeted attack against a system containing terabytes of customer data, Herath said. So applying the same disclosure standards in both cases may not be appropriate, he said.

Similarly, requiring even companies that encrypt their data to disclose breaches, as some states mandate, is overkill, according to Herath.

Paul Rubin, a former director at the Federal Trade Commission and a professor of economics and law at Emory University in Atlanta, argued that a more targeted notification standard is required because only about 2% of breach victims actually become victims of fraud and ID theft. In the vast majority of cases, there’s no evidence to show that breached information is being misused, he said.

With that in mind, indiscriminate disclosures will only worry consumers, who may be induced to place fraud alerts on their accounts or close them entirely, with little real reason for doing so, he said. “I think all that these notices are doing is scaring people.”

They also expose companies to lawsuits from consumers who may not fully understand the true extent of the risk from security breaches, argued an analyst at a financial services firm who requested anonymity. “I personally believe that giving as much notice as possible is good behavior. But this is a litigious society we live in.”

That may be true, said Arshad Noor, CEO of StrongAuth Inc. a compliance management firm in Sunnyvale, Calif. But allowing breached companies to make judgments on whether data might be misused will never work in favor of consumers “because the statute of limitations on thieves using stolen data does not expire,” he said. “For more than four decades, IT organizations have operated in the shadows. Now for the first time, they’re being forced to shine the spotlight on their deficiencies.”

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Report: IRS slips on keeping workers’ computers secure; Systems administrators are being blamed for weak security settings

computerworld.com
Report: IRS slips on keeping workers’ computers secure
Systems administrators are being blamed for weak security settings
News Story by Linda Rosencrance

MARCH 02, 2006 (COMPUTERWORLD) - The Internal Revenue Service must do a better job of maintaining the security settings it developed and deployed on employees’ workstations under a common operating environment (COE), according to report by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration (download PDF).

Currently, high-risk vulnerabilities could allow the computers to be compromised, Michael Phillips, deputy inspector general for audit, said in the report.

Although the IRS developed the COE with secure configurations and installed those configurations on employees’ computers, security settings have not been consistently maintained, Phillips said.

“In our sample of 102 computers with the COE installed [out of approximately 100,000], only 42 were sufficiently secure based on the IRS standards,” Phillips said. “The remaining 60 computers complied with less than [90%] of the computer settings prescribed by the IRS or contained at least one high-risk vulnerability that could be exploited to either take control of the computer or render it unusable.”

In addition, 50 of the computers studied had at least one incorrect setting that could allow employees to circumvent security controls and inadvertently introduce vulnerabilities into the agency’s network, according to the report. “In our sample, 11 of the 102 computers contained 21 unauthorized software programs,” Phillips said in the report. “Some of the programs were clearly not authorized for official business, such as card and board games.”

Phillips said the weak security settings could be attributed to systems administrators since they are generally the only people authorized to change security settings on employees’ workstations.

“Maintaining secure settings also includes correcting new vulnerabilities that are identified by software vendors or the computer industry. However, the IRS did not ensure that all new vulnerabilities on employee workstations were being addressed,” according to the report. “We found 29 of the 102 computers in our sample did not have the latest COE update version. COE updates contain the latest available security patches to address new vulnerabilities. When the automated update installation failed, employees were not aware of the failure and did not take actions to install the updates. System administrators also did not follow up to ensure the updates had been installed.”

In addition, the COE image has not been installed on more than 4,700 IRS workstations, meaning those computers don’t have critical security patches and contained high-risk vulnerabilities, including incorrect password length and inadequate virus protection, Phillips said. “These computers are especially susceptible to computer viruses that could render them unusable.”

The report also indicates that the IRS is paying license fees for software that it rarely uses, such as the full version of Adobe Acrobat, which is an advanced software package with features employees are probably either unaware of or rarely use, Phillips said.

“In practice, most IRS employees only need the Adobe Reader, which is free software,” Phillips said. “The IRS paid approximately $2.3 million for 10 fully licensed versions of Adobe Acrobat. The IRS is also under agreement for annual maintenance and support for an additional $2.3 million each year.”

If systems administrators had performed necessary configuration audits, they would have identified software packages that are no longer needed, Phillips said. “At the time of our review, we were not aware of any such software configuration reviews being conducted,” he said.

The IG’s office recommends that the agency’s CIO hold system administrators accountable for maintaining the correct security settings on computers after the COE is deployed. The CIO should also ensure that the systems administrators run the IRS’s configuration-checking program on a sample of workstations on a periodic basis and conduct workstation security reviews. The system administrations should also follow up on workstations where proper updates were not successfully installed, identifying all computers without the agency’s COE image and either install it, replace the computers or manually bring the computers into compliance.

“We also recommended [that the CIO] use available tools to identify possible unauthorized software installed on computers, consider purchasing software metering tools, and assign responsibility for monitoring software with significant license agreement costs,” Phillips said.

In the report, IRS CIO, W. Todd Gramms said he agrees with the findings and most of the recommendations and is committed to securing employees’ workstations.

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Bush Administration - Video Outtakes

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Priorities

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Did you know?

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Run along like a good little chap

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Clinton family debacle

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Unbelievable, but true

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What Ever Happened to the Civil Liberties Board?

Newsweek
What Ever Happened to the Civil Liberties Board?
Michael Isikoff

March 13, 2006 issue - For more than a year, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has been the most invisible office in the White House. Created by Congress in December 2004 as a result of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, the board has never hired a staff or even held a meeting. Next week, NEWSWEEK has learned, that is due to finally change when the board's five members are slated to be sworn in at the White House and convene their first session. Board members tell NEWSWEEK the panel intends to immediately tackle contentious issues like the president's domestic wiretapping program, the Patriot Act and Pentagon data mining. But critics are furious the process has taken this long—and question whether the White House intends to treat the panel as anything more than window dressing. The delay is "outrageous, considering how long its been since the bill [creating the board] was passed," said Thomas Kean, who chaired the 9/11 Commission. "The administration was never interested in this."

Renewed concerns about the White House's commitment came just a few weeks ago when President Bush's new budget was released—with no listing for money for the civil liberties board. Alex Conant, a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, denied to NEWSWEEK the White House was trying to kill the panel by starving it of funds. "It will be fully funded," he said, explaining that the board wasn't in the budget this year because officials decided not to itemize funding levels for particular offices within the White House. When a reporter pointed out that funding for other White House offices such as the National Security Council were listed in the budget, Conant said: "I have no explanation."

The funding snafu is only the latest setback. Kean said the 9/11 Commission had pushed hard for the board to ensure that some agency within the government would specifically review potential abuses at a time vastly expanded powers were being given to U.S. intel and law-enforcement agencies. But the White House, and congressional leaders, resisted and sharply restricted its scope, denying the board basic tools like subpoena power. Bush didn't nominate members of the board until June 2005—six months after the panel was created—and they weren't confirmed until last month. The chair of the board is Carol Dinkins, a former senior Justice official under Ronald Reagan and former law partner of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Dinkins did not respond to requests for comment.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11677336/site/newsweek/

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Police issue warnings about 'choking game'

USA TODAY
Police issue warnings about 'choking game'

WHITEFIELD, N.H. (AP) — Police and school officials are issuing warnings about a potentially fatal game gaining popularity among teenagers after the death of a 14-year-old boy.

Eighth-grader Rodney Webster died last week after choking himself to deprive his brain of oxygen so he could feel a brief rush when the blood flow returned.

His death prompted Whitefield Police Chief Bill Colburn and school officials to create pamphlets outlining the danger of the so-called "choking game." They will be distributed Monday when children return from winter break.

"They need to make people aware," said Webster's mother, Lori. "We don't want this to happen to anybody else."

Her son was a wrestler and eighth-grade class president.

The game — also known as space monkey, flat-liner, fainting game and black out — was responsible for more than 50 deaths last year and eight this year, according to the Stop The Choking Game website.

It can also cause brain damage, strokes, seizures and retinal damage.

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Is Roe v. Wade Doomed? The Abortion Battle Is Heating Up as States Pass Anti-Abortion Bills

ABC News
Is Roe v. Wade Doomed?
The Abortion Battle Is Heating Up as States Pass Anti-Abortion Bills

March 3, 2006 — - South Dakota is not alone. Several other states are turning their heads toward changing abortion laws. Their ultimate goal? To challenge Roe v. Wade all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"What we are seeing is that these states are emboldened by the climate in this country," said NARAL Pro-Choice America President Nancy Keenan. "They see a pro-life president, a pro-life Congress and Senate, and a president who nominated two members to the Supreme Court who he said would be in the mold of [Justices] Scalia and Thomas."

In addition to South Dakota's measure, which is awaiting the governor's signature, legislation is being introduced and/or drawn up in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Tennessee.

The laws in effect are a call to the Supreme Court to revisit Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision establishing the right to an abortion.

It's the newest and, some say, the biggest fight against abortion rights in this country since the landmark decision.

But do they have a chance?

"No," Keenan said. "The public is not there. The majority of Americans are pro-choice, and this has even caused a split in the anti-choice movement. One half is supporting this legislation while the other half is saying strategically this would be a mistake."

The South Dakota vote comes at a time when some activists believe the high court may be more willing than ever to abandon Roe v. Wade. Conservatives John Roberts and Samuel Alito are on the bench, and 85-year-old John Paul Stevens may be close to retiring.

Anti-abortion activist Leslee Unruh of Sioux Falls, S.D., told The Associated Press that support for the proposal in South Dakota began long before Roberts and Alito were nominated. She said the issue took on urgency in recent months because term limits will soon force some key lawmakers from office.

"I know the inner workings of the Legislature and the personalities, and I know it had to be this year," said Unruh, founder of a pregnancy counseling center and an organization devoted to teaching abstinence to teenagers. "There's a window of time, and this is it."

The South Dakota abortion-ban legislation sailed through the House and Senate. Republican Gov. Mike Rounds has said he is inclined to sign the measure, which would make it a crime for doctors to perform an abortion unless necessary to save the woman's life. The bill would make no exception in cases of rape or incest.

The Mississippi House voted today to ban most abortions in the state, with exceptions for pregnancies that endanger a woman's life or those caused by rape or incest.

The bill passed, 94-25, and moves to the Senate, where it has the support of a key chairman. Republican Gov. Haley Barbour also has said he will sign the bill into law.

Lawmakers said that Mississippi had a 1940s law similar to what's being proposed now, but that it was invalidated by Roe v. Wade.

"How many millions of souls are crying out that's been killed because of this hideous practice called abortion?" Rep. Eric Robinson, R-Quitman, asked during the House debate, according to the AP.

Barbour told the AP that he likely would sign a bill that would allow abortions only if a pregnant woman's life were in danger, if that's what lawmakers sent him.

"But I would certainly rather it come to my desk with an exception for rape and incest," Barbour told the AP. "I think that's consistent with the opinion of the vast majority of Mississippians and Americans."

No lawmakers stood to argue in favor of abortion rights, although several said abortions should be allowed if a woman was impregnated against her will.

A Missouri bill, sponsored by Republican Sen. Jason Crowell, would make it a felony charge for anyone who performs an abortion, carrying a sentence of five years to 15 years in prison.

"Across the country, state politicians are creating a gauntlet of anti-choice laws and regulations to make it more difficult for women to get the best and safest reproductive health-care services," Eve Gartner, senior staff attorney for Planned Parenthood, said in a statement following the South Dakota ban. "South Dakota's ban is the most sweeping abortion ban passed by any state in more than a decade. Planned Parenthood will go to court to ensure women, with their doctors and families, continue to be able to make personal health-care decisions -- not politicians."

Nationwide, abortion opponents are split over whether it's time to pull out all the stops on banning abortion or time to continue seeking to restrict the procedure with less ambitious bills, such as measures to require parental consent or regulate clinics.

"The pro-life community is divided on what the best strategy is," said Sam Lee, of the anti-abortion group Campaign Life Missouri.

ABCNEWS.com's Rose Palazzolo contributed to this report.

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Iran's Best Friend

The New York Times
Iran's Best Friend

At the rate that President Bush is going, Iran will be a global superpower before too long. For all of the axis-of-evil rhetoric that has come out of the White House, the reality is that the Bush administration has done more to empower Iran than its most ambitious ayatollah could have dared to imagine. Tehran will be able to look back at the Bush years as a golden era full of boosts from America, its unlikely ally.

During the period before the Iraq invasion, the president gave lip service to the idea that Iran and Iraq were both threats to American security. But his advisers, intent on carrying out their long-deferred dream of toppling Saddam Hussein, gave scant thought to what might happen if their plans did not lead to the unified, peaceful, pro-Western democracy of their imaginings. The answer, though, is now rather apparent: a squabbling, divided country in which the Shiite majority in the oil-rich south finds much more in common with its fellow Shiites in Iran than with the Sunni Muslims with whom it needs to form an Iraqi government.

Washington has now become dangerously dependent on the good will and constructive behavior of Shiite fundamentalist parties that Iran sheltered, aided and armed during the years that Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq. In recent weeks, neither good will nor constructive behavior has been particularly evident, and if Iran chooses to stir up further trouble to deflect diplomatic pressures on its nuclear program, it could easily do so.

There is now a real risk that Iraq, instead of being turned into an outpost of secular democracy challenging the fanatical rulers of the Islamic republic to its east, could become an Iranian-aligned fundamentalist theocracy, challenging the secular Arab regimes to its west.

Fast-forward to Thursday's nuclear deal with India, in which President Bush agreed to share civilian nuclear technology with India despite its nuclear weapons programs and its refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

This would be a bad idea at any time, rewarding India for flouting the basic international understanding that has successfully discouraged other countries from South Korea to Saudi Arabia from embarking on their own efforts to build nuclear weapons. But it also undermines attempts to rein in Iran, whose nuclear program is progressing fast and unnerving both its neighbors and the West.

The India deal is exactly the wrong message to send right now, just days before Washington and its European allies will be asking the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Iran's case to the United Nations Security Council for further action. Iran's hopes of preventing this depend on convincing the rest of the world that the West is guilty of a double standard on nuclear issues. Mr. Bush might as well have tied a pretty red bow around his India nuclear deal and mailed it as a gift to Tehran.

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We Are (Aren't) Safer With India in the Nuclear Club

The New York Times
We Are (Aren't) Safer With India in the Nuclear Club
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON

HAS President Bush just made the world a safer or a more dangerous place?

That question lingered after he reached a deal with India last week recognizing that India is never giving up its nuclear weapons, and declaring that a country America once treated as a nuclear pariah could now be trusted.

In doing so, Mr. Bush took a step in his efforts to rewrite the world's longstanding rules that for more than 30 years have forbidden providing nuclear technology to countries that do not sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

"I'm trying to think differently," Mr. Bush said in New Delhi, referring to the administration's argument that a new system is needed. But in treating India as a special case — a "strategic relationship" — he has so far declined to define general rules for everyone.

In essence, Mr. Bush is making a huge gamble — critics say a dangerous one — that the United States can control proliferation by single-handedly rewarding nuclear states it considers "responsible," and punishing those it declares irresponsible. For those keeping a scorecard, India is in the first camp, Iran is in the second, and no one in the administration wants to talk, at least on the record, about Israel or Pakistan — two allies that have embraced the bomb, but not the treaty.

So will other countries with nuclear ambitions react by becoming more responsible, as the administration hopes, or more envious and more determined than ever to expand their own arsenals? And will India use its new access to American-branded nuclear fuel to free up its domestic supplies of uranium to make bomb fuel for new weapons? And how will the deal affect the tense relationship between India and Pakistan, or for that matter China?

Perhaps the strongest and most discussed critique of the deal goes like this: Mr. Bush's timing could not be worse. In the eyes of his critics, he is creating a double standard by legitimizing an Indian weapons program that only eight years ago led Washington to impose huge sanctions, while demanding, in the same week, that Iran and North Korea give up any capacity to make their own nuclear fuel.

Mr. Bush, notes Ashton B. Carter, a nuclear expert at Harvard, declared nearly two years ago that there should be no new nuclear states, a concept that "was violated irrevocably" when Mr. Bush and the Indians reached agreement on the broad outline of this deal last summer. Now, he says, the deal at least puts the United States in the position of dealing directly with India's plans to maintain or expand its arsenal.

But the new deal may have solved one problem at the expense of creating new ones. Mr. Bush's team says it designed the India deal as a way to build a "strategic partnership" with the world's largest democracy, after decades of estrangement. India has proved itself a responsible power, Mr. Bush said. It also does not hurt that the country is one of the fastest-growing emerging markets, a favorite destination for technology companies, and a potential friend if trouble breaks out in tense relationships with China and Pakistan.

The part of the deal the administration likes to talk about allows India to buy American fuel for its civilian reactors for the first time, in exchange for opening them to international inspection. But India only designated 14 of its sites as "civilian" plants that it permanently guarantees can be inspected (up from four a few months ago), meaning that the additional eight can be used to make bomb fuel.

That part of the deal drives its critics up the cooling tower.

The administration never expected India's nuclear establishment to give up its ability to make bomb-grade fuel. So the administration's negotiator "caved on that one early on," in the words of Robert J. Einhorn, a nonproliferation expert who served under President Clinton and in the early days of Mr. Bush's tenure.

Critics have noted that since the United States would now sell India fuel for its newly declared civilian reactors — assuming Congress goes along — the Indians can devote their domestic uranium supply to weapons. "It substantially expands the supply of uranium the Indians have for military purposes," said Mr. Einhorn.

Mr. Bush argues that the Indians were going to build more weapons anyway.

And he said on Thursday in New Delhi that a way had be found to help India build safe civilian nuclear plants. Otherwise, it and China, the other country with a billion-plus population and a rising appetite for energy supplies, would end up struggling with each other and the West over resources to keep their economies growing.

Mr. Bush puts that as a pocketbook issue: "Increasing demand for oil from America, from India and China, relative to a supply that's not keeping up with demand, causes our fuel prices to go up," he said. "And so, to the extent that we can reduce demand for fossil fuels, it will help the American consumer."

"It's a start," said Xenia Dormandy, a Southeast Asia expert who was in on the early days of the deal as an official at the National Security Council, before leaving for Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "It acknowledges that over the years, India has played according to the rules, never proliferated, and it makes more sense to bring a rising power into the system rather than treat them like we've treated them for 30 years."

Ms. Dormandy applauds the deal for another reason: the politics of Pakistan, the nuclear power next door, is driven by jealousy over anything that India gets. The government there, she argued, may be driven to clean up its nuclear act in hopes of one day getting a similar deal.

Maybe so, but it could be a long wait: Robert Blackwill, the former American ambassador to India and an early architect of the agreement, said that because of the huge nuclear black market that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear engineer, operated from Islamabad for two decades, "there's not the slightest possibility that this deal is going to be made available to Pakistan." But if there is a plan to keep Pakistan from boosting its own relatively small arsenal to keep up with India — or China from doing the same — no one in the adminstration has yet explained it.

That is why some experts believe the deal could make the world more dangerous: Even if India is a responsble player, the deal could touch off a regional race to produce more bomb fuel. In that case, more of that fuel would be floating around — perhaps to tempt terrorists. If, on the other hand, India shows restraint and Mr. Bush's gamble pays off, other nations that defiantly built their own weapons may gradually be drawn back into a new club whose membership rules are still being written.

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Military denies withdrawal plan

Reuters
Military denies withdrawal plan
By Ibon Villelabeitia

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military in Iraq said on Sunday media reports that America and Britain planned to pull all troops out of Iraq by spring 2007 were "completely false," reiterating that there was no timetable for withdrawal.

Two British newspapers reported on Sunday that the pull-out plan followed an acceptance by the two governments that the presence of foreign troops in Iraq was now an obstacle to securing peace.

But a spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq reiterated previous statements by U.S. and Iraqi officials that foreign troops would be gradually withdrawn from the country once Iraqi security forces were capable of guaranteeing security.

"This news report on a withdrawal of forces within a set timeframe is completely false," Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson said of the stories in Britain's Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Mirror, which quoted unnamed senior defense ministry sources.

"As we've said over and over again, any withdrawal will be linked to the ability of the Iraqi security forces to maintain domestic order on behalf of a representative Iraqi government that respects the rights of all its citizens. This is an ongoing assessment and not linked to any timeframe," he said.

UNITY GOVERNMENT

Iraq's Kurdish President Jalal Talabani said he would issue a decree on Sunday to summon a first sitting of the parliament elected in December.

Talabani on Saturday added his voice to pressure from other leaders for Shi'ite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to step aside, saying his resignation would help persuade other parties to form a national unity government that could halt a slide toward civil war.

As at least 14 people were killed in sectarian violence on Saturday, the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East called for a broad coalition Washington hopes can foster stability and allow it to start withdrawing its troops.

The Shi'ite United Alliance, the biggest bloc in the new parliament, nominated Jaafari to keep his job despite security and economic difficulties and criticism of his handling of violence that has killed more than 500 people since the destruction of a major Shi'ite shrine in Samarra on February 22.

But smaller factions are refusing to join a coalition he leads and rival Shi'ite leaders are considering putting up a new nominee, political sources say. Parliament is likely to sit around next Sunday, government sources say, but forming a government may take much longer.

The premier must be confirmed by a two-thirds majority.

General John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, met both Talabani and Jaafari in Baghdad: "The government of national unity must be formed to bring the country together," he said.

There are about 135,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines and about 8,500 British troops in Iraq. The full U.S.-led coalition numbers around 160,000. Italy, with the fourth largest contingent in Iraq, has said it plans to pull out this year.

U.S. and British troops have trained 230,000 Iraqis to take on roles in the police force and Iraqi army, but both are currently incapable of securing the country on their own.

Talabani and Shi'ite Interior Minister Bayan Jabor have called for sectarian and ethnic militias to join the U.S.-trained security forces, something U.S. officials in Baghdad have long been urging.

Government leaders, including Talabani and Jabor, are in parties which have justified maintaining their own militia forces, however, and Jabor set no timetable for any change.

"There is no reasonable justification for any fear of the militias at the present time," Jabor said.

Sunni leaders have accused the government of condoning death squads targeting minority Sunnis and operating from inside the Shi'ite-controlled Interior Ministry. In the north, Sunni Arabs complain of the power of Kurdish peshmerga militias.

Militia leaders deny condoning any such violence.

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US launches drive to plug leaks

Reuters
US launches drive to plug leaks: Washington Post

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration has launched several investigations to discourage government employees from leaking classified information to news reporters, The Washington Post reported in its Sunday edition.

FBI agents have interviewed dozens of employees at the CIA, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies in recent weeks as they investigate possible leaks that led to reports about the NSA's domestic spying program and secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe, the Post said.

Employees at the FBI, the CIA, the Justice Department and other agencies have also received Justice Department letters prohibiting them from discussing the NSA program, the Post said, citing anonymous sources.

Republican lawmakers like Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts are considering legislation that would stiffen penalties for leaking.

FBI agents have contacted reporters at the Sacramento Bee about their coverage of a terrorism case that was based on classified documents, the Post said.

CIA Director Porter Goss has warned employees at the agency against speaking to reporters, and called for prosecutors to call reporters before a grand jury to force them to reveal who is leaking information, the Post said.

Several reporters have already been forced to reveal anonymous sources to a U.S. prosecutor investigating the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity after her husband accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence to justify its invasion of Iraq.

Editors and lawyers told the Post the incidents amount to the most extensive anti-leak campaign since the Nixon administration.

A White House spokesman told the Post that the government needs to protect classified information as it fights terrorism.

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House introduces mandatory radio-crippling law

boingboing.com
House introduces mandatory radio-crippling law

Rep. Mike Ferguson (R-N.J.) has introduced a bill to cripple all digital radios. The Audio Broadcast Flag Licensing Act of 2006 (H.R. 4861) requires all digital radio makers to build their devices so that they only permit "customary uses" of broadcasts. That means that no one ever gets to invent any new radio tech ever again unless the RIAA approves of it. Finally, it requires radio device makers to cripple their products to prohibit "unauthorized copying" -- which is a lot more broad than "illegal copying." As we've heard, the RIAA's position is that no copying is implicitly authorized -- they don't even think you should be allowed to rip your CDs.

Fergusun is committing political suicide. No constituent of Fergusun's woke up this morning wishing for a way to do less with her radio. There's no manufacturer who can sell more radios by advertising "Now! With fewer features!" This is a bill to steal from tomorrow's entrepreneurs, who'll never get to invent the next generation of awesome music tech, in order to line the pockets of yesterday's recording industry fatcats.

For a picture of what the RIAA considers permissible, take a look at the comments they filed with the FCC on this topic back in 2004. Here's the list of restrictions they asked for then:

* Receivers may only record or permit recording of covered content: (a) in direct and immediate response to a consumer pressing a record button; (b) based on a date and time preprogrammed by the consumer.

* Preprogrammed recordings shall be for a minimum period of 30 minutes in duration.

* A replay buffer may be used to initiate a recording of a previously broadcast transmission provided that the buffer does not exceed 30 minutes in duration.

* Each recording of covered content shall be stored and retrieved as a singe continuous session and may not be divided into recordings of individual songs on an automated or non-automated basis using ID information or audio characteristics...

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Update: Nathan sez, "A grassroots group here in NJ started a federal PAC called Blue 7th PAC that is geared towards defeating Mike Ferguson in the 2006 election, and this is just another reason to go after him. We created the blog, target letters to the editor, raise money for area candidates, hold candidates nights, publish fact sheets, and have an e-mail list of about 1200 people. We think that a small, targeted PAC of local folks can do a lot to change the results of an election."

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Supreme Court Steps Into Medicare Rx Fight

Yahoo! News
Supreme Court Steps Into Medicare Rx Fight
By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer

Fifteen states are urging the Supreme Court to take the unusual step of immediately intervening to resolve a dispute between states and the federal government over the costly new Medicare prescription drug program.

Justices were told Friday that states should not be forced to help fund the program, which could cost them billions of dollars over the next two years.

"The federal government has placed what amounts to a direct tax upon Texas and other states in violation of the U.S. Constitution," Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, the lead attorney in the case, said in a statement.

Traditionally, such lawsuits are filed first in a federal district court.

Texas, Kentucky, Maine, Missouri and New Jersey asked the Supreme Court for permission to file what is called an original case to get the issue directly before the justices.

Ten states filed a brief backing the move: Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Kansas, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Vermont. Lawyers for those states told justices that the program "establishes a dangerous precedent that threatens" states' independence.

A 2003 law added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, the federal health insurance program for the elderly and disabled. It went into effect Jan. 1 for those who signed up early and for millions who previously were covered by state Medicaid programs.

Gary Karr, a spokesman for the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said states are eventually going to save billions of dollars under the new program. "That's why very few states decided to join this lawsuit, despite requests for them to do so," Karr said.

State lawsuits against each other are filed directly with the Supreme Court. State lawsuits against the federal government can be filed directly with the Supreme Court, or begin in lower court. The high court does not have to agree to resolve them.

"I don't know if the Supreme Court is going to want to be the first court to get into this dispute. It seems controversial and political," said Neil Siegel, a Duke University law professor and former Supreme Court clerk.

If the court agrees to take the case, it will appoint someone to oversee it and make recommendations.

David Frederick, a Washington lawyer and Supreme Court expert, said "the states are trading the normal tools of district court litigation" in hopes of getting a speedier outcome at the high court.

The case is Texas v. Leavitt, No. 135.

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On the Net:

Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/

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