Spending Measure Not a Law, Suit Says; Senate, House Versions Are Different

Washington Post
Spending Measure Not a Law, Suit Says
Senate, House Versions Are Different
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer

For anyone who took fifth-grade social studies or sang "I'm Just a Bill," how legislation turns to law always seemed pretty simple: The House passes a bill, the Senate passes the same bill, the president signs it.

"He signed ya, Bill -- now you're a law," shouts the cartoon lawmaker on "Schoolhouse Rock" as Bill acknowledges the cheers.

But last month, Washington threw all that old-fashioned civics stuff into a tizzy, when President Bush signed into law a bill that actually never passed the House. Bill -- in this case, a major budget-cutting measure that will affect millions of Americans -- became a law because it was "certified" by the leaders of the House and Senate.

After stewing for weeks, Public Citizen, a legislative watchdog group, sued yesterday to block the budget-cutting law, charging that Bush and Republican leaders of Congress flagrantly violated the Constitution when the president signed it into law knowing that the version that cleared the House was substantively different from the Senate's version.

The issue is bizarre, with even constitutional scholars saying they could not think of any precedent for the journey the budget bill took to becoming a law. Opponents of the budget law point to elementary-school civics lessons to make their case, while Republicans are evoking an obscure Supreme Court ruling from the 1890s to suggest a bill does not actually have to pass both chambers of Congress to become law.

"We believe that the law is constitutional and that this is yet another political attempt by the Democrats to stop us from cutting spending," said Ronald D. Bonjean Jr., a spokesman for Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).

But liberal interest groups hoping to bring down the budget law have the backing of many legal scholars, who say that a $2 billion mistake cannot be ignored.

"The Deficit Reduction Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 2005 may be something, but it is not law within the meaning of the Constitution," said Jamin Raskin, an American University law professor.

No one disputes the central facts of the lawsuit: Last December, Vice President Cheney broke a tie vote in the Senate to win passage of a bill that would cut nearly $40 billion over five years by reducing Medicaid rolls, raising work requirements for welfare, and trimming the student loan program, among other changes.

Among those other changes was a provision to restrict Medicare payments for durable medical equipment, such as wheelchairs and oxygen tanks. Under the Senate bill, government-funded leases for such equipment could last only 13 months.

As the measure was being sent to the House last month, a Senate clerk inadvertently changed that 13-month restriction to 36 months, a $2 billion alteration. With the mistaken change, the measure squeaked through the House, 216 to 214.

Once the mistake was revealed, Republican leaders were loath to fight the battle again by having another vote, so White House officials simply deemed the Senate version to be the law.

"This is simple elementary-school civics," said Public Citizen lawyer Adina H. Rosenbaum, announcing that the group had filed suit in U.S. District Court to nullify the law. "The courts should declare void laws passed in an unconstitutional manner."

The suit has the sympathy of constitutional scholars.

"I think it's an open-and-shut case," agreed Michael J. Gerhardt, director of the Center on Law and Government at the University of North Carolina School of Law. "It would be a horrible precedent to set if this is how Congress is allowed to make laws."

For their part, congressional leaders and administration officials point to an 1892 Supreme Court decision, Field v. Clark , to argue that as long as the speaker of the House and the leader of the Senate certify a bill passed, it is passed. In that case, a bill signed by President Benjamin Harrison and authenticated by the leaders of the House and Senate was different from the version printed in the official journals of Congress, known now as the Congressional Record.

"Congress presented a bill certified by both chambers. It's been signed into law, and we consider the matter closed," said Scott Milburn, spokesman for the White House budget office.

In the 1892 case, the Supreme Court did not rule that the law really was a law but instead said the dispute was not a matter for the courts to decide, said Michael C. Dorf, a professor of constitutional law at Columbia University. The main problem for Public Citizen will not be showing that the budget law is technically not a law, but getting the courts involved, Dorf said, especially with a measure as sweeping as this one.

"An honest application of precedents would probably lead to the conclusion that the courts should strike this down," Dorf said. But, he added, "the courts will probably try to find a way to not throw the law out because it is so broad."

The issue would be solved if the House voted again, this time on the version that passed the Senate. But that would mark the third time House members would have to cast their votes on a politically difficult bill, containing cuts in many popular programs, and it would be that much closer to the November election.

But the issue may be snowballing. On Feb. 13, James Zeigler, a Republican lawyer in Alabama who specializes in elder-care issues, filed a similar suit, challenging the budget measure's constitutionality.

"The Constitution is broad and vague on a number of things; this is not one of them," Zeigler said. "The same bill must be passed by House and Senate and signed by the president. Otherwise it's not law. Case over."

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1,889 days and no vetoes: Bush gaining on Jefferson

USA TODAY
1,889 days and no vetoes: Bush gaining on Jefferson
By Richard Benedetto, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — President Bush Thursday becomes the longest-sitting president since Thomas Jefferson not to exercise his veto, surpassing James Monroe. (Related: Republicans work together)

Monroe was in office 1,888 days before he vetoed his first bill on May 4, 1822, a measure to impose a toll on the first federal highway. Jefferson never exercised his veto during two terms in 1801-09.

Thursday is Bush's 1,889th day in office, and no veto is in sight. As of Wednesday, Congress had sent him 1,091 bills. He signed them all.

Bush came close to a veto last month when Congress threatened to block a deal to turn over operations at ports in six states to a company owned by the Arab emirate of Dubai. He threatened a veto, but he avoided a showdown when the Dubai company decided to sell that part of its business to American interests.

"After that, we're not likely to hear a veto threat from him that much again," says G. Calvin Mackenzie, government professor at Maine's Colby College.

Some analysts say Bush's failure to use his veto shows an unwillingness to confront fellow Republicans who control Congress. "He doesn't want to fight battles unnecessarily and create a distance between himself and his party," says Mark Rozell, a George Mason University political scientist who has studied presidential vetoes.

Others say Bush's avoidance of the veto is a sign of strength. "Bush and his party are so close on most issues that there's no need to veto," Mackenzie says.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., scoffs at that: "This is a rubber-stamp Congress. Why would he veto anything?"

Still others say it is a matter of Bush's management style. "He's a CEO kind of guy. He gives his orders, delegates the negotiating to others and is willing to live with the outcome," says Robert McClure, a political scientist at Syracuse University's Maxwell School.

Bush has used veto threats to shape bills more to his liking. For example, the House wanted $370 billion for last year's highway bill; the Senate, $318 billion. Bush drew the line at $256 billion, then compromised at $286.4 billion, more than he wanted but far below the House and Senate levels.

Bush said Tuesday that the veto threat has helped him reduce the rate of domestic spending: "One reason why I haven't vetoed any appropriation bills is because they met the benchmarks we've set."



Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-03-22-bush-vetoes_x.htm

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New York, California Have the Dirtiest Air in Nation With Highest Cancer Risk, According to Data From EPA

ABC News
N.Y., Calif. Air Is Dirtiest, EPA Says
New York, California Have the Dirtiest Air in Nation With Highest Cancer Risk, According to Data From EPA
The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - New Yorkers and Californians breathe the dirtiest air in the nation and face higher cancer risks than the rest of the nation, according to the latest data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

New Yorkers' risk of developing cancer from air toxins is estimated to be 68 residents per million. In California, the risk is 66 residents per million.

The national average is 41.5 per million, according to the report, which was released in February and based on emissions of 177 chemicals in 1999, the most recent data available.

Oregon, Washington, D.C., and New Jersey had the third, fourth and fifth worst air in the nation, respectively, the EPA said. Rural residents of Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana breathed the cleanest air.

The EPA assessment evaluated toxins including heavy metals, such as lead; volatile chemicals, such as benzene; combustion byproducts, such as acrolein; and solvents, including perchloroethylene and methylene chloride.

Benezene alone contributed a quarter of the individual cancer risk identified in this assessment, the primary source of it being vehicles, according to the study.

The National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) is a screening tool that estimates cancer and other health risks from exposure to air toxins. It provides a snapshot of air quality and the risks if 1999 emissions levels remained unchanged. It does not reflect reductions in air toxins that may have occurred since 1999.

On the Net:

http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/natamain

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Bush Pulls Out All the Stops to Sweeten America on War in Iraq - and Polls on His Performance

ABC News
Bush Pulls Out the Stops to Save Ratings
Bush Pulls Out All the Stops to Sweeten America on War in Iraq - and Polls on His Performance
By JENNIFER LOVEN
The Associated Press

WHEELING, W.Va. - Whether he's before a friendly West Virginia audience, a Cleveland club proud of its interrogation skills or a White House news conference, President Bush is drawing on his plainspoken manner in freewheeling venues to defend his Iraq strategy.

Alternately serious and joking, charming and disarming in this war anniversary week, Bush is trying to counter election-year critics and reverse an approval ratings slide.

In Wheeling on Wednesday, the fifth day in a row Bush devoted his remarks to Iraq, the president bantered with the locals, his shoulders bouncing up and down as they do when he's pleased with his own jokes. Then he brought down the house with his trademark I-won't-back-down pledge.

"Let me put it to you this way: If I didn't think we'd succeed, I'd pull our troops out," Bush said. More than 2,000 supporters including many active-duty military and their families leapt from their seats and filled the gilded Capitol Music Hall with wild applause.

"I cannot look mothers and dads in the eye, I can't ask this good Marine to go into harm's way if I didn't believe, one, we're going to succeed, and, two, it's necessary for the security of the United States," Bush said.

Beginning with a speech last Monday in Washington. and with more planned to come, the president wants to convince Americans not only that there is reason for optimism about Iraq's future but that the situation now is better than the daily reports of strife make it appear.

With national polls showing he has a tough hill to climb and the upcoming midterm congressional elections making Republicans nervous Bush laces his remarks with nods to both Americans' worries and the grim realities on the ground in Iraq. The insurgency remains strong, sectarian violence is spiraling and talks to form a unity government seem stalemated.

The president said at least a half-dozen times here that he understands the concern about Iraq.

"There was some awful violence. Some reprisals taking place. And I can understand people saying, `Man, it's all going to you know, it's not working out,'" he said.

But, Bush added, standing in front of three large blue-and-yellow "Plan for Victory" posters: "The way I like to put it is, they looked into the abyss as to whether or not they want a civil war or not and chose not to. That's not to say we don't have more work to do, and we do."

The crowd in Wheeling needed little convincing. Another standing ovation was prompted by a woman who asked Bush what could be done to keep the press from ignoring progress in Iraq.

"Our major media don't want to portray the good," she said. "If the American people could see it, there would never be another negative word about this conflict."

Bush declined the opportunity to tell the media what to publish.

"You're asking me to say something in front of all the cameras here. Help over there, will you?" he joshed. "Just got to keep talking. Word of mouth."

In Cleveland on Monday, Bush did his talking at the City Club. The questions got tough at the forum known for taking on world leaders, ranging from Iraq to his warrantless wiretapping program to a new nuclear deal with India. But the exchanges allowed Bush to make his case for the war, and earned him a few laughs and several rounds of enthusiastic applause along the way.

"Anybody work here in this town?" Bush joked at one point as the Cleveland questioning went on in an appearance that eventually went over 90 minutes.

On Tuesday, Bush called a news conference with the Washington media. But he rejected the formal East Room in favor of going toe-to-toe with reporters in the cramped, casual White House briefing room that better suits his style. The president bantered with an outspoken critic, journalist Helen Thomas, saying he "semi-regretted" calling on her, and he teasingly accused other reporters of falling asleep during his speeches.

The sessions follow a December blitz by Bush that succeeded in arresting an earlier fall in his approval ratings. This time, White House advisers hope the speaking events, even when they draw the kind of difficult questions that have occasionally come Bush's way this week, will showcase a president comfortable with his message, his strategy and his facts.

"It's one of the best chances he has to be effective, to change away from the Pollyanna-ish characterizations of it being all good news," said Bruce Buchanan, a University of Texas political scientist who has long observed Bush.

However, Wayne Fields, a specialist in presidential rhetoric at Washington University in St. Louis, said, "The problem is that clearly he's doing this because of the polls and that adds a level of desperation."

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Clue to slow human bird flu jump

BBC NEWS
Clue to slow human bird flu jump

Scientists believe they may have discovered a reason why the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus cannot yet jump easily between humans.

Flu viruses which target man tend to attach to cells further up the airway - maximising their chances of being passed on by coughing or sneezing.

Researchers found the bird flu virus attached itself to cells deep down in the human airways.

The University of Wisconsin research is published in the journal Nature.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu has spread across Europe, Africa and parts of Asia, has killed more than 100 people worldwide and infected about 180 since it re-emerged in 2003.

But it still cannot jump easily from human to human.

Scientists fear that if it gains that ability and mutates it could result in a human flu pandemic, with millions of deaths world-wide.

Target molecule

The Wisconsin team investigated why the virus could not spread easily between humans despite the fact that it could replicate efficiently in human lungs.

Flu viruses infecting humans and birds are known to home in on slightly different versions of the same molecule, found on the surface of cells which line the respiratory tract.

The latest study found the version of the molecule targeted by human viruses was more prevalent on cells higher up in the airway.

The molecule targeted by bird viruses, on the other hand, tended to be found on cells deep within the lungs, in structures called alveoli.

Thus the bird flu virus tended to be buried so deep in the lungs that was unlikely to be spread by coughing or sneezing.

If the virus was to acquire the ability to infect cells higher up in the airway, it could take a crucial step towards causing a human pandemic, researchers believe.

Victims 'unlucky'

Professor Ian Jones, of the University of Reading, said the study provided some explanation of why people, particularly children, had caught the virus and died and yet it had remained "bird flu".

"It seems they were just really unlucky and transmitted enough virus to their mouths for it to gain access to the lower lung, a distance shorter in children than adults.

"Casual contact with the virus may therefore not be as dangerous as initially thought."

However, Professor Jones said it was possible that the virus could mutate to gain the potential to attach to cells in the upper airway.

"It remains the case therefore that planning for that eventuality makes a great deal of sense."

Dr Laurence Tiley, a lecturer in molecular virology at the University of Cambridge, said: "This may at least in part explain why H5N1 is inefficient at transmitting person to person, although I doubt that it is the complete answer."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/4829858.stm

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Iraqi Official, Paid by C.I.A., Gave Account of Weapons

The New York Times
Iraqi Official, Paid by C.I.A., Gave Account of Weapons
By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, March 21 — Saddam Hussein's foreign minister was paid for information he supplied to the Central Intelligence Agency, through the French intelligence agency, that raised questions about the scale of Iraq's weapons programs, former intelligence officials said Tuesday.

The role of Naji Sabri, Iraq's foreign minister from 2001 until the America-led invasion began in 2003, was first described publicly in a 2004 speech by George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, but Mr. Tenet did not give the Iraqi's name.

NBC News reported on Monday night that Mr. Sabri had been the man Mr. Tenet described as "a source who had direct access to Saddam and his inner circle," and two former intelligence officials confirmed the identification.

Mr. Sabri did not meet directly with C.I.A. officers, but spoke with intermediaries in meetings arranged by the French intelligence agency, which passed the information on, the officials said.

One official said Mr. Sabri may not have known for certain that his information was going to the United States government or that the money he received — reported by NBC as more than $100,000 — came from the C.I.A.

The officials were granted anonymity because of the importance of the secret intelligence relationship they had described. Mr. Sabri, who is teaching at a university in the Middle East outside Iraq, declined to discuss the report, NBC reported. A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment Tuesday.

According to Mr. Tenet's account, which is generally in accord with that of NBC and the former intelligence officials, the source now identified as Mr. Sabri gave a mixed account of Iraq's weapons programs when he spoke with French intelligence officers in the fall of 2002.

Mr. Tenet said in his speech, at Georgetown University in February 2004, that a source who had direct access to Mr. Hussein had said that Iraq had no nuclear weapons but was "aggressively and covertly" seeking to develop them. Mr. Tenet said the source had also reported that the Hussein government was "dabbling" with biological weapons but had no "real weapons program."

By comparison, an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, representing the views of American intelligence agencies, said Iraq had "reconstituted its nuclear weapons program" and it had an active biological weapons program that had produced some germ weapons.

On chemical arms, Mr. Sabri's information seems to be closer to the American estimate, which had said Iraq was producing and stockpiling chemical weapons. Mr. Sabri told French intelligence officers that Iraq had stockpiled chemical weapons and might use them against invading troops or Israel, according to Mr. Tenet.

Extensive searches by American troops and weapons specialists after the fall of Mr. Hussein found no unconventional weapons of any kind.

A worldly diplomat and former editor of an English-language Iraqi newspaper, Mr. Sabri was recalled from the Iraqi Embassy in London in 1980 after his two brothers were arrested by Mr. Hussein's agents and jailed on conspiracy charges. They were tortured, and one died in prison, while the other was freed after six years, according to a biography of Mr. Sabri compiled by the BBC.

Mr. Sabri lived quietly as an editor and literary translator for a decade before being given a new government post at the time of the Persian Gulf war in 1991. He worked at the Ministry of Information, as an adviser to Mr. Hussein and as ambassador to Austria before becoming foreign minister in April 2001.

In September 2002, in a speech to the United Nations, Mr. Sabri declared that "Iraq is free of all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons."

The Bush administration has been accused by some former officials and members of Congress of deliberately skewing prewar intelligence to make the case for war.

Last month, Paul R. Pillar, a former C.I.A. official who oversaw intelligence assessments on the Middle East before the war, charged in an article in Foreign Affairs that "intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions that had already been made."

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Evacuees' Lives Still Upended Seven Months After Hurricane

The New York Times
Evacuees' Lives Still Upended Seven Months After Hurricane
By SHAILA DEWAN, MARJORIE CONNELLY
and ANDREW LEHREN

Nearly seven months after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans and forced out hundreds of thousands of residents, most evacuees say they have not found a permanent place to live, have depleted their savings and consider their life worse than before the hurricane, according to interviews with more than 300 evacuees conducted by The New York Times.

The interviews suggested that while blacks and whites suffered similar rates of emotional trauma, blacks bore a heavier economic and social burden. And even as both groups flounder, most said they believed that the rest of the nation, and politicians in Washington, have moved on.

"I don't think anybody cares, really," said Robert Rodrigue, a semiretired computer programmer who has returned to his home in the suburb of Metairie. "New Orleans is kind of like at the bottom of the country, and they just forget about us."


The Times study is the first major effort to examine the lives and attitudes of those displaced by the storm's devastation at the six-month point, a moment when many must decide whether to establish a life in a new place or return home.

Fewer than a quarter of the participants in the study have returned to the same house they were living in before the hurricane, while about two-thirds said their previous home was unlivable. A fifth said their house or apartment had been destroyed. Many have not found work and remain separated from family members.

Still, most of those interviewed favor returning to the city, expressing a sense of optimism about the recovery process or, more often, a fierce yearning for home, as if staying away from New Orleans were like trying to breathe air through gills.

The 337 respondents were chosen randomly from a Web database of more than 160,000 evacuees, sponsored by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which was set up to help victims of the disaster reunite with their families. The interviews were conducted by telephone.

The Times used standard survey methods in asking the questions and recording the answers, but the interview project differs from a scientific poll. For one thing, the demographic characteristics of the full evacuee population cannot be determined, so the group cannot be sampled with the statistical precision of a poll. For that reason, no margin of sampling error could be calculated for the study, which was conducted from Feb. 16 to March 3.

Although the interviewees do not constitute a statistical sample, the racial makeup of the group, two-thirds black, was similar to that of the pre-hurricane population of the city. Those interviewed tended to be older and more predominantly female than the population as a whole.

The blacks interviewed were more likely to have had their homes destroyed or to have lost a close friend or relative. Although a majority of both blacks and whites left their homes before Hurricane Katrina hit, blacks were more likely to have been separated from family members.

And while a majority of whites and blacks reported that they had depleted their savings since the storm, blacks were more likely to have done so, and more likely to have been forced to borrow money. Whites were more likely to have kept their jobs or found similar or better employment, and were also more likely, by a wide margin, to have already returned to the New Orleans area.

A central question for New Orleans has been how much of its population would return, and 4 in 10 of those interviewed said they definitely or probably would. Another fourth were already back.

"New Orleans is in my blood; it's in my genes," said Jacob Mitchell, 67, a hospital maintenance man who is living for the time being with his daughter in Slidell, La. "It's like I'm married to New Orleans."

Of the rest of his family, scattered to four cities in three states, Mr. Mitchell said, "If they had a house to come back to, they'd be packing up tonight."

Tayari Kwa Salaam, 56, a consultant for several nonprofit groups, is back even though her paying clients are not. "For me, this is the most Afrocentric city in the United States," she said. "There's a way that we talk and way that we be that's just home."

Ms. Salaam, who describes herself as "one level above poverty," said that although she fretted over the city's future, she immediately began looking for ways to return after evacuating to her daughter's home in Baltimore. "Once we felt that chill in the air and it wasn't even autumn yet — and just the people there," she said. "It was generally cold."

Another quarter of those interviewed said they did not plan to return. The most common reason cited was fear of a repeat of last year's disaster.

A smaller group said they had settled in and were happy in their new location.

Those age 40 and older were almost twice as likely as the rest of the respondents to have already returned, and people in their 20's and 30's were more likely to say they were not going back.

Denise Debouchel, 46, said that her husband was living in a trailer in St. Bernard Parish, which is just east of the city and suffered some of the worst destruction, and that she was still at her sister's home in North Carolina. Ms. Debouchel believes the levees will never be high enough to prevent another flood of Hurricane Katrina proportions.

"I just can't fathom going through this again," she said. "It could be the end of my marriage."

Other families cited financial considerations and stability for their children. Deadra Ellis, 40, said she had found a job in San Antonio, her husband's job had transferred there, too, and the elder of her two children was settling into her new high school. The family would like to hold onto its house in eastern New Orleans, Ms. Ellis said, but insurance costs might prove too high.

"We are all kind of homesick," she said. "But I've been scanning the real estate listings — nothing is there."

Some of the poorest people in New Orleans were not included in the project, in part because they did not have access to the database or posted the telephone numbers of emergency shelters where they left no forwarding information. Only about a third of the people who participated in the study spent any time in emergency shelters, and even fewer sought refuge at the Superdome or the convention center.

More than one in 10 of the respondents said they were homeless or needed a permanent place to live. Although three out of five said they were depressed, and many reported symptoms like trouble sleeping or edginess, only one in five said they had talked to a therapist or counselor since the hurricane.

Nearly half were living in a house or apartment rented after the hurricane, while about a fifth were living in the same home as before the storm. Almost another fifth were living in someone else's home.

Attitudes about how the city should be rebuilt were complex, with many who want to return saying they would prefer a different neighborhood to the one they left. Nearly 9 out of 10 said protecting the city from flooding was worth a significant outlay of federal money, with almost as many saying that even low-lying areas should be rebuilt along with an improved levee system.

But asked if people should be able to live in those areas, 3 in 10 said the land should instead be returned to marsh.

As with race, income levels seemed to be a determining factor in how people fared. Those with household incomes over $30,000 a year were more likely to have evacuated before the hurricane as those who made less. They were also more likely to have stayed in a hotel or motel.

About 7 out of 10 respondents rated the Red Cross and FEMA as very or somewhat helpful, but the respondents were overwhelmingly critical of the local, state and federal government's response to the hurricane.

More than two-thirds disapprove of how President Bush and Congress are handling the response to Hurricane Katrina. Almost as many are critical of Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco's response, and more than half disapprove of Mayor C. Ray Nagin, who is up for re-election in April. But among Mr. Bush, Ms. Blanco and Mr. Nagin, more people approved of Mr. Nagin's response, by a wide margin.

Some shared the opinion of Reuben Friedman, 59, a retired lawyer who said that officials did the best they could in an unparalleled disaster.

"I'm not so much critical of their post-Katrina conduct as I am the failure to properly design and maintain the levees, which I think led directly to the loss of life and property," Mr. Friedman said.

Many of the black evacuees said the poor response was at least in part due to race. About half called race a major factor in the government's slow response. By contrast, almost three-quarters of the white evacuees said race was not a factor at all.

In follow-up interviews, some evacuees said the city had the potential to be better than it was before the storm, but others worried about the city's unique culture because the poor black residents who are a crucial part of it were having the most difficulty returning. Many expressed frustration about what they perceived as a lack of clear instructions about where or whether they could rebuild.

"We're kind of left in limbo," Mr. Rodrigue said. "So we can't move forward and we can't move back."

Brenda Goodman contributed reporting from Atlanta for this article, and Marina Stefan from New York.

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New Scrutiny for Law on Detaining Witnesses

The New York Times
New Scrutiny for Law on Detaining Witnesses
By ADAM LIPTAK

A 22-year-old federal law that allows people to be held without charges if they have information about others' crimes is coming under fresh scrutiny in the courts, in Congress and within the Justice Department after reports that it has been abused in terrorism investigations.

The law allows so-called material witnesses to be held long enough to secure their testimony if there is reason to think they will flee. But lawyers for people detained as material witnesses say the law has been used to hold people who the government fears will commit terrorist acts in the future but whom it lacks probable cause to charge with a crime.

Concerns about how the law has been used have prompted calls from across the political spectrum for a reassessment. That debate has also ignited a broader one: whether the United States should join the several Western nations that have straightforward preventive detention laws.

A bill introduced by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, would curtail the use of the material witness law to hold people suspected of plotting terrorist acts. Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, said he would introduce similar legislation in the House.

"It's being stretched beyond its original purpose," Mr. Flake said of the material witness law. "Individuals are being indefinitely detained who might be suspects. If that's the case, they need to be charged."

But Mr. Flake added that he might be receptive to arguments that federal prosecutors need tools to hold some people they consider dangerous. "If you need something else," he said, "come to us."

Recent prosecutions, lawsuits and internal investigations by the government have all focused attention on the potential misuse of the material witness law in terrorism investigations. The Justice Department, for instance, recently opened an inquiry into 21 instances of possible misuses of the law, its Office of the Inspector General said. A Justice Department spokesman would not elaborate on the inquiry, by the department's Office of Professional Responsibility, or name the detainees involved.

But in recent court filings in a case brought by a former detainee, the government argued that courts were powerless to second-guess whether the prosecutors had acted on improper motives as long as they complied with the formal requirements of the material witness law.

David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University and a prominent critic of the Bush administration's approach to civil liberties, said that the government had routinely misused the law. But Professor Cole added that there might be a place for a law that would allow the government to hold dangerous people when it lacked evidence to charge them.

"One of the problems we saw everywhere after 9/11," he said, "was, in the absence of any rational, narrowly tailored preventive detention authority, the administration reached out to exploit a number of other legal and illegal methods to detain people — immigration, material witness, enemy combatant. They were creating preventive detention authority out of statutes that were not meant to serve as that or out of whole cloth."

The use of material witness warrants in terrorism investigations continues to be shrouded in secrecy. In May 2003, the Justice Department told Congress that fewer than 50 people had been detained as material witnesses "in the course of the Sept. 11 investigation." About half were held for more than 30 days, the department said.

A department spokesman did not respond to requests for more current numbers. The department has for three years refused to give Congress fresher data on material witness detentions in terrorism investigations.

"They claim that they can't even tell us how many people they have detained" because of court sealing orders and grand jury secrecy rules, said Julie Katzman, a lawyer on Senator Leahy's staff.

Even the lawyers who represent material witnesses are often barred from talking about their clients.

"The Justice Department routinely gets sealing orders," said Ricardo J. Bascuas, a law professor at the University of Miami who has represented material witnesses. "These court orders never expire. For instance, I'm perpetually under court order from the Eastern District of Virginia, a place I've never been to, not to talk about" one material witness case.

People who have been arrested as material witnesses say the experience forever changed their lives, even when they were never called to testify or charged with a crime.

One of them, Abdullah al Kidd, who was born in Kansas and was a star running back at the University of Idaho, filed suit last year for what he says was "a gross abuse of the government's power" in arresting him.

Mr. al Kidd, who was known as Lavoni T. Kidd before he converted to Islam, spent 16 days in detention in three states in 2003, some of it shackled hand and foot. That was followed by 14 months under court supervision. Mr. al Kidd was not charged with a crime, and he was not called to testify, though a government affidavit said he had information "crucial to the prosecution" of another man. Mr. al Kidd said in a recent interview that his arrest and detention shattered his marriage and destroyed his career. He now drives a cab in Las Vegas.

"I call it social assassination, really," Mr. al Kidd said. "It's just basically taken me out of a lot of opportunities and placed me into a small box. I'm not doing anything my heart actually desires."

Mr. al Kidd, who had apparently attracted the government's attention after pursuing religious studies in Yemen, was interviewed repeatedly by the F.B.I. in 2002. He never missed an appointment, his lawsuit says. Yet, after a six-month lull and with no warning, he was arrested at Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia on March 16, 2003, as he tried to board a flight to Saudi Arabia to pursue a doctorate in Islamic studies.

Magistrate Judge Mikel H. Williams of the Federal District Court in Boise, Idaho, authorized the arrest, based on an affidavit from Special Agent Scott Mace of the F.B.I. "Kidd is scheduled to take a one-way, first-class flight (costing about $5,000)," the affidavit said.

That statement was false in every particular: the ticket was for a round trip, in coach, costing $1,700.

"If I had submitted an affidavit under penalty of perjury that contained false information," said Scott McKay, who represented the man Mr. al Kidd was said to have evidence about, "I would have been prosecuted." Mr. Mace, his lawyer and F.B.I. officials referred questions to a Justice Department spokesman, who declined to comment beyond referring a reporter to the court papers in the case.

In those papers, the government said the false statements in the affidavit were immaterial. "Either way," government lawyers wrote in a brief asking that Mr. al Kidd's case be dismissed, "there is no dispute that plaintiff purchased an expensive airline ticket to a foreign country with which the United States did not have an extradition treaty."

The government has apologized to 13 of the 70 material witnesses located by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch, according to a report the groups issued last year. Mr. al Kidd was not one of them.

"Absolutely no apologies," he said.

The proposed legislation would place strict time limits on detentions — 10 days for grand jury investigations and 30 days for trials — and allow them only where there is clear and convincing evidence that the witness is a flight risk.

Curtailing the authorities' ability to hold potentially dangerous people could be a devastating mistake, said Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor who took part in terrorism investigations in New York after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Terrorism cases present, obviously, the least margin for error that you could conceivably have," Mr. McCarthy, now a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said. "If you lose control of people who come up on the radar screen, you could have massive death."

Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the A.C.L.U.'s Immigrants' Rights Project, which represents Mr. al Kidd, said his client's case "crystallizes the question of whether we as a nation are going to allow preventive detention."

The idea has support, and some view it as inevitable.

"The most confident prediction you can make," Professor Cole said, "is that after the next attack, a preventive detention statute will be proposed."

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Top FBI official unaware of Moussaoui terror ties

Reuters
Top FBI official unaware of Moussaoui terror ties
By Deborah Charles

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (Reuters) - The FBI official in charge of international terrorism before September 11 said on Tuesday he did not know an agent had warned three weeks before the hijackings that he suspected Zacarias Moussaoui was plotting a terrorist act.

Michael Rolince, the chief of the FBI's international terrorism operation section in 2001, testified at Moussaoui's sentencing trial that he was unaware of a long report written by the FBI agent spelling out his theories.

Harry Samit, the FBI agent who arrested Moussaoui three weeks before the deadly airliner hijackings that killed 3,000 people, testified on Monday that agency superiors repeatedly blocked his efforts to warn of a possible terror attack.

Moussaoui, an admitted al Qaeda member, has pleaded guilty to six charges of conspiracy in connection with the September 11 attacks. The trial -- the only one in the United States in connection with the attacks -- will determine if he is sentenced to death.

Samit said after questioning Moussaoui he knew the Frenchman of Moroccan descent had "radical Islamic fundamentalist beliefs" and thought he was part of a bigger plot to attack the United States. In a message to his superiors on August 18, 2001, Samit said he believed Moussaoui was "conspiring to commit a terrorist act."

But Rolince said although he knew of Moussaoui's arrest, he did not know about the contents of a long message that Samit had sent to FBI headquarters.

Defense lawyer Edward MacMahon asked Rolince if was aware that Samit believed Moussaoui was a Muslim fundamentalist who was learning to fly a jumbo jet, and that the agent believed he was a terrorist who could be possibly planning a hijacking.

"No," Rolince said. "Can I ask what document that's coming from?"

"Sure, that's Mr. Samit's communication to your office ... August 18, 2001," MacMahon replied.

Moussaoui was arrested in Minnesota on August 16, 2001, after raising suspicions at a flight school. He was held on immigration charges.

Rolince said the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community were on heightened alert for a possible terror attack in the months leading up to the September 11, 2001 attacks.

He said the FBI knew there were al Qaeda operatives in the United States in the summer of 2001 and knew that one possible form of attack by Muslim fundamentalists might be hijacking an airplane.

"I was aware of threats to hijack aircraft throughout the world," he said.

But Rolince said the FBI did not have enough evidence to charge Moussaoui at the time.

"Agent Samit's suppositions and hunches were one thing," he said. "What we actually knew was something else."

Rolince said he did not even feel the information was strong enough to brief more senior officials.

"Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested on immigration charges ... the case was not anywhere near fully developed," he said when asked why he did not brief then-Attorney General John Ashcroft about Moussaoui.

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Bush raises possibility of years-long Iraq presence

Reuters
Bush raises possibility of years-long Iraq presence
By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush held out the possibility on Tuesday of a U.S. troop presence in Iraq for many years, saying a full withdrawal would depend on decisions by future U.S. presidents and Iraqi governments.

Bush, struggling to rebound from low job approval ratings that he blamed largely on the war, was asked at a news conference if there would come a time when no U.S. troops are in Iraq.

"That, of course, is an objective. And that will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq," said Bush, who will be president until January 2009.

Three years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, there are 133,000 U.S. troops in the country.

Bush has laid the groundwork for possible U.S. troop reductions by the end of the year, saying he aims to get Iraqi forces sufficiently trained to take over by then.

But until now he had not given a prediction on how long there might be an American presence. Many Arabs are concerned that the United States might want a permanent presence in Iraq, and those concerns were likely to be heightened by Bush's comments.

Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking to troops in Illinois after the news conference, held out hope for troop reductions but said the decisions would be made by military commanders.

"As the Iraqi forces gain strength and experience, and as the political process advances, we'll be able to decrease troop levels without losing our capacity to defeat the terrorists," Cheney told soldiers at Scott Air Force Base.

Cheney linked his call for patience over Iraq to what he said was a need for the United States to project a strong image after the September 11 attacks on the United States.

"Terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength. They are invited by the perception of weakness," he said.

Opinion polls show Americans have become increasingly dissatisfied over a war in which more than 2,300 U.S. troops have died. Democrats have seized on this in a congressional election year to criticize the Republican president's handling of the war.

Appearing for nearly an hour at his second formal solo news conference of the year, Bush mixed his vision of progress in Iraq with a realistic description of events, reflecting a recent White House pattern of admitting mistakes have been made in the war.

He acknowledged errors in the Iraqi reconstruction effort had cost valuable time in rebuilding and said the U.S. military was adjusting to insurgent tactics.

But he said his bedrock belief remained that Iraq can become a beacon of democracy in the Middle East.

"I'm optimistic we'll succeed," he said. "If not, I'd pull our troops out. If I didn't believe we had a plan for victory, I wouldn't leave our people in harm's way."

Bush said insurgent attacks that have killed hundreds of Iraqis in recent weeks were designed in part by the attackers to create horrific images for U.S. television screens and generate doubts about the mission among Americans.

"Please don't take that as criticism," Bush told reporters. "But it also is a realistic assessment of the enemy's capability to affect the debate, and they know that."

Bush also said he disagreed with those who said Iraq had fallen into a civil war.

Asked whether he agreed with former Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's comments that Iraq was already in civil war, Bush said: "I do not, there are other voices coming out of Iraq."

"We all recognize that there is violence, that there is sectarian violence," Bush said. "The way I look at it, the Iraqis took a look and decided not to give in to civil war."

A Newsweek magazine poll conducted last week showed Bush's approval rating fell to 36 percent, down 21 points from a year ago, amid discontent about Iraq. The survey said 65 percent of Americans were dissatisfied with Bush's handling of the war.

(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria in Washington and Caren Bohan in Illinois)

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Watchdog group sues to reverse spending-cut bill

Reuters
Watchdog group sues to reverse spending-cut bill

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A congressional watchdog group filed a suit on Tuesday in federal court challenging the constitutionality of a $39 billion spending-cut law that passed each chamber of Congress in different forms.

Under the U.S. Constitution, the president signs into law only bills that are passed in identical form by both chambers.

"We have filed a lawsuit against the Bush administration for trying to sign into law something that is unconstitutional," said Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook.

In early February, President George W. Bush signed the controversial budget bill into law, carrying out conservative Republicans' campaign to cut domestic programs including federal health care for the poor and elderly.

The legislation passed the Senate in December only after Vice President Dick Cheney, in his role as president of the Senate, cast a rare tie-breaking vote. Passage in the House of Representatives was extremely close too.

At issue is a change written into the legislation by a Senate clerk after it passed the Senate and before it reached the House. The change involved the length of Medicare payments for the rental of medical equipment such as oxygen tanks, wheelchairs and hospital beds.

The Senate bill set those payments at 13 months. But by the time it reached the House, the provision was rewritten to 36 months. The president signed the Senate's version into law.

Shortly after Bush signed the bill, the Senate passed legislation that Republican leaders hoped would clear up the confusion. The legislative fix stated that the version signed by Bush reflected "the intent of the Congress in enacting the bill into law." The House never took up that bill.

Ron Bonjean, a spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, said, "We believe that the law is constitutional and that this is yet another political attempt by the Democrats to stop us from cutting spending."

Bonjean was responding to a question on why congressional leaders allowed the legislation to be sent to the White House if they knew there was a technical problem.

In its lawsuit, Public Citizen, which opposed many of the provisions of the spending-cut bill, asked the U.S. District Court in Washington to overturn the entire law.

If a court were to rule in Public Citizen's favor, it would be difficult for the Republican-controlled Congress to pass a new spending-cut bill so close to November congressional elections.

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Bird flu likely in US this year: gov't officials

Reuters
Bird flu likely in US this year: gov't officials
By Tom Doggett and Sophie Walker

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bush administration officials said on Monday it was "increasingly likely" that bird flu could be detected in the United States this year, but added it may not mean the start of a human pandemic.

Speaking to reporters, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns and Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt unveiled a plan to increase monitoring of migratory birds that are likely to bring the bird flu virus to U.S. shores.

"It is increasingly likely that we will detect the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of avian flu in birds within the U.S. borders possibly as early as this year," Norton said.

As a result, the government is expanding its early warning system to deal with bird flu's eventual arrival.

"None of us can build a cage around the United States. We have to be prepared to deal with the virus here," Johanns said.

The H5N1 avian flu virus has spread across Europe, Africa and parts of Asia and killed at least 98 people worldwide since 2003. So far, it has a mortality rate of about 50 percent.

Although bird flu is hard to catch, people can contract the disease by coming into contact with infected birds, especially from bird droppings.

Scientists are concerned that the virus could develop the ability to transmit easily from person to person and trigger a worldwide pandemic which could kill millions.

Norton said the early detection plan would prioritize sampling in Alaska, where scientists believe the strain of highly pathogenic H5N1 virus currently affecting Southeast Asia would most likely spread to North America by migrating birds.

The government's expanded testing program will focus on Alaska, elsewhere in the Pacific Flyway for migrating birds and the Pacific islands, followed by the Central, Mississippi and Atlantic Flyways.

The Agriculture Department plans to collect between 75,000 and 100,000 samples from live and dead wild birds this year. Another 50,000 samples of water or feces from high-risk waterfowl habitats in the United States will also be taken.

Norton said she expected initial, so-called presumptive

H5N1 results could be announced some 20 to 100 times this year but those first tests would not tell whether the virus was the deadly strain or a weaker form.

Discovery of bird flu in the United States should not be reason to panic, Johanns said, noting that positive test results could turn out to be a harmless version of the virus.

The United States has dealt three times previously -- in 1924, 1983 and 2004 -- with outbreaks in domestic poultry of other forms of bird flu.

Should U.S. domestic poultry become infected with the high-pathogen H5N1, the Agriculture Department would act quickly to quarantine an affected area and destroy the infected flock, he said.

"Our producers have demonstrated that they will call us at the first sign of sick birds, knowing that with high-pathogen strains of bird flu we reimburse them for the birds that we destroy," Johanns said. "This is a $29 billion industry in the U.S. and our producers are as eager as we are to protect the safety of our poultry."

Poultry properly prepared would be safe to eat because cooking with high heat kills the virus, the officials said.

The U.S. poultry industry says it already has numerous safeguards in place to protect its flocks.

"Poultry in other parts of the world are in many cases allowed to run at large and are not protected from wild waterfowl or other birds that may be carrying viruses such as avian influenza," said Sherrill Davison, associate professor of avian medicine and pathology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.

Meanwhile, U.S. regulators on Monday proposed banning the use of two types of human flu-fighting drugs in poultry to preserve their effectiveness for people in case of a bird flu pandemic.

The proposal would prohibit use of neuraminidase inhibitors, Roche Holding Ag's Tamiflu and GlaxoSmithKline Plc's Relenza, and the older drugs, rimantadine and amantadine, in chickens, turkeys and ducks, the Food and Drug Administration said.

While the federal government is stockpiling medicines and making other preparations, it is important for state and local governments, hospitals, businesses and schools to formulate their own plans, Leavitt said.

"Any community that fails to prepare, with the expectation that the federal government will at the last moment be able to come to the rescue, will be tragically wrong. There is no way in which 5,000 different communities can be responded to simultaneously," Leavitt said.

(Additional reporting by Lisa Richwine)

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Humans spur worst extinctions since dinosaurs

Reuters
Humans spur worst extinctions since dinosaurs
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO (Reuters) - Humans are responsible for the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs and must make unprecedented extra efforts to reach a goal of slowing losses by 2010, a U.N. report said on Monday.

Habitats ranging from coral reefs to tropical rainforests face mounting threats, the Secretariat of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity said in the report, issued at the start of a March 20-31 U.N. meeting in Curitiba, Brazil.

"In effect, we are currently responsible for the sixth major extinction event in the history of earth, and the greatest since the dinosaurs disappeared, 65 million years ago," said the 92-page Global Biodiversity Outlook 2 report.

Apart from the disappearance of the dinosaurs, the other "Big Five" extinctions were about 205, 250, 375 and 440 million years ago. Scientists suspect that asteroid strikes, volcanic eruptions or sudden climate shifts may explain the five.

A rising human population of 6.5 billion was undermining the environment for animals and plants via pollution, expanding cities, deforestation, introduction of "alien species" and global warming, it said.

It estimated the current pace of extinctions was 1,000 times faster than historical rates, jeopardizing a global goal set at a 2002 U.N. summit in Johannesburg "to achieve, by 2010, a significant reduction in the current rate of biodiversity loss".

"Unprecedented additional efforts' will be needed to achieve the 2010 biodiversity target at national, regional and global levels," it said. The report was bleaker than a first U.N. review of the diversity of life issued in 2001.

NOT ABATING

According to a "Red List" compiled by the World Conservation Union, 844 animals and plants are known to have gone extinct in the last 500 years, ranging from the dodo to the Golden Toad in Costa Rica. It says the figures are probably a big underestimate.

"The direct causes of biodiversity loss -- habitat change, over-exploitation, the introduction of invasive alien species, nutrient loading and climate change -- show no sign of abating," the report said.

Despite the threats, it said the 2010 goal was "by no means an impossible one".

It urged better efforts to safeguard habitats ranging from deserts to jungles and better management of resources from fresh water to timber. About 12 percent of the earth's land surface is in protected areas, against just 0.6 percent of the oceans.

It also recommended more work to curb pollution and to rein in industrial emissions of gases released by burning fossil fuels and widely blamed for global warming.

The report said, for instance, that the annual net loss of forests was 7.3 million hectares (18 million acres) -- an area the size of Panama or Ireland -- from 2000-2005. Still, the figure was slightly less than 8.9 million hectares a year from 1990-2000.

And it said that annual environmental losses from introduced pests in the United States, Australia, Britain, South Africa, India and Brazil had been estimated at more than $100 billion.

About 300 "invasive species" -- molluscs, crustaceans and fish -- have been introduced to the Mediterranean from the Red Sea since the late 19th century when the Suez Canal opened.

It gave mixed overall marks for progress on four key goals.

It said there was "reasonable progress" toward global cooperation but "limited" advances in ensuring enough cash and research. It estimated that annual aid to help slow biodiversity losses sank to $750 million from $1 billion since 1998.

And it said there was "far from sufficient" progress in better planning and implementation of biodiversity decisions and a "mixed" record in better understanding of biodiversity.

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Israel Confirms First Outbreak of Bird Flu

Yahoo! News
Israel Confirms First Outbreak of Bird Flu

By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI, Associated Press Writer

Israel on Monday confirmed its first outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu. In a statement on its Web site, the Agriculture Ministry said the flu had been found in birds at two communal farms in southern Israel and at a farming community in central Israel.

Fearing the worst, Israel had gone ahead Saturday with the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of chickens and turkeys.

The H5N1 virus has killed or forced the slaughter of tens of millions of chickens and ducks across Asia since 2003, and recently spread to Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

World health officials fear H5N1 could evolve into a virus that would easily be transmitted between people, potentially triggering a global pandemic, though there is no evidence that is happening.

About 100 people have died from the disease worldwide, most after having been directly infected by sick birds.

On Sunday, Egypt reported its second human case of avian flu — a 30-year-old Egyptian who worked on a chicken farm in the province of Qalyoubiya.

The man was recovering in the hospital after being admitted Thursday with a fever, Deputy Health Minister Nasser el-Sayyed said.

The country's first known human case, a woman who died Friday, was from the same province, north of Cairo. The two victims had not had any contact and were from different villages, el-Sayyed said.

The Egypt-based U.S. Naval Medical Research was conducting additional tests to confirm whether the illnesses were caused by the H5N1 strain, the Health Ministry said in a statement run by the state Middle East News Agency.

Egypt discovered its first cases of the virus in birds last month.

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FBI agent 'warned of hijack risk'

BBC NEWS
FBI agent 'warned of hijack risk'

An FBI agent has told the sentencing trial of Zacarias Moussaoui that his attempts to warn of a possible hijack plan were obstructed by his superiors.

Harry Samit, who arrested Moussaoui a month before the 9/11 attacks, warned bosses on 18 August 2001 he thought Moussaoui was planning a terror act.

But, he told the court, FBI head office refused his pleas to obtain a search warrant for the detainee's belongings.


Prosecutors allege Moussaoui's lies on the 9/11 plot prevented the FBI acting.

But Moussaoui's defence argues that nothing he said after his arrest would have made any difference because the FBI was too bureaucratic to respond quickly to a threat.

A self-confessed member of al-Qaeda, Moussaoui has denied being part of the 9/11 plot but says he was part of a broader conspiracy to use airplanes to strike the White House.

He is the only person to face trial in the US in connection with the attacks on New York and Washington.

'Criminal negligence'

Giving evidence in Virginia, Mr Samit told the court his warnings over Moussaoui had been dismissed by his superiors at FBI headquarters in Washington.

He said he had alerted his bosses immediately after questioning Moussaoui, because he believed the suspect was conspiring to commit a terrorist act.

He said he had voiced concern over a possible hijack plot, based on the fact Moussaoui had been learning how to fly a 747 airliner, owned a portable GPS navigation system and was an Islamic fundamentalist.

But despite his entreaties, FBI headquarters refused to open a criminal investigation and obtain a search warrant for Moussaoui's possessions, Mr Samit said.

"You needed people in Washington to help you out?" asked defence lawyer Edward MacMahon. "They didn't do that did they?"

Mr Samit replied: "No."

He confirmed under questioning that in a report after the 9/11 attacks he had blamed the FBI's inaction on "obstructionism, criminal negligence and careerism".

'Tainted' witnesses

Moussaoui's trial resumed on Monday after a week-long delay while Judge Leonie Brinkema considered whether to allow prosecution testimony from aviation experts.

It followed revelations that a government lawyer had improperly coached four witnesses.

Moussaoui, a 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan origin, pleaded guilty last April to six charges of conspiracy.

The prosecution is seeking the death penalty on the grounds his silence about the 9/11 plot after his arrest prevented the FBI thwarting the attacks.

He was detained shortly before the 9/11 attacks after arousing suspicion at a flying school. He initially told federal agents he was training as a pilot only for personal enjoyment.

If Moussaoui is spared the death sentence, he will spend the rest of his life in prison. The sentencing trial is expected to last up to three months.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/4827460.stm

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US probes Iraqi civilian deaths

BBC NEWS
US probes Iraqi civilian deaths
By Jim Muir
BBC News, Baghdad

The US military has said it is conducting a criminal investigation into allegations that US marines shot and killed 15 Iraqi civilians.

The killings occurred last November, after a roadside bomb explosion in the town of Haditha in which one marine was killed and two injured.

A statement at the time claimed the civilians died in the blast.

But a preliminary military investigation conceded they were shot dead by marines in their homes.

The incident happened early in the morning of 19 November last year.

An American armoured vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb killing one marine and injuring two others.

Collateral damage

The military report at the time said insurgents then opened fire from all directions, there was a fire fight in which eight of the attackers were killed.

It said the 15 dead civilians, including three young children, died in the initial blast. But relatives, survivors and doctors who saw the bodies say that is not true.

They said they had died when marines burst into their houses and shot them dead in their nightclothes.

Protests at the marine base were fobbed off and there the story would have ended had it not been taken up by Time magazine.

It presented the US military command in Baghdad with documented evidence in January.

A preliminary military investigation was launched. It established that the two families were indeed killed by the marines, though it described the deaths as collateral damage.

Now the case has been referred for criminal investigation by the US navy to establish whether the 12 marines involved were guilty of misconduct.

Human rights organisations have already said that if the 15 civilians were killed deliberately it would the worst such case that has come to light, but it only did so because Time magazine took up the case.

There have been many allegations from Iraqi civilians that similar behaviour by US troops has caused numerous civilian deaths in combat situations, especially during the offensives at Falluja and elsewhere.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/4827424.stm

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Deficit Demagogues

The New York Times
Deficit Demagogues

Less than a week after he denounced the "wayward path" of deficit spending to a gathering of 2,000 Republican Party stalwarts, Senator Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader and would-be president, was busy presiding over business as usual in the Senate. Last Thursday, Mr. Frist, 49 of his fellow Republican senators and one Democrat approved a $2.8 trillion budget for 2007. The budget vote came just hours after Mr. Frist and 51 other Republicans voted to raise the nation's debt limit for the fourth time in five years — this time by $781 billion, to nearly $9 trillion. All of that increase will be needed to pay for earlier tax cuts and spending increases, and, if the Republicans get their way on taxes, to pay for future deficit-financed tax cuts.

Wayward, indeed. Mr. Frist has voted for every major spending increase and tax cut backed by President Bush since 2001. As the Senate leader for more than three years, he bears even greater responsibility than his fellow enablers for the country's dismal financial condition. Yet he is certainly not alone these days in calling for greater budget restraint while pursuing reckless policies. Other Republican presidential hopefuls, notably Senator George Allen and Senator John McCain, have also been coming out forcefully as fiscal conservatives.

Mr. Allen's record is no better than Mr. Frist's. Mr. McCain made a stand by voting against the Medicare prescription drug benefit in 2003 and Mr. Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. But, like his fellow Republican contenders, he supports extending tax cuts for investors, even though they are not paid for.

If leading Republicans were serious about the deficit, here's what they'd be saying:

Let the tax cuts expire as scheduled in 2008 and 2010 unless the budget improves significantly before then. Republicans want voters to believe that the deficit is the result of spending increases alone — not tax cuts. That's false. The swing from a $236 billion budget surplus in 2000 to a $371 billion deficit today is a huge deterioration in the nation's fiscal balance, equal to 5.3 percent of the economy. Of that, fully 62 percent is due to lower tax revenues.

Reimpose bulletproof budget rules. Potential candidates have started calling for a presidential line-item veto and a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. Those are shopworn delaying tactics that let politicians avoid hard calls. A real deficit-reduction plan would call for a return to the budget rules in effect from 1990 to 2001. These "pay as you go" rules helped create the budget surpluses of the 1990's by forcing Congress to pay for both tax cuts and entitlement spending increases.

An effort to reimpose the rules was defeated in the Senate as recently as last week, with 50 Republicans, including Mr. Frist and Mr. Allen, refusing to reinstate the rules. All 44 Democratic senators, 5 Republicans and one independent voted for the rules, but a majority of 51 votes is needed to win. Mr. McCain, to his credit, was among the 5 Republican senators who voted with the Democrats.

Spend wisely. For all their recent talk about wasteful spending, none of the Republican hopefuls have offered specifics about what they would ax. But in the past, their targets have been programs that foster better health, education and infrastructure. Those are precisely the investments we need for economic vitality.

A serious leader would balance spending and taxes in order to govern well.

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Be Sure Before You Censure

The New York Times
Be Sure Before You Censure
By H. W. BRANDS

RUSSELL FEINGOLD, the outspoken Democratic senator from Wisconsin, wants to censure President Bush for authorizing wiretaps of Americans without court orders. His fellow Democrats haven't exactly leaped to his side, but a recent poll indicated that 46 percent of the public considers censure warranted. If that figure increases, Mr. Feingold may have company.

Still, history shows that he ought to move carefully. While many have compared the censure proposal to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, there is a more relevant precedent: In 1834, America's most famous political orator, Henry Clay of Kentucky, arranged the Senate's only successful censure of a president, Andrew Jackson — and he never stopped paying for his accomplishment.

The bad blood between Clay and Jackson dated to the election of 1824, in which Jackson received the greatest number of popular and electoral votes, but not a majority of either. Clay finished third in the popular count and fourth in electors. The contest went to the House, and Clay threw his support to John Quincy Adams, who won the presidency and thereupon named Clay secretary of state — and next in line, in the practice of the day, for the White House. Jackson defeated Adams in an 1828 rematch, spoiling Clay's plans for the succession. But Clay maneuvered Jackson into vetoing a measure to renew the charter of the Bank of the United States, a privately controlled precursor to the Federal Reserve system. Clay forced the issue because he anticipated that the bank veto would undermine business confidence, which it did. Clay was wrong, however, in thinking this would fatally weaken Jackson in the 1832 election, in which Clay ran as the candidate of the new anti-Jackson coalition, soon to be called the Whigs.

Jackson was re-elected handily, and afterward withdrew the federal government's deposits from the Bank of the United States as punishment for its collusion in Clay's machinations. "The bank, Mr. Van Buren, is trying to kill me," Jackson told Vice President Martin Van Buren. "But I will kill it!"

Amid this so-called Bank War, Clay proposed to censure the president for removing those deposits without Congressional approval. The proposal enraged Jackson, who castigated Clay for being as "reckless and as full of fury as a drunken man in a brothel." It provoked an uproar in the Senate and the press, with Jackson's supporters rallying behind him as the defender of democracy against the moneyed interests, and his critics alleging that his interpretation of executive authority was revolutionary and unconstitutional. (Beyond the shouting, there were plausible arguments on both sides — as in the case of the Bush wiretaps.) On March 28, 1834, the Senate critics carried the day, approving the censure resolution by a vote of 26 to 20.

Clay thought he had won a great triumph. But the 1834 midterm elections returned control of the Senate to the Democrats, as the Jacksonians were called by then. And the Democrats refused to let the censure issue rest. Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, who had once shot Jackson in a street brawl (the president still carried bullet fragments in his shoulder) but eventually became the president's most devoted partisan, campaigned incessantly against the censure and all who had voted for it. His efforts helped make the retiring Jackson the focus of the 1836 presidential election, bringing voters out in force for Van Buren, Jackson's uncharismatic protégé.

The Democrats celebrated Van Buren's victory by voting to expunge the censure resolution from the records of the Senate. As Jackson, old and ill, prepared to leave Washington for the Hermitage, his plantation near Nashville, Benton choreographed an elaborate ceremony in which the original handwritten journal of the Senate from 1834 was carried into the chamber and the Senate's secretary, after drawing bold black lines around the censure resolution, wrote across it, "Expunged by order of the Senate."

Benton retrieved the secretary's pen and sent it to Jackson as spoils of victory, while Henry Clay was left to mutter against the "foul deed which, like the blood-stained hands of the guilty Macbeth, all ocean's waters will never wash out." Clay continued to pay for his temerity: in 1844, even as Jackson declined toward death, Clay lost his third (and final) race for the presidency to another Jackson protégé, James K. Polk.

Russ Feingold is no Henry Clay, at least not yet. And if he hopes to discredit Mr. Bush, as he doubtless does, I'd suggest he find means other than censure. The last thing today's Democrats want to do is to make George W. Bush look like Old Hickory.

H. W. Brands, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author, most recently, of "Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times."

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$17M questioned in FBI computer contracts

USA TODAY
$17M questioned in FBI computer contracts

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two companies that will share in a new FBI computer contract were singled out in a government audit Monday that questioned $17 million in the agency's computer overhaul.

The FBI and its contractors share the blame for $10 million in questionable costs and for 1,205 pieces of missing computer equipment valued at $7.6 million, the Government Accountability Office said in its review of the FBI's Trilogy program.

Two of those companies, CACI and Computer Sciences Corp., are part of the Lockheed Martin Corp. team that last week won a six-year, $305 million contract to build and run the FBI's Sentinel computerized case management system. The total value of the Sentinel project is $425 million.

FBI officials said they were applying the lessons learned in the Trilogy computer upgrade, including keeping tighter reins on their contractors. Sentinel is the replacement for the failed project that was to have been the final piece of Trilogy.

The questionable costs included first-class air travel for government contractors, excessive overtime and $5.5 million in charges that lacked substantiation, the report by Congress' investigative and audit agency said.

The FBI was "highly vulnerable to payments of unallowable costs" because of lax oversight, auditors said.

El Segundo, Calif.,-based Computer Sciences, or CSC, was the principal contractor in the effort to put in place a high-speed, secure computer network and 30,000 new desktop computers for the FBI. CACI of Arlington, Va., essentially reported to CSC.

Auditors identified a $456,211 invoice from CACI for which CSC never received sufficient evidence, but paid anyway. "It's not what we asked for but at this point it doesn't really matter. Approve it," one CSC employee wrote another in an e-mail exchange that was included in the GAO report.

In another bill from CSC to the FBI, all but $44,000 of a $1.95 million invoice was listed as "other direct costs" with no additional explanation provided.

Auditors also identified as excessive the $52,000 CACI spent on 60,000 pens that were custom-made for FBI computer training sessions.

Representatives of the companies did not immediately comment Monday.

A separate report last week from Justice Department inspector general Glenn A. Fine warned that costs could again get out of hand unless the FBI puts strong controls in place. Bureau officials have said they are doing just that.

"The lessons learned from the Trilogy program are guiding us, and the FBI continues to strengthen our internal controls," said FBI spokeswoman Cathy Milhoan.

The CSC unit that worked on Trilogy will not be part of the Sentinel project, Milhoan said. CACI will provide training for new system, as it did for Trilogy, she said.

The FBI has since accounted for more than 1,000 of the missing desktop and laptop computers, printers and servers, she said. The bureau also will seek repayment of inappropriate charges identified by a final audit of Trilogy that has yet to be finished, Milhoan said.


Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-03-20-fbi-computers_x.htm

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Poll of US Troops in Iraq Underlines Growing Pressure to Withdraw

Inter Press Service News Agency
Poll of US Troops in Iraq Underlines Growing Pressure to Withdraw
Jim Lobe

Along with signs of disaffection and confusion in military ranks, recent surveys of public opinion at home have shown growing pessimism about the war, while even some of Bush's staunchest right-wing supporters, such as National Review founder William F. Buckley, are calling the president's Iraq adventure a failure.

The military survey, carried out between mid-January and mid-February by Le Moyne College's Centre for Peace and Global Studies and the Zogby International polling firm, found that more than half of U.S. troops in Iraq (51 percent) favour a full withdrawal either ‘'immediately'' (29 percent) or within six months (22 percent).

An additional 21 percent told interviewers that U.S. troops should leave Iraq between six and 12 months from now, while only 23 percent -- or less than one in four -- agreed with official Bush policy that the troops should stay ‘'as long as they are needed.''

The face-to-face survey of 944 military respondents, whose names and specific locations were withheld for security reasons, is the latest in a series of polls showing a continued erosion of support for the Iraq war, as well as for Bush himself.

According to a New York Times-CBS poll released Tuesday, Bush's public-approval ratings have fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent -- down eight points from January, and lower even than the 35 percent he held in a CBS poll last October in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Iraq, along with the controversy over the administration's approval of a Dubai company to take over the management of terminals in six major U.S. ports, appears to be a major part of the latest decline. Only 30 percent of respondents said they approved of his management of the situation there, compared to 65 percent who said they disapproved.

That result echoes a recent Gallup poll that found the public more pessimistic than ever about progress in the Iraq war: only 31 percent -- almost all of them self-identified Republicans -- said they thought Washington and its allies were winning there.

The rising tide of popular discontent with the Iraq war -- particularly amid growing signs that the country is moving toward civil war and steadily accumulating evidence that the administration failed totally to prepare for the aftermath of the 2003 invasion -- has also prompted a growing number of defections from the war party's ranks.

‘'One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed,'' Buckley, a right-wing heavyweight for decades, wrote last weekend after a surge of sectarian violence sparked by the bombing of an important Shia shrine swept through key Iraqi cities. ‘'(T)he kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat.''

Several days later, another prominent right-winger, Bruce Fein, wrote in the Washington Times that last week's violence was ‘'sufficient proof that post-Saddam nation-building has failed. àPresident Bush should immediately begin an orderly withdrawal of U..S. troops from Iraq.''

In anticipation of these desertions, as well as declining public support for the war, neo-conservative activists who led the campaign to invade Iraq have been trying hard over the past two weeks to rally the public with a series of columns -- a remarkable number of them from Iraq ‘'with the troops'' -- extolling their grit, goodness and determination and warning against defeatism at home.

‘'Can-do Americans courageously go about their duty in Iraq -- mostly unafraid that a culture of 2,000 years, the reality of geography, the sheer forces of language and religion, the propaganda of state-run Arab media, and the cynicism of the liberal West are all stacked against them,'' wrote California classicist Victor Davis Hanson, a favourite of Vice President Dick Cheney, in the National Review Online.

‘'Iraq may not have started out as the pivotal front in the war between democracy and fascism, but it has surely evolved into that,'' he declared, stressing that Washington's current strategy should carry the day.

The new LeMoyne/Zogby poll, however, tells a somewhat different story, at least from the point of view of its military respondents, nearly 75 percent of whom were serving their second, third, or fourth six-month tour in Iraq at the time of their interview..

No less than 72 percent said U.S. troops should stay no longer than one year in Iraq. What is particularly remarkable is the 51 percent majority who favour withdrawal within six months. That corresponds precisely to the position of Democratic Rep. John Murtha, a highly decorated Marine veteran with long-standing ties to the military brass, whose impassioned appeals for a swift redeployment have been denounced by Hanson and other right-wing hawks in and outside the administration as surrender and a betrayal of the troops.

The respondents -- 41 percent regular Army; 25 percent Marines; and the rest National Guard and Reserves -- also showed uncertainty about their mission in Iraq.

While some 27 percent said they were ‘'very clear'' about the mission, nearly one third said they were ‘'somewhat clear,'' 20 percent ‘'somewhat unclear;'' and nearly 25 percent either ‘'very unclear,'' ‘'not sure,'' or had ‘'no understanding.''

Asked to assess the relative importance of the different justifications for the war articulated by Bush over the last several years, three in four soldiers said ‘'establish(ing) a democracy that could be a model for the Arab world'' -- the justification most recently cited by Bush -- was neither the ‘'main'' nor even a ‘'major reason'' for the U.S. intervention.

More than 90 percent also did not accept the justification most cited by the administration before the war -- to enforce U.N. resolutions requiring the destruction or removal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from Iraq. Less than five percent of respondents cited that as the ‘'main'' or a ‘'major reason.''

Remarkably, the two justifications most frequently mentioned by the troops were those that were discredited after the invasion. Forty-one percent said stopping ‘'Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq'' was the ‘'main reason,'' while another 36 percent said it was a ‘'major reason.'' At the same time, 35 percent said ‘'retaliat(ing) for Saddam's role in the 9/11 attacks'' was the ‘'main reason'', and 50 percent called it a ‘'major reason.''

Contrary to the administration's view, most troops also believe that controlling the insurgency -- which they see as overwhelmingly indigenous -- would require doubling the number of ground troops and bombing missions.

‘'The sense is that they're not necessarily really seeing themselves in this war fighting against al Qaeda, but more so fighting in the midst of what's turning out to be a civil war,'' said Zogby, who noted ominous parallels in soldiers' attitudes with the Vietnam War.

‘'These are the sorts of sentiments you started to hear and see impressionistically from troops coming home towards the end of Vietnam, the sense that why were we there in the first place, confusion, and what do we accomplish by staying there?''

Zogby said he was confident that the survey was representative of the troops serving in Iraq. ‘'We chose good locations; we used random sampling; the methodology was tight,'' he said. ‘'We stand by the results.''

The Pentagon, which neither authorised nor co-operated with the survey, had no comment. (FIN/2006)

originally published March 1, 2006

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Bomb Parts Pass Checkpoints at 21 U.S. Airports

ABC News
Bomb Parts Pass Checkpoints at 21 U.S. Airports
Congressman Calls Results of Undercover Tests 'Very Disappointing'

Government investigators conducting undercover tests at 21 U.S. airports were able to get bomb materials through screening machines at all of them, ABC News has learned.

The investigators sent through components of an improvised explosive device and common household chemicals, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office, the watchdog arm of Congress. Undercover agents carried a small amount of material that would need to be properly combined on the other side of the checkpoint to create a bomb. The material got past screeners and X-ray machines in every one of the 21 airports tested.

"I think security is still not where it needs to be," said Jerry Hauer, an ABC News consultant and terrorism expert. "At the end of the day, you can still get all the components through security that you need to assemble a bomb on the other side."

The report was ordered by Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., who said he wanted to see "how penetrable the passenger screening system is to explosive devices." He called the results "very disappointing."

Mica would not comment on any of the specifics of the report because it is classified.

Covert tests are a key part of testing the security system and are conducted by the Department of Homeland Security, which admitted it worried about explosive devices slipping through. It recently cut back on the list of banned items so screeners could concentrate on finding bomb-making material.

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, hidden weapons and simulated bombs have made it through checkpoints in hundreds of tests.

'Highly Implausible'

The Transportation Security Administration, the government agency that handles security at American airports, issued a statement in response to the report.

"While random items commonly found under a kitchen sink could conceivably be concocted into an IED [improvised explosive device], there are so many things that could go wrong with this hypothetical scenario that we find it highly implausible," it said.

A spokesman from the Department of Homeland Security said the study involved several investigators bringing different components through security screening checkpoints.

ABC News' Dennis Powell, Ari Meltzer and Lisa Stark contributed to this report.

originally published March 17, 2006

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Lobbyists Foresee Business As Usual; Post-Abramoff Rules Expected to Be Merely a Nuisance

washingtonpost.com
Lobbyists Foresee Business As Usual
Post-Abramoff Rules Expected to Be Merely a Nuisance
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer

Some of Washington's top lobbyists say that they expect to find ways around congressional efforts to impose new restrictions on lobbyists' dealings with lawmakers in the wake of the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal, and that any limits will barely put a dent in the billions of dollars spent to influence legislation.

Though Congress may ultimately vote to eliminate a few of the more visible trappings of special pleading, such as gifts, free meals and luxurious trips, lobbyists say they have already found scores of new ways to buy the attention of lawmakers through fundraising, charitable activities and industry-sponsored seminars. An estimated $10 billion is spent annually to influence legislation and regulations, and that spending is not likely to be diminished by the proposed lobbying changes, these lobbyists contend.

"I wouldn't classify those changes as major," said Dan Danner, executive vice president of the National Federation of Independent Business. "Between charitable events and fundraising events, there will still be lots of ways to get in front of members [of Congress]."

Abramoff's guilty plea in January -- to charges of fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials with lavish trips, luxury skybox fundraisers, meals and campaign contributions -- triggered a new push in Congress to rewrite the rules governing lobbying.

An emerging Senate bill, which has yet to be completed, would bar lawmakers from accepting meals and gifts such as sports tickets from registered lobbyists. The leading House measure, which has been proposed by GOP leaders, would rely more heavily on additional disclosures but would also impose a temporary ban on privately paid travel.

But many lobbyists said they consider these bills more of a nuisance than an impediment to their ability to work their will.

"Even if all lunches and sporting tickets are banned, legislation and regulations are so complex that the need for professional lobbyists will not diminish," said Frederick H. Graefe, a Washington lawyer and lobbyist.

"If meals are heavily restricted, we're likely to see executives from the home office picking up checks because they're not lobbyists," added J. Steven Hart of Williams & Jensen, a major lobbying firm. "And there are lots of other ways we can still get our cases before members of Congress."

Besides, experts said, industries and interest groups have turned to more sophisticated tactics in recent years, and such tactics are generally not addressed in the new bills on Capitol Hill. Lobbyists are increasing their campaign contributions, widening their use of the Internet to stir voter activism, and donating large sums to think tanks and charities affiliated with such big names as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).

The Business Roundtable, which represents big-business chieftains, has embraced a new technique of advertising on Web sites for grass-roots advocates. And organizations from the left and the right are increasingly offering meetings with top government officials in exchange for hefty dues.

Americans for Tax Reform, which is headed by conservative strategist Grover G. Norquist, invites contributors who give more than $15,000 a year to receptions and dinners, often at Norquist's home. Featured speakers have included Republicans such as Sens. George Allen (Va.), Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and Bill Frist (Tenn.), the majority leader.

Third Way, a group that devises policies for moderate Democrats, invites its $25,000-a-year donors (many of whom are lobbyists) to regular discussions around Washington that have spotlighted Democratic Sens. Thomas R. Carper (Del.), Evan Bayh (Ind.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and Ken Salazar (Colo.).

The most important framework for lobbying clout -- campaign finance laws -- would not be altered in the Senate approach, while House GOP leaders have proposed putting limits on the contributions made to big-money independent groups known as 527s. But without Senate support, the effort to clamp down on the independent groups will fail.

As a result, lobbyists would still be able to contribute to lawmakers' coffers, host and organize major fundraising events, and arrange trips subsidized by their clients to encourage electoral giving -- just as they do now. Total federal giving in this election cycle is expected to rise by at least 20 percent, to more than $3 billion, compared with the 2002 midterm-election cycle, according to Michael J. Malbin, executive director of the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute.

Such campaign-related activities are "the most significant benefits lobbyists use to influence members of Congress," said Larry Noble, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

The proposed ethics changes would not restrain the fastest growing part of lobbying: grass-roots activities. This ginning up of letters, telephone calls and, increasingly, e-mails from back home has become a $1 billion-a-year business, said Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), an activist for lobbying law changes.

Congress might require that such lobbying costs be disclosed but is not likely to limit them. In fact, lobbying in its many forms would continue unabated under the coming legislation.

In 2004, the most recent full year about which data are available, lobbying was a $10 billion industry, according to estimates by James A. Thurber, a political science scholar at American University. Of the total, $2.1 billion was used to pay the salaries of registered lobbyists, while the rest was spent on more subtle forms of persuasion.

Lobbying is done even at charity events. Lobbyists say privately that they are all but required to contribute to an annual dinner that helps low-income Roman Catholic schools in the District. The dinner is co-hosted each September by Boehner and Kennedy. Boehner has solicited contributions for the $10,000 tables, a request that lobbyists say they are loath to ignore.

"Some lobbyists might consider this a lobbying opportunity," said Michael L. Smith, the dinner's director. "But we see it as a very worthy charitable event."

The communications industry has its own lobbying-and-charity gala. Every December, the Federal Communications Bar Association fills the Washington Hilton's grand ballroom for a fancy dinner that raises money for D.C. schoolchildren and honors the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the interests of the dinner's patrons.

At the 2004 Chairman's Dinner, FCC commissioners dined at an elaborately set table while then-Chairman Michael K. Powell gave a lengthy speech and showed a video about himself.

Interest groups also pay to participate in social activities, which double as lobbying venues. State societies, for example, offer lawmakers, congressional aides and lobbyists numerous opportunities for informal encounters.

The California State Society's fall 2005 newsletter featured a photograph of Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and former congressman Bill Lowery (R-Calif.), who is a lobbyist for an electric utility and a defense contractor. Both are active members.

According to its Web site, the society's Platinum ($10,000) corporate sponsors in 2005 included Fleishman-Hillard, a lobbying and public relations company, and Sallie Mae, a Virginia-based provider of student loans that lobbies in Washington.

Lawmakers and their staffers have lately reduced their social interactions, especially meals, with lobbyists in anticipation of a possible crackdown under a new law.

But interests will always find a way to be heard, lobbyists say. One is through think tanks. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, which widely publicizes its belief that the earth is not warming cataclysmically because of the burning of coal and oil, says Exxon Mobil Corp. is a "major donor" largely as a result of its effort to push that position.

"I think what attracted them to us was our position on global warming," said Sam Kazman, CEI's general counsel. "And we hope to get support from other industries that agree with us."

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