Monday, March 27, 2006

Vague Law and Hard Lobbying Add Up to Billions for Big Oil

The New York Times
Vague Law and Hard Lobbying Add Up to Billions for Big Oil
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, March 26 — It was after midnight and every lawmaker in the committee room wanted to go home, but there was still time to sweeten a deal encouraging oil and gas companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico.

"There is no cost," declared Representative Joe L. Barton, a Texas Republican who was presiding over Congressional negotiations on the sprawling energy bill last July. An obscure provision on new drilling incentives was "so noncontroversial," he added, that senior House and Senate negotiators had not even discussed it.

Mr. Barton's claim had a long history. For more than a decade, lawmakers and administration officials, both Republicans and Democrats, have promised there would be no cost to taxpayers for a program allowing companies to avoid paying the government royalties on oil and gas produced in publicly owned waters in the Gulf.

But last month, the Bush administration confirmed that it expected the government to waive about $7 billion in royalties over the next five years, even though the industry incentive was expressly conceived of for times when energy prices were low. And that number could quadruple to more than $28 billion if a lawsuit filed last week challenging one of the program's remaining restrictions proves successful.

"The big lie about this whole program is that it doesn't cost anything," said Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who tried to block its expansion last July. "Taxpayers are being asked to provide huge subsidies to oil companies to produce oil — it's like subsidizing a fish to swim."

How did a supposedly cost-free incentive become a multibillion-dollar break to an industry making record profits?

The answer is a familiar Washington story of special-interest politics at work: the people who pay the closest attention and make the fewest mistakes are those with the most profit at stake.

It is an account of legislators who passed a law riddled with ambiguities; of crucial errors by midlevel bureaucrats under President Bill Clinton; of $2 billion in inducements from the Bush administration, which was intent on promoting energy production; and of Republican lawmakers who wanted to do even more. At each turn, through shrewd lobbying and litigation, oil and gas companies ended up with bigger incentives than before.

Until last month, hardy anyone noticed — or even knew — the real costs. They were obscured in part by the long gap between the time incentives are offered and when new offshore wells start producing. But lawmakers shrouded the costs with rosy projections. And administration officials consistently declined to tally up the money they were forfeiting.

Most industry executives say that the royalty relief spurred drilling and exploration when prices were relatively low. But the industry is divided about whether it is appropriate to continue the incentives with prices at current levels. Michael Coney, a lawyer for Shell Oil, said, "Under the current environment, we don't need royalty relief."

The program's original architect said he was surprised by what had happened. "The one thing I can tell you is that this is not what we intended," said J. Bennett Johnston, a former Democratic senator from Louisiana who had pushed for the original incentives that Congress passed in 1995.

Mr. Johnston conceded that he was confused by his own law. "I got out the language a few days ago," he said in a recent interview. "I had it out just long enough to know that it's got a lot of very obscure language."

A Subsidy of Disputed Need

Things looked bleak for oil and gas companies in 1995, especially for those along the Gulf Coast.

Energy prices had been so low for so long that investment had dried up. With crude oil selling for about $16 a barrel, scores of wildcatters and small exploration companies had gone out of business. Few companies had any stomach for drilling in water thousands of feet deep, and industry leaders like Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell were increasingly focused on opportunities abroad.

"At the time, the Gulf of Mexico was like the Dead Sea," recalled John Northington, then an Energy Department policy adviser and now an industry lobbyist.

Senator Johnston, convinced that the Gulf's vast reservoirs and Louisiana's oil-based economy were being neglected, had argued for years that Congress should offer incentives for deep-water drilling and exploration.

"Failure to invest in the Gulf of Mexico is a lost opportunity for the U.S.," Mr. Johnston pleaded in a letter to other lawmakers. "Those dollars will not move into other domestic development, they will move to Asia, South America, the Middle East or the former Soviet Union."

Working closely with industry executives, he wrote legislation that would allow a company drilling in deep water to escape the standard 12 percent royalty on up to 87.5 million barrels of oil or its equivalent in natural gas. The coastal waters are mostly owned by the federal government, which leases tens of millions of acres in exchange for upfront fees and a share of sales, or royalties.

Mr. Johnston and other supporters argued that the incentives would actually generate money for the government by increasing production and prompting companies to bid higher prices for new leases.

"The provision will result in a minimum net benefit to the Treasury of $200 million by the year 2000," Mr. Johnston declared in November 1995, denouncing what he called "outrageous allegations" that the plan was a giveaway.

He won support from oil-state Democrats, Republicans and the Clinton administration. Hazel O'Leary, the energy secretary at the time, said the assistance would reduce American dependence on foreign oil and "enhance national security."

Representative Robert Livingston of Louisiana, then a rising Republican leader, declared that the inducements would "create thousands of jobs" and "reduce the deficit."

Many budget experts agree that the rosy estimates were misleading. The reason, they say, is that it often takes seven years before a new offshore field begins producing. As a result, almost all the costs of royalty relief would occur outside of Congress's five-year budget timeframe.

Opponents protested that the cost estimates were wrong, that the incentives amounted to corporate welfare and that companies did not need government incentives to invest.

"They are going to the Gulf of Mexico because that's where the oil is," said Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, during a House debate. "What we do here is not going to change that. We are just going to decide whether or not we are going to give away the taxpayers' dollars to a lot of oil companies that do not need it."

Industry executives and lobbyists fanned out across Capitol Hill to shore up support for the program, visiting 150 lawmakers in October 1995. The effort succeeded. A month later, Congress passed Mr. Johnston's bill.

A Missing Escape Clause

To hear lawmakers today, they never intended to waive royalties when energy prices were high.

The 1995 law, according to Republicans and Democrats alike, was supposed to include an escape clause: in any year when average spot prices for oil or gas climbed above certain threshold levels, companies would pay full royalties instead.

"Royalty relief is an effective tool for two things: keeping investment in America during times of super-low prices, and spurring American energy production when massive capital and technological risks would otherwise preclude it," said Representative Richard W. Pombo, Republican of California and chairman of the House Resources Committee. "Absent those criteria, I do not believe any relief should be granted."

But in what administration officials said appeared to have been a mistake, Clinton administration managers omitted the crucial escape clause in all offshore leases signed in 1998 and 1999.

At the time, with oil prices still below $20 a barrel, the mistake seemed harmless. But energy prices have been above the cutoff points since 2002, and Interior Department officials estimate that about one-sixth of production in the Gulf of Mexico is still exempt from royalties.

Walter Cruickshank, a senior official in both the Clinton and Bush administrations, told lawmakers last month that officials writing the lease contracts thought the price thresholds were spelled out in the new regulations, which were completed in 1998. But officials writing the regulations left those details out, preferring to set the precise rules at each new lease sale.

"It seems to have been a massive screw-up," said Mr. Northington, who was then in the Energy Department. No one noticed the error for two years, and no one informed Congress about it until last month.

Five years later, the costs of that lapse were compounded. A group of oil companies, led by Shell, defeated the Bush administration in court. The decision more than doubled the amount of oil and gas that companies could produce without paying royalties.

The case began as a relatively obscure dispute. Shell paid $3.8 million in 1997 for a Gulf lease and soon drilled a successful well. But the Interior Department denied the company royalty relief, saying that Shell had drilled into an older field already producing oil and gas. The decision hinged on undersea geography and the court's interpretation of language in the 1995 law.

A typical field, or geological reservoir, often encompasses two or three separately leased tracts of ocean floor. Interior Department officials insisted that the maximum amount of royalty-free oil and gas was based on each field. Shell and its partners argued that limit applied only to each lease.

Perhaps shrewdly, the oil companies sued the Bush administration in Louisiana, where federal courts previously had sided with the industry in spats with the government.

The fight was not even close. In January 2003, a federal district judge declared that the Interior Department's rules violated the 1995 law. If the department "disagrees with Congress's policy choices," Judge James T. Trimble Jr. wrote, "then such arguments are best addressed to Congress."

What might have been a $2 billion mistake in the Clinton administration suddenly ballooned into a $5 billion headache under Mr. Bush.

But even as the Bush administration was losing in court, it was offering new incentives for the energy industry.

Mr. Bush placed a top priority on expanding oil and gas production as soon as he took office in 2001. Vice President Dick Cheney's task force on energy, warning of a deepening shortfall in domestic energy production, urged the government to "explore opportunities for royalty reduction" and to open areas like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.

Gale A. Norton, who stepped down this month as interior secretary, moved quickly to speed up approvals of new drilling permits. Starting in 2001, she offered royalty incentives to shallow-water producers who drilled more than 15,000 feet below the sea bottom.

In January 2004, Ms. Norton made the incentives far more generous by raising the threshold prices. Her decision meant that deep-gas drillers were able to escape royalties in 2005, when prices spiked to record levels, and would probably escape them this year as well.

She also offered to sweeten less-generous contracts the drillers had signed before the regulation was approved.

"These incentives will help ensure we have a reliable supply of natural gas in the future," Ms. Norton proclaimed, predicting that American consumers would save "an estimated $570 million a year" in lower fuel prices.

Ms. Norton's decision was influenced by the industry. The Interior Department had originally proposed a cut-off price for royalty exemptions of $5 per million British thermal units, or B.T.U.'s, of gas. But the Independent Petroleum Association of America, which represents smaller producers, argued that the new incentive would have little value because natural gas prices were already above $5. Ms. Norton set the threshold at $9.34.

Based on administration assumptions about future production and prices, that change could cost the government about $1.9 billion in lost royalties.

"There is no cost rationale," said Shirley J. Neff, an economist at Columbia University and Senator Johnston's top legislative aide in drafting the 1995 royalty law. "It is astounding to me that the administration would so blatantly cave in to the industry's demands." Incentives Keep Growing

Last April, President Bush himself expressed skepticism about giving new incentives to oil and gas drillers. "With oil at $50 a barrel," Mr. Bush remarked, "I don't think energy companies need taxpayer-funded incentives to explore."

But on Aug. 8, Mr. Bush signed a sweeping energy bill that contained $2.6 billion in new tax breaks for oil and gas drillers and a modest expansion of the 10-year-old "royalty relief" program. For the most part, the law locked in incentives that the Interior Department was already offering for another five years. But it included some embellishments, like an extra break on royalties for companies drilling in the deepest waters.

Lee Fuller, vice president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said smaller companies wanted to prevent future administrations from cutting back on incentives. "Having a clear, stable royalty policy was of value to independent producers," he said.

And energy companies, whose executives had long contributed campaign funds to Republican candidates, pushed to block any amendments aimed at diluting the benefits.

The push to lock in the royalty inducements came primarily from House Republicans. The only real opposition came from a handful of House Democrats, in a showdown about 1 a.m. on July 25, according to a transcript of the session.

"It is indefensible to be keeping these companies on the government dole when oil and gas prices are so high," charged Representative Markey of Massachusetts, who proposed to strip the royalty provisions. "We might as well be giving tax breaks to Donald Trump and Warren Buffett."

Mr. Barton, the Texas Republican, brushed aside the objections. He reassured lawmakers that the new provisions would not cost taxpayers anything.

When Mr. Markey proposed a more modest change — having Congress prohibit incentives if crude oil prices rose above $40 a barrel — Republicans quickly voted him down again.

"The only reason they waited until after midnight to bring up these issues is that they couldn't stand up in the light of day," Mr. Markey said in a recent interview. "They all expected me to give up because it was so late and I didn't have the votes. But if nothing else, I wanted to get these things on the record."

A Royalty-Free Future?

It is still not clear how much impact the reduced royalties had in encouraging deep-water drilling. While activity in the Gulf has increased since 1995, prices for oil and gas have more than quadrupled over the same period, providing a powerful motivation, experts say.

"It's hard to make a case for royalty relief, especially at these high prices," said Jack Overstreet, owner of an independent oil exploration company in Texas. "But the oil industry is like the farm lobby and will have its hand out at every opportunity."

The size of the subsidies will soar far higher if oil companies win their newest court battle.

In a lawsuit filed March 17, Kerr-McGee Exploration and Production argued that Congress never authorized the government to set price cut-offs for incentives on leases awarded from 1996 through 2000. If the company wins, the Interior Department recently estimated, about three-quarters of oil and gas produced in the Gulf of Mexico will be royalty-free for the next five years.

Mr. Markey and other Democrats recently introduced legislation that would pressure companies to pay full royalties when energy prices are high, regardless of what their leases allow.

But Republican lawmakers and the Bush administration have signaled their opposition.

"These are binding contracts that the government signed with companies," Ms. Norton recently remarked. "I don't think we can change them just because we don't like them."




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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:24 AM

In an Election Year, a Shift in Public Opinion on the War

The New York Times
In an Election Year, a Shift in Public Opinion on the War
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and ADAM NAGOURNEY

ALBUQUERQUE, March 25 — Neil Mondragon watched with approval at an auto repair shop recently as Representative Heather A. Wilson, a New Mexico Republican visiting her district, dropped into the pit and drained the oil from a car.

Afterward, Mr. Mondragon recalled how he had backed Ms. Wilson, a supporter of the Iraq war, in her race for Congress two years ago. He, too, supported the war.

But now, Mr. Mondragon said, it is time to bring the troops home. And he is leaning toward voting for Ms. Wilson's opponent, Patricia Madrid, who has called for pulling the troops out of Iraq by the end of the year.

"The way I see the situation is, we have done what we had to," said Mr. Mondragon, 27, whose brother fought in the war and returned with post-traumatic stress disorder. "I don't see the point of having so many guys over there right now. We can't just stay there and baby-sit forever."

Mr. Mondragon is far from alone in reassessing his view of the war that has come to define George W. Bush's presidency.

Mr. Bush is pressing ahead with an intensified effort to shore up support for the war, but an increasingly skeptical and pessimistic public is putting pressure on Congress about the wisdom behind it, testing the political support for the White House's determination to remain in Iraq.

The results have been on display over the past week as members of Congress returned home and heard first-hand what public opinion polls have been indicating.

"We have been there now for three years, and we have suffered more losses than I think most people thought we would see," Representative Steve Chabot, an Ohio Republican from a relatively conservative district near Cincinnati, said in an interview on Friday. "You may have the president or others now who say we always knew this would be a long slog, but I think most people did not expect it to be as hard as it has been."

In Connecticut, Representative Christopher Shays, a Republican who is one of the Democrats' top targets this year in the midterm elections, has distanced himself from the White House even as he has emphasized his support for the war, saying the administration has made "huge mistakes" by allowing looting, disbanding the Iraqi army and failing to have enough troops on the ground

Senator Mike DeWine, an Ohio Republican who is also facing a tough re-election challenge, said that "people are not optimistic about what they see."

Even Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican who has made her support for the war a centerpiece of her campaign, said the public seemed "to be losing patience" with the war.

Interviews with voters, elected officials and candidates around the country suggest a deepening and hardening opposition to the war. Historians and analysts said this might mark a turning point in public perception.

"I'm less optimistic because I see the fatalities every day," said Angela Kirby, 32, a lawyer from St. Louis who initially supported the war. "And the longer it goes on, the less optimistic I am."

Here in New Mexico, Dollie Shoun, 67, said she had gone from being an ardent supporter of the war and the president to a fierce critic of both.

"There has been too many deaths, and it is time for them to come back home," Ms. Shoun said. Speaking of Mr. Bush, she added: "I was very much for him, but I don't trust him at this point in time."

Polls have found that support for the war and expectations about its outcome have reached their lowest level since the invasion. A Pew Research Center poll this week found that 66 percent of respondents said the United States was losing ground in preventing a civil war in Iraq, a jump of 18 percent since January.

The Pew poll also found that 49 percent now believed that the United States would succeed in Iraq, compared with 60 percent last July. A CBS News poll completed two weeks ago found that a majority (54 percent) believed Iraq would never become a stable democracy.

Richard B. Wirthlin, who was the pollster for President Ronald Reagan, says he sees the beginning of a decisive turn in public opinion against the war. "It is hard for me to imagine any set of circumstances that would lead to an enhancement of the public support that we have seen," he said. "It is more likely to go down, and the question is how far and how fast."

Even more problematic for the administration, pollsters have found, is that Americans who have soured on the war include many independent voters and some self-described Republicans.

William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, argued that views on the war remained fluid and that the White House could still rally support for the effort if Americans "are convinced we can win."

A perception of progress on the ground could help turn public opinion back toward Mr. Bush's way, some analysts said. As it is, a significant number of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, want Mr. Bush to continue the war.

"Bush is right in being optimistic," said Susan Knapp, 64, a Florida Republican. "I listened to the news this morning and there are people who think he's out of touch with reality, but in fact I think he knows better than most of us about what is going on, and he does know the situation."

And in interviews, some respondents said they agreed with Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that journalists were exaggerating the bad news. "I have quite a few friends who have served over there and they come back with a different story than the media portrays," said Jerry Brown, a Republican in Fairfield County, Conn.

For Mr. Bush today, as it was for Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon decades ago, the question is how long can he continue fighting an unpopular war without it crippling his presidency by eroding trust in his judgment and credibility.

"Once the public loses confidence in a president's leadership at a time of war, once they don't trust him anymore, once his credibility is sharply diminished, how does he get it back?" said Robert Dallek, a historian who has written biographies of Johnson and Nixon.

The anxiety about the war could be seen in contested districts around the country. In recent weeks, Representative Wilson of New Mexico has been sharply critical of the administration on issues like domestic surveillance and its public projections about the war. Ms. Wilson said she worried that public opinion could turn decisively against the war in Iraq as it did during the Vietnam War. "Wasn't it Kissinger who said the acid test of foreign policy is public support?" she said.

In Connecticut, Diane Farrell, a Democrat challenging Mr. Shays, said she had consistently run into voters who drew comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam.

"People are throwing up their hands between the civil unrest, the number of deaths and the cost to taxpayers," Ms. Farrell said. "People feel worn out by the war, and they don't see an end. "

At the Capitol recently, Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican who was the secretary of the Navy during part of the Vietnam War, was introduced to a visiting Iraqi. Mr. Warner proceeded to lecture her about the need for Iraqis to form a new government, and fast.

"The American people have a mind of their own," he told her, recalling how he watched during the Vietnam War as public opinion turned against the conflict — and inevitably Congress followed. In a later conversation, Mr. Warner said that such a moment had not been reached yet, but he warned that he sensed a "certain degree of impatience" in the country and around the world.

David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Albuquerque, N.M., for this article, and Adam Nagourney from Washington. Reporting was contributed by Coke Ellington in Alabama, Ellen F. Harris in St. Louis, Stacey Stowe in Connecticut, and Andrea Zarate in Miami.


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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:23 AM

Lost Gems Of Scripture

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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:22 AM

The New WWF – Wrestling With "What (W) We're (W) For (F)"

HuffingtonPost
The New WWF – Wrestling With "What (W) We're (W) For (F)"
Dan Carol

We all know that we can't fight something with nothing -- and that saying no to Bush, to the Iraq war, and to conservative cronyism does not a message make.

Yet when Democrats and progressives sit down to decide what we're for (WWF), we often put the other WWF -- the World Wrestling Federation -- to shame.

So here's a first cut at an a la carte menu of no-brainer, change-oriented principles I'm pretty sure that most progressives, New Democrats, moderate Republicans and independent-minded folks in America crave.

I hasten to add that this draft menu is emphatically NOT an attempt to build or call for a national Democratic message platform or contract that all our candidates should run on.

As posted repeatedly, I think that nationalizing the election is NOT the way to go if we want Congress and subpoena power back, and that any message beyond we need to restore "checks and balances" is pushing it with voters who are sick of both political parties.

In other words, forget one fixed recipe: we just need a solid menu of good ideas, themes and proposals for local Democrats to pick from and run on, in their own voice.

So here's an initial taste test -- feel free to add your own flames and recipes. And I'll keep posting here as plans for the Regime Change Café Menu bake on up to a final form.

Our hearts on our sleeve.

We want candidates like Paul Wellstone who run -- and win -- with the courage of their convictions, beliefs and if they so choose, their faith. To such core progressive values as an open heart, tolerance, privacy, opportunity, and responsibility -- let us also embrace a sense of humor and humility about how right we are, all the time. And then we can repair the world.

A smart war on terror.

"No war on Iraq" does not a winning message make -- not when fear-mongerers like Karl Rove are out in force. So we need to make the case for being safe -- that we can find Osama without losing our values along the way at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. That takes global ethics and engagement, building economic hope, and acting tough as nails when necessary.

Starting gate equality.

The American dream -- a melting pot of opportunity for all -- has been left sitting on the back burner for too long. We need to care for our children and pay our teachers like our future depends on it. We need a living wage, health care for all and high road economic security policies that effectively answer the challenge of "If Not Walmart, Then What?" That will take thinking at bold scales, and delivery via reformed institutions that work across traditional boundaries. And it will take serious money and investment we must find at all cost.

Doing the math on government spending.

Whining that Republicans are hypocrites on budget deficits doesn't change the fact that there will be red ink and investment shortfalls for as far as the eye can see. To jumpstart payback policies and move from incarceration to investment, progressives should strongly favor economic and social "impact assessments" on all forms of spending and tax giveaways, so we are calling for the most bang for the buck on government spending -- not conservatives. Guess what. Smart investments in preventative health, infrastructure, childhood education and clean energy that pay for themselves over time will look good compared to prison construction and silly corporate tax breaks.

A new vision of the Commons.

The Me Decade and The Ownership Society have been excellent cover stories for the raping and pillaging of billions of dollars worth of our land, air and water. But guess what -- it's our stuff, dammit! -- and it's time we made the case for protecting, enhancing and naming our common assets and public spaces. This isn't just about parks and lakes but also about new forms of critical shared resources -- such as community Internet systems open to all Americans.

Not left, or right, but forward.

We live in the era of post-political party, change-based politics -- where half of America doesn't vote and people are tired of bickering on both sides of the political aisle. But the progressive majority -- and our issues -- can't be realized or marketed effectively if our agenda is "owned" by either political party. We therefore heartily embrace a new dynamic for strange bedfellows politics, where the parties and politicians are reaching higher for big bold ideas like energy independence, not selling out for least common denominator policies that offer little vision. Doing this is just the push that Democratic candidates need to move from weenies to winners.

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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:15 AM

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Can't Run Again

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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:35 AM

Freedom On The March In Afghanistan?

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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:33 AM

Near Paul Revere Country, Calls For Impeachment Get Louder

washingtonpost.com
Near Paul Revere Country, Anti-Bush Cries Get Louder
By Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writer

HOLYOKE, Mass. -- To drive through the mill towns and curling country roads here is to journey into New England's impeachment belt. Three of this state's 10 House members have called for the investigation and possible impeachment of President Bush.

Thirty miles north, residents in four Vermont villages voted earlier this month at annual town meetings to buy more rock salt, approve school budgets, and impeach the president for lying about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and for sanctioning torture.

Window cleaner Ira Clemons put down his squeegee in the lobby of a city mall and stroked his goatee as he considered the question: Would you support your congressman's call to impeach Bush? His smile grew until it looked like a three-quarters moon.

"Why not? The man's been lying from Jump Street on the war in Iraq," Clemons said. "Bush says there were weapons of mass destruction, but there wasn't. Says we had enough soldiers, but we didn't. Says it's not a civil war -- but it is." He added: "I was really upset about 9/11 -- so don't lie to me."

It would be a considerable overstatement to say the fledgling impeachment movement threatens to topple a presidency -- there are just 33 House co-sponsors of a motion by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) to investigate and perhaps impeach Bush, and a large majority of elected Democrats think it is a bad idea. But talk bubbles up in many corners of the nation, and on the Internet, where several Web sites have led the charge, giving liberals an outlet for anger that has been years in the making.

"The value of a powerful idea, like impeachment of the president for criminal acts, is that it has a long shelf life and opens a debate," said Bill Goodman of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted last month to urge Congress to impeach Bush, as have state Democratic parties, including those of New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin. A Zogby International poll showed that 51 percent of respondents agreed that Bush should be impeached if he lied about Iraq, a far greater percentage than believed President Bill Clinton should be impeached during the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal.

And Harper's Magazine this month ran a cover piece titled "The Case for Impeachment: Why We Can No Longer Afford George W. Bush."

"If the president says 'We made mistakes,' fine, let's move on," said Rep. Michael E. Capuano (D-Mass.). "But if he lied to get America into a war, I can't imagine anything more impeachable."

Democrats remain far from unified. Prominent party leaders -- and a large majority of those in Congress -- distance themselves from the effort. They say the very word is a distraction, that talk of impeachment and censure reflect the polarization of politics. Activists spend too many hours dialing Democratic politicians and angrily demanding impeachment votes, they say.

In California, poet Kevin Hearle, an impeachment supporter, is challenging liberal Rep. Tom Lantos -- who opposes impeachment -- in the Democratic primary in June.

"Impeachment is an outlet for anger and frustration, which I share, but politics ain't therapy," said Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts liberal who declined to sign the Conyers resolution. "Bush would much rather debate impeachment than the disastrous war in Iraq."

The GOP establishment has welcomed the threat. It has been a rough patch for the party -- Bush's approval ratings in polls are lower than for any president in recent history. With midterm elections in the offing, Republican leaders view impeachment as kerosene poured on the bonfires of their party base.

"The Democrats' plan for 2006?" Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman wrote in a fundraising e-mail Thursday. "Take the House and Senate and impeach the president. With our nation at war, is this the kind of Congress you want?"

The argument for an impeachment inquiry -- which draws support from prominent constitutional scholars such as Harvard's Laurence H. Tribe and former Reagan deputy attorney general Bruce Fein -- centers on Bush's conduct before and after the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

It is argued that Bush and his officials conspired to manufacture evidence of weapons of mass destruction to persuade Congress to approve the invasion. Former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill told CBS News's "60 Minutes" that "from the very beginning there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go . . . it was all about finding a way to do it." And a senior British intelligence official wrote in what is now known as the "Downing Street memo" that Bush officials were intent on fixing "the intelligence and the facts . . . around the policy."

Critics point to Bush's approval of harsh interrogations of prisoners captured Iraq and Afghanistan, tactics that human rights groups such as Amnesty International say amount to torture. Bush also authorized warrantless electronic surveillance of telephone calls and e-mails, subjecting possibly thousands of Americans each year to eavesdropping since 2001.

"Bush is saying 'I'm the president' and, on a range of issues -- from war to torture to illegal surveillance -- 'I can do as I like,' " said Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "This administration needs to be slapped down and held accountable for actions that could change the shape of our democracy."

Tribe wrote Conyers, dismissing Bush's defense of warrantless surveillance as "poppycock." It constituted, Tribe concluded, "as grave an abuse of executive authority as I can recall ever having studied."

But posed against this bill of aggrievement are legal and practical realities. Not all scholars, even of a liberal bent, agree that Bush has committed "high crimes and misdemeanors." Bush's legal advice may be wrong, they say, but still reside within the bounds of reason.

"The Clinton impeachment was plainly unconstitutional, and a Bush impeachment would be nearly as bad," said Cass R. Sunstein, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago. "There is a very good argument that the president had it wrong on WMD in Iraq but that he was acting in complete good faith."

Sunstein argues that Bush's decision to conduct surveillance of Americans without court approval flowed from Congress's vote to allow an armed struggle against al-Qaeda. "If you can kill them, why can't you spy on them?" Sunstein said, adding that this is a minority view.

Here in Massachusetts and Vermont, though, in the back roads and on the streets of Holyoke and Springfield, the discontent with Bush is palpable. These are states that, per capita, have sent disproportionate numbers of soldiers to Iraq. Many in these middle- and working-class towns are not pleased that so many friends and cousins are coming back wounded or dead.

"He picks and chooses his information and can't admit it's erroneous, and he annoys me," said Colleen Kucinski, walking Aleks, 5, and Gregory, 2, home.

Would she support impeachment? Kucinski wags her head "yes" before the question is finished. "Without a doubt. This is far more serious than Clinton and Monica. This is about life and death. We're fighting a war on his say-so and it was all wrong."


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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:31 AM

Election Whistle-Blower Stymied by Vendors; After Official's Criticism About Security, Three Firms Reject Bid for Voting Machines

washingtonpost.com
Election Whistle-Blower Stymied by Vendors
After Official's Criticism About Security, Three Firms Reject Bid for Voting Machines
By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer

MIAMI -- Among those who worry that hackers might sabotage election tallies, Ion Sancho is something of a hero.

The maverick elections supervisor in Leon County, Fla., last year helped show that electronic voting machines from one of the major manufacturers are vulnerable, according to experts, and would allow election workers to alter vote counts without detection.

Now, however, Sancho may be paying an unexpected price for his whistle-blowing: None of the state-approved companies here will sell him the voting machines the county needs.

"I've essentially embarrassed the current companies for the way they do business, and now I believe I'm being singled out for punishment by the vendors," he said.

There are three vendors approved to sell voting equipment in Florida, and each has indicated it cannot or will not fill Sancho's order for 160 voting machines for the disabled. Already, he has had to return a $564,000 federal grant to buy the machines because he has been unable to acquire the machines yet.

"I'm very troubled by this, to be honest -- I can't believe the way he's being treated," said David Wagner, a computer scientist at the University of California at Berkeley who sits on a California board that reviews voting machine security. "What kind of message is this sending to elections supervisors?"

The trouble began last year when Sancho allowed a Finnish computer scientist to test Leon County's Diebold voting machines, a common type that uses an optical scanner to count votes from ballots that voters have marked. Diebold Election Systems is one of the largest voting machine companies in the United States.

While some tests showed that the system is resistant to outside attack, others showed that elections workers could alter the vote tallies by manipulating the removable memory cards in the voting machines, and do so without detection.

A Diebold spokesman scoffed at the results, and compared them to "leaving your car unlocked, with the windows down and keys left in the ignition and then acting surprised when your car is stolen."

State officials similarly played down the results.

But last month, California elections officials arranged for experts to perform a similar analysis of the Diebold machines and also found them vulnerable -- noting a wider variety of flaws than Sancho's experts had. They characterized the vulnerabilities as "serious" but "fixable."

"What he [Sancho] discovered was -- oops -- that the conventional wisdom was all wrong," said Wagner, a member of the panel that reviewed the Diebold machines. "It was possible to subvert the memory card without detection."

In the wake of that finding, Florida elections officials issued new guidelines this month for handling the memory cards. They require records showing who had custody of the memory cards, and are aimed at the same kind of security attack Sancho had simulated.

"It was total vindication," Sancho said.

Diebold officials maintain that their systems are secure when standard safety procedures are used to protect the memory cards from tampering.

"It didn't vindicate Mr. Sancho," said Diebold spokesman David Bear. "You basically follow these industry standards, and you don't have issues."

Regardless, the announcement out of California echoing the Leon County findings was a sweet moment for Sancho, a public official for whom election validity is a very personal interest. In 1986, Sancho was defeated in a botched county commission election in which thousands of votes were believed to have been lost.

"That was the most searing event of my life," he said. "Having run for office and seeing the whole process come down on my head has made me who I am."

He ran for elections supervisor in 1988 and won.

Now he is required under federal laws instituted after the Florida voting debacle in 2000 to acquire 160 voting machines for disabled people -- and none of the state-approved vendors will provide the machines.

A spokesman said Diebold will not sell to Sancho without assurances that he will not permit more such tests, which the company considers a reckless use of the machines.

"While we welcome authorized testing and examination of our products by qualified professionals," Diebold attorney Michael E. Lindroos wrote Sancho last year, "actions such as yours only serve to undermine the public's confidence in the security and accuracy that good systems can provide when used with the proper procedures and by authorized personnel."

Another company, Sequoia Voting Systems, backed out of discussions with Sancho earlier this year. Spokesman Michelle Shafer said the company lacks the capacity to fill his order.

The third voting machine company, Election Systems & Software Inc., did not respond to three calls for comment directed through their sales representative.

The dispute highlights what many elections experts say is a failure in federal oversight. In Maryland, North Carolina, Texas and elsewhere, elections officials have called into question the security and accuracy of new voting machines. The experts said that a more rigorous federal oversight process, in which machine testers have no financial connections to the voting machine companies, is needed to ensure election security in the United States.

"The federal certification process for voting machines is broken, sadly, when it comes to security," Wagner said. "It was designed for the era of mechanical machines, and it hasn't kept up."



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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:29 AM

Schools Cut Back Subjects to Push Reading and Math

The New York Times
Schools Cut Back Subjects to Push Reading and Math
By SAM DILLON

SACRAMENTO — Thousands of schools across the nation are responding to the reading and math testing requirements laid out in No Child Left Behind, President Bush's signature education law, by reducing class time spent on other subjects and, for some low-proficiency students, eliminating it.

Schools from Vermont to California are increasing — in some cases tripling — the class time that low-proficiency students spend on reading and math, mainly because the federal law, signed in 2002, requires annual exams only in those subjects and punishes schools that fall short of rising benchmarks.

The changes appear to principally affect schools and students who test below grade level.

The intense focus on the two basic skills is a sea change in American instructional practice, with many schools that once offered rich curriculums now systematically trimming courses like social studies, science and art. A nationwide survey by a nonpartisan group that is to be made public on March 28 indicates that the practice, known as narrowing the curriculum, has become standard procedure in many communities.

The survey, by the Center on Education Policy, found that since the passage of the federal law, 71 percent of the nation's 15,000 school districts had reduced the hours of instructional time spent on history, music and other subjects to open up more time for reading and math. The center is an independent group that has made a thorough study of the new act and has published a detailed yearly report on the implementation of the law in dozens of districts.

"Narrowing the curriculum has clearly become a nationwide pattern," said Jack Jennings, the president of the center, which is based in Washington.

At Martin Luther King Jr. Junior High School in Sacramento, about 150 of the school's 885 students spend five of their six class periods on math, reading and gym, leaving only one 55-minute period for all other subjects.

About 125 of the school's lowest-performing students are barred from taking anything except math, reading and gym, a measure that Samuel Harris, a former lieutenant colonel in the Army who is the school's principal, said was draconian but necessary. "When you look at a kid and you know he can't read, that's a tough call you've got to make," Mr. Harris said.

The increasing focus on two basic subjects has divided the nation's educational establishment. Some authorities, including Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, say the federal law's focus on basic skills is raising achievement in thousands of low-performing schools. Other experts warn that by reducing the academic menu to steak and potatoes, schools risk giving bored teenagers the message that school means repetition and drilling.

"Only two subjects? What a sadness," said Thomas Sobol, an education professor at Columbia Teachers College and a former New York State education commissioner. "That's like a violin student who's only permitted to play scales, nothing else, day after day, scales, scales, scales. They'd lose their zest for music."

But officials in Cuero, Tex., have adopted an intensive approach and said it was helping them meet the federal requirements. They have doubled the time that all sixth graders and some seventh and eighth graders devote to reading and math, and have reduced it for other subjects.

"When you only have so many hours per day and you're behind in some area that's being hammered on, you have to work on that," said Henry Lind, the schools superintendent. "It's like basketball. If you can't make layups, then you've got to work on layups."

Chad Colby, a spokesman for the federal Department of Education, said the department neither endorsed nor criticized schools that concentrated instructional time on math and reading as they sought to meet the test benchmarks laid out in the federal law's accountability system, known as adequate yearly progress.

"We don't choose the curriculum," Mr. Colby said. "That's a decision that local leaders have to make. But for every school you point to, I can show you five other schools across the country where students are still taking a well-rounded curriculum and are still making adequate yearly progress. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask our schools to get kids proficient at grade level in reading and math."

Since America's public schools began taking shape in the early 1800's, shifting fashions have repeatedly reworked the curriculum. Courses like woodworking and sewing joined the three R's. After World War I, vocational courses, languages and other subjects broadened the instructional menu into a smorgasbord.

A federal law passed after the Russian launching of Sputnik in 1957 spurred a renewed emphasis on science and math, and a 1975 law that guaranteed educational rights for the disabled also provoked sweeping change, said William Reese, a professor at the University of Wisconsin and author of "America's Public Schools: From the Common School to No Child Left Behind." But the education law has leveraged one of the most abrupt instructional shifts, he said.

"Because of its emphasis on testing and accountability in particular subjects, it apparently forces some school districts down narrow intellectual paths," Dr. Reese said. "If a subject is not tested, why teach it?"

The shift has been felt in the labor market, heightening demand for math teachers and forcing educators in subjects like art and foreign languages to search longer for work, leaders of teachers groups said.

The survey coming out this week looks at 299 school districts in 50 states. It was conducted as part of a four-year study of No Child Left Behind and appears to be the most systematic effort to track the law's footprints through the classroom, although other authorities had warned of its effect on teaching practices.

The historian David McCullough told a Senate Committee last June that because of the law, "history is being put on the back burner or taken off the stove altogether in many or most schools, in favor of math and reading."

The report says that at districts in Colorado, Texas, Vermont, California, Nebraska and elsewhere, math and reading are squeezing other subjects. At one district cited, the Bayonne City Schools in New Jersey, low-performing ninth graders will be barred from taking Spanish, music or any other elective next fall so they can take extra periods of math and reading, said Ellen O'Connor, an assistant superintendent.

"We're using that as a motivation," Dr. O'Connor said. "We're hoping they'll concentrate on their math and reading so they can again participate in some course they love."

At King Junior High, in a poor neighborhood in Sacramento a few miles from a decommissioned Air Force base, the intensive reading and math classes have raised test scores for several years running. That has helped Larry Buchanan, the superintendent of the Grant Joint Union High School District, which oversees the school, to be selected by an administrators' group as California's 2005 superintendent of the year.

But in spite of the progress, the school's scores on California state exams, used for compliance with the federal law, are increasing not nearly fast enough to allow the school to keep up with the rising test benchmarks. On the math exams administered last spring, for instance, 17.4 percent of students scored at the proficient level or above, and on the reading exams, only 14.9 percent.

With scores still so low, Mr. Harris, the school's principal, and Mr. Buchanan said they had little alternative but to continue remedial instruction for the lower-achieving among the school's nearly 900 students.

The students are the sons and daughters of mostly Hispanic, black and Laotian Hmong parents, many of whom work as gardeners, welders and hotel maids or are unemployed. The district administers frequent diagnostic tests so that teachers can carefully calibrate lessons to students' needs.

Rubén Jimenez, a seventh grader whose father is a construction laborer, has a schedule typical of many students at the school, with six class periods a day, not counting lunch.

Rubén studies English for the first three periods, and pre-algebra and math during the fourth and fifth. His sixth period is gym. How does he enjoy taking only reading and math, a recent visitor asked.

"I don't like history or science anyway," Rubén said. But a moment later, perhaps recalling something exciting he had heard about lab science, he sounded ambivalent.

"It'd be fun to dissect something," he said.

Martín Lara, Rubén's teacher, said the intense focus on math was paying off because his math skills were solidifying. Rubén said math had become his favorite subject.

But other students, like Paris Smith, an eighth grader, were less enthusiastic. Last semester, Paris failed one of the two math classes he takes, back to back, each morning.

"I hate having two math classes in a row," Paris said. "Two hours of math is too much. I can't concentrate that long."

Donna Simmons, his mother, said Mr. Lara seemed to be working hard to help Paris understand math.

"The school cares," Ms. Simmons said. "The faculty cares. I want him to keep trying."

Sydney Smith, a vice principal who oversees instruction at the school, said she had heard only minimal grumbling from students excluded from electives.

"I've only had about two students come to my office and say: 'What in the world? I'm just taking two courses?' " Ms. Smith said. "So most students are not complaining about being miserable."

But Lorie Turner, who teaches English to some pupils for three consecutive periods and to others for two periods each day, said she used some students' frustration to persuade them to try for higher scores on the annual exams administered under California's Standardized Testing and Reporting program, known as Star.

"I have some little girls who are dying to get out of this class and get into a mainstream class," Ms. Turner said. "But I tell them the only way out is to do better on that Star test."





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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:26 AM

Court Case Challenges Power of President; Military Tribunals' Legitimacy at Issue

washingtonpost.com
Court Case Challenges Power of President
Military Tribunals' Legitimacy at Issue

By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer

Seized by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Osama bin Laden's former chauffeur is now seeking victory over President Bush in a new arena: the Supreme Court.

In oral arguments Tuesday, an attorney for Salim Ahmed Hamdan will ask the justices to declare unconstitutional the U.S. military commission that plans to try him for conspiring with his former boss to carry out terrorist attacks.

Significant as that demand is, its potential impact is much wider, making Hamdan's case one of the most important of Bush's presidency. It is a challenge to the broad vision of presidential power that Bush has asserted since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In blunt terms, Hamdan's brief calls on the court to stop "this unprecedented arrogation of power." Just as urgently, the administration's brief urges the court not to second-guess the decisions of the commander in chief while "the armed conflict against al Qaeda remains ongoing."

The case may not produce a frontal clash between the judiciary and the executive -- if the court decides that a recently enacted federal law on military commissions deprives it of jurisdiction to rule on Hamdan's case. Yet another possibility is that the court could reach an inconclusive 4 to 4 tie because Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. had ruled on the case while he was on a federal appeals court and must sit out now.

But if the court fears to tread on such difficult ground, it has given no sign of that. It has refused the administration's invitation to dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction before hearing arguments, and, perhaps more important, it has already refused to defer completely to the president in two previous terrorism-related cases.

"There are so many issues in the case -- whether the president was authorized by the Constitution, or a statute, to set up the commissions -- right down to exactly how to fit this kind of a war into the existing laws of war," said Richard Lazarus, a law professor at Georgetown University who specializes in Supreme Court litigation. "Most cases have two or three or four issues. This one has 10 or 12, which makes it very hard to handicap."

Whether designating an American citizen as an "enemy combatant" subject to military confinement, denying coverage under the Geneva Conventions to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, or using the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on domestic communications, Bush has said that the Constitution and a broadly worded congressional resolution passed three days after Sept. 11, 2001, empower him to wage war against terrorists all but unencumbered by judicial review, congressional oversight or international law.

Those assertions emerged in Bush's Military Order No. 1 of Nov. 13, 2001, which established the commissions and set off one of the first political debates in the United States over terrorism after two months of relative unity after the attacks.

The administration wanted a tough-minded alternative to the civilian court system that the Clinton administration had used against terrorists. Yet the swift and certain punishment that supporters of the commissions expected has not materialized. Though 10 of the 490 terrorism suspects currently held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay have been designated for trial, not a single case has been decided.

From the outset, the commissions have been plagued by questions about their fairness and workability. Critics argued that the commissions were flawed because, as Hamdan's brief, written by Georgetown University law professor Neal K. Katyal, puts it, they would try suspects "for crimes defined by the President alone, under procedures lacking basic protections, before 'judges' who are his chosen subordinates."

After lengthy internal debates, the administration modified the commissions, requiring that trials be public and that defendants be presumed innocent until proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

But that did not persuade critics who pointed out that the executive branch would still be the only one deciding who is an "unlawful enemy combatant" eligible for trial in the first place.

Critics also argue that the Geneva Conventions require that each detainee should be given an individual hearing, with access to the federal courts through habeas corpus.

Historically, the courts have been reluctant to take on presidents during wartime. As a result, Lazarus said, Hamdan's supporters "need to make it clear there is a reason not to trust" Bush with unchecked power. That reason, Lazarus noted, may come from the allegations of torture at Guantanamo Bay and at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, which surfaced in 2004 and are discussed extensively in briefs on Hamdan's side.

Several members of the court are especially sensitive to international opinion, which has generally seen Guantanamo as a symbol of U.S. excesses in the war against al-Qaeda. The court has been bombarded by friend-of-the-court briefs urging it to think about the impact of the Hamdan case on the image of the United States abroad.

Two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that federal law gave U.S. courts the power to hear the prisoners' challenges to their detention at Guantanamo Bay. In a separate case involving an American citizen held there, a plurality of justices noted that the court would not give the president "a blank check" on national security matters.

That triggered a flood of habeas corpus petitions, including Hamdan's, from lawyers representing hundreds of Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

Hamdan's attorneys say that neither the broadly worded Sept. 14, 2001, House-Senate resolution that endorsed the use of force against al-Qaeda nor older statutes give Bush the clear legislative approval he needs to set up the commissions. They also contend that the commissions violate the Geneva Conventions, which, they say, are enforceable by U.S. courts and entitle Hamdan to the same kind of trial a U.S. soldier would get from a court-martial.

The rules of the tribunals, which allow evidence that "would . . . have probative value to a reasonable person," provide no guarantee against the use of evidence gathered through torture, Hamdan's supporters say.

In response, the Bush administration notes that military commissions have a long history in war and were contemplated by the Sept. 14, 2001, resolution.

But the administration's brief, written by Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, also says that "even if Congress's support for the President's Military Order were not so clear, the President has the inherent authority to convene military commissions to try and punish captured enemy combatants in wartime -- even in the absence of any statutory authorization."

As for the Geneva Conventions, they are not enforceable by U.S. courts and do not apply to Hamdan because al-Qaeda is a terrorist network that has not signed the conventions and regularly violates them, the administration says.

So far, the administration has prevailed. Last year, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, one of whose members was Roberts, upheld the administration's position, overruling a decision in Hamdan's favor by the U.S. District Court in Washington.

After the Supreme Court agreed to hear Hamdan's appeal of the D.C. Circuit's ruling, Congress stepped in.

The Detainee Treatment Act (DTA), enacted in December, reinforces the president's authority under the Sept. 14 resolution, the administration says. By modifying the rules related to the commissions, the measure implicitly accepts their legitimacy, the administration says.

The DTA stripped federal courts of jurisdiction over habeas corpus petitions from the Guantanamo Bay detainees "pending on or after" the date of its enactment -- and it provides an alternative military process for reviewing their enemy combatant status, to be followed by appeals to the D.C. Circuit court. Under the law, that court is the exclusive venue for appeals of military commission verdicts.

On Jan. 12, the administration asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the Hamdan case, arguing that it is covered by the "pending on or after" phrase. The proper time for his constitutional challenge is after his trial, the administration argued.

But Hamdan's attorneys contend that the DTA was a compromise intended to apply only to new cases, not to those that had already been filed. At a minimum, it does not provide a clear enough statement of congressional intent to deny Hamdan and others a day in court, they say.

The case is Hamdan v. Rumsfeld , No. 05-184. A decision is expected by July.


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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:22 AM

Bound, Blindfolded and Dead: The Face of Atrocity in Baghdad

The New York Times
Bound, Blindfolded and Dead: The Face of Atrocity in Baghdad
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 25 — Mohannad al-Azawi had just finished sprinkling food in his bird cages at his pet shop in southern Baghdad, when three carloads of gunmen pulled up.

In front of a crowd, he was grabbed by his shirt and driven off.

Mr. Azawi was among the few Sunni Arabs on the block, and, according to witnesses, when a Shiite friend tried to intervene, a gunman stuck a pistol to his head and said, "You want us to blow your brains out, too?"

Mr. Azawi's body was found the next morning at a sewage treatment plant. A slight man who raised nightingales, he had been hogtied, drilled with power tools and shot.

In the last month, hundreds of men have been kidnapped, tortured and executed in Baghdad. As Iraqi and American leaders struggle to avert a civil war, the bodies keep piling up. The city's homicide rate has tripled from 11 to 33 a day, military officials said. The period from March 7 to March 21 was typically brutal: at least 191 bodies, many mutilated, surfaced in garbage bins, drainage ditches, minibuses and pickup trucks.

There were the four Duleimi brothers, Khalid, Tarek, Taleb and Salaam, seized from their home in front of their wives. And Achmed Abdulsalam, last seen at a checkpoint in his freshly painted BMW and found dead under a bridge two days later. And Mushtak al-Nidawi, a law student nicknamed Titanic for his Leonardo DiCaprio good looks, whose body was returned to his family with his skull chopped in half.

What frightens Iraqis most about these gangland-style killings is the impunity. According to reports filed by family members and more than a dozen interviews, many men were taken in daylight, in public, with witnesses all around. Few cases, if any, have been investigated.

Part of the reason may be that most victims are Sunnis, and there is growing suspicion that they were killed by Shiite death squads backed by government forces in a cycle of sectarian revenge. That allegation has been circulating in Baghdad for months, and as more Sunnis turn up dead, more people are inclined to believe it.

"This is sectarian cleansing," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of Parliament, who has maintained a degree of neutrality between Shiites and Sunnis.

Mr. Othman said there were atrocities on each side. "But what is different is when Shiites get killed by suicide bombs, everyone comes together to fight the Sunni terrorists," he said. "When Shiites kill Sunnis, there is no response, because much of this killing is done by militias connected to the government."

The imbalance of killing, and the suspicion the government may be involved, is deepening the Shiite-Sunni divide, just as American officials are urging Sunni and Shiite leaders to form an inclusive government, hoping that such a show of unity will prevent a full-scale civil war.

The pressure is increasing on Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, but few expect him to crack down, partly because he needs the support of the Shiite militias to stay in power.

Haidar al-Ibadi, Mr. Jaafari's spokesman, acknowledged that "some of the police forces have been infiltrated." But he said "outsiders," rather than Iraqis, were to blame.

Now many Sunnis, who used to be the most anti-American community in Iraq, are asking for American help.

"If the Americans leave, we are finished," said Hassan al-Azawi, whose brother was taken from the pet shop.

He thought for a moment more.

"We may be finished already."

The human rights office of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a mostly Sunni group, has cataloged more than 540 cases of Sunni men and a few of Sunni women who were kidnapped and killed since Feb. 22, when a Shiite shrine in Samarra was destroyed, unleashing a wave of sectarian fury.

As the case of Mr. Azawi shows, some were easy targets.

Mr. Azawi was the youngest of five brothers. He was 27 and lived with his parents. He loved birds since he was a boy. Nightingales were his favorite. Then canaries, pigeons and doves.

During Saddam Hussein's reign, he was drafted into the army, but he deserted.

"He was crazy about birds," said a Shiite neighbor, Ibrahim Muhammad.

A few years ago, Mr. Azawi opened a small pet shop in Dawra, a rough-and-tumble, mostly Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad.

Friends said that Mr. Azawi was not interested in politics or religion. He never went to the Sunni mosque, though his brothers did. He did not pay attention to news or watch television. That characteristic might have cost him his life.

On Feb. 22, the Askariya Shrine in Samarra was attacked at 7 a.m. But Mr. Azawi did not know what had happened until 4 p.m., his friends said. He was in his own little world, tending his birds, when a Shiite shopkeeper broke the news and told him to close. He stayed in his house for three days after that. His friends said he was terrified.

The day of the shrine attack, Shiite mobs began rampaging through Baghdad, burning Sunni mosques and slaughtering Sunni residents. Some Sunnis struck back and killed Shiites. The mayhem claimed hundreds of lives and exposed tensions that until then had been bubbling just beneath the surface.

Two Shiite militias, the Badr Organization, which once trained in Iran, and the Mahdi Army, the foot soldiers of a young, firebrand Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, were blamed for much of the bloodshed. Mr. Sadr's men often wear all-black uniforms, and many of the relatives of kidnapped people said men in black uniforms had taken them. Many people also said the men in black arrived with the police.

Around 9 on the night of the shrine bombing, a mob of black-clad men surrounded the Duleimi brothers, family members said.

The brothers lived in New Baghdad, a working-class neighborhood that is mostly Shiite. They were all gardeners and religious men who prayed five times a day. They had relatives in Falluja, in the heart of Sunni territory.

Where a family hails from in Iraq often reveals whether it is Sunni or Shiite. Nowadays, because of the sectarian friction, people are increasingly aware of the slight regional differences in accent, dress and name. Some first names, like Omar for Sunnis, or Haidar for Shiites, are clear giveaways. Others, like Khalid, are not. Tribal names can also be a sign.

A cousin of the Duleimi brothers, who identified himself as Khalaf, said the four men were taken at gunpoint from the small house they shared. The next day, their bodies turned up in a drainage ditch near Sadr City, a stronghold of the Mahdi Army. All their fingers and toes had been sawed off.

That same day Mushtak al-Nidawi, 20, was kidnapped. According to an aunt, Aliah al-Bakr, he was chatting on his cellphone outside his home in Bayah when a squad of Mahdi militiamen marched up the street, shouting, "We're coming after you, Sunnis!"

Ms. Bakr said they snatched Mr. Nidawi while his mother stood at the door. His body surfaced on the streets seven days later, his skin a map of bruises, his handsome face burned by acid, his fingernails pulled out.

"I told his mother he was shot," Ms. Bakr said.

Sheik Kamal al-Araji, a spokesman for Mr. Sadr, said "the Mahdi Army does not commit such crimes."

He also said the militiamen would soon change their uniforms so they would no longer be confused with thugs.

The question of who exactly is behind these collective assassinations has become a delicate political issue. So has the disparity in the killings.

Many Sunni politicians, including secular ones like Methal al-Alusi, accuse the Shiite-led government of backing a campaign to wipe out Sunnis. Many Shiite leaders, including Prime Minister Jaafari, blame "foreign terrorists," without being more specific. It seems that Shiite militias, unable to strike back against the presumably Sunni suicide bombers who kill Shiite civilians, are now victimizing Sunni civilians. There is no evidence that the Sunnis who have been kidnapped and killed are connected to terrorists.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, is now saying that militias are Iraq's No. 1 security threat. But he has been careful to paint the problem in broad strokes, implying both sides are at fault.

There are a few Shiite victims, like Mohammed Jabbar Hussein, who lived in a mostly Sunni area west of Baghdad. He disappeared on Feb. 26 and was found four days later, shot in the head.

But the militias under the greatest suspicion, and the ones with the strongest ties to the government, are Shiite. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a spokesman for the American military, said Shiite militias have played a role in the killings and "the government of Iraq has to take action."

Then there is the question of prosecution. While countless Sunni insurgents have been arrested and tried on murder charges, very few Shiite militiamen have been apprehended.

Thamir al-Janabi, who is in charge of the Interior Ministry's criminal investigation department, declined to comment. So did several other Interior Ministry officials.

A new round of revenge attacks began March 12, around 6 p.m., when a string of car bombs exploded in Sadr City, killing nearly 50 civilians. Most security officials, Shiite and Sunni, blamed Sunni terrorists.

An hour and a half later, half a dozen gunmen arrived at Mr. Azawi's pet shop.

Wisam Saad Nawaf was playing pool across the street. He said that a man wearing a ski mask arrived with the gunmen, who were not wearing masks, and that when they grabbed Mr. Azawi, the masked man nodded. "He must have been an informant from the neighborhood," Mr. Nawaf explained.

Mr. Azawi got into a car. The gunmen closed the doors. The next morning Mr. Azawi's body was found at the sewage plant. Autopsy photos showed how badly he had been abused. His skin was covered with purple welts. His legs and face had drill holes in them. Both shoulders had been broken.

His brother Hassan carries the autopsy photos with him, along with a pistol. "I cannot live without vengeance," he said.

Hassan said there were a few Shiites at his brother's funeral, which he took as a grim speck of hope.

One week later, on March 20, the body of Mr. Abdulsalam, another Sunni, was found under a bridge. Mr. Abdulsalam, 21, worked with his father in a real estate office. His family said he was last seen in his BMW, stopped at a Mahdi Army checkpoint.





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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:21 AM

A Bellwether for the Power of a President

The New York Times
A Bellwether for the Power of a President
By JONATHAN MAHLER

TAKE a good look at the prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui, an admitted member of Al Qaeda who may soon be sentenced to death, after pleading guilty to conspiracy in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. It may be the last time a suspected terrorist will enjoy the full panoply of rights — a jury of civilians, an independent judge, the guarantee of an open trial — accorded to criminal defendants in the United States.

Instead, the government plans to try accused terrorists before special tribunals in which the judge is appointed by the Pentagon, the jurors are military officers and certain canonical rights in our civil system — like the right to be present at all sessions of the trial — are absent. The future of the tribunals will be up to the Supreme Court, which will rule on their legality in Salim Hamdan v. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, which is to be argued on Tuesday.

Salim Hamdan, born in Yemen, was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 and has confessed to working as a driver for Osama bin Laden. Like Mr. Moussaoui, Mr. Hamdan was charged with conspiring with Al Qaeda to commit acts of terrorism. The critical distinction, though, is that Mr. Hamdan was charged as a war criminal, meaning he was designated for prosecution before a military tribunal rather than in a federal court. His lawyers, led by Neal K. Katyal, a professor at Georgetown University, have sued to block the tribunal; hence Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

There is much more at stake here than the fate of one detainee. Mr. Hamdan's case will test a broader strategic shift in the American approach to fighting terrorism. By treating terrorism as an act of war rather than a crime, the Bush administration is hoping to end an embarrassing string of botched criminal terrorism prosecutions, including those of Mr. Moussaoui — where the judge recently rebuked a government prosecutor for improperly coaching witnesses — and Sami al-Arian, who is accused of being an Islamic Jihad activist and who was acquitted of various charges by a Florida jury several months ago.

The administration is also trying to ease the burdens of proof on its prosecutors, whom the government believes are at a disadvantage in the post-Sept. 11 era, when the emphasis is on prevention of terrorist attacks rather than their prosecution. "If you are serious about stopping people before things take off, then necessarily your evidence is going to be more ambiguous," said Andrew McCarthy, the lead prosecutor in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

More significant, President Bush would be extending his commander-in-chief authority to the war on terror. What this means in a practical sense is that he and his successors would be vested with perhaps greater wartime powers than any previous president. Unlike prior wars, limited by duration and geography, the war on terror is global and potentially endless. Indeed, terrorism will last well beyond the defeat of radical Islam.

IS the war on terror really a war?

The logical parallel to Sept. 11 would appear to be Pearl Harbor, but Bruce Ackerman, a Yale law professor and author of "Before the Next Attack," argues that the two are not the same. "Pearl Harbor was an act of violent incursion that everybody recognized augured more violent acts of incursion because there was a Japanese fleet out there," he says. "We don't know whether we're looking at a powerful and well-organized enemy, or some terrorists who just happened to get lucky."

Yet the alternative — defining terrorist attacks simply as crimes — doesn't seem quite right either. After all, it was no coincidence that a target of the Sept. 11 hijackers was the headquarters of the United States military. Terrorists are capable of inflicting damage on a scale beyond the reach of any criminal enterprise. Anyway, the United States has responded to the attacks with military force; it seems a little late to debate whether the country is at war.

What are the implications of an unending war with no geographical boundaries? In one of their briefs, Mr. Hamdan's lawyers warn of "a dangerous and unprecedented expansion of executive authority" that would be tantamount to a re-allocation of constitutional power. A precedent that gave the president sweeping authority to fight the war on terror, they argue, could become "the edifice upon which any number of actions could be grounded, even against U.S. citizens." The president could assert his commander-in-chief powers to permit electronic surveillance without a wiretap, for instance, or to detain indefinitely an American citizen arrested in Cleveland.

Draconian as this sounds, advocates of the administration's position point out that warrantless surveillance and protracted detentions of suspected enemy combatants, even if they are American citizens, pale in comparison with the suspensions of civil rights deemed necessary in previous wars. During World War I, for instance, an American was sentenced to 10 years for questioning the "good faith" of our ally. His crime was making a film that depicted British atrocities in the Revolutionary War.

The court has traditionally deferred to the president in wartime, then gradually stripped the office of any newly accrued authority once the hostilities ended. Given the indefinite nature of the war on terror, though, this pattern no longer seems relevant.

The last time a president tried to make the case that the theater of war should not be confined to the area of hostilities, he was rebuffed: during the Korean War, the Supreme Court barred Harry S. Truman from seizing steel mills to prevent a strike. Of course, Truman could not point to a recent attack on American soil to help make his case.

In short, the Hamdan case presents the Supreme Court with two historically unappealing choices: to police the president's ability to make war or to allow executive authority to go unchecked.

Jonathan Mahler, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, is writing a book about the Hamdan case.




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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:18 AM

Pension Reform Politics

The New York Times
Pension Reform Politics

The pension reform bill now being worked on by a House-Senate conference is teetering on the verge of being worse than worthless. The nation cannot afford to miss this opportunity to protect workers who count on company retirement plans to see them through their old age. There is still time to rescue this critical legislation — if key lawmakers give up political horse-trading and put public good above corporate interests.

Let's start with Representative John Boehner, Republican of Ohio and the new House majority leader. The most important reform in the bill, as everyone agrees, is to ensure that companies contribute enough money to their pension plans to meet their obligations fully. It is also accepted that companies cannot step up their contributions overnight. But rather than support the sensible notion of a simple seven-year catch-up period, Mr. Boehner championed a super-slow phase-in that is now part of the House bill. The slower the phase-in, the weaker the reform. A seven-year transition, with the clock starting on Day 1, is reasonable and should become law.

On the Senate side, Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia, has been a leader in the fight for special airline relief provisions, mainly for the bankrupt Northwest and Delta. But the largess in the Senate bill must be scaled way back. In general, Congress has skillfully devised new rules for computing pension obligations. But an exception to the rules would allow airlines to factor in highly optimistic assumptions that would, in effect, let them get away with putting much less in their pensions each year than would otherwise be the case. That is a horrible precedent, essentially endorsing the use of funny numbers for favored industries.

Legislators can legitimately give bankrupt companies leeway, for example, by granting more time to make required pension contributions. But allowing "flexibility" in the basic pension calculation would mock the whole notion of reform.

It should go without saying, but Congress should also reject provisions that would weaken current protections. Present law bans a mutual fund company from offering employees investment advice if the company's funds are among the employees' retirement investing options. Mr. Boehner, a darling of the securities industry, wants to remove the ban. That is a clear invitation to conflicts of interest. The House bill would also allow hedge funds to manage more pension money without having to meet established legal standards for doing so. That would encourage the misuse of pension assets.

This is not just a matter of better or worse ways to improve the shaky status quo. As Mary Williams Walsh recently reported in The Times, a study from the federal pension insurance agency shows that the current House and Senate bills would actually weaken the pension system by sharply reducing corporate pension contributions over the next few years. Corporations — and lawmakers in their thrall — routinely dismiss the agency's calculations as flawed. But an analysis of the bills released by Congress's own Joint Committee on Taxation also shows lower contributions through 2010.

No matter what Congress does, traditional pensions are disappearing. In the year that it has taken to get this far on reform, more pension plans have defaulted or have become in danger of default. Healthy companies are increasingly freezing pensions for current employees and closing them to new hires. The point of reform should be to avoid accelerating the decline by ensuring that companies with pension obligations keep their promises, in that way protecting employees and taxpayers.

Real pension reform would deliver 100 percent pension funding and the use of uniform market-sensitive calculations. Instead of focusing on those goals, the House and Senate have been stuffing the legislation with opportunistic attempts to please corporate campaign contributors. But in this case, less is definitely more.




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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:15 AM

Skullcap on Recruit's Head Keeps Him From Serving in Coast Guard

The New York Times
Skullcap on Recruit's Head Keeps Him From Serving in Coast Guard
By ANDY NEWMAN

Jack Rosenberg wants to serve his country.

Mr. Rosenberg, a 34-year-old tire technician and a certified pilot from Spring Valley, N.Y., signed up for the Coast Guard Auxiliary last year, hoping to fly on search-and-rescue missions and the like.

He underwent a full military background check. He had several sets of fingerprints taken. He passed the boating test and the written course.

"But as soon as I got sworn in and got ready to put on the uniform," Mr. Rosenberg said, "the commander came to me and said it's going to be a problem."

The problem was on top of Mr. Rosenberg's head. He is a Hasidic Jew, and he wears a skullcap at all times except when showering or swimming. The skullcap clashed with the uniform.

Wearing a visible piece of religious garb violates Coast Guard regulations. It says so in the Coast Guard manual, right between "Umbrellas" ("Plain black or navy blue, expandable, straight handle. Must be carried in left hand.") and "Backpacks" ("Must be carried in left hand when in uniform"). "Religious Items," the manual says. "Concealed or worn only during religious services."

Mr. Rosenberg's main skullcap, a black velvet model, is about six inches across. On occasions when Coast Guard protocol calls for wearing the official cap, including most outdoor activities, it would conceal the skullcap.

But indoors, auxiliarists are not supposed to wear their caps. (They are also told not to wear them while walking to a plane at an airport; a blast of prop wash could lead to the undignified sight of an auxiliarist chasing his bounding cap across the tarmac.)

If Mr. Rosenberg had joined the Army, things might be different. Since 1987, in response to a lawsuit, the armed services have let members wear skullcaps, head scarves, and other religious garments "except under circumstances in which an item is not neat and conservative or its wearing shall interfere with the performance of the member's military duties."

Other organizations have dealt with similar controversies. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has eased its restrictions even as it fights a federal suit involving bus drivers who were not allowed to wear their Muslim head scarves.

But the Coast Guard does not answer to the Department of Defense, or to the transportation authority for that matter. It is under the Department of Homeland Security, and it has its own regulations.

Mr. Rosenberg said his flotilla commander, Arthur Ramirez, of the auxiliary unit based in Lincoln Park., N.J., tried to accommodate him.

"Is it possible," Commander Ramirez asked in an e-mail message, "that you could wear a 'miniature' yarmulke, small enough to be concealed by your hair?"

It would have to be very small indeed. Mr. Rosenberg is bald on top.

Commander Ramirez referred the matter to his supervisors, to no avail.

Things looked grim. Mr. Rosenberg's smart blue dress uniform hung unworn in a closet in his home in Rockland County. He was not about to compromise on the skullcap, which Orthodox Jews commonly wear to remind them of God's position above humankind.

"If my religion requires it," Mr. Rosenberg said, "there's not a choice."

A relative referred Mr. Rosenberg to a state assemblyman in Brooklyn, Dov Hikind, who has many Orthodox constituents. Mr. Hikind wrote on March 7 to the commandant of the Coast Guard, reminding him that a homeland security expert at the University of Maryland had recently called the Coast Guard "vastly understaffed and underresourced" and that turning away a willing volunteer might not be a good idea.

The commandant has not responded. But as it turns out, the Coast Guard's uniform board has its annual meeting this week in Washington.

One item up for discussion is whether to relax the restrictions on religious accessories to bring them in line with armed forces policy. The policy chief for the Coast Guard Auxiliary, Steve Minutolo, said he expected a change.

"I'd be striving to align as closely as possible with our D.O.D. counterparts," he said, adding that he had not heard of Mr. Rosenberg's case and that the proposal had been in the works long before Mr. Hikind's letter.

So it now looks as if Mr. Rosenberg may be able to take his uniform out of the closet after all. As long as he keeps his beard less than half an inch long, that is.

Or at least, as long as it looks as if he does.

"Do you know how long my beard is?" Mr. Rosenberg asked. He reached under his chin, undid a hidden black rubber band, and pulled and teased and pulled and teased until two long locks of hair flowed down from his chin to his navel.

"You just have to keep it up," he said.




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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:13 AM

California's Rep. Richard Pombo in Tough Fight, With Goal of Rewriting Species Act a Top Issue

ABC News
Congressman Faces Fight Over Species Act
California's Rep. Richard Pombo in Tough Fight, With Goal of Rewriting Species Act a Top Issue
By ERICA WERNER
The Associated Press

TRACY, Calif. - Rep. Richard Pombo has never gotten over being outfoxed by the endangered San Joaquin kit fox.

The rancher and chairman of the House Resources Committee is closer than ever to his goal of rewriting the Endangered Species Act to expand property rights his mission ever since the obscure fox species blocked development of a neighboring town 25 years ago.

The prospect of long-fought success has made Pombo a target in the November election. The conservative Republican has abandoned the cowboy hat in his official congressional photo and is looking a little more worldly as he confronts a changing electorate in his district.

Seeking his eighth term, Pombo, 45, faces a primary challenge on June 6 from a moderate Republican who helped write the landmark species protections. Democrats see a glimmer of hope of capturing the seat; environmentalists say his defeat would be the best thing that could happen in November.

On top of all that, Pombo is facing ethical questions arising from his ties with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his own unconventional financial arrangements.

"The easiest thing in the world is for an incumbent congressman to get re-elected if you don't do anything," Pombo said in the kitchen of his ranch on sloping central California farmland. "But I figure I'm here for a reason that's to get things done."

Pombo grew up in a large Portuguese ranching family. He says his immigrant grandfather taught him to prize land ownership above almost anything. That pride of ownership is evident as he points out cows, sheep and the barn he just built on the ranch he shares with his wife, Annette, and their three children. His parents and brothers live next door.

"There's got to be something that you're willing to lose your election over," he says. He describes moderates as people who "just can't make up their mind what they believe in."

Pombo's country style he still wears cowboy boots is an odd fit in upscale, liberal towns such as Pleasanton that were added to his district after the 2000 census. But he remains popular with traditional constituents in the agricultural sections of an area that straddles the San Joaquin Valley and the San Francisco Bay area, including his hometown of Tracy, where signs for his uncle's real estate firm dot rural roads.

"He comes from a good family, a long, longtime Tracy family," said Linda Alegre, who works at a menswear store in the fast-growing exurb's faded downtown. "The Democrats want to get rid of him because he's gotten too strong."

But Claudia Hess, a gallery director in Pleasanton and a Republican undecided about how to vote, says, "He looks like a hick to me."

In 2004, Pombo won with 61 percent of the vote in a district where Republicans outnumber Democrats.

He is favored against little-known Democratic contenders among them engineer Jerry McNerney and Steve Filson, a Navy veteran and airline pilot. But it is early and the national Democratic Party is spending time and money to try to weaken him.

First, Pombo faces a primary challenge from former Rep. Pete McCloskey, an author of the Endangered Species Act. McCloskey moved into the district after failing to recruit another Republican to run against Pombo.

"He's been there too long and power has corrupted him," McCloskey said.

Environmentalists promise to spend plenty against Pombo. They note his proposals to sell public lands and his support for oil drilling offshore and in an Alaskan wildlife refuge, as well as his stance on endangered species.

"Getting rid of him would be the best thing politically that could happen to us in the November election," said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife.

Pombo's quest to rewrite the species act had its genesis in an earlier fight.

In the early 1980s, he was upset when the presence of the endangered San Joaquin kit fox contributed to stopping development of a proposed town outside Tracy. After serving on the Tracy City Council from 1990 to 1992, Pombo won a congressional seat by pledging to revise the legislation.

Opponents "were able to use an endangered species that no one had ever seen or heard of in order to stop that project from going forward," said Pombo, co-author of the 1996 book, "This Land is Our Land: How to End the War on Private Property."

He pushed a bill through the House last year that would require the government to compensate property owners if species protections thwart development plans and would block critical habitat designations that restrict development.

Senators may write their own version. It remains unclear whether any legislation will reach President Bush.

As for ethics, Pombo is among lawmakers who got thousands of dollars in questionable contributions from Abramoff or his clients while supporting the lobbyist's causes. After that came out, Pombo gave $7,000 to charity that he had received from Abramoff. The congressman denies taking any positions because of the money.

Pombo has been criticized for billing taxpayers $5,000 to rent an RV to tour national parks and for letting a top committee aide who lives in California bill for frequent travel to Washington.

Pombo asserts: "I don't break the rules."



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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:11 AM

Florida County Supervisor Draws Criticism in His Quest to Ensure an Honest Vote

ABC News
Florida County Supervisor Draws Criticism in His Quest to Ensure an Honest Vote
By BRENT KALLESTAD
The Associated Press

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Elections controversies just seem to stick to Florida. With the memory of a botched 2000 presidential election still etched in the minds of most elections supervisors in the state, Leon County's Ion Sancho is now finding he can't get the equipment he says he needs to guarantee an honest election.

Vendors of the ATM-like electronic voting machines, tired of Sancho's criticisms over the level of security in their software, no longer want to do business with him or the county. All three companies certified to do business in Florida Diebold Inc., Election Systems & Software Inc. and Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. have said "no."

Sancho's insistence on quality also has angered several Florida officials, including Gov. Jeb Bush, and has already cost his county more than a half million dollars.

Nonetheless, the feisty 55-year-old has his share of supporters, with the Tallahassee Democrat dubbing him "a zealous soldier in election reform battles."

"Ion is one of the few to ask the questions," said Herbert Thompson, chief security strategist for Boston-based firm Security Innovation. "Like, what is this thing actually doing to my vote? How is it processing my vote?"

Thompson said most elections officials use the new equipment blindly.

"Nowadays, with the electronic voting systems, you don't know what even looks suspicious if you're an elections official," Thompson said. "You need people who understand software and software security to understand what the risks are."

The 2000 vote recount in Florida that settled the U.S. presidential race exposed myriad problems in the state and led to widespread voter skepticism across the nation.

More problems surfaced during the 2002 election cycle in Broward and Miami-Dade counties in heavily populated southeastern Florida, helping to spur Congress to pass a law that led more counties to adopt the high-tech, e-voting equipment.

Nearly a quarter of Americans who voted in 2004 used an electronic ballot, almost doubling the percentage from the 2002 election, according to the political consulting firm, Election Data Services.

But a September report from Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, pointed to significant security and reliability problems long the subject of complaints from computer scientists and security experts.

A separate review of voting machine logs used in Palm Beach County in the 2002 election revealed thousands of errors just two years after it was forced to manually recount votes when Florida's massive elections problems surfaced while a presidential election was being settled.

Sancho wants to make sure such problems don't occur in Leon County.

"Florida is one example of how partisan politics interfere with having folks' votes being counted accurately," Sancho said in his office overlooking a series of mildew-stained white government buildings near the state Capitol. "Americans have taken elections for granted for far too long."

A major concern in Florida is around computerized ballots their frequent inability to produce a written receipt of a vote. Beginning with Nevada, some 25 states now have requirements for e-voting machines with attached printers producing voter-verified paper audit trails while others, like Florida, rely on the audit capabilities of the equipment.

"If you make a system that can be manipulated, unfortunately in our current political environment, it probably will be," Sancho said. "Why take that chance?"

He likes the optical scanners used in his county the past several election cycles, but if a county is going to use electronic machines, he believes there ought to be a paper trail. To underscore the system's vulnerabilities, he even had his own system hacked into in December.

And that has ruffled some of his colleagues around the state.

"He kind of has his own drummer," said Susan Gill, the Citrus County elections supervisor who also serves as president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections. "He doesn't object to being viewed as someone standing out there by himself."

A 1986 Florida State law school graduate of Puerto Rican and French descent, Sancho worries that his demands for security guarantees have led vendors to boycott Leon County, home to Florida's capital in Tallahassee.

He recently ran into trouble with his commissioners over the loss of $564,421 in federal grant money because the county missed a Jan. 1 deadline for meeting a federal requirement to provide voting systems for disabled people. Now, it's up to the Legislature to decide whether to reinstate the money.

Sancho, who got into the elections business after losing a 1986 bid for a county commission seat in a disputed election, had tried to buy touchscreen machines for the disabled from ES&S, but they refused to fill his order.

"We did not believe that we would have the kind of working relationship that is key to providing smooth running, reliable and accurate elections," ES&S spokesman Ken Fields said.

Sequioa and Diebold also refused.

A Sequoia spokeswoman said it was simply a business decision.

"Due to the timing and everything our plate is full," Michelle Shafer said. "We haven't been taking on new customers that haven't already signed contracts."

Diebold, which currently supplies Leon's optical scanners, did not immediately return a message for comment. Leon has a legal dispute with Diebold over software upgrades for the optical scanners.

For the disabled, Sancho now prefers to use a vote-by-phone system from Louisville-based IVS LLC, saying it's cheaper, more reliable and more user-friendly, but it's not one of the three companies certified in Florida.

The three vendors' refusal to work with Sancho led to a complaint from the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition on Wednesday, asking Attorney General Charlie Crist to investigate if those companies were violating antitrust laws.

"It's of concern," Crist said Thursday. "We want to make sure we have free, fair and open elections."

Sancho met March 13 for the first time with Florida Secretary of State Sue Cobb in hopes of getting equipment put in place by May 1.

"What he's done has put the entire state of Florida in jeopardy," Cobb's spokeswoman Jenny Nash said, explaining that the U.S. Department of Justice will declare the entire state noncompliant just because one county isn't.

While unpopular in some halls of government and even among some of his supervisors, Sancho is supported by voters in his county. First elected in 1988, he's been sent back four times since.

Sancho said the first elections supervisors conference he ever attended inspired his long pursuit of seeking perfection in the voting process. And he's still wary of the politics in that process.

"An honest man with integrity is probably not the person you want to bet on in the American political system," Sancho said.




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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:10 AM

Possible Drug Plan Scam Ensnares Seniors; Some Companies Take Money With Promises of Savings

ABC News
Possible Drug Plan Scam Ensnares Seniors
Some Companies Take Money With Promises of Savings

March 25, 2006 — - Mary Brashear's prescription drugs cost her $800 each month, and she thought Medicare's new prescription drug plan would be her savior.

"It gets your nerves worked up and you get all upset," she said of the cost of her drugs.

So when the Indiana resident got a phone call asking her to sign up for the Medicare plan -- she happily gave her bank account number to a company called Pharma Express of Chaplain, N.Y., which promptly took $299 out of her account.

She never got a discount card.

"It makes you feel pretty bad, especially when you know you ain't got no money to start with," she said.

In Kansas, Mary Williams was fooled by the same line.

"I was really shocked I could do such a stupid thing," she said, "but I did."

Brashear and Williams are among 66 people who have filed similar complaints with the government in the past two months. Mark McClellan, the director of Medicare, believes it's connected to a new scam and fears there may be other scams going on.

"This $299 scam involves an unsolicited call or door-to-door visit to a beneficiary," McClellan said. "These are activities that are prohibited in the Medicare program. … What has happened to Mary is unquestionably a case where we will pursue a further investigation."

Seniors Confused

The government fears con artists in at least six states may be preying on senior citizens who have until May to join the Medicare drug plan -- which critics have charged is confusing and difficult for seniors to navigate. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 51 percent of the 42 million elderly eligible for the program still have not signed up.

The New York State attorney general's office says it has received similar complaints about Pharma Express.

In a statement to ABC News, the company said, "We are an independent company; we have nothing to do with Medicare."

The company said it does provide drug discount cards and offered to return Brashear's money. She said she has not received it.

Avoid Trouble

To prevent scams, Medicare says that seniors need to know …

No one legitimately connected with Medicare can come to your home unsolicited.

Nor can they ask for your bank account number or other payment over the phone.

ABC News' Gigi Stone and Kathleen Hendry reported this story for "World News Tonight."

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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:09 AM

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