Bilking the Elderly, With a Corporate Assist

The New York Times
Bilking the Elderly, With a Corporate Assist
By CHARLES DUHIGG

The thieves operated from small offices in Toronto and hangar-size rooms in India. Every night, working from lists of names and phone numbers, they called World War II veterans, retired schoolteachers and thousands of other elderly Americans and posed as government and insurance workers updating their files.

Then, the criminals emptied their victims’ bank accounts.

Richard Guthrie, a 92-year-old Army veteran, was one of those victims. He ended up on scam artists’ lists because his name, like millions of others, was sold by large companies to telemarketing criminals, who then turned to major banks to steal his life’s savings.

Mr. Guthrie, who lives in Iowa, had entered a few sweepstakes that caused his name to appear in a database advertised by infoUSA, one of the largest compilers of consumer information. InfoUSA sold his name, and data on scores of other elderly Americans, to known lawbreakers, regulators say.

InfoUSA advertised lists of “Elderly Opportunity Seekers,” 3.3 million older people “looking for ways to make money,” and “Suffering Seniors,” 4.7 million people with cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. “Oldies but Goodies” contained 500,000 gamblers over 55 years old, for 8.5 cents apiece. One list said: “These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change.”

As Mr. Guthrie sat home alone — surrounded by his Purple Heart medal, photos of eight children and mementos of a wife who was buried nine years earlier — the telephone rang day and night. After criminals tricked him into revealing his banking information, they went to Wachovia, the nation’s fourth-largest bank, and raided his account, according to banking records.

“I loved getting those calls,” Mr. Guthrie said in an interview. “Since my wife passed away, I don’t have many people to talk with. I didn’t even know they were stealing from me until everything was gone.”

Telemarketing fraud, once limited to small-time thieves, has become a global criminal enterprise preying upon millions of elderly and other Americans every year, authorities say. Vast databases of names and personal information, sold to thieves by large publicly traded companies, have put almost anyone within reach of fraudulent telemarketers. And major banks have made it possible for criminals to dip into victims’ accounts without their authorization, according to court records.

The banks and companies that sell such services often confront evidence that they are used for fraud, according to thousands of banking documents, court filings and e-mail messages reviewed by The New York Times.

Although some companies, including Wachovia, have made refunds to victims who have complained, neither that bank nor infoUSA stopped working with criminals even after executives were warned that they were aiding continuing crimes, according to government investigators. Instead, those companies collected millions of dollars in fees from scam artists. (Neither company has been formally accused of wrongdoing by the authorities.)

“Only one kind of customer wants to buy lists of seniors interested in lotteries and sweepstakes: criminals,” said Sgt. Yves Leblanc of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. “If someone advertises a list by saying it contains gullible or elderly people, it’s like putting out a sign saying ‘Thieves welcome here.’ ”

In recent years, despite the creation of a national “do not call” registry, the legitimate telemarketing industry has grown, according to the Direct Marketing Association. Callers pitching insurance plans, subscriptions and precooked meals collected more than $177 billion in 2006, an increase of $4.5 billion since the federal do-not-call restrictions were put in place three years ago.

That growth can be partly attributed to the industry’s renewed focus on the elderly. Older Americans are perfect telemarketing customers, analysts say, because they are often at home, rely on delivery services, and are lonely for the companionship that telephone callers provide. Some researchers estimate that the elderly account for 30 percent of telemarketing sales — another example of how companies and investors are profiting from the growing numbers of Americans in their final years.

While many telemarketing pitches are for legitimate products, the number of scams aimed at older Americans is on the rise, the authorities say. In 2003, the Federal Trade Commission estimated that 11 percent of Americans over age 55 had been victims of consumer fraud. The following year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation shut down one telemarketing ring that stole more than $1 billion, spanned seven countries and resulted in 565 arrests. Since the start of last year, federal agencies have filed lawsuits or injunctions against at least 68 telemarketing companies and individuals accused of stealing more than $622 million.

“Most people have no idea how widespread and sophisticated telemarketing fraud has become,” said James Davis, a Federal Trade Commission lawyer. “It shocks even us.”

Many of the victims are people like Mr. Guthrie, whose name was among the millions that infoUSA sold to companies under investigation for fraud, according to regulators. Scam artists stole more than $100,000 from Mr. Guthrie, his family says. How they took much of it is unclear, because Mr. Guthrie’s memory is faulty and many financial records are incomplete.

What is certain is that a large sum was withdrawn from his account by thieves relying on Wachovia and other banks, according to banking and court records. Though 20 percent of the total amount stolen was recovered, investigators say the rest has gone to schemes too complicated to untangle.

Senior executives at infoUSA were contacted by telephone and e-mail messages at least 30 times. They did not respond.

Wachovia, in a statement, said that it had honored all requests for refunds and that it was cooperating with authorities.

Mr. Guthrie, however, says that thieves should have been prevented from getting access to his funds in the first place.

“I can’t understand why they were allowed inside my account,” said Mr. Guthrie, who lives near Des Moines. “I just chatted with this woman for a few minutes, and the next thing I knew, they took everything I had.”

Sweepstakes a Common Tactic

Investigators suspect that Mr. Guthrie’s name first appeared on a list used by scam artists around 2002, after he filled out a few contest entries that asked about his buying habits and other personal information.

He had lived alone since his wife died. Five of his eight children had moved away from the farm. Mr. Guthrie survived on roughly $800 that he received from Social Security each month. Because painful arthritis kept him home, he spent many mornings organizing the mail, filling out sweepstakes entries and listening to big-band albums as he chatted with telemarketers.

“I really enjoyed those calls,” Mr. Guthrie said. “One gal in particular loved to hear stories about when I was younger.”

Some of those entries and calls, however, were intended solely to create databases of information on millions of elderly Americans. Many sweepstakes were fakes, investigators say, and existed only to ask entrants about shopping habits, religion or other personal details. Databases of such responses can be profitably sold, often via electronic download, through list brokers like Walter Karl Inc., a division of infoUSA.

The list brokering industry has existed for decades, primarily serving legitimate customers like magazine and catalog companies. InfoUSA, one of the nation’s largest list brokers and a publicly held company, matches buyers and sellers of data. The company maintains records on 210 million Americans, according to its Web site. In 2006, it collected more than $430 million from clients like Reader’s Digest, Publishers Clearinghouse and Condé Nast.

But infoUSA has also helped sell lists to companies that were under investigation or had been prosecuted for fraud, according to records collected by the Iowa attorney general. Those records stemmed from a now completed investigation of a suspected telemarketing criminal.

By 2004, Mr. Guthrie’s name was part of a list titled “Astroluck,” which included 19,000 other sweepstakes players, Iowa’s records show. InfoUSA sold the Astroluck list dozens of times, to companies including HMS Direct, which Canadian authorities had sued the previous year for deceptive mailings; Westport Enterprises, the subject of consumer complaints in Kansas, Connecticut and Missouri; and Arlimbow, a European company that Swiss authorities were prosecuting at the time for a lottery scam.

(In 2005, HMS’s director was found not guilty on a technicality. Arlimbow was shut down in 2004. Those companies did not return phone calls. Westport Enterprises said it has resolved all complaints, complies with all laws and engages only in direct-mail solicitations.)

Records also indicate that infoUSA sold thousands of other elderly Americans’ names to Windfall Investments after the F.B.I. had accused the company in 2002 of stealing $600,000 from a California woman.

Between 2001 and 2004, infoUSA also sold lists to World Marketing Service, a company that a judge shut down in 2003 for running a lottery scam; to Atlas Marketing, which a court closed in 2006 for selling $86 million of bogus business opportunities; and to Emerald Marketing Enterprises, a Canadian firm that was investigated multiple times but never charged with wrongdoing.

The investigation of Windfall Investments was closed after its owners could not be located. Representatives of Windfall Investments, World Marketing Services, Atlas Marketing and Emerald Marketing Enterprises could not be located or did not return calls.

The Federal Trade Commission’s rules prohibit list brokers from selling to companies engaged in obvious frauds. In 2004, the agency fined three brokers accused of knowingly, or purposely ignoring, that clients were breaking the law. The Direct Marketing Association, which infoUSA belongs to, requires brokers to screen buyers for suspicious activity.

But internal infoUSA e-mail messages indicate that employees did not abide by those standards. In 2003, two infoUSA employees traded e-mail messages discussing the fact that Nevada authorities were seeking Richard Panas, a frequent infoUSA client, in connection with a lottery scam.

“This kind of behavior does not surprise me, but it adds to my concerns about doing business with these people,” an infoUSA executive wrote to colleagues. Yet, over the next 10 months, infoUSA sold Mr. Panas an additional 155,000 names, even after he pleaded guilty to criminal charges in Nevada and was barred from operating in Iowa.

Mr. Panas did not return calls.

“Red flags should have been waving,” said Steve St. Clair, an Iowa assistant attorney general who oversaw the infoUSA investigation. “But the attitude of these list brokers is that it’s not their responsibility if someone else breaks the law.”

Millions of Americans Are Called

Within months of the sale of the Astroluck list, groups of scam artists in Canada, the Caribbean and elsewhere had the names of Mr. Guthrie and millions of other Americans, authorities say. Such countries are popular among con artists because they are outside the jurisdiction of the United States.

The thieves would call and pose as government workers or pharmacy employees. They would contend that the Social Security Administration’s computers had crashed, or prescription records were incomplete. Payments and pills would be delayed, they warned, unless the older Americans provided their banking information.

Many people hung up. But Mr. Guthrie and hundreds of others gave the callers whatever they asked.

“I was afraid if I didn’t give her my bank information, I wouldn’t have money for my heart medicine,” Mr. Guthrie said.

Criminals can use such banking data to create unsigned checks that withdraw funds from victims’ accounts. Such checks, once widely used by gyms and other businesses that collect monthly fees, are allowed under a provision of the banking code. The difficult part is finding a bank willing to accept them.

In the case of Mr. Guthrie, criminals turned to Wachovia.

Between 2003 and 2005, scam artists submitted at least seven unsigned checks to Wachovia that withdrew funds from Mr. Guthrie’s account, according to banking records. Wachovia accepted those checks and forwarded them to Mr. Guthrie’s bank in Iowa, which in turn sent back $1,603 for distribution to the checks’ creators that submitted them.

Within days, however, Mr. Guthrie’s bank, a branch of Wells Fargo, became concerned and told Wachovia that the checks had not been authorized. At Wells Fargo’s request, Wachovia returned the funds. But it failed to investigate whether Wachovia’s accounts were being used by criminals, according to prosecutors who studied the transactions.

In all, Wachovia accepted $142 million of unsigned checks from companies that made unauthorized withdrawals from thousands of accounts, federal prosecutors say. Wachovia collected millions of dollars in fees from those companies, even as it failed to act on warnings, according to records.

In 2006, after account holders at Citizens Bank were victimized by the same thieves that singled out Mr. Guthrie, an executive wrote to Wachovia that “the purpose of this message is to put your bank on notice of this situation and to ask for your assistance in trying to shut down this scam.”

But Wachovia, which declined to comment on that communication, did not shut down the accounts.

Banking rules required Wachovia to periodically screen companies submitting unsigned checks. Yet there is little evidence Wachovia screened most of the firms that profited from the withdrawals.

In a lawsuit filed last year, the United States attorney in Philadelphia said Wachovia received thousands of warnings that it was processing fraudulent checks, but ignored them. That suit, against the company that printed those unsigned checks, Payment Processing Center, or P.P.C., did not name Wachovia as a defendant, though at least one victim has filed a pending lawsuit against the bank.

During 2005, according to the United States attorney’s lawsuit, 59 percent of the unsigned checks that Wachovia accepted from P.P.C. and forwarded to other banks were ultimately refused by other financial institutions. Wachovia was informed each time a check was returned.

“When between 50 and 60 percent of transactions are returned, that tells you at gut level that something’s not right,” said the United States attorney in Philadelphia, Patrick L. Meehan.

Other banks, when confronted with similar evidence, have closed questionable accounts. But Wachovia continued accepting unsigned checks printed by P.P.C. until the government filed suit in 2006.

Wachovia declined to respond to the accusations in the lawsuit, citing the continuing civil litigation.

Although Wachovia is the largest bank that processed transactions that stole from Mr. Guthrie, at least five other banks accepted 31 unsigned checks that withdrew $9,228 from his account. Nearly every time, Mr. Guthrie’s bank told those financial institutions the checks were fraudulent, and his money was refunded. But few investigated further.

The suit against P.P.C. ended in February. A court-appointed receiver will liquidate the firm and make refunds to consumers. P.P.C.’s owners admitted no wrongdoing.

Wachovia was asked in detail about its relationship with P.P.C., the withdrawals from Mr. Guthrie’s account and the accusations in the United States attorney’s lawsuit. The company declined to comment, except to say: “Wachovia works diligently to detect and end fraudulent use of its accounts. During the time P.P.C. was a customer, Wachovia honored all requests for returns related to the P.P.C. accounts, which in turn protected consumers from loss.”

Prosecutors argue that many elderly accountholders never realized Wachovia had processed checks that withdrew from their accounts, and so never requested refunds. Wachovia declined to respond.

The bank’s statement continued: “Wachovia is cooperating fully with authorities on this matter.”

Some Afraid to Seek Help

By 2005, Mr. Guthrie was in dire straits. When tellers at his bank noticed suspicious transactions, they helped him request refunds. But dozens of unauthorized withdrawals slipped through. Sometimes, he went to the grocery store and discovered that he could not buy food because his account was empty. He didn’t know why. And he was afraid to seek help.

“I didn’t want to say anything that would cause my kids to take over my accounts,” he said. Such concerns play into thieves’ plans, investigators say.

“Criminals focus on the elderly because they know authorities will blame the victims or seniors will worry about their kids throwing them into nursing homes,” said C. Steven Baker, a lawyer with the Federal Trade Commission. “Frequently, the victims are too distracted from dementia or Alzheimer’s to figure out something’s wrong.”

Within a few months, Mr. Guthrie’s children noticed that he was skipping meals and was behind on bills. By then, all of his savings — including the proceeds of selling his farm and money set aside to send great-grandchildren to college — was gone.

State regulators have tried to protect victims like Mr. Guthrie. In 2005, attorneys general of 35 states urged the Federal Reserve to end the unsigned check system.

“Such drafts should be eliminated in favor of electronic funds transfers that can serve the same payment function” but are less susceptible to manipulation, they wrote.

But the Federal Reserve disagreed. It changed its rules to place greater responsibility on banks that first accept unsigned checks, but has permitted their continued use.

Today, just as he feared, Mr. Guthrie’s financial freedom is gone. He gets a weekly $50 allowance to buy food and gasoline. His children now own his home, and his grandson controls his bank account. He must ask permission for large or unusual purchases.

And because he can’t buy anything, many telemarketers have stopped calling.

“It’s lonelier now,” he said at his kitchen table, which is crowded with mail. “I really enjoy when those salespeople call. But when I tell them I can’t buy anything now, they hang up. I miss the good chats we used to have.”

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Basic Facts And Figures About Iraq Remain Unknown

The New York Times
In the Heat of Battle and Politics, the Hard Facts Melt
By JAMES GLANZ

BEWARE the benchmarks of Iraq.

As Congress and the American public begin to ask for tangible and quantitative measures of whether the troop increase in Iraq is creating improvement or presiding over failure, it would be wise to remember the kind of place where the United States is dispatching — metaphorically, at least — its statisticians.

Iraq is the place where there are still wildly conflicting estimates of something as fundamental as how many civilians have died as a result of the war. It is a place where some government officials will swear that there are 348,000 wonderfully trained, motivated and equipped Iraqis in the security forces and other officials will tell you that most of those troops and police either have questionable loyalties, lack equipment or simply do not always report for duty.

The precision is very important: 348,000, according to Wednesday’s update from the Pentagon. Or, perhaps, hundreds of thousands less. And the disagreements do not go away even when various groups agree on basic facts — say, that the United States has now spent $8.9 billion of its own and Iraq’s money on rebuilding the electricity and oil sectors, according to the latest figures from the Government Accountability Office.

In those same numbers, oversight agencies see a rebuilding program that has fallen short of virtually all of its performance goals and had little impact on Iraqis’ lives, while organizations that are heavily involved in the program, like the United States Army Corps of Engineers, see a huge success that has not received due credit.

“Nationwide, and since the time of sovereignty in 2004, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has completed over 3,000 of the original 3,786 projects in the Iraq Reconstruction Program,” according to a recent news release from the corps.

How can a single country look so kaleidoscopically different depending on the point of view?

Part of the answer is clearly that competing political entities strain with all their might to see a reality that fits their convictions — and that includes official entities that are determined to show progress, said Justin Logan, an analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute. “You can always show progress,” he said. “Somewhere in Iraq, something is better than it was three months ago, and you can go and get somebody to write that story.”

That method survives after four years in Iraq, Mr. Logan said, through “a mixture of wishful thinking and selective disclosure.”

Mr. Logan’s analysis finds support among some of the oversight officials who have looked most closely at the reality of Iraq.

Take, for example, those 348,000 Iraqis in the military and police forces. Joseph A. Christoff, director of the international affairs and trade team at the Government Accountability Office, who has made repeated trips to Iraq to carry out his research, said that the figure enormously overstates the actual readiness of the forces.

“Half of them don’t show up for work each day,” he said. “They have divided loyalties — many of the people are loyal to Shia militias. And they are dependent on the United States for their movement, their equipment, their ammunition and their life support.”

There is a related problem, he said, when the United States attempts to show that it has made progress against what it sees as the main foe in Iraq, Al Qaeda, by killing or capturing the organization’s leaders or disrupting its operations. In fact, he pointed out, it has long been known that the violence in Iraq stems not from one source but from a mishmash of conflicts, including purely criminal gangs working with both Shiite and Sunni armed groups, which in turn battle each other and fight among themselves.

“And all of them have the general goal of getting us out of there,” Mr. Christoff said.

Several other factors have recently made it even tougher to obtain solid information about what is actually happening on the streets of Baghdad, a notoriously opaque environment even before the fog of war set in.

First, as the often desperate security situation has damaged the normal functioning of parts of the government, information that used to flow quickly through chains of command at the Interior and Defense Ministries is no longer as readily available. And most Iraq analysts have concluded that the rise of sectarian powers in Iraq has weakened the office of the prime minister, which had previously functioned as a sort of information clearinghouse during crises.

A second problem is that by necessity Iraqi government officials are surrounded by thicker and thicker blankets of security where they operate, within the strange menagerie of the Green Zone. That prevents them from making their own observations of life in the rest of Baghdad, said Laith Kubba, who was the spokesman for Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari until Mr. Jaafari left office in early 2006.

“The gap has gone too wide,” Mr. Kubba said. “Many of those people have insulated themselves from what’s out on the streets.”

Another difficulty for the United States is the remarkable weakness American officials seem to have for people who say what Americans want to believe about whatever country they happen to be in. The effect has been obvious at least since “The Quiet American” by Graham Greene, set in 1950s Vietnam, and Iraq has been fertile ground for this particular brand of bad information.

Yet even for Iraqis with no motivation to shade the facts, exactly what effect the recent American troop buildup has had on the streets remains unclear. Mishkat al-Moumin, a former Iraqi environment minister in close touch with family in Baghdad, says the buildup has already increased security and allowed people to lead slightly more normal lives in some neighborhoods.

But Louay Bahry, a former Iraqi academic, says that his contacts are telling him that the so-called surge has been a failure and has not improved security. Both Ms. Moumin and Mr. Bahry are now affiliated with the Middle East Institute, a research organization in Washington.

Still, even Mr. Bahry says that there are tenuous indications that all is not lost.

“In certain areas of Baghdad,” he said, “real estate has revived itself. People are buying and selling houses. People would not do this if there were not some good signs for the future.”

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Carter blasts Bush, Blair on Iraq

Reuters
Carter blasts Bush, Blair on Iraq

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former President Jimmy Carter blasted George W. Bush's presidency as "the worst in history" in international relations and denounced British Prime Minister Tony Blair's loyal relationship with Bush in interviews released on Saturday.

"I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history," Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, said in a telephone interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette from the Carter Center in Atlanta.

"The overt reversal of America's basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including (those of) George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me," Carter told the newspaper.

In an interview on Britain's BBC radio, Carter slammed Blair, who leaves office next month, for his tight relations with Bush, particularly concerning the Iraq war.

"Abominable. Loyal, blind, apparently subservient," Carter said when asked how he would characterize Blair's relationship with Bush.

"I think that the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world," Carter said.

Carter, who was president from 1977-1981 and won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for his charitable work, was an outspoken opponent of the invasion of Iraq before it was launched in 2003.

In the newspaper interview, Carter said Bush had taken a "radical departure from all previous administration policies" with the Iraq war.

"We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered," Carter said.

REPUBLICANS STRIKE BACK

The White House declined to comment on his statements, but the Republican National Committee struck back at Carter.

"Most Americans will probably take his criticisms with a grain of salt considering he also challenged Ronald Reagan's strategy for the Cold War, and history has since proven him wrong," said RNC spokeswoman Amber Wilkerson.

Carter told the BBC that if Blair had opposed the invasion he could have reduced the ensuing harm by making it tougher for Washington to shrug off critics, even if the British prime minister had not been able to stop the war.

"It would certainly have assuaged the problems that have (arisen) lately," Carter said.

"One of the defenses of the Bush administration in America and worldwide ... has been: 'Okay, we must be more correct in our actions than the world thinks because Great Britain is backing us,'" Carter said.

"I think the combination of Bush and Blair giving their support to this tragedy in Iraq has strengthened the effort and has made opposition less effective and has prolonged the war and increased the tragedy that has resulted," he told the BBC.

Blair, who made an unannounced visit to Iraq on Saturday, has said he will step down in June. His Labour Party has named his long-serving finance minister, Gordon Brown, to succeed him.

Brown was a member of the Cabinet that voted in favor of the war, but has said mistakes were made in Iraq and he will review policy there.

In the newspaper interview, Carter, who brokered the Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel, also criticized Bush's Middle East policies.

"For the first time since Israel was founded, we've had zero peace talks to try to bring a resolution of differences in the Middle East. That's a radical departure from the past," Carter said.

(Additional reporting by Peter Graff in London)

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House GOP Uses Procedural Tactic To Frustrate Democratic Majority; Motion to Recommit Employed to Delay or Alter Legislation

washingtonpost.com
House GOP Uses Procedural Tactic To Frustrate Democratic Majority
Motion to Recommit Employed to Delay or Alter Legislation
By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer

House Republicans, fighting to remain relevant in a chamber ruled by Democrats, have increasingly seized on a parliamentary technique to alter or delay nearly a dozen pieces of legislation pushed by the majority this year.

And an election-year promise by Democrats to pay for any new programs they created has made it easier for Republicans to trip them up.

Tensions over the maneuvers reached a boil this week. Republicans used procedural tactics to stall floor debate for four hours Wednesday, and they are threatening to tie up future legislative action.

The stalling tactics prompted Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) to leave the floor and meet privately in his office with Republican Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and his whip, Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.). The men emerged with an uneasy detente that they said would last at least until Congress breaks for the Memorial Day recess, but the matter is far from settled.

Since January, GOP leaders have relied on a maneuver known as the "motion to recommit" to stymie Democrats and score political points for Republicans still adjusting to life in the minority.

The motion to recommit allows the minority a chance to amend a bill on the floor or send it back to committee, effectively killing it. In a legislative body in which the party in power controls nearly everything, it is one of the few tools the minority has to effect change.

In the 12 years of Republican control that ended in January, Democrats passed 11 motions to recommit. Republicans have racked up the same number in just five months of this Congress.

Democrats say any comparison is unfair because when Republicans controlled Congress, they directed their members to vote against all Democratic motions to recommit.

Now in the majority and mindful of staying there, Democrats have given no such instruction to their members, allowing them to break with the party if they choose. Many freshmen Democrats from GOP-leaning districts find themselves voting with Republicans as a matter of survival -- a reality Republicans have seized upon.

"Sometimes we offer motions to recommit to improve legislation -- sometimes it's to force Democrats in marginal districts to make tough choices," Boehner said. "Every time the Republicans win, it boosts morale. We're able to show unity, which is good for the overall team. Members feel good about winning on the House floor. And when you're in the minority, it doesn't happen that often."

Democrats dismiss the Republican maneuvers as largely symbolic and so arcane as to be irrelevant to the public.

"From a public policy standpoint, it's not very significant," said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), regarded as an expert in parliamentary combat. "It's almost a Capture the Flag game. The number of people in America who say, 'Oh my gosh, the Republicans won another motion to recommit' is very small."

But Republicans argue they have been able to make significant changes. They point to Thursday, when they successfully used a motion to recommit to restore millions of dollars for missile defense to a defense bill. It remains to be seen if that money will survive a conference committee.

"It's kind of a 'Rashomon' world," said Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution, referring to the movie in which participants in an event all recount it differently. "The two parties see it in very different terms."

The Democrats' own rules have made it easier for Republicans to offer motions to recommit. In January, the party promised to observe "pay-go" -- finding a way to pay for any new spending rather than adding to the federal deficit. The unintended consequence is that tax proposals open legislation to modifications by the minority that would not otherwise be allowed.

Such was the case in March, when Democrats tried to pass a bill to give the District of Columbia a vote in the House. The bill included an additional seat for Utah and a minuscule tax increase to pay for two more House seats -- it called for expanding a provision of federal tax withholding law by .003 percent.

Republicans seized on the opening and moved to recommit the bill to committee, attaching new language that would have thrown out the District's strict anti-gun laws.

Worried that conservative, pro-gun Democrats would feel compelled to vote with GOP and kill the bill, Democratic leaders yanked it from the floor. They regrouped and split the bill into two tightly written measures, both of which passed and are pending in the Senate.

But the problem for Democrats was apparent. "We need to address that, or we're going to be, on every bill . . . [facing] an amendment totally unrelated to the substance of the bill," Hoyer said at the time.

This week, Democratic staffers privately discussed a rule change to limit the Republicans' ability to make motions to recommit. GOP leaders were incensed and threatened to use all available procedural techniques to block every bill except war spending legislation. But Democrats are hampered by their promise to run the chamber in a more open fashion than Republicans did when in the majority.

Hoyer agreed to hold off on further rule changes until Memorial Day and consult Boehner and Blunt on possible changes.

"The bottom line is, the war goes on," Mann said. "The majority uses the rules to structure debates and limit amendments on matters where Republicans have a chance to either break up the Democrats' winning coalition or embarrass them."

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More Bush Scandals -- So What?

Huffington Post
Dave Johnson
More Bush Scandals -- So What?

So now the word seems to be rippling out about what has been going on in the Justice Department. Of course, bloggers have been shouting about how it was also going on in every department all along... And for once it seems like a few people beyond the bloggers actually care this time.

I think at this point a majority of the informed opinion-leadership - all the liberals and even some of the conservatives (David Brooks on the NewsHour tonite, for example) - understand that the Bush administration has, basically, thrown away rule of law. The word "lawlessness" is coming up a lot.

But so what? We knew that. Great. Now more people know it. So what?

That's pretty much what Bush is saying, too. "So what? What are you going to do about it?"

And that's the question, isn't it?

Meanwhile, what does the public "know?" - in contrast to the opinion-leaders I mentioned. I scanned all three network news shows tonite and there was no mention of this supposedly huge scandal on any of them.

But even if the public found out about all of this bruhaha -- and cared -- again, so what? No one is going to prosecute anyone for anything. I mean, they own the Justice Department and that's part of what this is about -- blocking prosecutions. They replaced everyone with Pat Robertson graduates like Monica Goodling, and fired prosecutors who were going after Republican corruption so, please, don't try to tell me anyone is going to be prosecuted.

The only "rule of law" solution available is impeachment. That ain't going to happen -- there are enough "movement" Republicans in the Senate to block impeachment even if it got that far.

So ... so what? Rule of law was so 20th-century.
Watch your backs.

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Evolution Opponent Is in Line for Schools Post

The New York Times
Evolution Opponent Is in Line for Schools Post
By CORNELIA DEAN

The National Association of State Boards of Education will elect officers in July, and for one office, president-elect, there is only one candidate: a member of the Kansas school board who supported its efforts against the teaching of evolution.

Scientists who have been active in the nation’s evolution debate say they want to thwart his candidacy, but it is not clear that they can.

The candidate is Kenneth R. Willard, a Kansas Republican who voted with the conservative majority in 2005 when the school board changed the state’s science standards to allow inclusion of intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism. Voters later replaced that majority, but Mr. Willard, an insurance executive from Hutchinson, retained his seat. If he becomes president-elect of the national group, he will take office in January 2009.

The group, based in Washington, is a nonprofit organization of state school boards whose Web site (www.nasbe.org) says it “works to strengthen state leadership in educational policymaking.”

Brenda L. Welburn, its executive director, said Mr. Willard’s only opponent in the race withdrew for personal reasons after the period for nominations had closed. Each state has one vote in the election.

Some scientists hope that when states submit their votes, they will write in someone else. One possible candidate is Sam Schloemer, a retired businessman from Cincinnati who won a seat on the Ohio board last November with the help of scientists who organized to defeat creationist candidates.

Mr. Schloemer, a Republican, said in a telephone interview that he had learned of Mr. Willard’s unopposed candidacy a few days before. He said he had no particular desire for the office, but added, “I would rather serve than see someone of his persuasion represent school boards across the country.” Mr. Willard, who is in his fourth year on the 16-member national board, said in a telephone interview yesterday that issues like the teaching of evolution were best left to the states.

“We don’t set curriculum standards or anything like that,” Mr. Willard said of the national organization, adding that it handled issues like advising state boards on how to deal with governance concerns or influxes of immigrant students or ways to raise academic achievement among members of disadvantaged groups.

He said, though, that he personally thought students should be taught about challenges to the theory of evolution, like intelligent design. And while he said he had not heard of a possible challenge to his candidacy, Mr. Willard added that he was not surprised by it.

“Some people are mindless about their attacks on anyone questioning anything Darwin might have said,” Mr. Willard said.

There is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the complexity and diversity of life on earth. Courts have repeatedly ruled that creationism and intelligent design are religious doctrines, not scientific theories.

People like Steve Rissing, a professor of biology at Ohio State University who was involved in the state election effort last fall, say they fear that if Mr. Willard is elected, challenges to the teaching of evolution would move to the national board. “Those of us in the trenches say, ‘Oh no, not again,’ ” Professor Rissing said.

Patricia Princehouse, a professor of evolutionary biology at Case Western Reserve University and a leader of the scientists’ efforts, said she hoped there would be many write-in votes. “Whether they decide it counts or not is up to Nasbe,” Professor Princehouse said, using the acronym for the national association. “But people do not have to endorse Willard’s candidacy.”

The association’s bylaws make no provision for write-ins, said Ms. Welburn, the executive director.

John G. West, associate director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, a group based in Seattle that espouses intelligent design, praised Mr. Willard’s views on evolution and denounced criticism of his candidacy as “the kind of thought-policing we are getting used to.”

But Kenneth R. Miller, a biology professor at Brown University who testified last year in a lawsuit over an effort to challenge the teaching of evolution in Dover, Pa., said he was “concerned” when he learned a supporter of intelligent design was slated to head the national school board group.

“We are in a nationwide struggle for the integrity of science education,” Professor Miller said, “and any situation that provides an opportunity for the opponents of science education to advance their agenda is a matter of concern.”

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Judge Told Leak Was Part of 'Policy Dispute'; Cheney Above The Law

washingtonpost.com
Judge Told Leak Was Part of 'Policy Dispute'
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer

Attorneys for Vice President Cheney and top White House officials told a federal judge yesterday that they cannot be held liable for anything they disclosed to reporters about covert CIA officer Valerie Plame or her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

The officials, who include senior White House adviser Karl Rove and Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, argued that the judge should dismiss a lawsuit filed by the couple that stemmed from the disclosure of Plame's identity to the media.

The suit claims that Cheney, Libby, Rove and former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage violated the couple's privacy and constitutional rights by publicly revealing Plame's identity in an effort to retaliate against Wilson. Plame's identity was disclosed in a syndicated column in July 2003, days after Wilson publicly accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence to exaggerate Iraq's nuclear threat and justify an invasion.

Libby was convicted in March of lying to a grand jury investigating the leak.

The lawyers said any conversations Cheney and the officials had about Plame with one another or with reporters were part of their normal duties because they were discussing foreign policy and engaging in an appropriate "policy dispute." Cheney's attorney went further, arguing that Cheney is legally akin to the president because of his unique government role and has absolute immunity from any lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge John D. Bates asked: "So you're arguing there is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- these officials could have said to reporters that would have been beyond the scope of their employment," whether the statements were true or false?

"That's true, Your Honor. Mr. Wilson was criticizing government policy," said Jeffrey S. Bucholtz, deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's civil division. "These officials were responding to that criticism."

Erwin Chemerinsky, a Duke University law professor who is representing Wilson and Plame, said the leak was no typical policy debate. President Bush himself said that revealing Plame's identity could be illegal conduct and a firing offense, he told Bates.

Chemerinsky said that after Plame's cover was blown, the couple feared for their safety and their children's safety and Plame lost any opportunity for advancement at the CIA.

"This isn't a case where the government said mean things about Mr. Wilson. This is about revealing the secret status of his wife to punish Mr. Wilson," Chemerinsky said. "In the end, this is egregious conduct that ruined a woman's career and put a family in danger."

Bates, who expressed doubts about arguments on both sides, said he will rule in the coming weeks whether to dismiss the case.

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Third-party White House bid could shake up race

Reuters
Third-party White House bid could shake up race
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In an unpredictable 2008 presidential race, the prospect of a viable third-party candidacy -- particularly a self-financed bid by billionaire Michael Bloomberg -- could be the biggest wild card of all.

Reports that Bloomberg, New York's Republican mayor, is willing to spend a big chunk of his personal fortune -- perhaps as much as $1 billion -- on a White House run set off a new round of speculation about his intentions and his possible impact on the November 2008 election.

The speculation was egged on by Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a conservative Republican and Iraq war opponent who also is considering an independent bid and had dinner with Bloomberg recently.

Hagel openly hinted about joining the mayor on a high-octane, third-party ticket that could reshape the political landscape and jolt the traditional U.S. two-party system.

"It's a great country to think about -- a New York boy and a Nebraska boy to be teamed up leading this nation," Hagel said earlier this week on CBS.

A third-party bid would hope to take advantage of public discontent with the Republican and Democratic parties, which already has led 60,000 people to sign up for an Internet-based movement aimed at fielding a bipartisan independent ticket in 2008.

The Unity '08 effort, led by a group of veteran political strategists from both parties, was inspired by the idea that both parties are dominated by their most extreme elements and a majority of Americans are looking for a centrist approach.

"The political system is at a point where the train has left the track," said Doug Bailey, a consultant on President Gerald Ford's 1976 campaign and founder of the Hotline political newsletter.

"There is no common ground and there is no capacity to seek common ground," said Bailey, a co-founder of the group along with Hamilton Jordan and Gerald Rafshoon, advisers to former President Jimmy Carter.

He said the group, which hopes to have 2 million delegates signed up to participate in its June 2008 online nominating convention, has talked to about 40 potential candidates. He refused to say whether that included Bloomberg and Hagel.

ACTING LIKE A CANDIDATE

Bloomberg has tried to scuttle talk about a presidential candidacy without flatly ruling it out. But the former Democrat, who turned Republican to run for mayor, has been acting very much like a candidate for something.

He revived his campaign Web site and traveled recently to Texas and Oklahoma, two states with relatively difficult procedures for getting independent candidates on the ballot, to outline a plan for a national energy policy.

Any third-party candidate would face enormous obstacles, from meeting requirements to get on state ballots to producing from scratch the organizations that drive campaigns. But Bloomberg would have the money to overcome many of the normal hurdles, analysts said.

"Bloomberg can simply buy himself some support. Putting a billion dollars in the race can overcome a lot of challenges," said Jack Pitney of Claremont McKenna College in California.

A liberal on social issues with a strong track record as a manager and businessman, Bloomberg would probably pull votes from both parties, Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf said.

The history of modern third-party U.S. presidential bids offers few success stories. The most recent third-party candidates to break double-digits in popular vote percentage were businessman Ross Perot, who won 19 percent in 1992, and Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who won 13 percent in 1968.

Third-party candidates often play the role of spoiler, most famously in 2000 when Green Party candidate Ralph Nader was blamed by Democrats for taking enough votes from Al Gore in Florida to hand the White House to Republican George W. Bush.

Public discontent does not necessarily translate into a winning third-party run, analysts said.

"Americans like the idea of third parties, but as we've seen repeatedly they are pretty well satisfied with the two-party system," said public opinion analyst Karlyn Bowman of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

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House nixes proposal to bar Iran attack

USA TOday
House nixes proposal to bar Iran attack

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House rejected two measures Wednesday that would have required President Bush to seek congressional approval before attacking Iran.

The proposals were offered as amendments to a $646 billion defense policy bill for the 2008 budget year, which starts Oct. 1.

The first proposal, by Rep. Robert Andrews, D-N.J., would have prohibited money in the bill from being used to strike Iran without Congress' blessing; it fell by a 216-202 vote. A similar, but more sweeping measure offered by Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., was rejected by a 288-136 vote.

The votes were primarily symbolic; Bush has not said he is planning to invade Iran. But because of missteps made in assessing pre-war intelligence on Iraq, many Democrats said the legislation was necessary.

"If it were any president I don't think we'd have to worry about this," said Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I.

A similar proposal on Iran initially was included in this year's war spending bill drafted by the House. But Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., agreed to remove the requirement after several Democrats said they were worried about Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Those concerns were expressed again Wednesday by both Republicans and some Democrats who said the proposals would unnecessarily tie the president's hands and leave Israel and the United States vulnerable.

"No one wants another war," said Rep. Shelly Berkley, D-Nev. "But if we don't take a tough stance on Iran and maintain the threat of military action, Iran will get the message that we don't care if it gets nuclear weapons."

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Researchers challenge Kennedy lone gunman theory

Reuters
Researchers challenge Kennedy lone gunman theory
By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bullet analysis used to justify the lone assassin theory behind President John F. Kennedy's assassination is based on flawed evidence, according to a team of researchers including a former top FBI scientist.

Writing in the Annals of Applied Statistics, the researchers urged a reexamination of bullet fragments from the 1963 shooting in Dallas to confirm the number of bullets that struck Kennedy.

Official investigations during the 1960s concluded that Kennedy was hit by two bullets fired by Lee Harvey Oswald.

But the researchers, including former FBI lab metallurgist William Tobin, said new chemical and statistical analyses of bullets from the same batch used by Oswald suggest that more than two bullets could have struck the president.

"Evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed," the researchers said in their article.

"If the assassination (bullet) fragments are derived from three or more separate bullets, then a second assassin is likely."

The Kennedy assassination set off a whirlwind of theories about who killed the 46-year-old president.

The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, concluded in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, fired three shots, one of which missed the president's car. There have been many challenges to its conclusions over the years.

The House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that Oswald was probably part of a conspiracy that could have included a second gunman who fired but missed Kennedy.

The panel's supporting evidence was a bullet analysis that said fragments collected from the site were too similar to be from more than two slugs.

But the latest report found that many bullets from the same batch used by Oswald had a similar composition.

"Further, we found that one of the thirty bullets analyzed in our study also compositionally matched one of the fragments from the assassination," the article said.

"This finding means that the bullet fragments from the assassination that match could have come from three or more separate bullets."

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Dobson says he will not back Giuliani in 2008

Reuters
Dobson says he will not back Giuliani in 2008

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Religious conservative leader James Dobson said on Thursday he would not vote for 2008 Republican presidential contender Rudolph Giuliani under any circumstances because of his support for abortion rights and his three marriages.

Dobson, head of the influential Colorado-based group Focus on the Family, said Giuliani was not suited for the White House. Dobson said he would be willing to sit out the November 2008 election if Giuliani is the Republican presidential nominee.

"I cannot, and will not, vote for Rudy Giuliani in 2008," Dobson wrote in a commentary posted online at the Web site worldnetdaily.com.

Given a choice between Giuliani and the Democratic nominee, he said, "I will either cast my ballot for an also-ran -- or if worse comes to worst -- not vote in a presidential election for the first time in my adult life."

Dobson is a prominent voice among the religious and social conservatives who are powerful forces in the early Republican nominating contests. His criticism follows several weeks of attacks on Giuliani by conservatives over his support of abortion rights.

The attacks were spurred by his comments at the first Republican debate in California, where he appeared to be waffling on the issue.

"Is Rudy Giuliani presidential timber? I think not," Dobson said in the commentary.

"Can we really trust a chief executive who waffles and feigns support for policies that run contrary to his alleged beliefs? Of greater concern is how he would function in office," he said.

Giuliani leads the 10-man Republican field in national polls despite longstanding doubts about his candidacy from conservatives, but he has seen his lead over second-place Sen. John McCain of Arizona shrink in recent weeks as social issues have moved to the fore of the debate.

Giuliani earned a national reputation for his leadership while he was mayor of New York after the September 11 attacks.

Dobson said Giuliani had tried to hide his views from conservatives, but "this leopard has not changed his spots." He also said the former mayor's three marriages raised "moral concerns about Giuliani's candidacy that conservatives should find troubling."

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House demands plan for Guantanamo detainees

Reuters
House demands plan for Guantanamo detainees
By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Shrugging off a possible veto from President George W. Bush, the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday demanded the administration develop a plan to transfer detainees from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The 220-208 vote came on an amendment to a bill authorizing defense programs that the Democratic-led House passed overwhelmingly. The Senate has yet to act, and then the two versions will have to be reconciled.

Earlier this week the White House warned lawmakers not to "micro-manage" the treatment of Guantanamo detainees, saying any bill that blocked the administration from detaining people it has designated as "enemy combatants" could provoke a veto.

The United States is holding hundreds of suspected militants at the prison. U.S. defense officials say 95 percent are connected to Al Qaeda, the Taliban or their associates.

Lawmakers noted that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has suggested Congress should explore with the White House ways to close the prison, while not releasing its most dangerous detainees. Human rights groups have demanded that Guantanamo be closed and detainees charged with crimes or released.

The proposal by Rep. James Moran that cleared the House requires the administration to report on plans to place captives on trial, transfer them to other facilities, or release them.

"LACK OF INFORMATION"

"Whether you like it or not, whether you believe Guantanamo Bay is a blight on our international standing, or whether you believe these detainees should be held and tried in the United States, we should all agree the policy options before the president and Congress should not be limited by a lack of information," the Virginia Democrat said.

Pentagon officials say they plan to try about 80 of the 385 Guantanamo detainees under a military commissions structure set up by Congress last year. Those trials are scheduled to begin this summer. The Pentagon also has about 80 detainees it wants to transfer to other countries. The rest are in legal limbo.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, a Missouri Democrat, pledged to offer another bill soon to restore to Guantanamo detainees rights that Congress limited last year to challenge their imprisonment.

Moran's amendment was denounced by House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio, who said Democrats "are leading us down the road to importing dangerous terrorists into our local communities" as Guantanamo prisoners are moved.

Boehner also disparaged the bill's cuts in missile defense programs as "a giant step backwards." The legislation would cut $160 million the administration wanted to develop a missile defense interceptor site in Poland. But it also says that if a deal on the site is reached with Poland before September 30, 2008, the administration can ask again for the money.

The mammoth defense bill authorizes $504 billion for defense programs. It calls for increases of 13,000 Army and 9,000 Marine Corps active duty personnel over current authorized level.

It also allocates $142 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan during fiscal 2008, which starts October 1, but for this to take effect, a partner defense appropriations bill must pass later this year.

Democrats want to wind down the Iraq war, but House leaders decided not to fight that battle on this defense programs legislation. They are negotiating with the White House over whether to approve a separate Iraq war funding bill with money for the current fiscal year.

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Al Gore says he's out of love with politics

Reuters
Al Gore says he's out of love with politics

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Former U.S. vice president Al Gore says he has "fallen out of love with politics" and does not want to run for president although he has not ruled it out completely.

"If I do my job right, all the candidates will be talking about the climate crisis," Gore said in an interview with Time Magazine released on Thursday.

"And I'm not convinced the presidency is the highest and best role I could play."

He added, "It would take a lot to disabuse me of the notion that my highest and best use is to keep building that consensus."

Asked what it would take for him to run, Gore said, "I can't say because I'm not looking for it. But I guess I would know it if I saw it. I haven't ruled it out. But I don't think it's likely to happen."

The Time article also includes an excerpt from Gore's new book, "The Assault on Reason," in which he writes: "It is too easy and too partisan to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush.

"We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes. We have a Congress. We have an independent judiciary. We have checks and balances. We are a nation of laws. We have free speech. We have a free press. Why have they all failed us? ... American democracy is now in danger not from any one set of ideas, but from unprecedented changes in the environment within which ideas either live and spread, or wither and die."

Gore, a Democrat, served as Bill Clinton's vice president for eight years and lost the 2000 presidential election to Bush.

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Senators strike deal on immigration overhaul

Reuters
Senators strike deal on immigration overhaul
By Donna Smith

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Leading U.S. senators reached an agreement on Thursday on immigration reform that would strengthen U.S. borders and grant lawful status to millions of illegal immigrants, a deal that could lead to a major legislative victory for President George W. Bush.

This sets the stage for what is expected to be a passionate Senate debate over the plan, which would give some 12 million illegal immigrants legal status, create a temporary worker program and set up a merit-based system for future newcomers.

"The agreement we've just reached is the best possible chance we will have in years to secure our borders, bring millions of people out of the shadows and into the sunshine of America," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat who helped lead the bipartisan talks.

Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican said: "No matter what we craft it's going to be attacked from both the right and the left."

"This is the best I think that can be done," he added.

Immigration is a hot-button issue that has divided the United States in a way that has made it difficult to pass reforms. Hundreds of thousands of Latinos and other immigrants rallied as recently as May 1 to demand change.

Many Republicans oppose amnesty and blocked consideration of immigration legislation last year in the U.S. House of Representatives, saying it rewarded those who broke U.S. laws.

Republican Reps. Lamar Smith of Texas and Peter King of New York condemned the Senate compromise, issuing a statement saying it "treats illegal immigrants better than those who play by the rules and come in the right way."

The Senate compromise would put illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship after a probationary period and make them pay stiffer fines than proposed in last year's bill.

The agreement was reached after marathon talks. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, set aside next week for Senate debate. The House is expected to take up its version of immigration reform later this year.

DEMOCRATIC RESERVATIONS, BUSH SUPPORT

One Democratic negotiator said he could not support the compromise, citing the temporary worker program and fees to be paid in the legalization process.

"I for one cannot settle for something that isn't responsible, or something that creates a bigger problem than already exists," New Jersey Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez said. "It doesn't have to be perfect, but it does have to be fair, humane, and practical."

Bush embraced the Senate breakthrough. "I really am anxious to sign a comprehensive immigration bill as soon as we possibly can. Today we took a good step in that direction," he said.

Under the legislation, a new visa would be created for illegals who can prove they arrived in the United States before January 1, 2007. They would receive a probationary visa during background checks. That would convert to a renewable four-year "Z" visa allowing employment in the United States and eventual eligibility for a permanent residency, or green card.

The measure would create a temporary worker program that would allow workers from Mexico and other countries to work for two years, if they went home before they returned. At least 400,000 visas a year could be issued.

Temporary workers would be allowed three two-year work periods, but their time in the United States would help earn points toward permanent status.

Mexico called the deal "positive" and "an important step toward the passing of a complete migration accord this year."

"The Mexican government hopes that the different players involved in the process of debating and eventually approving this initiative will take advantage of this opportunity," foreign ministry spokesman Victor Aviles said in a statement.

The legislation also includes tough border security and workplace enforcement measures that would have to take effect before the temporary worker program goes forward.

The proposal would limit immigration for "family reunification" to close relatives and establish a merit-based system with points for skills, education, English and family ties. Kennedy said the merit system would include low-skilled workers as well as highly skilled ones.

Some immigrant groups called the compromise a first step.

"The package is generous for those who are already here and those who have waited patiently to come legally," said Frank Sharry, executive director of the pro-immigrant National Immigration Forum.

"How the deal treats immigrant families and workers coming in the future is where the biggest problem lies," he said.

(Additional reporting by Andy Sullivan in Washington, Tim Gaynor in Phoenix and Catherine Bremer in Mexico City)

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Democrats seek "no confidence" vote on Gonzales

Reuters
Democrats seek "no confidence" vote on Gonzales
By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats announced on Thursday they will seek a U.S. Senate vote of "no confidence" in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, hopeful it will prompt President George W. Bush's embattled friend to resign.

The White House brushed off the Democrats' latest move tied to their widening investigation of Gonzales for the firing of federal prosecutors as "nothing more than a meaningless political act." A White House spokesman added that the attorney general still had "the full confidence of the president."

Democrats said they intend to hold a "no confidence" vote on Gonzales as early as next week and expect it to pass with the support of a number of Republicans.

A half dozen of the 49 Republicans in the 100-member, Democratic-led Senate have called on Gonzales to step down, with Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota becoming the latest to do so. "I believe Attorney General Gonzales is unable to provide the type of leadership needed," Coleman said on Thursday.

Bush has repeatedly rejected bipartisan calls to dismiss Gonzales, a longtime aide and fellow Texan who has been under fire for months for ousting eight federal prosecutors last year. Critics charge many were sacked for political reasons.

Gonzales appeared to have weathered the storm in recent weeks, insisting with White House support at two congressional hearings that the firings were justified though mishandled.

But he faced a new criticism this week after a former aide testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

SPY PROGRAM ROLE

Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey said while White House counsel in 2004, Gonzales paid a hospital visit to the seriously ill John Ashcroft, then attorney general, in a failed bid to pressure him to set aside concerns by his own Justice Department and reauthorize Bush's domestic spying program.

Comey said Bush ended a showdown between the White House and Justice Department by ordering changes to bring the program into compliance with the law.

Bush brushed off questions on Thursday about the matter, telling reporters, "There's a lot of speculation about what happened and what didn't happen."

"I'm not going to talk about it. It's a very sensitive program," Bush said, even as House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, wrote Gonzales demanding more information about the program.

Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat who has led the charge against Gonzales, said, "I think for the Senate, the last straw was Jim Comey's sad tale of what happened in the hospital that night."

Earlier on Thursday, Sen. Arlen Specter, the Judiciary Committee's top Republican, predicted that by the time the panel completes its investigations of Gonzales -- which could take months -- he will no longer be attorney general.

"I have a sense that when we finish our investigation we may have a conclusion of the tenure of the attorney general," Specter said.

"It will be clear to even the attorney general and the president that we are looking at a dysfunctional department" that needs new leadership, Specter added.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, introduced a resolution calling on Bush to immediately offer replacements for Gonzales and World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, who is under fire for arranging a promotion for a female companion.

"Be it the World Bank or the Department of Justice, the way to maintain the integrity of an institution is to have leaders of integrity at the top," Dodd said.

(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan)

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Report: Wolfowitz broke World Bank rules

Yahoo! News
Report: Wolfowitz broke World Bank rules
By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz broke bank rules in arranging a hefty compensation package for his girlfriend, a situation that has caused a "crisis in the leadership" at the institution, according to a report released Monday by a special bank panel.

Wolfowitz described the report's findings as "unfair and unwarranted."

The special panel said the bank's full 24-member board must consider whether Wolfowitz "will be able to provide the leadership" to ensure that the bank achieves its mission of fighting poverty around the world.

The board will ultimately decide Wolfowitz's fate.

Board members have discussed a range of disciplinary options. It could fire Wolfowitz, ask him to resign, signal that it lacks confidence in his leadership or reprimand him. Board members have been leaning toward an expression of no confidence or other tough language that would make it difficult — if not impossible — for Wolfowitz to stay on.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, however, does not think the facts merit dismissal, according to department spokeswoman Brookly McLaughlin.

Wolfowitz said he acted in good faith in arranging Riza's pay package. He has accused his critics of launching a "smear campaign" against him.

He is scheduled to make an appearance before the board late Tuesday. The proceedings are not public. A decision could come as early as Tuesday or Wednesday.

The controversy that has put Wolfowitz's job in jeopardy involves his handling of the 2005 compensation pay package for his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, a bank employee.

The special bank panel concluded that Wolfowitz's involvement in the details of the package "went beyond the informal advice" given by the bank's ethics committee and that he "engaged in a de facto conflict of interest," the report stated. Under Wolfowitz's contract as well as the code of conduct for board officials, he was required to avoid any conflict of interest, the report said.

In a response to the panel's report, Wolfowitz said, "It is highly unfair and unwarranted to now find that I engaged in a conflict of interest because I relied on the advice of the ethics committee as best I understood it."

Wolfowitz also said he did not attempt to hide details of the arrangement from bank officials. "I did not have it locked up or placed in a secret drawer; it was a contract of the bank," Wolfowitz wrote in his submission to the panel.

Riza worked for the bank before Wolfowitz took over as president in June 2005. She was moved to the State Department to avoid a conflict of interest but stayed on the bank's payroll. Her salary went from close to $133,000 to $180,000. With subsequent raises, it eventually rose to $193,590.

The panel concluded that the salary increase Riza received "at Mr. Wolfowitz's direction was in excess of the range" allowed under bank rules.

Wolfowitz "placed himself in a conflict of interest situation" when he became involved in the terms and details of Riza's assignment and pay package and "he should have withdrawn from any decision- making in the matter," the panel said.

The panel acknowledged, however, that the informal advice provided by the ethics committee "was not a model of clarity."

Still, the entire episode involving Wolfowitz's handling of the pay package "underscores that there is a crisis in the leadership of the bank," the panel said.

In addition, the special panel said it was of the view that the controversy "has had a dramatic negative effect on the reputation and credibility" of the bank, had raised "serious questions" about the bank's governance and ability to carry out its mission and was contributing to "erosion in the operational effectiveness" of the bank.

The special panel also raised fears that the fracas could hinder the bank's ability to raise billions of dollars from countries around the world to provide financial help to poor countries.

Before he took the bank's helm, Wolfowitz was the No. 2 official at the Pentagon and a key architect of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

European members — led by Germany, France and the Dutch — are pushing for Wolfowitz to resign. European and other countries, however, would still like to avoid a pitched battle with the United States, the bank's largest shareholder. It's unclear, though, whether such a battle can be avoided.

The Bush administration continued to stand by Wolfowitz.

"A clear reading of the facts in this report demonstrates that this was a unique situation, missteps occurred on all sides and communication may not have been clear enough," said Treasury's McLaughlin.

"The facts reveal that President Wolfowitz acted to find a pragmatic solution and to carry out the direction he received from the ethics committee," she added. "Secretary Paulson spoke to some of his colleagues today from other countries and expressed that he does not think the facts merit dismissal."

To that end, the administration has intensified efforts to win support for Wolfowitz and is reaching out to the other members of the Group of Seven countries — Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada. A conference call among the G7 countries is anticipated.

The United States requested earlier Monday that the special panel's report be delayed being sent to the board by a few hours, said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. "But it had nothing to do with phone calls or contact with other countries," Fratto said. "We just needed the time to ensure that the report is fair and factual and to allow for a proper process for discussions going forward. It had nothing to do with presidential activity."

By tradition, the World Bank has been run by an American, while the International Monetary Fund has been run by a European. President Bush tapped Wolfowitz, a move that was approved by the bank's board. The United States keenly wants to preserve that decades-old tradition.

Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that Wolfowitz should remain chief of the bank. The White House has repeatedly expressed confidence in Wolfowitz.

However, many of the bank's staff, former bank officials, aid groups and Democratic politicians also have called on Wolfowitz to resign.

For now, Wolfowitz intends to carry on with his duties. He still plans to make a trip to Europe later in the week.

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The Freshman: Barely in Office, but G.O.P. Rivals Are Circling

The New York Times
The Freshman
Barely in Office, but G.O.P. Rivals Are Circling
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ

MILFORD, N.Y. — The furniture has yet to arrive for one of the offices that Kirsten Gillibrand, a freshman Democrat in Congress, recently opened here. But the list of Republicans angling to challenge her next year is already growing.

Alexander F. Treadwell, a former state Republican Party chairman, opened a headquarters near Ms. Gillibrand’s main office in Saratoga Springs and has assembled a campaign staff, including a former political director for the House Republicans’ re-election committee.

Richard Wager, an aide to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City, formed a campaign committee and is raising money from his old network of allies, including well-heeled donors on Wall Street.

And several other potential rivals — including a retired United States Army lieutenant colonel, a former candidate for governor and even the man Ms. Gillibrand defeated last year — are considering a run.

It may seem unusually early for the opposition to begin mobilizing against Ms. Gillibrand, who only recently wrote and introduced her first bill since arriving in Washington four months ago. But the maneuvering reflects a growing confidence among Republicans that they can win back the district, where the vast majority of voters are registered to their party.

Indeed, Republican officials in Washington are so confident of Ms. Gillibrand’s vulnerabilities that they say they intend to field test an array of themes in the district that they believe can be applied to other freshman Democrats around the country.

Chief among those themes: Ms. Gillibrand’s willingness to collect special-interest money despite having deplored the influence of special interests in Washington as a candidate last year, and her propensity for voting with what they call the party’s left-leaning leadership after having campaigned as a centrist.

“There are a lot of these recently elected Democrats who claimed to be reformers of the system on the campaign trail but have turned out to be something quite different,” said Ken Spain, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

All this has placed enormous pressure on Ms. Gillibrand, 40, to raise a great deal of money just months after she won her seat in November. Though her advisers say raising money does not detract from legislating, there is little question it has lengthened her workweek.

Those demands were evident one recent weekend, when she arrived late to a family barbecue after having attended both a fund-raiser in Cooperstown and a town-hall-style meeting in Milford where officials and residents aired their concerns about issues like the local economy and schools.

The event in Cooperstown was the eighth fund-raising reception this year held by Ms. Gillibrand, one of the largest fund-raisers in the House in the first four months of this year, having taken in nearly $700,000.

“It’s the reality of modern-day politics,” she said, with a hint of resignation in her voice.

Ms. Gillibrand has agreed to allow The New York Times to chronicle her first year in office representing New York’s 20th Congressional District, which runs from the mid-Hudson Valley to Lake Placid.

For her and other freshman lawmakers, it is a time of intense learning and sudden challenges, harried travel and nonstop work. But it is also a period of political peril: Gary Jacobson, a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, has found that while veteran incumbents enjoy a re-election rate of 98 percent, the rate drops to less than 92 percent for first-term incumbents.

Not surprisingly then, 30 of the 41 Democratic freshmen in the House are facing Republicans who have either announced their candidacies or are said to have plans to announce them, according to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Political analysts in both parties predict that the race will cost much more than the roughly $6 million that Ms. Gillibrand and her Republican predecessor, John E. Sweeney, spent on their campaigns last year.

John Nolan, who is known as Jasper and has been chairman of the Saratoga County Republican Committee for the past 20 years, says that he has been telling prospective candidates that they will need at least $1 million by the beginning of next year if they hope to compete effectively.

“It’s never too early to start running when you are going up against an incumbent,” he said. “You can’t wait until 2008.”

But even Republicans are aware that there are risks in gearing up this early in a district where there is ample evidence that the bitterly contested race between Ms. Gillibrand and Mr. Sweeney left voters weary.

A reminder of those perils came a few weeks ago when the editor of The Glens Falls Post-Star described the Republicans moving to challenge her as “piranhas” and pointedly asked in a column, “Shouldn’t someone be allowed to do their job for at least a year before they have to worry about keeping it?”

Still, Republicans have not been shy about attacking Ms. Gillibrand, for example, by trying to use one of her own open-government ideas against her.

Shortly after taking office, Ms. Gillibrand directed her staff to publish the details of her meetings, no matter how sensitive, on her Congressional Web site, calling the listing the Sunlight Report.

But Republicans see these reports as a potential trove of damaging information. Examining them, they discovered, for instance, that Ms. Gillibrand, while vacationing with her family in Europe recently, held several fund-raisers for her re-election campaign, including two in London and one in Paris.

Michael Brady, a former National Republican Congressional Committee operative, disseminated the information on a new Internet news service, the Majority Accountability Project, that he started, noting that it is illegal for foreign citizens to contribute to American campaigns. (The Gillibrand camp insisted that attendees were required to show American passports before being permitted into the events and that no money was donated by foreign citizens.)

In an interview, Mr. Brady accused Ms. Gillibrand of hypocrisy, saying that she had denounced Mr. Sweeney during the campaign for holding a weekend fund-raiser with pharmaceutical lobbyists at a ski resort in Park City, Utah.

“This is a woman who criticized her opponent for going to Utah, and here she is going to fund-raisers in foreign countries,” Mr. Brady said.

But to Gillibrand supporters who have been concerned that Republicans may use her Sunlight Report against her, the episode shows that “no good deed goes unpunished,” as one of her advisers put it.

Republicans are also depicting Ms. Gillibrand as a liberal who is cloaking her true ideological leanings behind the politically moderate language she employs in her public appearances in the district, as well as in her mailings.

Mr. Nolan, the Republican leader in Saratoga, is seeking to tie Ms. Gillibrand to the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi — a strategy that is also being employed by Republican operatives in Washington who are compiling a political dossier on Ms. Gillibrand.

“She’s kind of attached to the hip of Pelosi, who is one of the most left-wing speakers in American history,” Mr. Nolan said.

Ms. Gillibrand scoffed at such criticism, which she said began within weeks of her taking office. She pointed to what she considered her accomplishments so far: voting to cut interest rates on federally backed college loans; supporting security initiatives recommended by the 9/11 Commission; providing $1 million in grants for sewage, water and road projects in her district.

“It’s political,” she concluded about the attacks. “It’s not about my performance or the good job I am doing.”

How far the Republican candidates themselves are willing to go in directly attacking Ms. Gillibrand is an open question. Many are clearly mindful of the fact that voters were turned off by the ugly tone of the race between Ms. Gillibrand and Mr. Sweeney.

(In the final days of that contest, for example, Mr. Sweeney accused the Gillibrand campaign of being behind published reports that his wife placed a call to 911 to report that he had physically abused her. No charges resulted from the episode, which he called campaign propaganda. Her campaign denied Mr. Sweeney’s contention.)

“The voters of the 20th District have gone through a negative campaign in the past, and anyone who goes that way again will turn them off,” said Mr. Wager, the Bloomberg aide, who has been traveling the district meeting with party leaders and rank-and-file Republicans.

Mr. Treadwell, the former state Republican Party chairman, agreed. “I think people are tired of it,” he said.

Mr. Treadwell, who recently met with Republican leaders in Washington and sent letters to all 1,400 Republican committeemen in the 20th District, said he is focused on building support for his candidacy among Republicans — not attacking someone who has barely been in office.

“She’s just starting,” he said of Ms. Gillibrand. “We’ll have to see how her record develops.”

Through it all, Ms. Gillibrand has worked like a candidate who is in a tight race. She visits even the most politically unwelcoming regions of her district, trying to deliver constituent services and to make the case that she is staying above the political fray.

That was the case recently when she came here to Otsego County, a heavily Republican area that represented a tiny percentage of the overall vote in the previous election. As is her practice, she took along an aide to handle constituent needs, like helping to obtain Social Security benefits.

Tom Gale, the Republican town supervisor of Milford, said he was pleasantly surprised to see Ms. Gillibrand. “It’s good to see that kind of representation,” he said. “She actually took the time to come here even though the population here isn’t all that large.”

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McCain and Bush: Making a Mockery of Democracy in Iraq

Huffington Post
Arianna Huffington
McCain and Bush: Making a Mockery of Democracy in Iraq

It's an odd thing to be running for president while simultaneously denigrating the very idea of democracy. But, then, the Republican Party's relationship to democracy has become, to put it charitably, very odd. Right now, they're barely on speaking terms, and if they could just have the whole relationship annulled, they probably would. Just like Rudy did with his first marriage (you know, the one to his cousin that lasted 14 years).

But wasn't democracy in the Middle East what the entire Iraq adventure was all about? Or, I should say, wasn't it the reason of last resort when the other 217 reasons turned out to be lies? Well, apparently, the idea of bringing the Iraqis democracy was about as real as Saddam's WMD.

Just listen to John McCain -- the biggest supporter of the war outside of Dick Cheney -- on this week's Meet the Press. Tim Russert asked him about the fact that 144 members of the 275 person Iraqi parliament signed a legislative petition last week calling on the U.S. to set a timetable to withdraw:

RUSSERT: The duly elected people's bodies, the U.S. Congress and the Iraqi parliament, say they want a troop withdrawal. That's more than a poll. Isn't that the voice of the people?

McCAIN: ...There is a certain amount of domestic political calculations involved there in what the Iraqi, quote, "parliament" said.

You could almost see the contempt dripping off McCain's lips: "The Iraqi, quote, 'parliament.'"

So what, pray tell, is the difference between a "parliament" and a parliament? To McCain it's apparently whether the parliament agrees with him. And, by the way, Senator, there is another word for "domestic political calculations": democracy. But McCain, like Bush, is too arrogant to believe that real democracy could ever include disagreement with their wishes.

The syllogism goes something like this:

a) I'm right.
b) Democracy is right.
c) Whatever I agree with is therefore "democracy" and whatever I don't agree with, isn't.

At least McCain didn't attack the Iraqi legislators as being "un-American."

Bush's lack of respect for democracy runs even deeper than McCain's and is topped only by his cynical use -- and abandonment -- of the concept.

Throughout the Iraq debacle, Bush has insisted that Iraq is a sovereign country ("Let Freedom Reign!") and that if the Iraqis didn't want us there we would leave. Indeed, in January 2005, on the eve of the Iraqi election, the president was asked if America would pull out of Iraq if the new government asked him to do so. "Absolutely," he replied. "This is a sovereign government. They're on their feet."

But now that a majority of that government is calling for a withdrawal date, what has been the president's response? Silence. Which is standard operating procedure for those in this administration. Any time they fail on their stated goals, they just make up new ones. Any time a fact comes out that belies their increasingly skewed view of reality, they just deny it. And as the circle of war supporters gets smaller and smaller, the last dead-enders -- which, unfortunately, includes every serious GOP candidate for president -- grow more detached.

What's worse for the president is that the war isn't even a left/right issue anymore -- and hasn't been for a long time now. John McCain may discount what the Iraqi parliament did last week, but George Will doesn't. "We may be watching the wrong legislature," he told George Stephanopoulos on This Week. "We're watching Congress on Capitol Hill. There are 275 seats in the Iraqi parliament -- 138 of them are occupied by people -- that's one more than a majority -- who signed a petition..."

But to McCain, Bush, Cheney and their dwindling allies, that doesn't matter. And if it means turning up their noses at democracy in action, so be it.

The danger for them, of course, is that it's a lot easier to discount democracy in Iraq than democracy back here at home. Americans made a "domestic political calculation" in November; they're going to make another in 2008. And "Making a Mockery of Democracy" isn't likely to be a winning campaign slogan for McCain or the GOP.

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U.S. Senate Democrats want Iraq war deadline: Reid

Reuters
U.S. Senate Democrats want Iraq war deadline: Reid
By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Democrats want to spell out a time frame to withdraw combat troops from Iraq, but might offer President George W. Bush power to waive the deadlines, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on Monday.

"We've not, on this side of aisle, lost sight of the fact the American people have concluded the president's Iraq policy has failed and we're demanding a new way forward," said Reid, of Nevada, who a few weeks ago concluded the Iraq war was "lost."

In an attempt to again gauge Senate sentiment for placing end-dates for U.S. involvement in a war now in its fifth year, Reid has attached two Iraq amendments to an unrelated water resources bill the Senate is debating.

One would wind down U.S. involvement early next year by prohibiting combat funds after March 31. The other would call for troop withdrawals to begin this year and set a goal of finishing by March 31 next year. But Bush could waive the dates, Reid said.

Reid added that he and fellow Democrats were prepared to pass a bill to fund the Iraq war that is "very, very close" to a bill Congress sent Bush last month, which he vetoed.

The White House restated its opposition to a bill that includes timelines for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq, saying it sends the wrong message to the troops, as well as allies and enemy forces.

"A timeline for when we hope to leave the battlefield is not the message we should be sending to any of these audiences. The bottom line is that a date for retreat is a date for retreat, and the president opposes such provisions," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

VETOED MEASURE

On May 1, Bush rejected a $124 billion funding bill, mainly for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that would have required U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq to begin no later than October 1. The vetoed measure also set a nonbinding goal of March 31 for removing all combat troops.

Last week, the House of Representatives passed a different bill Bush has promised to veto. It would provide only enough money for the military to fight in Iraq for the next two or three months. A second batch of funds would be voted upon in late July to decide whether the additional money would be spent on more combat or on withdrawing troops.

In the meantime, the House wants Bush to submit reports to Congress on the war's progress and the Iraq's government's ability to stabilize the country.

Reid told reporters he was still talking to White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten in hopes of reaching a compromise on Iraq war funds, which by various estimates could run out in the next two to six weeks.

With more Republicans in Congress starting to question his Iraq policy, Bush has embraced the idea of including in the war spending bill a list of "benchmarks" for measuring Iraq's progress in stabilizing a country that has suffered from relentless violence since the 2003 U.S. invasion.

But the president has not said he would accept a bill with consequences, such as troop withdrawals, if progress lags.

Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, gave her fellow liberals a full House vote on ending the war by early next year, knowing it would be defeated. But supporters said the 171 votes in favor showed congressional sentiment is turning against the war.

No matter how the two Senate votes go, the chamber still would have to pass a separate war-funding bill, probably this week. After passage, the House and Senate would have to work out a compromise bill to send to Bush and hope he signs it.

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Gonzales deputy resigns from Justice Department

Reuters
Gonzales deputy resigns from Justice Department
By David Alexander

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, second-in-command to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and caught in the firestorm over the firing of federal prosecutors, resigned on Monday citing family financial reasons.

In a letter to Gonzales, who faces his own calls to resign for the scandal over last year's controversial firings, McNulty said he was stepping down "on a date to be determined in the late summer."

McNulty is the latest senior Justice Department official to resign since March as the Democratic-controlled Congress investigates a controversial department decision to fire eight of the country's 93 U.S. attorneys last year. A ninth federal prosecutors said last week he was pushed out as well.

McNulty told The Washington Post that the political tumult over the prosecutor dismissals, including his role in giving inaccurate information to Congress, did not play a part in his decision to resign after 18 months on the job.

"It's been a big issue for the past few months, but the timing of this is really about other things," McNulty told the paper. He also said he wanted to leave enough time for an orderly transition before his departure, the newspaper reported.

The administration has insisted the decision to dismiss the prosecutors was justified, though mishandled. Congressional investigators are attempting to determine if the firings were politically motivated.

According to documents released by the Justice Department, Gonzales aides said that the attorney general was upset by McNulty's testimony on Capitol Hill in February.

McNulty testified that only the federal prosecutor in Arkansas was let go so the job could be given to a former White House aide, with the others fired for performance-related issues.

When later information suggested otherwise, Gonzales said both he and his deputy were misinformed by top aides.

'OUTSTANDING PUBLIC SERVANT' - GONZALES

Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, who has been among those pressing the Senate Judiciary Committee investigation of the firings, used McNulty's resignation to criticize the administration.

"It seems ironic that Paul McNulty, who at least tried to level with the committee, goes, while Gonzales, who stonewalled the committee, is still in charge. This administration owes us a lot better," he said.

McNulty's resignation follows that of former Justice Department aide Monica Goodling, who abruptly quit last month. Goodling, as counselor to Gonzales and Justice Department White House liaison, was involved in the prosecutor firings.

In March, Kyle Sampson resigned as chief of staff to Gonzales after acknowledging that he did not tell other department officials sooner about his dealings with the White House over the firings.

Michael Battle, the Justice official who informed prosecutors that they were being dismissed also quit in March. Justice officials said at the time that his resignation had long been planned.

In his resignation letter, McNulty wrote, "The financial realities of my college-age children and two decades of public service lead me to a long overdue transition in my career."

Gonzales praised McNulty's record of service.

"Paul is an outstanding public servant and a fine attorney who has been valued here at the department, by me and so many others, as both a colleague and a friend. He will be missed," the attorney general said, without mentioning the recent controversy.

At the White House, spokeswoman Dana Perino said, "The president greatly appreciates all that Paul McNulty has done on behalf of the American people. He's been a tireless public servant and he has a tremendous future in front of him."

(Additional reporting by Joanne Allen and James Vicini)

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