A Party Inverted

The New York Times
March 30, 2005

A Party Inverted
By BILL BRADLEY

FIVE months after the presidential election Democrats are still pointing fingers at one another and trying to figure out why Republicans won. Was the problem the party's position on social issues or taxes or defense or what? Were there tactical errors made in the conduct of the campaign? Were the right advisers heard? Was the candidate flawed?

Before deciding what Democrats should do now, it's important to see what Republicans have done right over many years. When the Goldwater Republicans lost in 1964, they didn't try to become Democrats. They tried to figure out how to make their own ideas more appealing to the voters. As part of this effort, they turned to Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and soon to become a member of the United States Supreme Court. In 1971 he wrote a landmark memo for the United States Chamber of Commerce in which he advocated a sweeping, coordinated and long-term effort to spread conservative ideas on college campuses, in academic journals and in the news media.

To further the party's ideological and political goals, Republicans in the 1970's and 1980's built a comprehensive structure based on Powell's blueprint. Visualize that structure as a pyramid.

You've probably heard some of this before, but let me run through it again. Big individual donors and large foundations - the Scaife family and Olin foundations, for instance - form the base of the pyramid. They finance conservative research centers like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, entities that make up the second level of the pyramid.

The ideas these organizations develop are then pushed up to the third level of the pyramid - the political level. There, strategists like Karl Rove or Ralph Reed or Ken Mehlman take these new ideas and, through polling, focus groups and careful attention to Democratic attacks, convert them into language that will appeal to the broadest electorate. That language is sometimes in the form of an assault on Democrats and at other times in the form of advocacy for a new policy position. The development process can take years. And then there's the fourth level of the pyramid: the partisan news media. Conservative commentators and networks spread these finely honed ideas.

At the very top of the pyramid you'll find the president. Because the pyramid is stable, all you have to do is put a different top on it and it works fine.

It is not quite the "right wing conspiracy" that Hillary Clinton described, but it is an impressive organization built consciously, carefully and single-mindedly. The Ann Coulters and Grover Norquists don't want to be candidates for anything or cabinet officers for anyone. They know their roles and execute them because they're paid well and believe, I think, in what they're saying. True, there's lots of money involved, but the money makes a difference because it goes toward reinforcing a structure that is already stable.

To understand how the Democratic Party works, invert the pyramid. Imagine a pyramid balancing precariously on its point, which is the presidential candidate.

Democrats who run for president have to build their own pyramids all by themselves. There is no coherent, larger structure that they can rely on. Unlike Republicans, they don't simply have to assemble a campaign apparatus - they have to formulate ideas and a vision, too. Many Democratic fundraisers join a campaign only after assessing how well it has done in assembling its pyramid of political, media and idea people.

There is no clearly identifiable funding base for Democratic policy organizations, and in the frantic campaign rush there is no time for patient, long-term development of new ideas or of new ways to sell old ideas. Campaigns don't start thinking about a Democratic brand until halfway through the election year, by which time winning the daily news cycle takes precedence over building a consistent message. The closest that Democrats get to a brand is a catchy slogan.

Democrats choose this approach, I believe, because we are still hypnotized by Jack Kennedy, and the promise of a charismatic leader who can change America by the strength and style of his personality. The trouble is that every four years the party splits and rallies around several different individuals at once. Opponents in the primaries then exaggerate their differences and leave the public confused about what Democrats believe.

In such a system tactics trump strategy. Candidates don't risk talking about big ideas because the ideas have never been sufficiently tested. Instead they usually wind up arguing about minor issues and express few deep convictions. In the worst case, they embrace "Republican lite" platforms - never realizing that in doing so they're allowing the Republicans to define the terms of the debate.

A party based on charisma has no long-term impact. Think of our last charismatic leader, Bill Clinton. He was president for eight years. He was the first Democrat to be re-elected since Franklin Roosevelt. He was smart, skilled and possessed great energy. But what happened? At the end of his tenure in the most powerful office in the world, there were fewer Democratic governors, fewer Democratic senators, members of Congress and state legislators and a national party that was deep in debt. The president did well. The party did not. Charisma didn't translate into structure.

If Democrats are serious about preparing for the next election or the next election after that, some influential Democrats will have to resist entrusting their dreams to individual candidates and instead make a commitment to build a stable pyramid from the base up. It will take at least a decade's commitment, and it won't come cheap. But there really is no other choice.

Bill Bradley, a former Democratic senator from New Jersey, is a managing director of Allen & Company.

Read More...

Summary only...

In the Name of Politics

The New York Times
March 30, 2005

In the Name of Politics
By JOHN C. DANFORTH

St. Louis — BY a series of recent initiatives, Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians. The elements of this transformation have included advocacy of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, opposition to stem cell research involving both frozen embryos and human cells in petri dishes, and the extraordinary effort to keep Terri Schiavo hooked up to a feeding tube.

Standing alone, each of these initiatives has its advocates, within the Republican Party and beyond. But the distinct elements do not stand alone. Rather they are parts of a larger package, an agenda of positions common to conservative Christians and the dominant wing of the Republican Party.

Christian activists, eager to take credit for recent electoral successes, would not be likely to concede that Republican adoption of their political agenda is merely the natural convergence of conservative religious and political values. Correctly, they would see a causal relationship between the activism of the churches and the responsiveness of Republican politicians. In turn, pragmatic Republicans would agree that motivating Christian conservatives has contributed to their successes.

High-profile Republican efforts to prolong the life of Ms. Schiavo, including departures from Republican principles like approving Congressional involvement in private decisions and empowering a federal court to overrule a state court, can rightfully be interpreted as yielding to the pressure of religious power blocs.

In my state, Missouri, Republicans in the General Assembly have advanced legislation to criminalize even stem cell research in which the cells are artificially produced in petri dishes and will never be transplanted into the human uterus. They argue that such cells are human life that must be protected, by threat of criminal prosecution, from promising research on diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and juvenile diabetes.

It is not evident to many of us that cells in a petri dish are equivalent to identifiable people suffering from terrible diseases. I am and have always been pro-life. But the only explanation for legislators comparing cells in a petri dish to babies in the womb is the extension of religious doctrine into statutory law.

I do not fault religious people for political action. Since Moses confronted the pharaoh, faithful people have heard God's call to political involvement. Nor has political action been unique to conservative Christians. Religious liberals have been politically active in support of gay rights and against nuclear weapons and the death penalty. In America, everyone has the right to try to influence political issues, regardless of his religious motivations.

The problem is not with people or churches that are politically active. It is with a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement.

When government becomes the means of carrying out a religious program, it raises obvious questions under the First Amendment. But even in the absence of constitutional issues, a political party should resist identification with a religious movement. While religions are free to advocate for their own sectarian causes, the work of government and those who engage in it is to hold together as one people a very diverse country. At its best, religion can be a uniting influence, but in practice, nothing is more divisive. For politicians to advance the cause of one religious group is often to oppose the cause of another.

Take stem cell research. Criminalizing the work of scientists doing such research would give strong support to one religious doctrine, and it would punish people who believe it is their religious duty to use science to heal the sick.

During the 18 years I served in the Senate, Republicans often disagreed with each other. But there was much that held us together. We believed in limited government, in keeping light the burden of taxation and regulation. We encouraged the private sector, so that a free economy might thrive. We believed that judges should interpret the law, not legislate. We were internationalists who supported an engaged foreign policy, a strong national defense and free trade. These were principles shared by virtually all Republicans.

But in recent times, we Republicans have allowed this shared agenda to become secondary to the agenda of Christian conservatives. As a senator, I worried every day about the size of the federal deficit. I did not spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the institution of marriage. Today it seems to be the other way around.

The historic principles of the Republican Party offer America its best hope for a prosperous and secure future. Our current fixation on a religious agenda has turned us in the wrong direction. It is time for Republicans to rediscover our roots.

John C. Danforth, a former United States senator from Missouri, resigned in January as United States ambassador to the United Nations. He is an Episcopal minister.

Read More...

Summary only...

Lions, Lambs, Elephants, Donkeys and City Hall

The New York Times
March 30, 2005

Lions, Lambs, Elephants, Donkeys and City Hall
By JIM RUTENBERG

The Rev. Al Sharpton has thrown his support behind the proposed West Side stadium, a major initiative of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's. Fernando Ferrer, a Democrat who wants Mr. Bloomberg's job, is courting police officers, a group generally considered a key constituency for a Republican mayor running on his public safety record.

James S. Oddo, one of the few Republicans in the City Council, is a frequent ally of the pro-gay marriage, pro-tax, pro-abortion rights Democratic mayoral candidate, Gifford Miller, while Charles E. Schumer, the senior senator from New York and one of the state's leading Democrats, frequently compliments Mr. Bloomberg. And there was Mr. Bloomberg on NY1 News on Monday night speaking in glowing terms about Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

By the standards of past mayoral races, lions are lying down with lambs in this contest, and wolves are keeping hens as pets. Although it is in its early stages, many alliances seem oddly out of place, longtime political observers say.

There is plenty of time for the city's political planets to realign, but for now, several factors have come together to cause the Republican incumbent and his Democratic challengers to spend more time courting each other's voting bases than their own. In some cases, they are gaining backing among the others' supporters.

Most important, Mr. Bloomberg, though nominally a Republican, often acts like a Democrat, siding with that party on many social issues.

The city's racial tensions have often been a catalyst for political polarization, but they have been relatively quiet over the past three years, in large part because Mr. Bloomberg's Police Department has worked to keep them so.

The mayor's stadium plan has attracted an unlikely group of cheerleaders eager to see jobs created for black and Hispanic workers if the project goes through. And Democrats, who often form a circular firing squad, are weary and divided after a bruising mayoral campaign in 2001.

"It is kind of crazy," said Jennifer Cunningham, political director for 1199/S.E.I.U., the health care workers' union, which is still weighing its endorsement. "I think we have the combination of shifting demographics and the seeming disparity between people running like Democrats but voters electing Republicans."

Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, said that as things stand now, "Politics is a little up for grabs in the city," citing Mr. Bloomberg's unusual political position as the primary cause.

The mayor switched his party registration from Democrat to Republican in 2000 and has even referred to himself as "a liberal." In the latest Marist poll, taken earlier this month, nearly a third of the voters interviewed said they considered Mr. Bloomberg to be more a Democrat than a Republican.

Some Democrats believe that such a perception could hurt the mayor among the more conservative white voters in the boroughs outside Manhattan who were crucial to his victory over Mark Green in 2001. Democratic strategists say they believe their party might just be able to pick up some of those voters, who were especially displeased with the mayor's 2002 property tax hike and who frequently complain about his failure to settle contract disputes with the teacher, fire and police unions.

For his part, Mr. Ferrer has been seriously tweaking his 2001 campaign theme, which revolved around "two New Yorks" - one poor and the other rich - which discomforted many white voters. The "other New York" for which he is vowing to fight this year seems to include more white and middle-class New Yorkers, if one judges by his appearances at community meetings in white neighborhoods in Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens and by a recent meet-and-greet event with voters at Zabar's on the Upper West Side.

Two weeks ago, Mr. Ferrer attended a Sergeants Benevolent Association meeting in hopes of winning its endorsement when he made his infamous remark that the fatal 1999 police shooting of Amadou Diallo was not a crime. The comment enraged many black voters, but his appearance at the meeting emphasized that Mr. Ferrer and his strategists see a chance to pick up support from the police unions, who are hostile to Mr. Bloomberg.

The mayor's political strategists are not too worried about that possibility, and even see new opportunities among voters who supported Mr. Green last time. In fact, Mr. Green may have given them cause for that optimism by frequently speaking well of his 2001 opponent, going so far as to say of Mr. Bloomberg in a recent interview, "I'm not going to vote for him, but he's been pretty competent, with flaws."

Even Mr. Sharpton has said Mr. Bloomberg's style seems so low-key next to that of his bare-knuckled predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, that he is often hard pressed to organize opposition against the mayor. "I've always said that Bloomberg benefited from having succeeded such a figure of hostility," Mr. Sharpton said during an interview late last week.

Mr. Sharpton's hushed tones do little for the mayor in certain quarters of the city - conservative, white ones - where Mr. Bloomberg could use some help. The mayor may not have helped himself in those areas by constantly praising Democratic lawmakers.

Having endorsed Mr. Schumer last year and suggesting he could give Mrs. Clinton the nod, Mr. Bloomberg risks reigniting anger within his Republican base. As one of Mr. Bloomberg's primary opponents, the former Republican leader of the City Council, Thomas V. Ognibene, put it: "Once you have a quote, Republican mayor endorsing Democratic candidates for statewide office, that has a ripple effect," adding, "It throws everything off kilter."

Then again, everything already is.

Read More...

Summary only...

Lively Debate as Justices Address File Sharing

The New York Times
March 30, 2005
Lively Debate as Justices Address File Sharing
By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON, March 29 - The much-heralded Supreme Court showdown in the Grokster case between old-fashioned entertainment and newfangled technology found the justices surprisingly responsive on Tuesday to warnings from Grokster, the software maker that allows Internet users to share computer files on peer-to-peer networks, that a broad definition of copyright infringement could curtail innovation.

Justice David H. Souter asked Donald B. Verrilli Jr., the lawyer arguing for the Hollywood studios and the recording industry, to envision "a guy sitting in his garage inventing the iPod."

"I know perfectly well that I can buy a CD and put it on my iPod," Justice Souter said. "But I also know if I can get music without buying it, I'm going to do so."

Because that possibility was so obvious, he continued: "How do we give the developer the confidence to go ahead? On your theory, why isn't it a foregone conclusion from the outset that the iPod inventor is going to lose his shirt?"

That Justice Souter, the least technically minded of the justices - he still drafts his opinions by hand on a legal pad - could even invite a dialogue about Apple iPods, much less suggest that he could be tempted to engage in illegal file sharing, was an indication of how this confrontation of powerful interests had engaged the court.

But by the end of the lively argument pitting Grokster and its allies on the electronic frontier against the entertainment community's stalwart defense of intellectual property rights, any prediction about what the court will actually decide appeared perilous. The justices themselves seemed taken aback by the procedural complexities of the case, Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios v. Grokster Ltd., No. 04-480, which moved through the lower federal courts on summary judgment, without a trial.

Some justices appeared tempted by the prospect of allowing the studios and record companies to get to trial on a legal theory that the lower courts did not address: that Grokster and the other defendant, StreamCast Networks, which offers the Morpheus file-sharing service, are liable for copyright infringement for having actively induced consumers to use their software to download copyrighted material on an immense scale.

The Federal District Court in Los Angeles, in a decision affirmed last year by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, took a different approach, ruling that the file-sharing networks were not liable because their services were "capable of substantial noninfringing uses."

The lower courts took that test from the Supreme Court's 1984 decision that absolved the Sony Corporation, manufacturer of the Betamax video recorder, of copyright liability for infringing uses that consumers might make of the product.

The Sony decision provided the right answer, and that should be the end of the case, Richard G. Taranto, arguing for Grokster and StreamCast, told the court. He said it was "critical" for the Supreme Court to adhere to the "clear Sony rule" for the sake of "innovation protection."

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg objected, noting that the 1984 decision "goes on for 13 more pages" after articulating the test that provided Sony's defense.

"If the standard was that clear, the court would have stopped there," Justice Ginsburg continued. "I don't think you can take one sentence from a rather long opinion and say, 'Ah-hah, we have a clear rule.' "

In briefs filed as friends of the court, allies of the file-sharing networks in various technology industries and civil liberties organizations have depicted file sharing as a useful, if not vital, means of expanding knowledge through the inexpensive transmission and Internet archiving of lawful material in the public domain. As long as the noninfringing uses were not "far-fetched," Mr. Taranto said, the defense that applied to videocassette recorders should be available for his clients' "autonomous communication tool," as he described file sharing.

Whether this argument makes headway may depend on the technological universe that the court considers in applying it. Grokster and StreamCast are asking the court to look at all possible uses of file sharing, not just the use that is made of their own software. The plaintiffs, backed by the Bush administration, are asking the court to focus on the business of the defendants.

Paul D. Clement, the acting solicitor general, told the justices that while the Ninth Circuit had used as its test "the mere theoretical capability of noninfringing uses," the Supreme Court should look at the actual "business model" used by the defendants. It was an "extreme case," Mr. Clement said, a model built on "copyright infringement without liability, with the full knowledge that the draw is unlawful copying."

"Sony could have set up a 'theoretical capability' test, but it didn't," Mr. Clement continued. Instead, he pointed out, the Sony decision required evidence of a "substantial" noninfringing use. The court in that decision found that consumers used their VCR's primarily for recording television programs that they could watch later, a noninfringing use referred to as time-shifting.

Justice Antonin Scalia said he was concerned that legitimate uses of a new technology might need some time to become established; in the meantime, the developer would be defenseless against a copyright infringement suit. "What I worry about is a suit right out of the box," he said. "Do you give a company a couple of years to show 'substantial' noninfringement?"

Mr. Clement replied that in the government's view, there should be "a lot of leeway at the beginning." But that was "not this case," he said, asserting that Grokster and StreamCast had "a business plan from Day 1 to capitalize on Napster."

Napster, the original file-sharing network, was put out of business by a ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 2001 that it was secondarily liable for the copyright infringement committed by its users. The Ninth Circuit found that Grokster differed significantly from Napster because its software permits users to share files with one another directly, rather than going through a central computer server.

Mr. Verrilli, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, urged the justices not to rely on that distinction. "There is a shell game going on here," he said. "Our position is that we're entitled to injunctive relief against the continued operation of this gigantic machine that was built on infringement."

In a second argument on Tuesday, the court heard an appeal by the Federal Communications Commission and the cable industry of another Ninth Circuit ruling, this one with implications for the development of the business of providing high-speed access to the Internet. The Ninth Circuit rejected the commission's view that companies offering cable modem service should be considered in the "information service" rather than telecommunications business, and as such should be exempt from the extensive regulation to which federal law subjects traditional telephone companies.

At issue is the ability of Internet service providers to force cable companies to open their broadband lines. The outcome of the case, National Cable and Telecommunications Association v. Brand X Internet Services, No. 04-277, is likely to depend on how much deference the justices decide to give to the F.C.C. Based on the argument, the outlook is uncertain.

Read More...

Summary only...

Agencies Fight Over Report on Sensitive Atomic Wastes

The New York Times
March 30, 2005
Agencies Fight Over Report on Sensitive Atomic Wastes
By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON, March 29 - A semisecret debate is raging between the National Academy of Sciences and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about the vulnerability of nuclear wastes to terrorist attack and about how secret the debate should be.

The academy, under orders from Congress, produced a study last summer about whether the spent-fuel pools at nuclear reactors were vulnerable to terrorist attacks. The pools hold most of the radioactive material ever produced at the reactors, far more than the reactors themselves. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, an independent group of scientists published a paper in a Princeton scientific journal asserting that an enemy could drain a pool and set a fire that would be "significantly worse than Chernobyl."

Academy officials say they have hit a roadblock in releasing their report. By law, the academy, which Congress charters, coordinates the work of academic experts from around the country, and it is supposed to make its findings public. In cases like the nuclear waste one, it is supposed to work with the relevant federal agency to develop a version of its report that has no information that would be useful to terrorists.

The academy sent a draft to the regulatory commission in November. But the two have not agreed on what information to release. A commission official said the problem was "aggregation." Although no secret facts appear in the academy version, piecing together the material disclosed would provide useful information.

This month, the academy took the unusual step of sending its version to members of Congress, with classified information removed but still including "safety sensitive information."

A few days later, the commission sent several lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, a rebuttal to the classified report. A spokesman, Eliot Brenner, said this was not a response to the academy, but because Congress wanted to know what actions the commission would take.

According to the commission, the academy panel had "identified some scenarios that are unreasonable."

The rebuttal, sent by Nils J. Diaz, chairman of the commission, said using those situations could "lead to a misinterpretation of the actual risk, and this can cause confusion."

Some ideas put forward by the academy "lacked a sound technical basis," including having reactor operators move more fuel from the pools to dry casks, said the rebuttal, which was sent to Senator Pete V. Domenici, the New Mexico Republican who is chairman of a Senate subcommittee on energy and water.

Among engineers, those are fighting words. The rebuttal's characterization is "an incomplete and, consequently, less than accurate description of what our classified report had to say," the executive officer of the academy, E. William Colglazier, said in a telephone interview.

In separate interviews, two of the scientists who provided peer review of the academy study and an author of the study agreed. All three said they could not talk about what the report said because it remained classified at the insistence of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

When nuclear fuel is taken out of the reactor, it has to stay in the pool because it generates so much heat. After about five years, it cools enough to be put in a sealed cask of steel and concrete.

The casks are filled with inert gas to prevent rust. The fuel warms the gas, which transfers its heat to the exterior of the cask. Nearly half the reactors in the United States use such casks because they have run out of space in their fuel pools and because the government has not accepted the waste for permanent disposal. Building the casks is expensive, and the power plant operators have constructed them only as needed and not fast enough to lower the inventories in the pools.

The commission has repeatedly said cask storage and pool storage are equally safe. On March 14, Dr. Diaz told reporters at the National Press Club, "I don't see them as a significant radiological risk."

At many plants, the pools are below ground or nearly so, making attacks difficult. But at some reactors, the plants are well above grade. In Mr. Diaz's rebuttal, he refers to a recommendation by the academy that plants be analyzed individually to evaluate their vulnerability and that at some the commission "might determine that earlier movements of spent fuel from pools to dry storage would be prudent."

Frank N. von Hippel, a Princeton professor and co-author of the study that brought the issue to prominence, was also brought in as a peer reviewer of the academy study. He said it did not go nearly far enough in urging dry storage.

"I found it peculiar that the N.R.C. said they did," Dr. von Hippel said.

A declassified version might explain the apparent discrepancy. Mr. Brenner, the commission spokesman, said his agency sent a new draft to the academy on Tuesday.

Read More...

Summary only...

Ads Will Seek to Turn DeLay's Powerful Network Into His Downfall

The New York Times
March 30, 2005
Ads Will Seek to Turn DeLay's Powerful Network Into His Downfall
By GLEN JUSTICE

WASHINGTON, March 29 - For more than a decade, Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, has devoted himself to cultivating Republican allies along Washington's K Street lobbying corridor.

By promoting Republicans for top jobs and recruiting partners to push legislation and raise money, Mr. DeLay has built an unusually powerful network. That network has helped him increase the Republican majority in Congress, pass business-friendly legislation and collect more than $25 million since 1994, according to PoliticalMoneyLine, which tracks campaign finance.

But a series of criminal investigations, court cases and ethical inquiries have turned what was once a potent collection of allies into potential liabilities. A half-dozen people connected to Mr. DeLay have come under official scrutiny. Others, like a group of Mr. DeLay's friends and advisers at Alexander Strategy Group, have drawn attention after a client financed an expensive South Korea trip, including Mr. DeLay, that has raised ethical questions.

The problems of Mr. DeLay's associates have renewed criticism about his aggressive networking and fund-raising, criticism that Mr. DeLay has long dismissed as partisan attacks.

"Tom tends to push things to the very outer limit," said Representative Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican who has often opposed Mr. DeLay. "When you push things to the outer limit, you give your detractors the opportunity to criticize you and make charges against you."

Two left-leaning groups intend to do just that in tough advertising campaigns that attack the majority leader and highlight the scandals involving his former aides and advisers.

The Campaign for America's Future, which is calling for Mr. DeLay's resignation, is spending about $75,000 to run commercials in the majority leader's home district in Texas. The advertisement opens with a man wearing cuff links and a Rolex watch walking down the stairs into a basement, where he begins washing his hands. An announcer ticks off cases surrounding Mr. DeLay as the figure tries harder and harder to get clean.

"Tom DeLay can't wash his hands of corruption by involving Congress in one family's personal tragedy," an announcer says, referring to Mr. DeLay's involvement in the Terri Schiavo case. "But Congress can certainly wash its hands of Tom DeLay."

The Public Campaign Action Fund is spending $25,000 to pressure Republican lawmakers to denounce Mr. DeLay. Those drawing attention include Representative Doc Hastings of Washington, the chairman of the House ethics committee, and Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, who heads fund-raising for House Republicans.

The commercial involving Mr. Hastings exhorts him to "do your job and clean up Congress without delay."

Ellen Miller, deputy director at the Campaign for America's Future, said the group was focused on ethical issues throughout Congress.

"As with fish, rot starts at the head," Ms. Miller said. "The litany of complaints concerning ethical lapses by Tom DeLay have reached a point where somebody has to stand up and say, 'Wait a minute.' "

Officials in Mr. DeLay's office were quick to depict the commercials as partisan attacks, noting that the Campaign for America's Future has in the past received money from George Soros, the philanthropist and financier who gave millions of dollars to support Democrats in last November's elections. Records show Mr. Soros gave $300,000 to a committee run by the organization last year.

"This is one more front group for Nancy Pelosi and Democratic heavy hitters like George Soros," said Dan Allen, a spokesman for Mr. DeLay. "They are attacking the House Republicans in an attempt to bring the House down."

During Mr. Delay's 20 years in Congress, his office has became a breeding ground for high-powered K Street consultants. Many top aides have graduated from his staff to set up shop on K Street, where a close relationship with a powerful lawmaker can draw a top post or lucrative clients. Former DeLay aides have represented major companies, including Citigroup, Fidelity Investments and Federal Express.

The lobbyists, in turn, have helped Mr. DeLay raise millions of dollars to increase the Republican majority in the House and push the party's agenda. One lobbyist organized a $150,000 fund-raiser at a golf retreat just weeks after leaving Mr. DeLay's office. Another helped run a group intended to raise millions of dollars in unlimited contributions to get around restrictive new campaign finance laws.

"It is the hallmark of a very savvy member of Congress to see the departure of staff as an asset and not a detriment," said Jade West, a Republican lobbyist with the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors. "They are building contacts and networks to the good of both sides. Tom has done that as well as anyone."

Part of Mr. DeLay's network was the Alexander Strategy Group, a lobbying firm on the Potomac River waterfront in Georgetown. The firm was founded by Edwin A. Buckham, Mr. DeLay's former chief of staff. Several former aides have signed on in recent years, including Tony C. Rudy, who served Mr. DeLay in several capacities, and Karl Gallant, who headed his political action committee.

The firm has had a long list of top-shelf clients, including BellSouth, Eli Lilly, Microsoft, Koch Industries and MGM Mirage, and Mr. Buckham and his colleagues are among Mr. DeLay's inner circle of advisers. In fact, Mr. DeLay's political action committee paid the firm more than $300,000 for fund-raising and consulting services from 2000 to 2003, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

Alexander Strategy clients over the years have benefited from favorable legislation passed by Congress. And some clients have had direct access to Mr. DeLay to hear their concerns. Among them was the Korea-U.S. Exchange Council, which was created to promote Seung Youn Kim, chairman of the Hanwha Group, a South Korean conglomerate. Universal Bearing, an Indiana company owned by Hanwha, has paid Alexander Strategy $600,000 since 2001, lobbying records show.

When Mr. DeLay, his wife and other lawmakers took a four-day trip to South Korea in 2001, the Korea-U.S. Exchange Council picked up the $28,000 bill, travel records show. The trip came under scrutiny by the news media in recent weeks because the Exchange Council was registered with the Department of Justice as a "foreign agent," meaning it represents organizations outside the country. House rules do not allow such foreign agents to finance Congressional travel. Mr. DeLay has said he was unaware of the foreign agent designation.

Mr. Buckham and others at Alexander Strategy did not return calls.

Among the cases involving other DeLay associates is one in which three former aides were indicted by a grand jury in Texas last year on charges of illegal fund-raising. The Texas prosecutor, a Democrat, has refused to rule out criminal charges against Mr. DeLay. An indictment would require him to step down as majority leader.

Another former DeLay staff member, Michael S. Scanlon, is under investigation alongside a lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, in a case involving lobbying activities for Indian tribes. Several government agencies are involved in the inquiry, and Congress is also investigating.

In another case, Mr. DeLay was admonished by the House ethics committee last year for a fund-raiser that a former aide helped to organize.

Drew Maloney stepped down as Mr. DeLay's former legislative director in March 2002 and is now a lobbyist with the Federalist Group, where he has represented energy clients, records show.

Just one month after leaving Mr. DeLay's office, Mr. Maloney was working with the lawmaker's daughter, Dani DeLay Ferro, to organize a small two-day fund-raiser for energy companies at the Homestead, a golf resort in Hot Springs, Va., according to Congressional documents.

The event, which included meals and a round of golf with Mr. DeLay and his staff, was held as energy legislation was headed into a conference committee, where lawmakers in the House and Senate would work out a final bill. The event raised about $152,500 for committees connected to Mr. Delay, according to Congressional documents.

The House ethics committee called Mr. DeLay's actions "objectionable."

"At a minimum, they created an appearance that donors were being provided special access to you regarding the then-pending energy legislation," committee leaders said in a letter to Mr. DeLay last year.

Mr. DeLay's allies are undaunted by the investigations and other cases, echoing his argument that they are politically motivated.

"The reason they are firing the big bullets at Tom DeLay is that it is vital to the political opposition to take him out," said Bill Paxon, a former New York representative who now works as a lobbyist. "That's what the current furor is about."

Democrats say that Mr. DeLay's aggressive style over the years has come back to haunt him and that the sheer number of cases involving his former advisers might lead to his downfall.

"You can't complain of partisanship when you are one of Congress's leading partisans," said John Jonas, a Democratic lobbyist. "This is somebody who has contributed to the sharp and bitter partisan environment in Washington. There's not much credibility in his claim."

Read More...

Summary only...

Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., Trial Lawyer Defined by O.J. Simpson Case, Is Dead at 67

The New York Times
March 30, 2005
Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., Trial Lawyer Defined by O.J. Simpson Case, Is Dead at 67
By ADAM LIPTAK

Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., whose fierce, flamboyant and electrifyingly effective advocacy in the O. J. Simpson murder trial captivated the country and solidified his image as a master of high-profile criminal defense, died yesterday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 67.

The cause was a brain tumor, said a law partner, Peter J. Neufeld.

Mr. Cochran was already a prominent Los Angeles lawyer in 1994, when Mr. Simpson, the former football star, asked him to join and then lead the lawyers defending him on charges that he had killed his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and a friend of hers, Ronald L. Goldman.

The televised trial riveted the nation for most of 1995 and rocked it that October, when the jury acquitted Mr. Simpson. He was later held responsible for the killings in a civil case, where another jury evaluated much of the same evidence against a more relaxed standard of proof.

Before the Simpson case, Mr. Cochran was best known for bringing police brutality cases on behalf of black clients and for representing celebrities in trouble. Both experiences proved valuable at the Simpson trial.

Drawing on his knowledge of the Los Angeles Police Department gleaned from his days in the Los Angeles city attorney's office, Mr. Cochran focused the Simpson jury's attention on shortcomings in the department's investigation of the killings and on the seeming racism of one of its detectives.

In the trial's aftermath, Mr. Cochran's name became a sort of shorthand, but one that meant different things in different contexts. To some, it stood for legal acumen. To others, a masterly rapport with the jury. To still others, the vexing roles of money and race in the justice system.

Mr. Cochran mostly enjoyed the references to him in films and on late-night television, where he was both admired as a singularly effective trial lawyer and mocked for his smooth style and court rhetoric.

He pleaded guilty to charges of extravagance and flamboyance.

"I like to get paid well and I like to enjoy the rewards of my work," he wrote.

But the money he made, he said, allowed him to work for people he called "the No J's" - "those cases I've taken in which the chances for getting paid are actually pretty slim."

For all the publicity of the Simpson trial, the case that Mr. Cochran always said meant the most to him was that of Elmer Pratt, a leader of the Black Panther Party also known as Geronimo. Mr. Cochran represented Mr. Pratt when he was convicted in 1972 of murdering a 27-year-old schoolteacher on a tennis court in Santa Monica, and worked tirelessly to overturn that verdict.

In 1997, Mr. Cochran was part of the team that convinced Judge Everett W. Dickey of Orange County Superior Court to void the conviction and free Mr. Pratt because prosecutors had withheld crucial evidence about a witness.

That same year, Mr. Cochran traded on the fame he achieved in the Simpson trial to form a successful national law firm - The Cochran Firm - devoted mostly to personal injury cases. In "A Lawyer's Life," one of his two autobiographies, Mr. Cochran conceded that he was involved in only a few of the firm's cases and often just tangentially. His name, though, he said, was often "enough to cause the other side to initiate settlement discussions."

"I'm sort of the legal gunslinger," he wrote, "the celebrity lawyer." Mr. Cochran was a steady presence on television after the Simpson trial, serving as the host of programs on Court TV and as a legal commentator on NBC and elsewhere.

His work at Court TV caused him to spend more time in New York, and he became a presence in the city's legal and political circles.

He represented Abner Louima, the Haitian immigrant tortured by police officers in the bathroom of a Brooklyn station house in 1997, eventually helping to settle Mr. Louima's civil case for $8.75 million.

He also briefly represented Kadiatou Diallo, the mother of Amadou Diallo, who was killed by four police officers in 1999. She fired him, saying she was frustrated by his lack of attention to the details of the case.

He and Benjamin Brafman defended Sean Combs, the rap star, in a weapons case in 2001. Mr. Combs was acquitted.

Mr. Cochran helped pay a libel judgment against the Rev. Al Sharpton, erasing a political liability, "because," Mr. Cochran said, "New York needs Al Sharpton." Mr. Cochran was himself an occasional plaintiff. In 1997, Andrea Peyser wrote a column about Mr. Cochran's representation of Ms. Louima in The New York Post. "History reveals," Ms. Peyser wrote, referring to the Simpson case, that Mr. Cochran "will say or do just about anything to win, typically at the expense of the truth."

Mr. Cochran filed a libel suit. In 1998, a federal judge in Los Angeles, Kim McLane Wardlaw, agreed with Mr. Cochran about what Ms. Peyser meant - "that he 'made up the police conspiracy theory' during O.J. Simpson's criminal trial 'to save the guilty O.J. Simpson.' "

The statement was still, Judge Wardlaw concluded in dismissing the suit, an opinion protected by the First Amendment.

In 2000, Mr. Cochran also sued a former client, Ulysses Tory, for libel. Mr. Tory, dissatisfied with Mr. Cochran's work, had for years written threatening letters to Mr. Cochran and picketed at his office and during court appearances. In 2003, a California state appeals court upheld an order prohibiting Mr. Tory from commenting on Mr. Cochran "in any public forum."

The United States Supreme Court heard arguments in the case this month. News organizations and law professors filed briefs urging the court to overturn the order, saying it represented a prior restraint on speech that is prohibited by the First Amendment.

Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. was born in Shreveport, La., on Oct. 2, 1937. His father, Johnnie L. Cochran Sr., a pipe fitter and later an insurance executive, moved the family to Alameda, Calif., in 1943.

The younger Mr. Cochran graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1959, with a degree in business administration, and from Loyola Law School three years later.

He joined the Los Angeles city attorney's office, at first handling drunken driving and misdemeanor battery cases. Later, he prosecuted Lenny Bruce, the comedian, on criminal obscenity charges. A judge dismissed the case on First Amendment grounds.

He went into private practice in 1966 and made a name for himself in police brutality cases but handled hundreds of other case, too.

He represented Michael Jackson, the pop star, in his first child molesting case. Mr. Cochran helped negotiate a settlement of a civil case in 1994, and prosecutors dropped the criminal charges.

In all of his cases, Mr. Cochran showed notable flair and creativity.

When a client accused of robbery said he was a victim of mistaken identity, Mr. Cochran asked the victim to point out the robber from the witness stand.

"Without hesitating," Mr. Cochran recalled, "she pointed right at the man sitting at the defense table and said firmly, 'That's him, sitting at the table.' "

"But knowing I was going to ask that question," Mr. Cochran continued, "I'd seated my client among the spectators and had a man of about the same build sitting at the table." His client went free.

Mr. Cochran's opposition to the death penalty was tested in 1998, when his younger brother, Ralonzo, was murdered. He asked the district attorney, without success, not to seek the death penalty. The killer was later sentenced to 75 years to life.

Mr. Cochran is survived by his wife, Dale Mason; two daughters, Melodie Cochran and Tiffany Edwards; a son, Jonathan; and two sisters, Pearl Baker and Martha Jean Sherrard.

The team of lawyers who worked on the Simpson case included some of the nation's greatest legal talents and biggest egos. The so-called dream team, which included Robert L. Shapiro, F. Lee Bailey, Alan M. Dershowitz, Barry Scheck and Mr. Neufeld, did not always get along.

After the trial, Mr. Shapiro said he regretted some of the team's tactics. "Not only did we play the race card," he told Barbara Walters, "we dealt it from the bottom of the deck."

In his 1996 memoir, "Journey to Justice," Mr. Cochran responded.

"If some people insist in comparing a double murder trial to a card game," he wrote, "then they ought to be honest enough to admit that we played the history and credibility cards." Mr. Cochran was often asked if he believed that Mr. Simpson was innocent. His answers were careful. Mr. Simpson has always maintained his innocence, he would say.

And often he would change the subject, to police misconduct and to the role of race in the criminal justice system. Mr. Cochran spoke with pride about catching Mark Fuhrman, then a Los Angeles police detective, in a lie about whether he had ever used a racial epithet.

But Mr. Cochran's legacy may well be captured in a little rhyme he used to convince the Simpson jurors to let his client go. He reminded them that Mr. Simpson, asked by prosecutors to try on a bloody glove found at his house after the killings, struggled without success to pull it on.

"If the glove doesn't fit," Mr. Cochran said, "you must acquit."

Mr. Cochran said the line was suggested by another member of the legal team, Gerald Uelmen, and sometimes he seemed to grow tired of the references to it and parodies of it in the popular culture.

"It's the line that eventually will be cited by Bartlett's Familiar Quotations," he wrote, "the line endlessly quoted to me by people, the line by which I'll be remembered, and I suspect it will probably be my epitaph."

Read More...

Summary only...

Anger at Bushes as time grows short for Schiavo

Yahoo! News
USA TODAY
Anger at Bushes as time grows short for Schiavo

Mon Mar 28, 7:56 AM ET

By Larry Copeland, USA TODAY

A week ago, the demonstrators outside Terri Schiavo's hospice were mostly calm. They prayed, sang hymns and awaited word from protest organizers about legal developments in the case, hoping their presence might help save the brain-damaged woman.

By Sunday, after nine days of legal defeats for Schiavo's parents in their effort to have her feeding tube reattached, much of the optimism was gone. Last week's unity among the demonstrators had splintered, and an undercurrent of anger ran through them.

Their ire was directed at Michael Schiavo, Terri's husband, who successfully petitioned the courts to have her feeding tube removed; at state judge George Greer, who has ruled consistently in his favor; and increasingly, at President Bush (news - web sites) and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

"If Gov. Bush wants to be the man that his brother is, he needs to step up to the plate like President Bush did when the United Nations (news - web sites) told him not to go into Iraq (news - web sites)," Randall Terry, a protest organizer, said of the governor. "Be a man. Put politics aside."

Sharon Mull, who drove here from St. Augustine, said she had written three letters to the governor in the past few days. "It seems like he could have intervened more," she said. "At this point, it's getting too late to help this woman. She's being tortured. She's being murdered."

Last Monday, President Bush signed an emergency bill from Congress enabling Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, to have federal courts hear their appeal to restore her feeding tube. Gov. Bush asked state courts for permission to take custody of Schiavo. But the Schindlers have been turned down by every court, and the president and the governor have said they can do no more.

Among the messages on protest signs Sunday: "Barbara Bush: Are you proud of your sons now?" "Stop the American Holocaust!" "Send in the National Guard!"

Tension mounted outside Woodside Hospice here, where Schiavo was in her 10th day without food or water. Bobby Schindler, Schiavo's brother, told the protesters they aren't helping his family by getting arrested.

Karl Henderson, 25, of Denver Bible Church, took issue with Schindler. "We should be able to take her water if she's dying," he said.

"You're not speaking for our family," Schindler said.

Sunday's protest played out throughout the day. Several members of Not Dead Yet, a disability rights group, lay on a driveway in front of their wheelchairs. Jerry Layne, a Baptist street preacher from Chattanooga, Tenn., delivered a fiery sermon, saying the multiple court rulings in the Schiavo case are part of the nation's moral decline.

The Rev. Patrick Mahoney, a protest organizer, urged the demonstrators, whose numbers ranged from about 75 to 100, to remain peaceful.

"It's going to get more emotional," he said. "You're going to have more feelings. But we don't want the focus to be on us. We want the focus to be on Terri."

Michael Schiavo has argued that his wife wouldn't want to live hooked up to a tube. But her parents have argued that their daughter, a Roman Catholic, would not have wanted the tube removed. She was given communion Sunday. She also received last rites and communion when the feeding tube was removed March 18.

Terry, a spokesman for the Schindler family, said he thinks there's still time to keep Schiavo alive.

"She's still conscious," he said. "She's still responding, and she's still fighting for her life. She is hanging on. That is her message to Gov. (Jeb) Bush and the world. She wants to live."

Read More...

Summary only...

US Mideast Policies Prove a Boon to Religious Parties

arabnews.com

Tuesday, 29, March, 2005 (18, Safar, 1426)

US Mideast Policies Prove a Boon to Religious Parties
Linda Heard, solitairemedia@yahoo.co.uk —


While it is common knowledge that the Bush administration is out to democratize the Middle East and back secular governments friendly to the US, just the opposite is happening.

Take Iraq, for example. Isn’t it the ultimate irony, from the neocon point of view, that an avowed secular, albeit brutal, regime was toppled only to be replaced by a Shiite-dominated coalition, to be headed by Ibrahim Jaafari, leader of the Islamic Dawa Party with links to America’s arch ideological enemy, Iran?

Perhaps, like most Iraqis, you are beginning to wonder why it has taken two months since elections were held at the end of January to produce a new prime minister, president and Cabinet. On the face of it Kurdish demands over autonomy, key Cabinet posts and control over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk have been the main obstacles. But read between the lines and you find one of the key sticking points is Jaafari’s advocacy of Shariah law as the basis of the new constitution.

An article in Sunday Times reports caretaker Prime Minister Iyad Allawi as saying clerics must stay out of politics if he is to join a new governing coalition. Given that Allawi came a low third place in the vote, one wonders who desires his ongoing presence other than his masters in Washington, of course.

Allawi put this demand in a letter to the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance and the Kurdish leaders, who have basically told him, “don’t call us, we’ll call you”.

Leader of the United Iraqi Alliance cleric Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim said: “As long as we’re alive and as long as Iraq and the believers are there, we will continue to work according to the directions and the advice of the religious authority.” That certainly won’t be music to Washington’s ears.

Moving on to Egypt’s new US-inspired democracy movement led by Ayman Noor, who has been cozying up to US Ambassador David Welch, America’s best laid plans there may be going awry as well.

On Sunday, pro-democracy demonstrators gathered in large numbers outside the Parliament building and in other parts of Cairo but definitely not the ones on the US wish list. These were members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, encouraged by Hosni Mubarak’s promise to change the constitution so as to allow for multiparty elections. The result was a host of arrests and detentions.

The Muslim Brotherhood, having been outlawed since 1954, and considered responsible for the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Al-Sadat as well as the attempted assassination of Jamal Abdul Nasser, normally maintains a low profile in the country but claims a membership of 500,000 with a far greater ideological following. Today it forms the largest and best-organized opposition group.

It is worth recalling that Osama Bin Laden’s top lieutenant Ayman Zawahiri emerged from its ranks along with others labeled “terrorists” by the US. The omnipresent threat of the Brotherhood putting its head above the parapet may have been the reason Mubarak earlier referred to a pluralistic and open electoral system as “futile”.

It is certainly true that Ayman Noor’s pro-Western ‘kifayah’ or Enough Movement is perceived as refreshing wind of change among the Egyptian elite as well as some intellectuals, but for decades the Brotherhood has been courting the nation’s poorest with financial handouts as well as free or subsidized food in the same way the Lebanese militant Islamist group Hezbollah — now coalescing into a political force — has been doing.

Ah, but Lebanon is on the verge of independence and democracy now that Syria has begun to pull out, you might be forgiven for believing. And it’s all down to the US with a little help from France and other like-minded allies. But even before the celebratory fireworks are set to go off, they already are in the form of sectarian violence and bombs. The Lebanese may be united in cheering on Syria’s exit, but there are major ideological and religious divides, threatening to erupt.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Syrian Minister Bouthaina Shaaban outlines a statement by Condoleezza Rice on her vision of the new Middle East thus: “A different kind of broader Middle East that’s going to be stable and democratic, where our children will one day not have to worry about the kind of ideologies of hatred that led those people to fly those airplanes into those buildings on Sept. 11.”

Such irony isn’t lost on Ms. Shaaban either. While complaining about Rice’s description of the region as being riddled with “ideologies of hatred” Shaaban argues: “Syria’s secular heritage and its long-standing tradition of religious coexistence are being threatened...”

The fact is that the Bush administration’s policies concerning the region are badly conceived. They are based on simplistic goals set to increase Western power, influence and ideals while diluting traditional convictions inherent throughout the area. Instead, due to US aggression and “do as I say but not as I do” diktats, the reverse has come into play.

Religious, political and militant groups are using the rampant anti-Americanism prevalent in the region to gain supporters while privately thanking the US for opening up democratic channels through which they may legitimately gain power.

The bottom line is this: For the first time ever a fundamentalist power bloc is being formed from Iraq to Lebanon and, perhaps, even in Egypt courtesy of Uncle Sam, who may have shot himself in the foot.

The neocons may think they are clever but they have turned out to be fools. So-called Western “values” can’t be imposed on other parts of the world by force and threats. They will only be evaluated and accepted by people who admire their purveyors and who, over time, come to the conclusion that those values best serve their interests.

In the final analysis Western-style democracy must come from the bottom up just as it has done in various former Soviet republics. Ideally it should be a grass-roots movement, which works its way to the top, perhaps gently encouraged and supported by major global players rather than forcibly inserted on the back of a bomb. There will be many within the region and without who disagree with this analysis. They are the eternal optimists, who are desperate for change. Some genuinely believe the US and its policies are a force for good. I can only hope that they are right and those who think as I do are wrong. Time, as always, will tell.

— Linda Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback.

Read More...

Summary only...

U.S. Says Rights Are Key to Relations

washingtonpost.com
U.S. Says Rights Are Key to Relations
Report Is Critical of Allies but Omits Mention of U.S. Abuses

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 29, 2005; Page A13

The State Department, releasing an annual report on its efforts to promote human rights and democracy, declared yesterday that upholding human rights will be key to assessing relations with other countries. But the report sidestepped mention of U.S. prison abuse scandals in Iraq and Afghanistan, which had prompted a delay in the report last year.

Although the report was critical of U.S. allies such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the nearly 300-page document also illustrated exceptions to the administration's pledge to make human rights the hallmark of its bilateral relations. Libya, for instance, was harshly condemned as "among the world's worst violators of human rights," but in the past year the administration has lifted economic sanctions and begun to normalize relations with Libya after it gave up its programs to build weapons of mass destruction.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has made promotion of democracy a central part of her diplomacy since taking office two months ago. On releasing the report, she told reporters that "in all that lies ahead, our nation will continue to clarify for other nations the moral choice between oppression and freedom, and we will make it clear that ultimately success in our relations depends on the treatment of their own people."

Rice's preface to the report drove home that theme as well, declaring that in the past year there has been a "dramatic shift in the world's landscape" after elections in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, and the successful effort to overturn fraudulent elections in Ukraine. The report said that, for the United States, "promoting freedom [is] the bedrock of foreign policy."

Acting Assistant Secretary of State Michael G. Kozak was peppered with questions about the administration's support of nations with less-than-stellar records on democracy. Last week, for instance, the administration announced it would sell F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan, which is ruled by a general who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999.

Kozak said it is difficult to apply a "scientific cookie-cutter approach" that works consistently. "Sometimes it's the carrot, and sometimes it's the stick," he said, adding that the right combination will vary by country. "You can slice and dice this any way you want. Hopefully, you know, the sausage machine produces something that's halfway coherent at the end."

Amnesty International applauded the U.S. initiatives outlined in the report but said U.S. credibility is hurt by the prison abuse scandal and the administration's practice of sending some terrorism suspects to countries that the State Department has criticized for their use of torture. Many of the administration's policies to promote democracy and human rights will be greeted with "deep skepticism" if current practices continue, the human rights group said in a statement.

Kozak maintained that the problems caused by the images of the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq have been mitigated by the fact that many soldiers have been court-martialed. "Our system is there, it's working," he said.

Read More...

Summary only...

Iran Put Plan to Respond to Possible U.S. Attack

abcnews.com
March 29, 2005

Iran Put Plan to Respond to Possible U.S. Attack

An article in Al Hayat today quotes Iranian military sources as saying that Iran's political and military leadership put a strategy to respond to any possible US attack on the country. It preparation for the possibility of a loss of contact between the army and the central command, which sources said the U.S. may try to cause to prevent the leadership from giving orders to attack. The military leadership therefore already gave orders to all sections of the army and the Revolutionary Guard to respond within an hour without waiting for orders. The targets were predetermined and would include U.S. bases and troops in neighboring countries especially Iraq, Bahrain and Qatar. The sources said Iran would also attacks Israel. (Al Hayat)

Read More...

Summary only...

What's Going On?

The New York Times
March 29, 2005

What's Going On?
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Democratic societies have a hard time dealing with extremists in their midst. The desire to show respect for other people's beliefs all too easily turns into denial: nobody wants to talk about the threat posed by those whose beliefs include contempt for democracy itself.

We can see this failing clearly in other countries. In the Netherlands, for example, a culture of tolerance led the nation to ignore the growing influence of Islamic extremists until they turned murderous.

But it's also true of the United States, where dangerous extremists belong to the majority religion and the majority ethnic group, and wield great political influence.

Before he saw the polls, Tom DeLay declared that "one thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America." Now he and his party, shocked by the public's negative reaction to their meddling, want to move on. But we shouldn't let them. The Schiavo case is, indeed, a chance to highlight what's going on in America.

One thing that's going on is a climate of fear for those who try to enforce laws that religious extremists oppose. Randall Terry, a spokesman for Terri Schiavo's parents, hasn't killed anyone, but one of his former close associates in the anti-abortion movement is serving time for murdering a doctor. George Greer, the judge in the Schiavo case, needs armed bodyguards.

Another thing that's going on is the rise of politicians willing to violate the spirit of the law, if not yet the letter, to cater to the religious right.

Everyone knows about the attempt to circumvent the courts through "Terri's law." But there has been little national exposure for a Miami Herald report that Jeb Bush sent state law enforcement agents to seize Terri Schiavo from the hospice - a plan called off when local police said they would enforce the judge's order that she remain there.

And the future seems all too likely to bring more intimidation in the name of God and more political intervention that undermines the rule of law.

The religious right is already having a big impact on education: 31 percent of teachers surveyed by the National Science Teachers Association feel pressured to present creationism-related material in the classroom.

But medical care is the cutting edge of extremism.

Yesterday The Washington Post reported on the growing number of pharmacists who, on religious grounds, refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control or morning-after pills. These pharmacists talk of personal belief; but the effect is to undermine laws that make these drugs available. And let me make a prediction: soon, wherever the religious right is strong, many pharmacists will be pressured into denying women legal drugs.

And it won't stop there. There is a nationwide trend toward "conscience" or "refusal" legislation. Laws in Illinois and Mississippi already allow doctors and other health providers to deny virtually any procedure to any patient. Again, think of how such laws expose doctors to pressure and intimidation.

But the big step by extremists will be an attempt to eliminate the filibuster, so that the courts can be packed with judges less committed to upholding the law than Mr. Greer.

We can't count on restraint from people like Mr. DeLay, who believes that he's on a mission to bring a "biblical worldview" to American politics, and that God brought him a brain-damaged patient to help him with that mission.

What we need - and we aren't seeing - is a firm stand by moderates against religious extremism. Some people ask, with justification, Where are the Democrats? But an even better question is, Where are the doctors fiercely defending their professional integrity? I think the American Medical Association disapproves of politicians who second-guess medical diagnoses based on video images - but the association's statement on the Schiavo case is so timid that it's hard to be sure.

The closest parallel I can think of to current American politics is Israel. There was a time, not that long ago, when moderate Israelis downplayed the rise of religious extremists. But no more: extremists have already killed one prime minister, and everyone realizes that Ariel Sharon is at risk.

America isn't yet a place where liberal politicians, and even conservatives who aren't sufficiently hard-line, fear assassination. But unless moderates take a stand against the growing power of domestic extremists, it can happen here.

E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com

Read More...

Summary only...

President Bush's New Public Face: Confident and 'Impishly Fun'

The New York Times
March 28, 2005

President Bush's New Public Face: Confident and 'Impishly Fun'
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON

George W. Bush has been acting like a man liberated from the American presidency.

At an event in Denver last Monday, he mused that sending out quarterly statements for the individual investment accounts he wants to add to Social Security could encourage people to pay more attention to government but then chuckled that investors might conclude from tepid returns that "maybe we ought to change presidents or something."

At a news conference last week, Mr. Bush joked that he did not have the time "to sit around and wander, lonely, in the Oval Office, kind of asking different portraits, 'How do you think my standing will be?' "

And at the end of an interview with a Belgian television correspondent last month, Mr. Bush blurted out to the young woman that she had "great eyes," glanced away slyly and then a little sheepishly, but for the most part seemed sorry that the session was over.

Is this a new George Bush?

White House officials insist not and say that the frisky president people are seeing in public is simply the one he has kept private for the last four years. "In the first term he wanted to have the American people see his heart and his policy agenda and his seriousness, and not that he's an impishly fun, very clever guy," said Margaret Spellings, the secretary of education and the president's former domestic policy adviser.

But White House officials, Mr. Bush's friends and Republicans allied with the administration readily say that re-election to a second term has made Mr. Bush more confident in office and changed the tenor of his presidency as well. The president has been buoyed, they add, by the elections in Iraq and recent stirrings toward his hope of democracy in the Middle East.

One statistic is telling: since he defeated Senator John Kerry last November, Mr. Bush has held a solo news conference every month - still fewer than many previous presidents, but a big jump, if he continues the pace, from the 17 solo news conferences he held in a first term known for an iron curtain between the White House and the press.

"He could be the first president since Eisenhower to hold more news conferences in his second term than in the first," said Martha Joynt Kumar, a professor of political science at Towson University in Maryland who is working on a book about the White House communications operation. Professor Kumar said that scandals had made a number of second-term presidents more reluctant to face the press.

In foreign policy, Mr. Bush has softened his tone as he has tried to pick up the pieces after the American-led invasion of Iraq. The change in style has reflected one of substance, too, as the president has joined with the Europeans to offer incentives to one of his "axis of evil" countries, Iran, to try to get it to give up its nuclear ambitions. In domestic policy, Mr. Bush has begun to make small adjustments in his do-it-my-way rhetoric on Social Security and recently acknowledged, as his critics have long pointed out, that private accounts will do nothing to ensure the program's long-term solvency. His looseness in public sometimes results in the kind of sharp political calculation - Mr. Bush said at a news conference last week that he would not propose his own Social Security plan to Congress "because the first bill on the Hill is always dead on arrival" - that he more often kept private in the first term.

White House officials also say that Mr. Bush may be making more jokes in public, but he has not forgotten that the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, happened on his watch. "The president still carries tremendous burdens," said Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff. "I see that every morning when he walks into the Oval Office and gets the overnight reports as to what's been happening in the war on terror. He has to make decisions in many more areas of responsibility than most people realize."

Still, no one disputes that Mr. Bush is more comfortable in the job. Roland Betts, the chairman of the Chelsea Piers entertainment complex in Lower Manhattan and one of the president's closest friends, recalls working out with Mr. Bush in the White House weight room in January and seeing a more relaxed man. "One thing he said was that 'I finally got the election out of my neck,' and he was rubbing his neck and shoulder as he said it," Mr. Betts said. As he has since becoming president, Mr. Bush gets massages most Sunday afternoons to relieve tension and muscle aches from exercise.

These days Mr. Bush's chief form of exercise is biking - he no longer runs since his knees gave out last year - and he has taken it on with the same aggressiveness as he did his old 6:45 miles. "He's turned into a bike maniac," said Mark McKinnon, a biking buddy of the president who was also his chief media strategist during the 2004 campaign. "He grinds, and he goes flat out from beginning to end."

Mr. Bush, he added, had lost eight pounds since the election. "He's as calm and relaxed and confident and happy as I've ever seen him," Mr. McKinnon said. Despite the beating he has taken on Social Security, other advisers say, Mr. Bush still presents a cheery face to the staff. "People are not walking around with their heads hung on Social Security," said Joshua B. Bolten, the White House budget director. "When we have our Social Security meetings, and those are often very detailed, substantive meetings, he's consistently upbeat."

Clay Johnson III, the deputy director for management in the White House budget office and Mr. Bush's roommate at Yale, had a simple explanation for the president's mood: "He never, ever has to run for office again."

Read More...

Summary only...

Native Americans Criticize Bush's Silence

washingtonpost.com
Native Americans Criticize Bush's Silence
Response to School Shooting Is Contrasted With President's Intervention in Schiavo Case

By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 25, 2005; Page A06

MINNEAPOLIS, March 24 -- Native Americans across the country -- including tribal leaders, academics and rank-and-file tribe members -- voiced anger and frustration Thursday that President Bush has responded to the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history with silence.

Three days after 16-year-old Jeff Weise killed nine members of his Red Lake tribe before taking his own life, grief-stricken American Indians complained that the White House has offered little in the way of sympathy for the tribe situated in the uppermost region of Minnesota.

"From all over the world we are getting letters of condolence, the Red Cross has come, but the so-called Great White Father in Washington hasn't said or done a thing," said Clyde Bellecourt, a Chippewa Indian who is the founder and national director of the American Indian Movement here. "When people's children are murdered and others are in the hospital hanging on to life, he should be the first one to offer his condolences. . . . If this was a white community, I don't think he'd have any problem doing that."

Weise's victims included his grandfather and five teenagers; seven other students were wounded, and two of them remain in serious condition in a hospital in Fargo, N.D.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan, in an informal discussion with reporters Tuesday, said: "Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those who were killed."

"I hope that he would say something," said Victoria Graves, a cultural educator at Red Lake Elementary School on the reservation. "It's important that there's acknowledgment of the tragedy. It's important he sees the tribes are out here. We need help."

The reaction to Bush's silence was particularly bitter given his high-profile, late-night intervention on behalf of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman caught in a legal battle over whether her feeding tube should be reinserted.

"The fact that Bush preempted his vacation to say something about Ms. Schiavo and here you have 10 native people gunned down and he can't take time to speak is very telling," said David Wilkins, interim chairman of the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and a member of the North Carolina-based Lumbee tribe.

"He has not been real visible in Indian country," said former senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.). "He's got a lot of irons in the fire, but this is important."

Even more alarming than Bush's silence, he said, is the president's proposal to cut $100 million from several Indian programs next year.

After hearing grumbling from tribal leaders, Jacqueline Johnson, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, called the White House on Thursday to inquire about Bush's silence. "I wanted to make sure the White House is paying attention to this issue," she said. "I wasn't sure."

Asked Thursday about Bush's silence, spokeswoman Dana Perino said that he plans to dedicate part of his Saturday radio address to the Red Lake tragedy and that he is following the case closely through the FBI and the Justice Department.

In the hours after the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999, President Bill Clinton publicly expressed his condolences and followed up a few days later with a radio address in which he proposed new gun control measures and school safety projects.

At the Red Lake Urban Indian Office here, volunteer Marilyn Westbrook said she was disappointed but not surprised.

"I don't feel he cares about the American Indian people," said Westbrook, as she collected donations of gas cards and money to enable fellow Red Lake members to make the 260-mile journey to the reservation. "Why hasn't he made any statements about what happened with this shooting?"

Staff writers Dana Hedgpeth in Red Lake and Peter Baker in Waco, Tex., and research editor Lucy Shackelford in Washington contributed to this report.

Read More...

Summary only...

List of Schiavo Donors Will Be Sold by Direct-Marketing Firm

The New York Times
March 29, 2005
List of Schiavo Donors Will Be Sold by Direct-Marketing Firm
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and JOHN SCHWARTZ

WASHINGTON, March 28 - The parents of Terri Schiavo have authorized a conservative direct-mailing firm to sell a list of their financial supporters, making it likely that thousands of strangers moved by her plight will receive a steady stream of solicitations from anti-abortion and conservative groups.

"These compassionate pro-lifers donated toward Bob Schindler's legal battle to keep Terri's estranged husband from removing the feeding tube from Terri," says a description of the list on the Web site of the firm, Response Unlimited, which is asking $150 a month for 6,000 names and $500 a month for 4,000 e-mail addresses of people who responded last month to an e-mail plea from Ms. Schiavo's father. "These individuals are passionate about the way they value human life, adamantly oppose euthanasia and are pro-life in every sense of the word!"

Privacy experts said the sale of the list was legal and even predictable, if ghoulish.

"I think it's amusing," said Robert Gellman, a privacy and information policy consultant. "I think it's absolutely classic America. Everything is for sale in America, every type of personal information."

Executives of Response Unlimited declined to comment. Gary McCullough, director of the Christian Communication Network and a spokesman for Ms. Schiavo's parents, confirmed that Mr. Schindler had agreed to let Response Unlimited rent out the list as part of a deal for the firm to send an e-mail solicitation raising money on the family's behalf.

The Schindlers have waged a lengthy legal battle against their son-in-law Michael Schiavo to prevent the removal of the feeding tube from their daughter, who doctors say is in a persistent vegetative state.

Mr. McCullough said he was present when Mr. Schindler agreed to the arrangement in a conversation with Phil Sheldon, the co-founder of a conservative online marketing organization, RightMarch.com, who acted as a broker for Response Unlimited.

"So the Schindlers do know the details," Mr. McCullough said on Monday. How much attention they paid to the matter is hard to assess, he added. "The Schindlers right now know that their daughter is starving to death, and if I ask about anything else, they say, 'I don't want to hear about it.' "

Direct mail and mass e-mailings are ubiquitous fund-raising tools of interest groups on the left as well as the right, and others in the direct-mail business defended the sale of lists like the roster of donors to the Schindlers as a useful way for potential donors to learn of causes that might appeal to them.

Pamela Hennessy, an unpaid spokeswoman for the Schindlers, said she was initially appalled when she learned of the list's existence.

"It is possibly the most distasteful thing I have ever seen," Ms. Hennessy said. "Everybody is making a buck off of her."

Ms. Hennessy, who operates the Schindlers' Web site, www.terrisfight.org, said the family had not released any of the names or e-mail addresses gathered there. "Obviously these people are enterprising, and they are taking advantage of this very desperate father," she said.

On Sunday, as the Schindlers gave up on their legal battle and their daughter passed her 10th day without food, others continued to rally supporters and solicit money in an effort to restore the feeding tube.

"This time, we have a real chance to break through the 'roadblocks' that the enemies of life have been putting up in front of us," said a mass e-mailing from RightMarch.com, asking supporters to urge Gov. Jeb Bush to intervene somehow.

The message added: "We're asking you to give a donation to help with our activism efforts to save Terri's life. Battles cost money; resources cost money; media costs money; we could go on, but you get the picture."

Mr. Sheldon - whose father, the Rev. Lou Sheldon, founder of the Traditional Values Coalition, has also sent appeals urging support for Ms. Schiavo - apparently played a dual role as a partner in RightMarch.com, which is working with the anti-abortion activist Randall Terry, and as a broker for Response Unlimited. Mr. Sheldon did not respond to phone calls yesterday.

"I think it sounds a little unusual right now because of the situation where she is in the process of dying," said Richard Viguerie, another major conservative direct-mail operator. "If you came across this information six months or a year from now, I don't think you would give it too much thought."

Read More...

Summary only...

Reservist: Knee blows that killed 2 detainees were approved

kentucky.com

Posted on Sat, Mar. 26, 2005

Reservist: Knee blows that killed 2 detainees were approved

Today's topic: Prison abuse hearings
By Elise Ackerman
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE

FORT BLISS, Texas - An Army reservist accused of killing a detainee in Afghanistan told investigators that the blows that caused the man's death were commonly used to deal with uncooperative prisoners and that his superiors approved of the technique.

Other soldiers testified at a hearing here that they were taught to administer the so-called "compliance blows" in an Army course covering non-lethal tactics and that the blows became an accepted way of dealing with detainees who were considered "combative."

The statement from Pfc. Willie Brand and the testimony from his fellow soldiers provide new evidence that prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq might have been the result of interrogation and detention practices adopted for the war on terrorism.

U.S. officials have insisted that abuse at U.S.-run prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq was the work of a few rogue soldiers. But human rights groups have charged that President Bush's February 2002 directive saying the Geneva Conventions didn't apply to members of al-Qaida or Taliban fighters led to pervasive mistreatment, first in Afghanistan and later at Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere in Iraq.

Brand's statements were read aloud at a so-called Article 32 hearing intended to determine whether he should be court-martialed in the December 2002 deaths of two prisoners at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul in Afghanistan. Among the 11 counts facing Brand is one charge of involuntary manslaughter and one charge of maiming in one death. He also faces multiple charges of maltreatment and assault in the deaths of both prisoners.

Army pathologists said the two detainees, identified as Habibullah and Dilawar, died as a result of repeated kneeings to their legs. The men died Dec. 4, 2002, and Dec. 10, 2002, respectively.

Brand, who is charged with involuntary manslaughter in Dila-war's death, said in a sworn statement read at the hearing that sharply kneeing a suspect in the legs was a common technique used to subdue prisoners. He said he had used the technique to gain control of more than 20 detainees during his 10 months of service in Afghan-istan.

Brand, 26, who was assigned to the 377th Military Police Company out of Cincinnati, is the only soldier charged with manslaughter in the deaths. Another soldier from the 377th, Sgt. James Boland, faces assault charges.

But investigators have identified 26 other military police officers and interrogators who they say committed offenses ranging from assault to maltreatment in the case, including a military intelligence officer who later served at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq when abuses took place there.

Army investigators have recommended that the officer, Capt. Carolyn Wood, who was in charge of the Bagram Collection Point when Dilawar and Habibullah died, be charged with maltreatment, conspiracy and making a false official statement in connection with their deaths.

An Army investigation of abuse at Abu Ghraib also criticized Wood, who served with the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, for failing "to implement the necessary checks and balances to prevent detainee abuse" there.

Wood declined to comment through a spokesman at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., where she's assigned.

Brand's defense attorney, John P. Galligan, asked to question Wood during the hearing, which ended Wednesday. But the Army Reserve officer chairing the hearing, Col. Stephen Pence, the lieutenant governor of Kentucky, said she couldn't be called because she had invoked her right against self-incrimination.

Pence will recommend to the base commander whether Brand should be court-martialed.

According to Army pathologists, Habibullah and Dilawar died after repeated blows to their legs. Both also were shackled to the ceiling for prolonged periods, sometimes with their hands chained at the level of their heads or higher.

Brand said he'd been trained to use "minimum force" when a detainee attacked or assaulted a guard. But when he got to Bagram, he said, "the standard changed and we did things differently."

Brand, who was demoted from specialist to private earlier this year, said an outgoing platoon of soldiers at Bagram trained him to use the knee strikes "as a matter of common practice."

Brand said he initially was uncomfortable with the move, which momentarily crushes a nerve in the leg and incapacitates a person with pain. But he said his commanders "saw this stuff and made no move to correct it, so I took it that the practice was tolerated or allowed."

Brand admitted he struck Habibullah four times in the thigh while the detainee was chained to the ceiling of an isolation cell. He said Habibullah had repeatedly tried to remove a hood covering his head by pinching it between his neck and arms.

The first blow didn't have much of an effect. Brand said he then "stabilized" Habibullah by holding his shirt and hitting him hard enough to lift his feet off the ground.

"It was morally wrong," Brand said. "But it was an SOP."

A few hours later, Habibullah, the brother of a former Taliban commander, lost consciousness. He died shortly after midnight on Dec. 4, 2002.

The next day, a part-time taxi driver named Dilawar was brought to the detention facility. According to investigative documents, Dilawar "was resistant to interrogation" and "eventually became combative."

Handcuffed, Dilawar was placed in an isolation cell and "his hands were stretched over his head to maintain him in a standing position." But even in that contorted posture, Dilawar was able to repeatedly mule-kick the door.

According to Brand's statement, he eventually got fed up with Dilawar's behavior and went into his cell, where he kneed him repeatedly in the legs as he hung from the ceiling.

"I told people I had to switch knees because my leg got tired," Brand said in the affidavit.

Read More...

Summary only...

Protests Outside Schiavo Hospice Chaotic

Yahoo! News
AP
Protests Outside Schiavo Hospice Chaotic

Sat Mar 26, 7:57 AM ET

By JILL BARTON, Associated Press Writer

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. - Jennifer Johnson, barefoot and in her pajamas, ran to her grandfather's bedside once a hospice worker said his death was moments away. She got there — one minute too late. Johnson said the chaos outside the hospice where Terri Schiavo is dying kept her from saying goodbye.

When Johnson arrived, a police officer demanded identification; she had none. And after a hospice employee cleared her, another officer halted her for a search with a metal detector.

The delays lasted three to four minutes — the last of her grandfather's life.

"It's a terrible, extra obstacle to put in front of a family. ... Everything is about Schiavo," Johnson said. "It's all about her and in my family's case, it cost us dearly."

Woodside Hospice has 70 patients besides Schiavo, whose parents are desperately trying to have her feeding tube reconnected. Dozens of protesters have arrived from across the nation since the tube was removed March 18, and at least 15 have been arrested, prompting a police barricade around the facility and unprecedented security.

Family members visiting patients must pass through a police checkpoint to park, then show identification outside the door before another security screening inside. They also must walk by scores of signs decrying Schiavo's "crucifixion," "torture," and "starvation," plus navigate around hordes of media who have been camped outside.

"To have to maneuver through all of this and have a hostile environment outside when all they want is peace and quiet and to enjoy those few days they have left with a loved one is a horror," said Dr. Morton Getz, executive director of Douglas Gardens Hospice in Miami.

Getz said many people with a family member in a hospice have to make the same excruciating decision that courts have made for Schiavo.

"It's causing a lot of grief and questions in their own mind on whether they did the right thing," he said. "It's unconscionable to have a family member to be near the end stages of life and to get there, you have to walk through signs that say, 'Murderer.'"

Most protesters direct their signs and their chants against the courts and Michael Schiavo, Terri's husband, who insists she would not want to be kept alive artificially.

But walking through a hostile environment can only add stress to what's already an emotionally draining situation.

"It probably has the same psychological effect on the residents' families as it does on someone who is walking into an abortion clinic and facing signs and aggressive behavior," said Elizabeth Foley, a Florida International University law professor who specializes in bioethics.

Over the past few days, as Schiavo's parents' attempts to have their daughter's feeding tube reinserted repeatedly failed, signs outside the hospice have grown more desperate. Doctors have said Schiavo would probably die within a week or two of the feeding tube being removed.

Messages compare Michael Schiavo to Scott Peterson, convicted of killing his wife and unborn child in California, and John Evander Couey, who allegedly murdered a 9-year-old girl in Homosassa.

One woman in a wheelchair regularly moves up and down sidewalks in front of the hospice yelling in a megaphone, "We're disabled, not disposable!" and "Terri is a person, not a vegetable!"

Relatives of hospice residents say the clamor — intended to rattle Michael Schiavo — rattles their patience.

"It's a real pain in the neck," said Bill Douglass, whose mother-in-law is a resident. He said the only consolation is that she is "oblivious" to the outside scene.

Police and hospice officials say they are trying to minimize the intrusion on hospice residents and their families, and that the security measures are meant to protect the privacy and safety of all residents, not just Schiavo.

But Johnson, 24, said her 73-year-old grandfather, Thomas Bone, was restricted from moving freely around the hospice grounds during his final days. He died just hours after Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was removed and protests intensified.

"They've taken away hospice's greatest quality, that it is peaceful and serene and quiet and calming — and it's not fair," Johnson said.

Read More...

Summary only...

Is No One Accountable?

The New York Times
March 28, 2005
Is No One Accountable?
By BOB HERBERT

The Bush administration is desperately trying to keep the full story from emerging. But there is no longer any doubt that prisoners seized by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere have been killed, tortured, sexually humiliated and otherwise grotesquely abused.

These atrocities have been carried out in an atmosphere in which administration officials have routinely behaved as though they were above the law, and thus accountable to no one. People have been rounded up, stripped, shackled, beaten, incarcerated and in some cases killed, without being offered even the semblance of due process. No charges. No lawyers. No appeals.

Arkan Mohammed Ali is a 26-year-old Iraqi who was detained by the U.S. military for nearly a year at various locations, including the infamous Abu Ghraib prison. According to a lawsuit filed against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Mr. Ali was at times beaten into unconsciousness during interrogations. He was stabbed, shocked with an electrical device, urinated on and kept locked - hooded and naked - in a wooden, coffinlike box. He said he was told by his captors that soldiers could kill detainees with impunity.

(This was not a boast from the blue. On Saturday, for example, The Times reported that the Army would not prosecute 17 American soldiers implicated in the deaths of three prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.)

Mr. Ali's story is depressingly similar to other accounts pouring in from detainees, human rights groups, intelligence sources and U.S. government investigators. If you pay close attention to what is already known about the sadistic and barbaric treatment of prisoners by the U.S., you can begin to wonder how far we've come from the Middle Ages. The alleged heretics hauled before the Inquisition were not permitted to face their accusers or mount a defense. Innocence was irrelevant. Torture was the preferred method of obtaining confessions.

No charges were ever filed against Mr. Ali, and he was eventually released. But what should be of paramount concern to Americans is this country's precipitous and frightening descent into the hellish zone of lawlessness that the Bush administration, on the one hand, is trying to conceal and, on the other, is defending as absolutely essential to its fight against terror.

The lawsuit against Mr. Rumsfeld was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First, a New York-based group, on behalf of Mr. Ali and seven other former detainees from Iraq and Afghanistan who claim to have been tortured by U.S. personnel.

The suit charges that Mr. Rumsfeld personally authorized unlawful interrogation techniques and abdicated his responsibility to stop the torture and other abuses of prisoners in U.S. custody. It contends that the abuse of detainees was widespread and that Mr. Rumsfeld and other top administration officials were well aware of it.

According to the suit, it is unreasonable to believe that Mr. Rumsfeld could have remained in the dark about the rampant mistreatment of prisoners in U.S. custody. It cites a wealth of evidence readily available to the secretary, including the scandalous eruptions at Abu Ghraib prison, the reports of detainee abuse at Guantánamo Bay, myriad newspaper and magazine articles, internal U.S. government reports, and concerns expressed by such reputable groups as the International Committee of the Red Cross.

(The committee has noted, among other things, that military intelligence estimates suggest that 70 percent to 90 percent of the people detained in Iraq had been seized by mistake.)

Whether this suit will ultimately be successful in holding Mr. Rumsfeld personally accountable is questionable. But if it is thoroughly argued in the courts, it will raise yet another curtain on the stomach-turning practices that have shamed the United States in the eyes of the world.

The primary aim of the lawsuit is quite simply to re-establish the rule of law. "It's that fundamental idea that nobody is above the law," said Michael Posner, executive director of Human Rights First. "The violations here were created by policies that deliberately undermined the rule of law. That needs to be challenged."

Lawlessness should never be an option for the United States. Once the rule of law has been extinguished, you're left with an environment in which moral degeneracy can flourish and a great nation can lose its soul.

E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com

Read More...

Summary only...