Memo stokes 'terror flights' row

BBC NEWS
Memo stokes 'terror flights' row

The US may have used UK airports to transport terror suspects on more occasions than the two so far admitted, a leaked government memo suggests.

The Foreign Office memo, leaked to the New Statesman, warned that the process of "rendition" would be illegal if the suspects were to face torture.

It advises that the government avoid detailed questions on the flights, and stress their anti-terrorist purpose.

Opposition parties have demanded more government transparency on the issue.

'Not aware of more'

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told MPs on 12 December that only two cases, in 1998, had been found where such transfers were approved, and none had been found since 11 September 2001.

But the memo, written in early December and apparently designed to prepare Tony Blair for questions about the flights, said officials were urgently examining the files.

"We cannot say that we have received no such request for the use of UK territory.

"The papers we have uncovered so far suggest that there could be more than the two cases referred to in the House by the Foreign Secretary," it says.

It adds: "It does remain true that we are not aware of the use of UK territory or airspace for the purposes of extraordinary rendition.

"But we think we should now try to move the debate on and focus people instead on (US Secretary of State Condoleezza) Rice's clear assurance that US activities are consistent with their domestic and international obligations and never include the use of torture".

Legal?

The memo suggests that Whitehall officials were worried that US activities may be illegal under international law.

"In the most common use of the term - ie, involving real risk of torture - it could never be legal because this is clearly prohibited by the UN Convention Against Torture," it says.

The Foreign Office and Downing Street both refused to comment on a leaked document.

But a Foreign Office spokesman said Mr Straw had already made clear the UK had not agreed, and would not agree, to help transfer people to places where there were "substantial grounds to believe they would face a real risk of torture".

'Strategic avoidance'

Shadow foreign secretary William Hague said: "This leaked memo requires fresh explanations from the Foreign Office. It is important that any further requests, in addition to those already confirmed by the Foreign Office, are revealed.

"We still need to know from ministers whether they are entirely satisfied that UK airspace and territory has not been used for the transfer of suspects leading to their torture."

The Liberal Democrats have asked for Mr Straw to make a statement to MPs on the latest revelations.

Human rights group Liberty, which had called for the issue to be investigated, said it was "disappointed" in the government for its "strategic avoidance".

Liberty's director Shami Chakrabarti now called for new laws allowing UK police officers to board US flights and if necessary investigate them.

The government should co-operate "more robustly" with the police investigation, and ask some "rather more difficult questions of the Americans than they have in the past".

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4626370.stm

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Report says Britain doubts legality of CIA flights

Reuters
Report says Britain doubts legality of CIA flights

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain believes the CIA's reported secret transfer of terrorism suspects to foreign countries for interrogation is illegal, according to a leaked government document published on Thursday.

The Foreign Office memo says the practice, known as extraordinary rendition, "could never be legal" if the detainee is at risk of torture, according to extracts printed in the Guardian newspaper.

It adds that British cooperation "would also be illegal if we knew of the circumstances", according to the newspaper.

Human rights groups have accused the Central Intelligence Agency of running secret prisons in Europe and elsewhere, abducting suspects and transferring them between countries by plane.

President George W. Bush said last month the United States does not secretly move terrorism suspects to foreign countries that torture to get information.

"We do not render to countries that torture, that has been our policy and that policy will remain the same," Bush said.

Washington has come under growing pressure to explain why hundreds of flights by CIA planes have criss-crossed the world, stopping in many European countries.

Britain, a key U.S. ally, has repeatedly sought to play down its role in the rendition controversy.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told parliament on January 10 that Britain has approved only two CIA rendition flights. However, the leaked document, dated December 7, 2005, says the CIA may have used British airports more often.

"The papers we have uncovered so far suggest that there could be more than the two cases referred to in the House (of Commons) by the foreign secretary," the BBC News Web site quoted from an extract of the memo.

It was sent by an official in Straw's department to an aide in Prime Minister Tony Blair's office, the Guardian said.

It was leaked to the New Statesman magazine and parts were reprinted in several British newspapers on Thursday.

The briefing document's author, named as Irfan Siddiq, appears to suggest the British government should seek to sidestep difficult questions over its role in the renditions.

"We should try to avoid getting drawn on detail and to try to move the debate on," he wrote, according to the newspaper."

A spokesman for Blair declined to comment. A Foreign Office spokesman had no direct comment.

"The government does not deport or extradite anyone to another state where there are substantive grounds to believe they would be subject to torture," he said in a statement.

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Americans more receptive to idea of woman president

USA TODAY
Americans more receptive to idea of woman president
By Catherine Hours, Agence-France Presse

NEW YORK — Americans are getting used to the idea of being led by a female president with political observers dreaming of a showdown between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Senator Hillary Clinton in the 2008 election.

If polls, a television show about a woman president and a prediction by First Lady Laura Bush are any indication, Americans appear willing to follow Liberia and Chile in electing their first woman president.

Before attending the presidential inauguration of Liberia's Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first elected female president, Laura Bush predicted last week that a woman would lead the United States someday soon.

"I think it will happen for sure," she said, adding it will "happen probably in the next few terms of the presidency in the United States."

Reality may imitate art in 2008. Commander in Chief, which stars Geena Davis as the first female president, became a hit television series after appearing last year. Davis won a Golden Globe for her role on Monday.

A recent Gallup poll for USA TODAY and CNN showed that 70% of Americans said they would probably vote for a woman in 2008.

But before Clinton and Rice can battle for the ultimate power seat in the Oval Office, they would have to become the first women to win the nomination of the top two American political parties.

Republicans and Democrats have yet to pick a woman as a White House nominee, although Geraldine Ferraro was the Democratic vice presidential candidate in Walter Mondale's failed presidential bid in 1984.

Laura Bush has already her view on the subject known. She told CNN last week that Rice would be a great Republican candidate to succeed her husband, President George W. Bush, who marks the first year of his second term Friday.

"I'd love to see her run. She's terrific," she said.

Rice, however, has said she does not want to run for president.

Clinton, who has led potential Democratic candidates in opinion polls, has yet to declare her intentions.

Although neither has said she will run for president, political observers are already pining for a battle between the two powerful women.

Dick Morris, a former adviser to ex-president Bill Clinton, co-wrote a book titled Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race.

The book imagines a political duel between "two highly accomplished women, partisans of opposite parties, media superstars, and quintessentially twenty-first-century female leaders."

To Morris, only Rice has the potential to reach across the political spectrum to stop Clinton from winning the 2008 election.

While Rice's boss saw his popularity rating plunge last year, the chief US diplomat remained a popular government figure.

After Johnson Sirleaf's inauguration and Chilean president-elect Michelle Bachelet's election victory this week, seeing a female US leader is becoming less uncommon, analysts said.

"It's perfectly possible," said Stephen Hess, a George Washington University professor.

"We're talking on a week in which a woman president was inaugurated in Africa and a woman was elected in Latin America, so this is not any longer so unique," Hess said.

"Here polls show that gender doesn't really make that much difference anymore," he added.

Women have made gains in the U.S. political landscape, although the United States remains in the 63rd spot worldwide in terms of female legislative representation.

There are 69 women in the 435-member House of Representatives and 14 female senators in the 100-member Senate.

Clinton has an edge over Rice because she has won an election, while the secretary of state has never run for office, Hess said.

"The odds are greater that it would be Hillary rather than Condi," he said. "You would have to go very far to find a president of the United States who hadn't been elected to some previous office."

All three individuals who became presidents in their first attempts at winning any kind of election were retired generals: Dwight Eisenhower, president from 1953 to 1961; Ulysses S. Grant, 1869 to 1877; and Zachary Taylor, 1849 to 1850.

Chester Arthur, who became president in 1881 after the death of James Garfield, had never run for election before seeking the vice presidency as part of the Garfield ticket.

Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-01-18-femalepresident_x.htm?csp=34

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Tribes, 'tired of being used,' reject senator's donation

USA TODAY
Tribes, 'tired of being used,' reject senator's donation

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Montana-Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council has rejected a $111,000 donation from the campaign of Montana Sen. Conrad Burns, with some saying the money is tainted because it originally came from lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his clients.

James Steele Jr., also chairman of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, said yesterday that the council voted not to accept the donation, which was made up of contributions from Abramoff, his associates and his tribal clients.

Julia Doney, president of the Fort Belknap Indian Community Council, a member of the tribal leaders council, said that some tribes are "tired of being used" and do not want to appear as if they are helping Burns.

In a statement Wednesday, Burns campaign chairman Mark Baker called the decision "disappointing" and said Burns would redirect most of the funds to the tribes that originally donated the money. Burns, a Republican, said in December that he would give away and return $146,700 in donations in order to avoid the appearance of improper connections to Abramoff, who pleaded guilty two weeks ago to federal corruption charges.

Abramoff admitted to conspiring to defraud Indian tribes, which he sometimes directed to make contributions to lawmakers. Since his plea agreement, many lawmakers have rushed to donate money connected to him and his clients or return it.

"To us it's tainted money," Doney said Wednesday. "If he wanted us to have extra money, he would have given it to us in other ways."

Burns returned some of the funds directly to Abramoff's tribal clients. But Baker, the campaign chairman, said last week that they were not able to return some of the larger donations — $20,000 from the Tigua tribe of El Paso, for example — because the account where the money landed has since been closed. A total of $111,000 was designated for the Montana-Wyoming tribal council instead.

Arturo Senclair, governor of the Tigua tribe, said then that Burns should have returned the money by donating to a charity that benefits the Tiguas, who hired Abramoff to help reopen a casino that had been closed down.

In his statement, Baker said Burns will contact the tribes that originally donated the campaign dollars "and determine from their counsel which charitable organization a comparable contribution should be given."

Burns has denied he was influenced by donations from Abramoff.

Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-01-18-indians-burns_x.htm?csp=34

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Court rules girl has right to die

Reuters
Court rules girl has right to die

By Jason Szep

BOSTON (Reuters) - Massachusetts' officials and doctors were deciding on Wednesday when to end life support for an 11-year-old girl beaten into a vegetative state, following a court ruling that she had a right to die.

Doctors will run tests on Haleigh Poutre after the Supreme Judicial Court, the state's top court, decided on Tuesday that her breathing machines and feeding tubes could be disconnected.

The court's decision adds fuel to America's divisive "right to die" debate and could lead to murder charges against her stepfather, Jason Strickland, a 31-year-old auto mechanic accused of battering Poutre.

The girl's brain was found partly sheared when she was hospitalized on September 11. Her body was covered with burns, cuts and bruises and her teeth were broken.

Strickland had fought to keep Poutre on life support -- a move that would have allowed him to avoid a charge of murder.

"We're getting an update on her current condition. We want to be very clear her condition is unchanged and if it takes complete retesting we will do that," said Denise Monteiro, a spokeswoman for the state's Department of Social Services.

Doctors have said the girl would die within a few days once life support is removed.

The state's highest court sided with a juvenile court which decided in September that the Department of Social Services could disconnect Poutre's life support, court documents show.

Strickland's wife -- the child's maternal aunt and sole legal guardian -- was found shot dead on September 22 with her grandmother in an apparent murder-suicide a day after police accused her of hitting Haleigh with a baseball bat.

ECHOES OF SCHIAVO

The case was as much about who has legal rights to the girl, who is now in state custody, as it is about her ultimate fate and whether the state can remove the ventilator and feeding tube keeping her alive.

It carries echoes of the case of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman taken off life support in March after a legal battle that galvanized the Christian right and drew in President George W. Bush and the U.S. Congress.

Strickland's lawyers had asked the Supreme Judicial Court to overturn the juvenile court judge's decision that the man has no legal rights over the girl. Strickland, who never adopted the child, wanted to be legally recognized as her defacto father because he lived with her for four years.

If the court had granted his wish, it would have allowed Stickland to decide whether to take Haleigh off life support.

Poutre's birth mother, 29-year-old Allison Avrett, lost custody of the girl when she was four years old because of allegations of abuse, said the Department of Social Services, whose lawyers have consulted Avrett in the case.

Avrett has said she would prefer the removal of Poutre's life support system.

The court heard that Poutre's doctors "have consistent medical opinion about her current condition" and all had agreed she will not regain consciousness.

The Massachusetts case is important because the U.S. Supreme Court has yet to make a definitive ruling on the issue of ending life support, said Louis Aucoin of the Institute for Human Security at Tufts University's Fletcher School.

"It raises the issue of how you interpret constitutions, both state and federal," he said. "It's a very, very important issue in light of current developments in the Supreme Court."

He was referring to debate over how Bush's recent appointments to the Supreme Court will influence how the nation's top court interprets the constitution.

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Court: Striking Abortion Law Goes Too Far

Yahoo! News
Court: Striking Abortion Law Goes Too Far

By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer

The Supreme Court steered clear of a major ruling on abortion Wednesday, instead giving New Hampshire a chance to save its parental notification law.

Justices, in a rare unanimous abortion ruling, agreed that the New Hampshire law could make it too hard for some ill minors to get an abortion, but at the same time they were hesitant about stepping in to fix the 2003 statute. They told a lower court to reconsider whether the entire law is unconstitutional.

"Making distinctions in a murky constitutional context, or where line-drawing is inherently complex, may call for a `far more serious invasion of the legislative domain' than we ought to undertake," retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for the court.

The New Hampshire case had been expected to be much closer at the high court.

Instead, justices found consensus on narrow grounds, that a lower court went too far by permanently blocking the law that requires a parent to be told before a minor daughter ends her pregnancy.

Civil rights groups predicted that the appeals court would again strike down the law.

"It tells politicians that they must include protections for women's health and safety when they pass abortion laws," said Jennifer Dalven, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.

O'Connor, a key swing voter at the court on abortion rights, last year announced plans to retire and she will step down soon if the Senate confirms nominee Samuel Alito.

Alito was questioned extensively last week during his Senate confirmation hearing about his views on abortion, including the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that declared abortion a fundamental constitutional right. He steadfastly refused to agree with assertions by Democrats that Roe v. Wade is "settled law."

O'Connor, who supports Roe, made clear that the court was not going to break new ground in what may be her final days on the bench. "We do not revisit our abortion precedents today," she wrote in the opening of the brief opinion.

David Garrow, a Supreme Court historian at Cambridge University, said the decision "can be read as another step toward a long-term middle-ground truce, or at least stalemate."

The case returns to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, which had ruled that the law was unconstitutional. The statute requires that a parent be informed 48 hours before a minor child has an abortion but makes no exception for a medical emergency that threatens the youth's health.

Phyllis Woods, a former state representative from Dover, N.H., who was a main sponsor of the bill, said she was pleased by the ruling but concerned that the appeals court might require a broad health exception. "Our concern has always been that a blanket health exception opens the door and really negates the whole purpose of the bill," Woods said.

New Hampshire's appeal gave the court a chance to clarify when laws pose an "undue burden" on a woman in choosing to end a pregnancy. O'Connor is an architect of the undue burden standard, and was the deciding vote in the last abortion case in 2000, when the justices ruled that a Nebraska law banning a type of late-term abortion was too burdensome. That law did not have an exception to protect the mother's health.

Justices did not deal directly with that question, although O'Connor wrote: "under our cases it would be unconstitutional to apply the act in a manner that subjects minors to significant health risks."

"In the case that is before us ... the lower courts need not have invalidated the law wholesale," O'Connor wrote. "Only a few applications of New Hampshire's parental notification statute would present a constitutional problem."

The opinion, just 10 pages, was a partial victory for New Hampshire in a case that had been closely watched by other states with restrictions. Justices had been told that 24 states mandate a parent's approval and 19, including New Hampshire, demand parental notice.

Another major case awaiting justices is the Bush administration's appeal of a lower court ruling that struck down a federal ban on a late-term procedure that critics call "partial birth" abortions. The federal law has no health exception.

The case is Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood, 04-1144.

___

On the Net:

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

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Polling of American Public on Impeachment

afterdowningstreet.org
Polling of American Public on Impeachment

Among American adults, 53% agreed and 42% disagreed with the statement:
"If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment."

Among Democrats 76% agreed, and 22% disagreed.
Oct. 29 – Nov. 2, 2005, Zogby International poll, commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, +/- 2.9% margin of error.

Among American adults 52% agreed and 43% disagreed with the statement:
"If President Bush wiretapped American citizens without the approval of a judge, do you agree or disagree that Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment."

Among Democrats 71% agreed, and 24% disagreed. January 9-12, 2006, Zogby International poll, commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, +/- 2.9% margin of error.

Among American adults, 50% agreed and 44% disagreed with the statement:
"If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable by impeaching him."

Many felt strongly: 39% strongly agreed, while 30% strongly disagreed. Among Democrats 72% agreed, 59% strongly agreed, 23% disagreed, and 11% strongly disagreed. Oct. 6-9, Ipsos Public Affairs poll, commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, +/- 3.1% margin of error.

Note on Methodology

The above polls asked about support for impeachment if Bush committed certain acts, rather than asking simply about support for impeachment. Pollsters predicted that asking simply about impeachment without any context would produce a large number of "I don't know" responses. The results may miss significant numbers who support Bush's impeachment for other reasons.

Majority Believes Bush Lied About War

Other polls show a majority of U.S. adults believe that Bush did in fact lie about the reasons for war. A June 23-26 ABC/Washington Post poll found 52% of Americans believe the Bush administration "deliberately misled the public before the war," and 57% say the Bush administration "intentionally exaggerated its evidence that pre-war Iraq possessed nuclear, chemical or biological weapons."

Historical Comparison

In August and September of 1998, 16 major polls asked about impeaching President Clinton. On average, 36% of American adults supported hearings to consider impeachment, and 26% supported actual impeachment and removal.

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Sept. 11 Workers Die of Health Problems

ABC News
Within 7 Months, 3 Sept. 11 Workers Die
Sept. 11 Workers Die of Health Problems; Direct Link to Ground Zero Unclear
By AMY WESTFELDT
The Associated Press

NEW YORK - James Zadroga spent 16 hours a day toiling in the World Trade Center ruins for a month, breathing in debris-choked air. Timothy Keller said he coughed up bits of gravel from his lungs after the towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001. Felix Hernandez spent days at the site helping to search for victims.

All three men died in the past seven months of what their families and colleagues say were persistent respiratory illnesses directly caused by their work at ground zero.

While thousands of people who either worked at or lived near the site have reported ailments such as "trade center cough" since the terrorist attacks, some say that only now are the consequences of working at the site becoming heartbreakingly clear.

"I'm very fearful," said Donald Faeth, an emergency medical technician and officer in a union with two of the ground zero workers who died last year. "I think that there are several people who died that day and didn't realize that they died that day."

Some officials say it is too early to draw that conclusion. Doctors running different health screening programs say it will take decades to get a clear picture of the long-term health effects of working at ground zero.

The city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which is tracking the health of 71,000 people exposed to Sept. 11 dust and debris, said last week that it is too soon to say whether any deaths or illnesses among its enrolled members are linked to trade center exposure.

But Robin Herbert, who directs a medical-monitoring program at Mount Sinai Medical Center for more than 14,000 ground zero workers, said "certainly it is not inconceivable" that a person could die of respiratory disease related to Sept. 11.

Karin DeShore said she does not need scientists to tell her what caused the death of her friend Keller, 41. DeShore was a Fire Department captain who took Keller to the trade center on Sept. 11, and barely escaped the south tower's collapse.

"He came back coughing" two days later, she said. Faeth said that Keller told him that he coughed up debris so violently he could barely breathe on Sept. 11, and later developed emphysema.

Keller went home to Levittown on medical leave in March. He died on June 23 of heart disease complicated by bronchitis and emphysema, the Nassau County medical examiner's office said.

Felix Hernandez, 31, worked on rescue and recovery work at ground zero following the attacks, said his former supervisor, Lt. Regina Pellegrino. In 2002, "it started with a cold he couldn't shake ... and it kept getting worse and worse and worse," she said.

Hernandez was diagnosed with various respiratory diseases and was told by doctors at one point that he may have cystic fibrosis, Pellegrino said. He left the job in 2004 when he became too weak to climb stairs, and died Oct. 23 of respiratory ailments in Florida, said colleagues who spoke with his family.

Both Keller and Hernandez, each with a decade on the job, were nonsmokers and had no previous health problems before Sept. 11, Faeth said.

Zadroga, a 34-year-old New York detective, logged 470 hours at the site in 2001, including Sept. 11, and died Jan. 5. Family members and co-workers said he had contracted black lung disease and had high levels of mercury in his brain. Autopsy results have not been released.

David Worby, an attorney representing more than 5,000 plaintiffs suing those who supervised the cleanup over their illnesses, said 21 of his clients have died of Sept. 11-related diseases since mid-2004. He said he was not authorized to release their names, but represented people who toiled at ground zero, at the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island where trade center debris was moved, and at the city morgue.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg," Worby said. "Many, many more people are going to die from the aftermath of the toxicity."

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, whose congressional district includes the trade center site, blames some of the illnesses on the failure to provide some workers with proper masks or respiratory protection. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found in 2004 that one in five workers wore respirators while they worked at the site to block out dust laced with asbestos, glass fibers, pulverized cement and other substances.

"All the people exposed should be monitored for life so that we know what happened," Nadler said.

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Federal Regulators Investigate Sale of Personal Phone Records to Online Companies

ABC News
Feds Probe Sale of Personal Phone Records
Federal Regulators Investigate Sale of Personal Phone Records to Online Companies
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Federal regulators are investigating whether telephone companies are doing enough to keep customers' records from falling into the hands of unscrupulous online data brokers.

"These records can include some of the most private personal information about an individual," Jonathan Adelstein, a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission, said Tuesday. "Finding out who people are calling and for how long can be like picking someone's brain about their friends, plans or business dealings."

Fellow Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps also praised the FCC's inquiry. "This must be a priority because every day such a problem exists puts American citizens needlessly at risk," he said.

The head of the commission, Kevin Martin, revealed the investigation in a letter last week to Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who has complained about the practice.

Martin said the agency was looking into how the online companies are getting the private records. The agency is coordinating its efforts with the Federal Trade Commission, he said.

In a letter to the FCC and the FTC last November, Markey said the disclosure of phone records without a customer's consent is illegal, and he asked the agencies what they are doing to shut down these operations.

Markey cited concerns about the sale on several Internet sites of customers' wireless and landline phone records, including the date, time and length of calls placed by consumers.

On the Net:

Federal Communications Commission: http://www.fcc.gov

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White House Refuses to Reveal Details of Staff Meetings With Jack Abramoff

ABC News
White House Silent on Abramoff Meetings
White House Refuses to Reveal Details of Staff Meetings With Jack Abramoff
By NEDRA PICKLER
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The White House is refusing to reveal details of tainted lobbyist Jack Abramoff's visits with President Bush's staff.

Abramoff had "a few staff-level meetings" at the Bush White House, presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said Tuesday. But he would not say with whom Abramoff met, which interests he was representing or how he got access to the White House.

Since Abramoff pleaded guilty two weeks ago to conspiracy, mail fraud and tax evasion charges in an influence-peddling scandal, McClellan has told reporters he was checking into Abramoff's meetings. "I'm making sure that I have a thorough report back to you on that," he said in his press briefing Jan. 5. "And I'll get that to you, hopefully very soon."

McClellan said Tuesday that he checked on it at reporters' requests, but wouldn't discuss the private staff-level meetings. "We are not going to engage in a fishing expedition," he said.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, along with three other Democratic senators, wrote Bush a letter Tuesday asking for an accounting of Abramoff's personal contacts with Bush administration officials and acts that may have been undertaken at his request. "The American people need to be assured that the White House is not for sale," they wrote.

McClellan has said Abramoff attended three Hanukkah receptions at the White House, but corrected himself Tuesday to say there were only two in 2001 and 2002.

McClellan said Bush does not know Abramoff personally, although it's possible the two met at the holiday receptions.

Abramoff was one of Bush's top fundraisers, having brought in at least $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney '04 re-election campaign and earning the honorary title "pioneer." The campaign took $6,000 of the contributions which came directly from Abramoff, his wife and one of the Indian tribes he represented and donated it to the American Heart Association. But the campaign has not returned the rest of the money Abramoff raised.

On the Net:

White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov

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Chief Justice John Roberts Questions McCain-Feingold Campaign Restrictions

ABC News
Roberts Questions McCain-Feingold Limits
Chief Justice John Roberts Questions McCain-Feingold Campaign Restrictions
By FREDERIC J. FROMMER Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Chief Justice John Roberts expressed doubts Tuesday about legal restrictions on political ads by outside groups as the Supreme Court took up a new challenge to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

Questioning Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, who was defending the law, Roberts raised a hypothetical case in which a group runs an issue ad every month. Does the ad, he asked, become illegal in the months before an election?

Clement responded that such a group could continue to run the ads if it used political action committee money to pay for them, or if it refrained from identifying a candidate by name.

But Justice Antonin Scalia said that would undercut the purpose of the ad, adding, "The point of an issue ad is to put pressure on an incumbent you want to vote your way."

At issue is a provision banning the use of corporate or union money for ads that identify federal candidates two months before a general election. The case involves a lawsuit by Wisconsin Right to Life, which was barred from broadcasting ads that mentioned Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., during his 2004 re-election campaign.

In the first challenge to how the law was working in practice, the group in 2004 sought an injunction barring the Federal Election Commission from enforcing the provision against it. But the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia denied the request. A month later, then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist declined the group's request to intervene.

Roberts suggested that the fact that the ad also mentioned the state's other senator Democrat Herb Kohl, who was not up for re-election that year buttressed the group's argument that the ad was meant to influence legislation, not the election.

Clement called that a "twofer" for Wisconsin Right to Life. He said most ads that run in the final weeks of a campaign are designed to influence the outcome of elections.

The McCain-Feingold restriction was aimed at forcing groups to use regulated PAC money to pay for issue ads that are widely seen as thinly veiled election commercials. But Wisconsin Right to Life says an exception should be made for "genuine issue ads" that constitute grass-roots lobbying.

The group's commercials urged people to call Feingold and Kohl and ask them to oppose Senate filibustering of President Bush's judicial selections. Feingold co-authored the campaign finance law with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

The Wisconsin group, which opposes legalized abortion, got a skeptical response from some justices, who said the court had already settled the issue when it upheld the law on a 5-4 vote in December 2003. Scalia voted against the law in that case.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, noting that the group opposed Feingold's re-election, asked why it didn't run the ad after the election if the commercial was aimed solely at lobbying.

The group's lawyer, James Bopp Jr., responded that a lobbying group makes its own determination about how to best influence legislation.

Justice Stephen Breyer said that in writing the law, Congress concluded it was impossible to tell whether such commercials were genuine issue ads or sham ads aimed at influencing the election.

"You have a very good argument," Breyer told Bopp. "But it's an argument we just heard in that (2003) case. ... Or are you asking us to go back and undo what we did?"

In a statement, Feingold called the case a good test for the court in whether it truly has respect for precedent.

"The court cannot uphold the challenge brought by Wisconsin Right to Life without ignoring the precedent it set when it upheld the issue ad provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act two years ago," Feingold said.

Both Breyer and Ginsburg voted to uphold McCain-Feingold in 2003, along with Justices David Souter, John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O'Connor, who is retiring. If Roberts votes against the restriction in question, that sets up the possibility of a 4-4 deadlock if O'Connor is off the bench by the time the court issues its new ruling.

In that case, the court could either affirm the U.S. District Court's ruling in 2004, or schedule new oral arguments with Samuel Alito on the bench. Alito is expected to win Senate confirmation to replace O'Connor this month.

The case is Wisconsin Right to Life v. Federal Election Commission, 04-1581.

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Spying on Ordinary Americans

The New York Times
Spying on Ordinary Americans

In times of extreme fear, American leaders have sometimes scrapped civil liberties in the name of civil protection. It's only later that the country can see that the choice was a false one and that citizens' rights were sacrificed to carry out extreme measures that were at best useless and at worst counterproductive. There are enough examples of this in American history - the Alien and Sedition Acts and the World War II internment camps both come to mind - that the lesson should be woven into the nation's fabric. But it's hard to think of a more graphic example than President Bush's secret program of spying on Americans.

The White House has offered steadily weaker arguments to defend the decision to eavesdrop on Americans' telephone calls and e-mail without getting warrants. One argument is that the spying produced unique and highly valuable information. Vice President Dick Cheney, who never shrinks from trying to prey on Americans' deepest fears, said that the spying had saved "thousands of lives" and could have thwarted the 9/11 attacks had it existed then.

Given the lack of good, hard examples, that argument sounded dubious from the start. A chilling article in yesterday's Times confirmed our fears.

According to the article, the eavesdropping swept up vast quantities of Americans' private communications without any reasonable belief that they could be related to terrorism. The National Security Agency flooded the Federal Bureau of Investigation with thousands of names, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers and other tips that virtually all led to dead ends or to innocent Americans.

About the only result the administration has been able to dredge up on behalf of the spying program is the claim that the information it gained helped disrupt two plots: one to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge and one to detonate fertilizer bombs in London. But officials in Washington and Britain disputed the connection. And that plot to cut down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch has been trotted out so many times that it would be comical if the issue were not so serious.

This was not just a tragic waste of the F.B.I.'s resources in dangerous times. It was an outrageous and pointless intrusion into individuals' privacy. Anyone who read the original reports on the spying operation and thought, "Well, so what, I have nothing to hide," should think about the uncounted innocent Americans who had F.B.I. officers knocking on their doors because of secret and possibly illegal surveillance. The National Security Agency was originally barred from domestic surveillance without court supervision to avoid just this sort of abuse.

The first lawsuits challenging the legality of the domestic spying operation were filed this week, and Congress plans hearings. We hope that lawmakers are more diligent about reining in Mr. Bush now than they have been about his other abuses of power in the name of fighting terrorism.

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Purple Heartbreakers

The New York Times
Purple Heartbreakers
By JAMES WEBB

Arlington, Va.

IT should come as no surprise that an arch-conservative Web site is questioning whether Representative John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has been critical of the war in Iraq, deserved the combat awards he received in Vietnam.

After all, in recent years extremist Republican operatives have inverted a longstanding principle: that our combat veterans be accorded a place of honor in political circles. This trend began with the ugly insinuations leveled at Senator John McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries and continued with the slurs against Senators Max Cleland and John Kerry, and now Mr. Murtha.

Military people past and present have good reason to wonder if the current administration truly values their service beyond its immediate effect on its battlefield of choice. The casting of suspicion and doubt about the actions of veterans who have run against President Bush or opposed his policies has been a constant theme of his career. This pattern of denigrating the service of those with whom they disagree risks cheapening the public's appreciation of what it means to serve, and in the long term may hurt the Republicans themselves.

Not unlike the Clinton "triangulation" strategy, the approach has been to attack an opponent's greatest perceived strength in order to diminish his overall credibility. To no one's surprise, surrogates carry out the attacks, leaving President Bush and other Republican leaders to benefit from the results while publicly distancing themselves from the actual remarks.

During the 2000 primary season, John McCain's life-defining experiences as a prisoner of war in Vietnam were diminished through whispers that he was too scarred by those years to handle the emotional burdens of the presidency. The wide admiration that Senator Max Cleland gained from building a career despite losing three limbs in Vietnam brought on the smug non sequitur from critics that he had been injured in an accident and not by enemy fire. John Kerry's voluntary combat duty was systematically diminished by the well-financed Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in a highly successful effort to insulate a president who avoided having to go to war.

And now comes Jack Murtha. The administration tried a number of times to derail the congressman's criticism of the Iraq war, including a largely ineffective effort to get senior military officials to publicly rebuke him (Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was the only one to do the administration's bidding there).

Now the Cybercast News Service, a supposedly independent organization with deep ties to the Republican Party, has dusted off the Swift Boat Veterans playbook, questioning whether Mr. Murtha deserved his two Purple Hearts. The article also implied that Mr. Murtha did not deserve the Bronze Star he received, and that the combat-distinguishing "V" on it was questionable. It then called on Mr. Murtha to open up his military records.

Cybercast News Service is run by David Thibault, who formerly worked as the senior producer for "Rising Tide," the televised weekly news magazine produced by the Republican National Committee. One of the authors of the Murtha article was Marc Morano, a long-time writer and producer for Rush Limbaugh.

The accusations against Mr. Murtha were very old news, principally coming from defeated political rivals. Aligned against their charges are an official letter from Marine Corps Headquarters written nearly 40 years ago affirming Mr. Murtha's eligibility for his Purple Hearts - "you are entitled to the Purple Heart and a Gold Star in lieu of a second Purple Heart for wounds received in action" - and the strict tradition of the Marine Corps regarding awards. While in other services lower-level commanders have frequently had authority to issue prestigious awards, in the Marines Mr. Murtha's Vietnam Bronze Star would have required the approval of four different awards boards.

The Bush administration's failure to support those who have served goes beyond the smearing of these political opponents. One of the most regrettable examples comes, oddly enough, from modern-day Vietnam. The government-run War Remnants Museum, a popular tourist site in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, includes an extensive section on "American atrocities." The largest display is devoted to Bob Kerrey, a former United States senator and governor of Nebraska, recipient of the Medal of Honor and member of the 9/11 commission.

In the display, Mr. Kerrey is flatly labeled a war criminal by the Vietnamese government, and the accompanying text gives a thoroughly propagandized version of an incident that resulted in civilian deaths during his time in Vietnam. This display has been up for more than two years. One finds it hard to imagine another example in which a foreign government has been allowed to so characterize the service of a distinguished American with no hint of a diplomatic protest.

The political tactic of playing up the soldiers on the battlefield while tearing down the reputations of veterans who oppose them could eventually cost the Republicans dearly. It may be one reason that a preponderance of the Iraq war veterans who thus far have decided to run for office are doing so as Democrats.

A young American now serving in Iraq might rightly wonder whether his or her service will be deliberately misconstrued 20 years from now, in the next rendition of politically motivated spinmeisters who never had the courage to step forward and put their own lives on the line.

Rudyard Kipling summed up this syndrome quite neatly more than a century ago, writing about the frequent hypocrisy directed at the British soldiers of his day:

An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;

An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!

James Webb, a secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, was a Marine platoon and company commander in Vietnam.

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2 Parties Rush to Offer Curbs for Lobbying

The New York Times
2 Parties Rush to Offer Curbs for Lobbying
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 - House Republican leaders laid out a proposal on Tuesday to rewrite House rules governing lobbying as they moved to contain the political damage from an election-year scandal over undue influence and access afforded to lobbyists.

In the first of a series of competing packages of legislation, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert called for a ban on Congressional travel underwritten by outside groups, tougher restrictions on gifts and favors and the elimination of privileges for lawmakers turned lobbyists in response to three bribery and corruption convictions that have reached into the House. Inquiries related to those criminal acts are continuing.

Congressional Democrats plan to issue their own overhaul plan Wednesday, and Senate Republicans are preparing one as well in a game of one-upsmanship touched off by guilty pleas to corruption charges by the high-powered lobbyist Jack Abramoff and an associate and a House Republican's admission to taking bribes.

The House and Senate are responsible for setting the rules that apply to each chamber, but in the past have enacted these types of reforms through a combination of rules changes and legislation to give them the force of law.

Past furors like the House Post Office scandal and sensational revelations about lobbyist paid travel, suspect book deals and speaking fees have sparked previous rounds of reform. But they are often undone by lack of staff members to police them and have been riddled with loopholes that allow lawmakers and lobbyists alike to find ways around them. Some fear that could be the case this time if Congress is not vigilant.

Though the plans differ, all take aim at the opportunities available to lobbyists to provide lawmakers with benefits like luxury travel, expensive meals, scarce tickets to entertainment events, fund-raising help, contributions to pet causes and other little-scrutinized forms of financial and political support.

"I think members can probably function very well in this town without having to go out to lunch with a lobbyist or to dinner with a lobbyist," Mr. Hastert said. "They can pay for it for themselves."

Democrats plan to push ahead with their own proposals, saying they are skeptical that the Republicans who control the House and Senate will be able to clean up a system they have presided over.

"It is like asking John Gotti to do what he can to clean up organized crime," said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader.

Like the other plans, the overhaul by Congressional Democrats would double to two years the time before a former lawmaker or senior aide could lobby Congress. Congressional Democrats would institute new quarterly lobbying reports with extensive new requirements for disclosure. They would also prohibit lawmakers and aides from pressing private entities to make employment decisions on the basis of political affiliation, a provision aimed at the Republican K Street push to force the hiring of Republicans by lobbying firms and trade associations. Senate Republicans are drafting a plan that, according to a party memorandum, would end travel subsidized by outside groups, ban gifts, reduce the ability of senators to stall legislation and nominations anonymously through "holds" and prohibit spouses and relatives of senators from lobbying the Senate. The last has become a growing practice in recent years.

Advocates of tighter rules say the frenzied approach to overhauling the rules could produce real changes in the way lawmakers and lobbyists interact if Congress follows through.

"If you want to be serious about it, there has to be some enforcement mechanism," said Roberta Baskin, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit group that tracks money in politics.

Some leading lobbyists, however, say Congress is in danger of going overboard and could cut off the ability of the public to advocate on Capitol Hill.

"We cannot lose sight of the fact that we have had one lawmaker and two lobbyists plead guilty," said Robert Livingston, a former House Appropriations Committee chairman who is now a Washington lobbyist. "The fact is, we have reformed campaign finance at least four times since 1974, and each time it has gotten progressively worse. I am worried we are going to do the same to lobbying."

Should Congress agree on a lobbying package this year, it would be the first extensive revision since a 1995 measure limiting gifts and requiring new lobbying disclosure.

Mr. Hastert and others acknowledged Tuesday, however, that it would not be easy to enact such legislation. He and others said that scores of House Republicans who participated in a 90-minute conference call Tuesday expressed misgivings about various elements of the House Republican approach, including the travel ban and the rights of former members.

In addition, House Republicans also intend to use the legislation to put new campaign spending and reporting restrictions on independent advocacy groups that have been seen as beneficial to Democrats, a move that could spark resistance.

"It's going to take some leadership and some pushing and pulling," Mr. Hastert said.

Representative John Shadegg of Arizona, a candidate for Republican majority leader, immediately objected to the travel ban, saying it could deprive members of crucial educational opportunities. The leadership position came open in part because of the links between Mr. Abramoff and Representative Tom DeLay of Texas.

Travel has become a chief focus since Mr. Abramoff was accused of using third-party groups to provide lavish trips for lawmakers, who said they were unaware that he had paid for the trips. Dozens of other lawmakers have had to file new disclosure reports to account for their journeys over the years while explaining the educational purposes of high-season trips to popular resorts.

Representative David Dreier, the California Republican who is the chairman of the Rules Committee and has been assembling the House plan, said he hoped to take a comprehensive proposal to the House floor by March.

But Mr. Dreier said the House would act as soon as it reconvenes Jan. 31 on a few elements of the plan, including provisions that would bar former lawmakers who are now registered lobbyists from being on the House floor or using a private gym where they have ready access to their old colleagues.

"We do know that members have raised concern about this issue," Mr. Dreier said.

Fred Wertheimer, president of the group Democracy 21 and a longtime advocate of tighter Congressional ethics rules, said he saw promise in the proposals, but he cautioned that the final judgment would await the details and the mechanisms to hold members accountable given a near collapse of the House ethics review.

"The real battle lies ahead," Mr. Wertheimer said, suggesting that Congress should consider a new professional office of public integrity to enforce the rules.

But Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and the author of his own Senate plan, said Tuesday that he did not want to see a new Congressional entity created. Greater disclosure, Mr. McCain said, could ultimately bring public and political pressure to bear.

"If there are issues, my initial response is, it could be taken care of by the ethics committees and/or the Justice Department, in case of criminal activities," he said.

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Al-Jazeera Hires Lawyers to Get Transcript

Yahoo! News
Al-Jazeera Hires Lawyers to Get Transcript

By MARIAM SAMI, Associated Press Writer

Al-Jazeera has hired a British law firm to press its request to British Prime Minister Tony Blair for a partial transcript of a conversation between him and U.S. President George W. Bush in which the American leader allegedly said the Arab broadcaster's headquarters should be bombed.

Yosri Fouda, an investigative reporter and acting Al-Jazeera bureau chief in London, told The Associated Press the network had hired Finers Stephens Innocent LLP in an "attempt to put pressure on the British government" to hand over part of the record of the conversation.

"We would like to know the truth," Fouda said in a telephone interview. The news channel, which is highly popular throughout the Middle East, wanted to "set the record straight" concerning the Bush-Blair conversation.

Fouda said the network was only asking for a transcription of "the ten lines" of the conversation that purportedly involved the Doha, Qatar-based Al-Jazeera, conceding that Britain's desire to keep the rest of the conversation secret was understandable as a matter of state security.

News of Bush's alleged remarks during a White House meeting with Blair on April 16, 2004, were first reported by the British Daily Mirror tabloid in late November. The newspaper said the remarks were detailed in a leaked secret British government memo.

According to the newspaper, Blair argued against Bush's suggestion. On Monday a Blair spokeswoman said "in spite of various allegations the memo does not refer to the bombing of the Al-Jazeera TV station."

When it disclosed the alleged memo, the Daily Mirror reported that its sources disagreed on whether Bush was serious about the bombing comment.

At the time, White House spokesman Scott McClellan called the newspaper's claims "outlandish and inconceivable." Blair has said he had no information about any proposed U.S. action against Al-Jazeera, an answer Fouda said was insufficient to explain what was really said during the conversation.

Fouda said the law firm sent a request to Blair's secretary on Jan. 12 outlining the channel's demand and invoking the Freedom of Information Act. Blair's office has sent a confirmation of receipt.

On Jan. 10, a judge ordered two British men to stand trial on charges of leaking the memo.

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Supreme Court Upholds Oregon Suicide Law

Yahoo! News
Supreme Court Upholds Oregon Suicide Law

By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer

The Supreme Court upheld Oregon's one-of-a-kind physician-assisted suicide law Tuesday, rejecting a Bush administration attempt to punish doctors who help terminally ill patients die.

Justices, on a 6-3 vote, said that a federal drug law does not override the 1997 Oregon law used to end the lives of more than 200 seriously ill people. New Chief Justice John Roberts backed the Bush administration, dissenting for the first time.

The administration improperly tried to use a drug law to punish Oregon doctors who prescribe lethal doses of prescription medicines, the court majority said.

"Congress did not have this far-reaching intent to alter the federal-state balance," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for himself, retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer.

Kennedy is expected to become a more influential swing voter after O'Connor's departure. He is a moderate conservative who sometimes joins the liberal wing of the court in cases involving such things as gay rights and capital punishment.

The ruling was a reprimand to former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who in 2001 said that doctor-assisted suicide is not a "legitimate medical purpose" and that Oregon physicians would be punished for helping people die under the law.

Kennedy said the "authority claimed by the attorney general is both beyond his expertise and incongruous with the statutory purposes and design."

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for himself, Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas, said that federal officials have the power to regulate the doling out of medicine.

"If the term `legitimate medical purpose' has any meaning, it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death," he wrote.

Scalia said the court's ruling "is perhaps driven by a feeling that the subject of assisted suicide is none of the federal government's business. It is easy to sympathize with that position."

Oregon's law covers only extremely sick people — those with incurable diseases, whom at least two doctors agree have six months or less to live and are of sound mind.

The ruling backed a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said Ashcroft's "unilateral attempt to regulate general medical practices historically entrusted to state lawmakers interferes with the democratic debate about physician-assisted suicide."

Ashcroft had brought the case to the Supreme Court on the day his resignation was announced by the White House in 2004. The Justice Department has continued the case, under the leadership of his successor, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The court's ruling was not a final say on federal authority to override state doctor-assisted suicide laws — only a declaration that the current federal scheme did not permit that. However, it could still have ramifications outside of Oregon.

"This is a disappointing decision that is likely to result in a troubling movement by states to pass their own assisted suicide laws," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, which backed the administration.

Sen. Ron Wyden (news, bio, voting record), D-Ore., and a supporter of the law, said the ruling "has stopped, for now, the administration's attempts to wrest control of decisions rightfully left to the states and individuals."

Thomas wrote his own dissent as well, to complain that the court's reasoning was puzzling. Roberts did not write separately.

Justices have dealt with end-of-life cases before. In 1990, the Supreme Court ruled that terminally ill people may refuse treatment that would otherwise keep them alive. Then, justices in 1997 unanimously ruled that people have no constitutional right to die, upholding state bans on physician-assisted suicide. That opinion, by then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, said individual states could decide to allow the practice.

Roberts strongly hinted in October when the case was argued that he would back the administration. O'Connor had seemed ready to support Oregon's law, but her vote would not have counted if the ruling was handed down after she left the court.

The case is Gonzales v. Oregon, 04-623.

___

On the Net:

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

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Groups Sue to Stop Domestic Spying Program

Yahoo! News
Groups Sue to Stop Domestic Spying Program

By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer

Federal lawsuits were filed Tuesday seeking to halt President Bush's domestic eavesdropping program, calling it an "illegal and unconstitutional program" of electronic eavesdropping on American citizens.

The lawsuits accusing Bush of exceeding his constitutional powers were filed in federal court in New York by the Center for Constitutional Rights and in Detroit by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The New York suit, filed on behalf of the center and individuals, names Bush, the head of the National Security Agency, and the heads of the other major security agencies, challenging the NSA's surveillance of persons within the United States without judicial approval or statutory authorization.

It asked a judge to stop Bush and government agencies from conducting warrantless surveillance of communications in the United States.

The Detroit suit, which also names the NSA, was filed by the ACLU, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Greenpeace and several individuals.

Messages seeking comment were left Tuesday morning with the National Security Agency and the Justice Department.

Bush, who said the wiretapping is legal and necessary, has pointed to a congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that authorized him to use force in the fight against terrorism as allowing him to order the program.

The program authorized eavesdropping of international phone calls and e-mails of people deemed a terror risk.

But the New York lawsuit noted that federal law already allows the president to conduct warrantless surveillance during the first 15 days of a war and allows court authorization of surveillance for agents of foreign powers or terrorist groups.

Instead of following the law, Bush "unilaterally and secretly authorized electronic surveillance without judicial approval or congressional authorization," the lawsuit said.

At a news conference, Center for Constitutional Rights Legal Director Bill Goodman portrayed the president as a man on an unprecedented power grab at the expense of basic democratic principles.

He said the public was starting to understand the assertion that the erosion of individual rights is a slippery slope that lets the government "brand anyone a terrorist with no right to counsel, no right to be brought before a judge and no right to privacy in communications."

The Detroit lawsuit said the plaintiffs, who frequently communicate by telephone and e-mail with people in the Middle East and Asia, have a "well-founded belief" that their communications are being intercepted by the government.

"By seriously compromising the free speech and privacy rights of the plaintiffs and others, the program violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the United States Constitution," the lawsuit states.

In its suit in New York, the Center for Constitutional Rights maintained its work was directly affected by the surveillance because its lawyers represent a potential class of hundreds of Muslim foreign nationals detained after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

It said its attorney-client privilege was likely violated as it represented hundreds of men detained without charge as enemy combatants at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station and a Canadian citizen who was picked up at a New York airport while changing planes, sent to Syria and tortured and detained without charges for nearly a year.

The group said the surveillance program has inhibited its ability to represent clients vigorously, making it hard to communicate via telephone and e-mail with overseas clients, witnesses and others for fear the conversations would be overheard.

Plaintiff Rachel Meeropol, an attorney at the center, said she believes she has been targeted. "I'm personally outraged that my confidential communication with my clients may have been listened to by the U.S. government," she said.

___

Associated Press writer Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.

___

On the Net:

http://www.aclu.org

http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/home.asp

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Reid To Introduce "Honest Leadership Act," Includes "Jack Abramoff Rule"

The Huffington Post
Reid To Introduce "Honest Leadership Act," Includes "Jack Abramoff Rule"...

AP

On Wednesday, Jan 18, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will unveil a set of reforms in an Honest Leadership Act to be introduced jointly by Senate and House Democrats. The Honest Leadership Act is intended to clean out the corruption and cronyism in government, and prevent abuses of power in the future.

A key proposal in the Act is known as "The Jack Abramoff Rule."

It bans members and staff from receiving gifts, meals and travel from lobbyists. Current Ethics Committee rules allow gifts and meals under $50 for members and staff and require full disclosure of lobbyist-related travel.

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Gore calls for special counsel on eavesdropping

Reuters
Gore calls for special counsel on eavesdropping
By Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Vice President Al Gore called on Monday for an independent counsel to investigate whether President George W. Bush broke the law in authorizing domestic eavesdropping without court approval.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales plans to testify in Senate hearings, expected next month, to give the administration's legal justification for the secret domestic eavesdropping operation.

"A special counsel should be immediately appointed by the attorney general to remedy the obvious conflict of interest that prevents him from investigating what many believe are serious violations of law by the president," Gore said in a speech to the American Constitution Society and the Liberty Coalition.

Gore, the Democrat defeated by Bush in the 2000 presidential election, said the eavesdropping operation threatened the foundation of U.S. democracy, and he recalled the FBI's secret surveillance of Martin Luther King, on the U.S. holiday commemorating the civil rights leader.

[Editor's note: Bore was not defeated by Bush in the 2000 election. The US Supreme Court decided that all the votes would not be counted and crowned Bush as President.]

Gonzales said in an interview on CNN's "Larry King Live" later on Monday, "I don't know why there would be a need for a special counsel at this time.

"From its inception, this (eavesdropping) program has been carefully reviewed by the lawyers at the Department of Justice and other lawyers within the administration, and we firmly believe that the president does have a legal authority to authorize electronic surveillance in order to gather up foreign intelligence ... of the enemy in a time of war," Gonzales said.

Gore's comments also came at the start of a congressional election year in which Democrats are seeking to regain majority control from Republicans.

He accused Bush of breaking the law for not getting court approval for the National Security Agency eavesdropping operation on communications such as phone calls and e-mail coming into and going out of the United States of people suspected of terrorism ties.

"We still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the president of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and insistently," Gore said.

"A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government," he said.

'INACCURACIES AND ANGER'

The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act makes it illegal to spy on U.S. citizens in the United States without the approval of a special, secret court.

Bush has steadfastly said his actions were within the law and that he ordered the domestic eavesdropping operation to fight terrorism after the September 11 attacks.

"Al Gore's incessant need to insert himself in the headline of the day is almost as glaring as his lack of understanding of the threats facing America," Tracey Schmitt, spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, said in a statement.

"While the president works to protect Americans from terrorists, Democrats deliver no solutions of their own, only diatribes laden with inaccuracies and anger," she said.

The New York Times reported on its Web site on Monday that the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights planned to file separate lawsuits on Tuesday against the Bush administration's domestic spying program.

The two leading civil rights groups will ask the court to immediately order an end to the eavesdropping program, the newspaper said.

(Additional reporting by Tom Doggett)


[Note: A full transcript can be found here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/16/AR2006011600779_pf.html ]

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Soldiers Prevented from Using Better Body Armor

huffingtonpost.com
Soldiers Prevented from Using Better Body Armor
Michelle Pilecki

Nearly three years in Iraq and we're still debating decent armor for the troops? The latest chapter of this ongoing saga was kicked off earlier this month when Soldiers for the Truth, an advocacy group, uncovered and quoted a Marine Corps forensic study criticizing the current Interceptor body armor:

[A]s many as 42% of the Marine casualties who died from isolated torso injuries could have been prevented with improved protection in the areas surrounding the plated areas of the vest.
Nearly 23% might have benefited from protection along the mid-axillary line of the lateral chest. Another 15% died from impacts through the unprotected shoulder and upper arm.

The New York Times extrapolated some numbers, and subsequently reported that "300 or more lives might have been saved with improved body armor" in the Iraq war. The revelation has even stirred Congress, who are talking about holding hearings. No sense of urgency there. Problems of both quality and quantity of protective gear have plagued the Iraq war for more than a couple of years now, but it's not a priority issue -- or a continuing scandal -- for the news media. Meanwhile, there may already exist a better set of body armor, Dragon Skin made by Pinnacle Armor of Fresno, Calif., according to industry observers like Defense Review (warning: very technical discussion), and many Iraq-bound soldiers and Marines have spent their own money to get it -- some $6,000 each. But now they face possible retaliation, says SFFT.

The soldiers, who are currently staging for combat operations from a secret location, reported that their commander told them if they were wearing Pinnacle Dragon Skin and were killed their beneficiaries might not receive the death benefits from their $400,000 SGLI life insurance policies. The soldiers were ordered to leave their privately purchased body armor at home or face the possibility of both losing their life insurance benefit and facing disciplinary action.

How much better is Dragon Skin than the DoD's current Interceptor (another way technical piece)? Defense Review not only has the technical specs but also a testimonial from a satisfied (i.e. alive) customer in Iraq.

[At first] I was slightly put off by the weight of the armor. It was heavy and slightly uncomfortable to begin with, but I have to admit, it kind of "adapted" to my body after a day or two. The weight distribution is a definite plus.

However, we were involved in a IED (improvised explosive device) attack and small arms fire on the [redacted date]. After the contact, when I removed my tactical vest, I saw that I had taken hits in the back of my vest. They were 7.62x39mm (AK-47) and they were inches apart. I was hit in the back (and we checked, if I was wearing any other body armor, I would not be writing this to you), as it were both low hits (below the typical 10"x12" plate coverage). In terms of bruising, nothing whatsoever. I did not even KNOW that I was hit twice until I took off my tactical vest (this was after about 2 hours after the contact) and saw the damage. It was only then that we took a close look at my body armor that we realized I was hit twice by an AK-47. I had another ricochet hit around the top end of my back that may have caused serious injury to my lower neck.

Most news outlets are still clueless about the existence of what many military types consider a superior body armor, but credit PBS' Newshour with setting up a debate between a Pentagon consultant, defending the DoD's current choice of body armor, and SFFT's president, Retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. Roger Charles, describing the benefits of Dragon Skin. Both the Army and Marine Corps declined to participate. (Go here for the transcript and links to streaming video and audio, and here for Defense Review's immediate counter-argument to the criticism of Dragon Skin.) The discussion also includes a good show-and-tell on how modern body armor works.

SFFT's Charles figures that the Pentagon is being stubborn about Dragon Skin because of "bureaucratic turf protection."

We were told by several independent consultants who work for the Pentagon that cannot be named because of fear of losing their jobs that this was probably the best available body armor. It's what they would take to Baghdad. They do not have any financial ties with Pinnacle Armor. We're not saying it's the best. We're saying it ought to get a fair test.

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