Judge Rules That U.S. Has Broad Powers to Detain Noncitizens Indefinitely

The New York Times
Judge Rules That U.S. Has Broad Powers to Detain Noncitizens Indefinitely
By NINA BERNSTEIN

A federal judge in Brooklyn ruled yesterday that the government has wide latitude under immigration law to detain noncitizens on the basis of religion, race or national origin, and to hold them indefinitely without explanation.

The ruling came in a class-action lawsuit by Muslim immigrants detained after 9/11, and it dismissed several key claims the detainees had made against the government. But the judge, John Gleeson of United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, allowed the lawsuit to continue on other claims, mostly that the conditions of confinement were abusive and unconstitutional. Judge Gleeson's decision requires top federal officials, including former Attorney General John Ashcroft and Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, to answer to those accusations under oath.

This is the first time a federal judge has addressed the issue of discrimination in the treatment of hundreds of Muslim immigrants who were swept up in the weeks after the 2001 terror attacks and held for months before they were cleared of links to terrorism and deported. The roundups drew intense criticism, not only from immigrant rights advocates, but also from the inspector general of the Justice Department, who issued reports saying that the government had made little or no effort to distinguish between genuine suspects and Muslim immigrants with minor visa violations.

Lawyers in the suit, who vowed to appeal yesterday's decision, said parts of the ruling could potentially be used far more broadly, to detain any noncitizen in the United States for any reason.

"This decision is a green light to racial profiling and prolonged detention of noncitizens at the whim of the president," said Rachel Meeropol, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represented the detainees. "The decision is profoundly disturbing because it legitimizes the fact that the Bush administration rounded up and imprisoned our clients because of their religion and race."

A spokesman for the government, Charles S. Miller, would not respond to those assertions, saying only that the Justice Department was "very pleased that the court upheld the decision to detain plaintiffs, all of whom were illegal aliens, until national security investigations were completed and plaintiffs were removed from the country." He said the government was reviewing the rest of the opinion to decide whether to appeal the rulings Judge Gleeson made to allow the plaintiffs' other claims to proceed.

In his 99-page ruling, Judge Gleeson rejected the government's argument that the events of Sept. 11 justified extraordinary measures to confine noncitizens who fell under suspicion, or that the attacks heightened top officials' need for government immunity to combat future threats to national security without fear of being sued.

But his interpretation of immigration law gave the government broad discretion to enforce the law selectively against noncitizens of a particular religion, race or national origin, and to detain them indefinitely, for any unspecified reason, after an immigration judge had ordered them removed from the country.

"The executive is free to single out 'nationals of a particular country' and focus enforcement efforts on them," the judge wrote. "This is, of course, an extraordinarily rough and overbroad sort of distinction of which, if applied to citizens, our courts would be highly suspicious."

Yet, he continued, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that Congress and the executive branch, in exercising their broad power over naturalization and immigration, can make rules that would be unacceptable if applied to American citizens.

In the judge's view, the government has the right to detain people indefinitely as long as their eventual removal is "reasonably foreseeable." If that interpretation stands, it could apply to millions of noncitizens, including tourists removable for visa violations, said Gerald L. Neuman, a law professor at Columbia who is an expert in human rights law and was not involved in the case.

"It doesn't seem to limit the motives the government has to have in being slow in removing them; it could even be just basic neglect," he said.

But Professor Neuman cautioned that "it's only a district judge's decision."

"The decision encourages the government to behave this way without fear of financial liability," he said, but it does not carry the weight of a ruling by an appellate court. "This interpretation is attackable even among other judges in Brooklyn, let alone Lower Manhattan."

But David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University and a co-counsel in the lawsuit, said the ruling was the only one of its kind and made New York "an equal protection-free zone" because the government can detain immigrants wherever it chooses.

"What this decision says is the next time there is a terror attack, the government is free to round up every Muslim immigrant in the U.S., based solely on their ethnic and religious identity, and hold them on immigration pretexts for as long as it desires," he said. "We saw after 9/11 what the government did in an era of uncertainty about how far it can go. Judge Gleeson has essentially given them a green light to go much further."

The class-action lawsuit, Turkmen v. Ashcroft, is the first and largest of several brought by immigrants held after 9/11. The named plaintiffs in the case include former detainees who came back to the United States this year for depositions and were required to be in the custody of federal marshals at all times. Among them were Hany Ibrahim, a deli worker, and his brother, Yasser, a Web designer, Egyptian Muslims who said then that putting themselves back in the hands of the government they were suing was an act of faith in America.

Yesterday, Yasser Ibrahim, who had lived in New York for three or four years on an expired tourist visa and was delivered in shackles to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn soon after Sept. 11, said through his lawyers that he was shocked and very disappointed by the judge's decision.

"I can't believe the court would allow this to happen," he said." I am frightened for other Muslims in the United States, who could face the same discrimination and abuse that I suffered."

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Democrats promise more oversight if they win House

Reuters
Democrats promise more oversight if they win House
By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic lawmakers said on Wednesday that they would investigate spending in Iraq and require government agencies to comply with accounting rules if voters give them control of the House of Representatives in November's elections.

"The American people deserve to know how their tax dollars are spent," Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, of California, said at a news conference.

Pelosi and other Democrats have begun to lay out the agenda they will enact if they win control of the House in November, an outcome political analysts say is possible.

Democrats highlighted a recent report by the Government Accountability Office that found that most federal agencies do not live up to federal accounting standards and cannot fully explain how they spend their money.

A bill introduced by California Rep. Dennis Cardoza would force agency heads who don't produce a clean audit within two years to appear before the Senate for reconfirmation.

"There is no business in America that would be run the way this country is being run," said Tennessee Rep. John Tanner, like Cardoza a member of the Blue Dogs coalition of centrist Democrats. "The books are so fouled up we can't tell what's going on."

Democrats also said that they would set up a committee to make sure that money given to private companies for support operations in Iraq is spent responsibly.

Other elements of the House Democrats' agenda include raising the minimum wage, making college tuition deductible from taxes, and negotiating lower drug prices for Medicare's prescription-drug program.

New York Republican Rep. Tom Reynolds said in a press release that the Democratic agenda contained no new ideas.

"What Minority Leader Pelosi is calling an agenda today is nothing more than a rehashing of the failed, tax-and-spend liberal policies of the past," said Reynolds, who as chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee is responsible for holding on to the Republican majority.

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Top Bush policy adviser leaving White House

Reuters
Top Bush policy adviser leaving White House
By JoAnne Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One of President George W. Bush's top policy advisers and former chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, is stepping down to pursue other opportunities, a White House spokesman said on Wednesday.

Gerson was Bush's chief speechwriter during the president's first term and was promoted to policy and strategic adviser in 2005. He had been crafting major speeches for Bush since joining the former Texas governor's presidential campaign in 1999.

Gerson, listed as one of the 25 most influential Evangelical Christians in America by Time magazine last year, is credited with helping Bush give voice to his "compassionate conservative" philosophy, a central theme of his presidential campaigns.

"It is compassionate to actively help our fellow citizens in need. It is conservative to insist on responsibility and on results. And with this hopeful approach, we can make a real difference in people's lives," Bush said in an April 2002 speech in California.

Two years later, Bush returned to the theme in his acceptance speech to the Republican National Convention.

"I am running with a compassionate conservative philosophy: that government should help people improve their lives, not try to run their lives," Bush said.

A White House spokesman said Gerson announced he would be leaving the administration to write and pursue policy work.

"He's been one of the president's closest advisers and he's starting a new chapter in his life after serving his country and this president for seven years," spokesman Ken Lisaius said.

The Washington Post said Gerson planned to step down in the next couple of weeks.

Gerson will be the latest Bush aide to depart in recent months. Chief of Staff Andrew Card, press secretary Scott McClellan and Treasury Secretary John Snow have all stepped down as part of a major shake-up designed to revive the Bush administration as it struggles with slumping approval ratings.

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Finally, Senate rebuffs Bush on war budgeting (it must be an election year!)

Reuters
Senate rebuffs Bush on war budgeting
By Vicki Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate voted unanimously on Wednesday to force President George W. Bush to submit a budget for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars instead of financing them in emergency bills that are pushed through Congress with minimal scrutiny.

As Congress prepared to pass an emergency bill with $65.8 billion the Pentagon urgently wanted for the wars, the Senate voted 98-0 to end the practice and make the administration lay out the wars' expected costs in its annual budget submitted to Congress in February.

The vote came on an amendment to legislation spelling out defense policies for next year that is expected to trigger a broader debate on Iraq. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts said he would push an amendment calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops by the end of this year, while other Democrats are considering measures calling for a phased withdrawal.

Including the latest emergency bill, the wars' cost will reach $420 billion, said Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican who sponsored the amendment.

"We're adding hundreds of billions to conveniently named emergency expenditures" that do not have to be accounted for in the budget, he said.

The amendment would only apply to war spending and would allow additional emergency Pentagon spending with justification.

The House of Representatives passed its version of the defense authorization bill in May without a similar measure to end the war supplementals.

Democrats and a number of Republicans have complained that the administration has sought to conceal the mounting red ink caused by the wars and diminish Congress' role in budget decisions by rolling the war spending into periodic supplemental bills.

Because the emergency bills are not offset by spending cuts, they add to the burgeoning federal debt.

The administration has resisted putting war spending through the regular budget process, arguing that the uncertainty of war means it cannot foresee many costs.

"The White House has shown no sign that it will take the fiscally responsible course of beginning ... to budget for the cost of the wars," said Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee that oversees federal spending.

McCain has frequently complained that the war supplementals

-- nine since the September 11, 2001, attacks -- have become vehicles for billions of dollars in spending on lawmakers' pet projects. Routine military spending also increasingly has crept into the emergency bills, he said.

Bush threatened to veto the Senate's version of the latest emergency bill that had swelled by $14 billion beyond the $94 billion Bush wanted for the wars and for rebuilding in the hurricane-ravaged U.S. Gulf Coast. But lawmakers trimmed the costs in a House of Representatives-Senate negotiation.

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2 top schools cheat students on AP test fees

NY Daily News
2 top schools cheat students on AP test fees
BY ERIN EINHORN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Two of the city's most elite high schools - Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech - cheated their poorest students out of thousands of dollars by wrongly charging them for Advanced Placement exams, investigators revealed yesterday.

A third top school, Bronx High School of Science, made the same mistake, but gave refunds to kids after discovering the error, its principal said.

Bronx Science's decision was in stark contrast to Brooklyn Tech, where Principal Lee McCaskill - who quit his job amid an unrelated scandal in February - allegedly said refunding students' money would be too difficult.

"I was horrified," said Peggy Blau, the Brooklyn Tech administrator who blew the whistle on McCaskill - launching a probe by special schools investigator Richard Condon.

"For many of these kids, [test fees] are a tremendous hardship, especially in their senior year when they have many expenses like ... the prom, the ring, the yearbook. To add to that a couple of hundred dollars for AP exams when they can't afford them is criminal."

A high score on the tests can translate into college credit for many students. To make sure all kids can afford to take the exams, the state has a program to subsidize the $52 fee for low-income students.

Last year, Blau already had collected fees from her students when she learned the state had written a check directly to the test maker for her low-income kids. When McCaskill refused to refund the money to the kids, she reported him, she said.

Investigators said Brooklyn Tech owes $76,678 to low-income students who have taken 1,511 exams since 2002. At Stuyvesant, kids are owed $71,000 for tests taken since 2002, Condon said.

A Stuyvesant administrator told investigators that the school needed the cash to pay for exam chairs and proctors.

Stuyvesant officials referred questions yesterday to city Education Department spokeswoman Margie Feinberg, who said all eligible students will get refunds.

"We will make sure that this doesn't happen again," Feinberg said.

Bronx Science Principal Valerie Reidy already had started issuing refunds. "We caught it on our own," she said. "We've issued about 200 checks."

McCaskill resigned in February after an investigation by Condon's office found that the principal had lied under oath and forged documents in a failed bid to hide his New Jersey address so his daughter could attend a city school.

McCaskill did not return calls yesterday.

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Strapped States Try New Route, Lease Toll Roads To Foreign Firms

washingtonpost.com
Strapped States Try New Route, Lease Toll Roads To Foreign Firms
By Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writer

ELKHART, Ind. -- Its official state motto is "the crossroads of America." Yet Indiana is about to turn over its entire toll road for the next 75 years to two foreign companies, making it more expensive to drive.

The decision to hand the Indiana Toll Road to an Australian and Spanish team for $3.8 billion at the end of this month has blown up into one of the biggest brawls here in a generation. It has unsettled the state's politics in the months before the November elections, pitting a governor who was President Bush's first budget director against the people of northern Indiana, which the highway passes through.

The decision also places Indiana at the leading edge of a nascent trend in which states and local governments are exploring the idea of privatizing parts of the United States' prized interstate highway system. The idea goes beyond projects, such as Northern Virginia's Dulles Greenway, in which states have turned to private companies to build or widen toll roads. Now, they are considering selling or leasing some of the best-known and most-traveled routes across America.

The trend started 1 1/2 years ago, when Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley (D) pushed through a 99-year lease of the Chicago Skyway, nearly eight miles of elevated highway across the South Side, for $1.8 billion.

Since then, a New Jersey lawmaker has proposed selling a 49 percent interest in the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway. New York Gov. George E. Pataki (R) is trying to persuade the legislature to let investors rebuild or replace the Hudson River's Tappan Zee Bridge. In Houston, Harris County officials are studying leasing 57 miles of toll roads.

Locally, Virginia transportation officials announced last month that they would lease a debt-ridden toll road outside Richmond, the Pocahontas Parkway, to a private firm for $522 million.

Half a century after President Dwight D. Eisenhower persuaded the nation to build the interstate highway system, the allure of privatization is a rethinking of the relationship between the government and its roads. It reverses the view of highways as a public responsibility, ingrained since the first half of the 19th century, when states took over roads, bridges and canals that had gone bankrupt in private hands.

The Bush administration advocates the new view. "We are like a poker game," Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta said in an interview. "We are inviting more people to the table and saying, 'Bring money when you come.' " Such eagerness for private investment stems from the financial strains on an overburdened highway system at a time when the White House and the Republican-controlled Congress want to curb domestic spending. The interstate system is decaying, and traffic congestion has worsened. Inflation in the price of building and improving roads is rampant.

Most significantly, money from federal and state gasoline taxes that pay for roads are falling further behind the need, with no political appetite in an era of record gas prices to increase the rates. According to U.S. projections, the part of the federal Highway Trust Fund devoted to roads is to run out of money for the first time in its history in 2009.

In response, the administration persuaded Congress last summer to take steps to make it easier for the private sector to finance new roads -- and take over existing ones. Lawmakers removed several legal barriers to charging tolls on interstates and gave private investors new access to tax-free bonds for transportation projects.

Mineta has been urging U.S. financial institutions to get involved. "This type of dialogue really didn't exist two years ago," said Mark Florian, a managing director at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which was paid $19 million to negotiate the Indiana deal and has discussed similar possibilities with officials in more than 35 states.

Still, skepticism abounds: Will companies take good care of highways? Will toll roads become too expensive to drive? Will investors pluck profitable routes, leaving others to crumble? What will happen to public toll-road workers -- including 600 in Indiana who have been promised interviews by the new operators, but not the same job?

In Elkhart, resistance to such change runs deep. At a rest stop here on a recent day -- at Milepost 77 near the midpoint between Illinois and Ohio -- both Indiana drivers and interstate truckers were almost uniformly against what the state has done. "I heard that foreigners were going to lease it, and that sounds like a bad deal to me," said Kreig Eberle, 36, a truck driver from Chillicothe, Ill., who uses the toll road nearly every day. "I think it is kind of baloney. Indiana ought to run it itself."

Dankia McLaren, 22, a kitchen designer from nearby South Bend, said: "It is sad. . . . It is just going to make it more expensive to drive."

The passionate opposition has astonished the architect of the deal, Gov. Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. (R), Bush's first budget director.

Daniels said he had his "little epiphany" about the toll road in 2004, after he returned from Washington and was campaigning for governor. At a barbecue in rural western Indiana, a veteran of the state highway department came over and said: "You understand it's a joke, don't you."

The joke, he told Daniels, was that the state for years had a list of promised transportation projects that would never be built. Running on a platform of economic development, Daniels immediately viewed a roads program as a means of creating jobs and attracting business to spur Indiana's sagging economy.

Soon after taking office last year, the governor ordered his staff to compute the price of the pent-up projects -- $2.6 billion more, it turned out, than the state could afford -- and propose ways to pay for them. Of more than 30 options, Daniels said in an interview, generating money by leasing the 157-mile Indiana Toll Road was the only "real bold stroke that could substantially close this huge gap."

In the shower one morning, he came up a name for his plan: "Major Moves," borrowed from the title of a Hank Williams Jr. country song. The governor announced Major Moves in September, saying the state was open for bids on the toll road to raise money for a 10-year transportation plan.

Late in January, he invited legislators, builders, manufacturers, mayors and trade union leaders to his office in Indianapolis to disclose that the winning bid was $3.85 billion, more than enough to fund the state's road projects. The crowd burst into applause. "Everybody thought, that was that," Daniels recalled. "We can stop dreaming and start digging all these big projects."

But, Daniels had not anticipated what he calls "the x-word" -- for xenophobia -- or the protests or the bumper stickers that say, "Keep the Toll Road, Lease Mitch."

"This was an authentic, spontaneous, very emotional reaction," the governor said, "and no interest group caused it."

The proposal stirred up one of the biggest fights the Indiana legislature had ever seen, with rallies and expensive media campaigns on both sides, and the governor unable to change minds at jammed town hall meetings in communities along the toll road where opposition was most fierce.

"Never in my legislative career will I ever again be faced with a [bill] quite like this," said the chief sponsor, state Rep. Randy Borror (R) of Fort Wayne, who walked the statehouse with thick notebooks filled with figures showing how much transportation money each legislator's district would get from the plan.

The winning bidders were Macquarie Infrastructure Group of Sydney, the same firm that controls the Dulles Greenway, and Cintra Concesiones de Infrastructures de Transporte S.A. of Madrid. Under the lease, the companies got the right to raise tolls -- which have not been increased in two decades -- for cars and trucks right away, and eventually to keep pace annually with inflation. The 103-page lease spells out the companies' responsibilities in meticulous detail, including clearing snow and road kill within specified times, and granting state police the right to patrol.

Steve Allen, Macquarie's chief executive, said the company, which operates toll roads in nine countries, has an incentive to improve the highways to attract more drivers. Since it took over the Chicago Skyway, he said, the company has built electronic toll booths sooner than required and made lane changes that reduce backups.

Indiana legislators were not reassured. Daniels and his allies made big compromises: extra money for each county along the toll road, a postponement of higher rates for cars until electronic tolls are installed, job-training money for economically depressed Gary. Even so, the plan passed the state House by one vote.

Three months after the legislation squeaked through, feelings remain raw.

"The whole thing stinks," said state Rep. B. Patrick Bauer, the House Democratic leader. The two companies, he said, "got a heck of an unbelievable deal. We got a bad deal."

Daniels's approval ratings have plummeted, from about 50 percent early last winter to 37 percent in the most recent polls. Borror said the issue "complicates the election" for state legislators in November.

"There are going to be a lot of states that fail at this," Borror said, "because they underestimate the amount of work it takes to get this bill passed." Even so, Daniels said, "I don't believe we'll ever [again] be able to do any one thing that will be as transformative and positive for the future of this state."

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$1.4 billion FEMA funds spent on divorce, sex change

Yahoo! News
FEMA funds spent on divorce, sex change
By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer

The government doled out as much as $1.4 billion in bogus assistance to victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, getting hoodwinked to pay for season football tickets, a tropical vacation and even a divorce lawyer, congressional investigators have found.

Prison inmates, a supposed victim who used a New Orleans cemetery for a home address, and a person who spent 70 days at a Hawaiian hotel all were able to wrongly get taxpayer help, according to evidence that gives a new black eye to the nation's disaster relief agency.

Federal investigators even informed Congress that one man apparently used FEMA assistance money for a sex change operation.

Agents from the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, went undercover to expose the ease of receiving disaster expense checks from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The GAO concluded that as much as 16 percent of the billions of dollars in FEMA help to individuals after the two hurricanes was unwarranted.

The findings are detailed in testimony, obtained by The Associated Press, that is to be delivered at a hearing Wednesday by the House Homeland Security subcommittee on investigations.

To dramatize the problem, GAO provided lawmakers with a copy of a $2,358 U.S. Treasury check for rental assistance that an undercover agent got using a bogus address. The money was paid even after FEMA learned from its inspector that the undercover applicant did not live at the address.

"This is an assault on the American taxpayer," said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the subcommittee that will conduct the hearing. "Prosecutors from the federal level down should be looking at prosecuting these crimes and putting the criminals who committed them in jail for a long time."

FEMA spokesman Aaron Walker said Tuesday that the agency, already criticized for a poor response to Katrina, makes its highest priority during a disaster "to get help quickly to those in desperate need of our assistance."

"Even as we put victims first, we take very seriously our responsibility to be outstanding stewards of taxpayer dollars, and we are careful to make sure that funds are distributed appropriately," he said.

FEMA said it has identified more than 1,500 cases of potential fraud after Katrina and Rita and has referred those cases to the Homeland Security inspector general. The agency said it has identified $16.8 million in improperly awarded disaster relief money and has started efforts to collect the money.

The GAO said it was 95 percent confident that improper and potentially fraudulent payments were much higher — between $600 million and $1.4 billion.

The investigative agency said it found people lodged in hotels often were paid twice, since FEMA gave them individual rental assistance and paid hotels directly. FEMA paid California hotels $8,000 to house one individual — the same person who received three rental assistance payments for both disasters.

In another instance, FEMA paid an individual $2,358 in rental assistance, while at the same time paying about $8,000 for the same person to stay 70 nights at more than $100 per night in a Hawaii hotel.

FEMA also could not establish that 750 debit cards worth $1.5 million even went to Katrina victims, the auditors said.

Among the items purchased with the cards:

_an all-inclusive, one-week Caribbean vacation in the Punta Cana resort in the Dominican Republic.

_five season tickets to New Orleans Saints professional football games.

_adult erotica products in Houston and "Girls Gone Wild" videos in Santa Monica, Calif.

_Dom Perignon champagne and other alcoholic beverages in San Antonio.

_a divorce lawyer's services in Houston.

"Our forensic audit and investigative work showed that improper and potentially fraudulent payments occurred mainly because FEMA did not validate the identity of the registrant, the physical location of the damaged address, and ownership and occupancy of all registrants at the time of registration," GAO officials said.

FEMA paid millions of dollars to more than 1,000 registrants who used names and Social Security numbers belonging to state and federal prisoners for expedited housing assistance. The inmates were in Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Florida.

FEMA made about $5.3 million in payments to registrants who provided a post office box as their damaged residence, including one who got $2,748 for listing an Alabama post office box as the damaged property.

To demonstrate how easy it was to hoodwink FEMA, the GAO told of an individual who used 13 different Social Security numbers — including the person's own — to receive $139,000 in payments on 13 separate registrations for aid. All the payments were sent to a single address.

Likewise, another person used a damaged property address located within the grounds of Greenwood Cemetery in New Orleans to request disaster aid. Public records show no record of the registrant ever living in New Orleans.

Instead, records indicate that for the past five years, the registrant lived in West Virginia — at the address provided to FEMA, the GAO said.

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A Shameful Silence

New York Observer
A Shameful Silence
On Coulter’s Spewing
By: Joe Conason

With the predictable regularity of a locust plague, Ann Coulter and her enablers at the once-reputable firm of Random House have issued yet another volume of fascistic entertainment. Now the hard-drinking, trash-talking, fortysomething bachelorette bills herself as a Christian moralist, in holy battle against the liberal heathens.

That whiff of brimstone in the air may only be the match she is striking for her next cigarette.

But her version of “Christianity” turns out to be a strangely modern and convenient faith, which encourages heaping scorn on bereaved widows, bearing false witness against them on television and publicly gloating over the ill-gotten profits thus attained. Leaving behind the golden rule of the Gospels to “do unto others as you would have them do to you,” she embodies a new rule of gold: You can never be too rich, too thin or too vicious.

Too vicious, however, is the only way to categorize Ms. Coulter’s attempted assassination of the 9/11 widows known as the Jersey Girls, whom she accuses of “enjoying” the horrific deaths of their husbands in the World Trade Center inferno. She harangues them as “broads,” “witches” and “millionaires,” guilty of being “self-obsessed” and “reveling in their status as celebrities” while they are “lionized on TV and in articles about them.”

Coming from an energetic publicity seeker like Ms. Coulter, who still whines bitterly about her elongated cover shot in Time magazine, those insults are an exercise in self-parody.

She goes on to complain that the widows, by telling their personal stories of loss, were able to shut down their critics with sentimentality. But that charge too is obviously false, since she is now reaping profits and publicity by savaging them. She is also a hypocrite, having freely brandished the name of her late friend Barbara Olson, tragically killed on 9/11, to lend impact to her own arguments.

The truth about the Jersey Girls—Kristen Breitweiser, Patty Casazza, Mindy Kleinberg and Lorie van Auken—is that they loved their husbands deeply, of course. They and their children continue to suffer from the loss that Ms. Coulter so heartlessly mocks. The truth is that in their suffering, these courageous women joined with other widows and family members to demand a serious investigation of 9/11. Together, they organized, researched and lobbied for thousands of hours to win the appointment of an independent commission, against the determined political opposition of the White House. The truth is that their success was an important victory for every American, without regard to party or ideology, and a vindication of grassroots democracy. The nation owes them all a debt of gratitude.

What is most disturbing about this episode is not that these women can be victimized by a brutal bully like Ms. Coulter, nor even that the mainstream media, which abandoned traditional standards of fairness and decency years ago, would eagerly assist her. That is our hideous political culture. What is most disappointing is the abject dereliction of the prominent politicians who worked so closely with the Jersey Girls.

John McCain and Joseph Lieberman, the Senate sponsors of the bill that created the 9/11 Commission, both believed that an independent investigation was essential for reasons of honor and national security. They both know that they could not have prevailed against the White House—and the Republican Congressional leadership—without the help of the widows.

In the fall of 2002, when their bill passed the Senate and the House, Mr. McCain acknowledged the efforts of the widows and their comrades. “I also want to put in a special word for the families,” he said after thanking his fellow statesmen. “Without their unstinting support and efforts, we would not be where we are today.”

In the summer of 2004, when the commission’s reform recommendations were debated, Mr. Lieberman praised all of the 9/11 families, including a special acknowledgment for the Jersey Girls. “I continue to be awed and inspired by your ability to turn your personal tragedies into better public safety for this nation,” said the Connecticut Senator.

And in the fall of 2005, when Mr. McCain needed citizen support for his worthy amendment to ban torture in the war against terrorism, the Jersey Girls rallied to his cause. He was glad enough of their support then.

But that was then, and this is now—and these two pious politicians remain silent in the face of a malevolent attack visited on their erstwhile friends. Both men know that it is a lie to call these women partisans or profiteers. Both know that these women—and the families they helped to lead—brought honor and purpose to a legislative process that is often petty and corrupt.

Shame on the silent Senators. And please, let’s hear no more from either of them for a while about tolerance, respect and decency.

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Christians Who Want Democracy Must Stop Bowing to a Dictator Christ

huffingtonpost.com
Christians Who Want Democracy Must Stop Bowing to a Dictator Christ
Jim Rigby

Whereas American theology was born out of a hope for democracy, much of it is wedded to a picture of Christ as a benevolent dictator. Should we be surprised that a hierarchical cosmology would produce hierarchical churches and nations? Should we be surprised that religious nations that picture Christ as a loving dictator have produced conquistadors, inquisitors and crusaders?
What else could they produce? As the tree is, so shall be the fruit.

The word “Lord” was not in the original Bible. It is an English word from feudal times. Whereas the Greek word “kurios” had a range of meanings, from a title of respect, to a title of leadership, to a name for the sacred, the English translation “Lord” refers specifically to a male European land baron. Many people have softened that interpretation in their own minds, but in times of great stress, such nuance falls away and many Christians seek a white male king. He may be called “Pope”, he may be called “the decider President,” he may be called “televangelist,” but the title only masks what he is, a benevolent (or not so benevolent) dictator.

Neither Calvin nor Luther spoke English, but they helped the Popes lay the groundwork for the view of God as a cosmic dictator. From Popes, Luther and Calvin we have some of the ugliest slurs ever recorded against women, intellectuals, and those who refused the church’s message. How did Christians hold slaves, oppress women and slaughter nonbelievers? Perhaps they could not see Christ in non-male, non-European, and non-Christian people because they were limited by their theology. Their “Christ” was merely a glorification of the most powerful member of their own culture.

To picture God in terms of power is also one of the great bait and switch gimmicks of all time. People within the power hierarchy proclaim that God is the ultimate authority, and then appoint themselves as God’s interpreters and enforcers. They are God’s humble bullies. It has been one of the most successful con games of all time.

The real Jesus was born illegitimately. He called himself “the human one.” Just like Buddha, his authority came from truth, not power. He taught whoever has love has God. He said those who work for the common good are his church.

The real Jesus was an anarchist. He spent his life refusing to claim power over anyone. He said that God is understood in terms of love not power. We add nothing to the majesty of “the human one” by adding a throne or a crown. If he did not want to rule over others in life, why should he want it in death? That is why Jesus is called “lamb of God,” he spoke not as the king of the universe, but from its heart.

If you want to know why Americans are so frightened and why we are attacking anything that would challenge our dominance over others, read the Bible. Like Cain we have murdered members of our human family. Even when we silence our victims, the ground beneath our feet cries out against us.

Today’s church lifts its arms to praise Christ wearing liturgical garments woven in sweatshops. So called “Christian America” is still a nation built on the work of slaves. We do not see them because they toil invisibly in other countries. Today’s church doles out bits of charity from booty stolen from God’s powerless people the world over. Anyone who claims to believe in a just God, or even in justice itself, has to know at some level that the prayers for liberation coming from third world countries will be heard and answered. At some level, people of faith have to know that unless America repents of the sin of empire we are a doomed nation.

Whatever prophetic voices survive in the church must take a message to the mainstream denominations. “We are guilty of our leaders’ crimes. Just because we are silent and passive does not mean that we are innocent. If we have any status in the power hierarchy, we are partially responsible for its misdeeds.”

I realize that most of the church consists of wonderful and compassionate people, but that does not matter if we turn over our power to those less charitable. The moderate mainstream church is helpless against fundamentalism because it is built on a nuanced version of the same cracked foundation of a theology of power.

Whether or not we can change America in time to avoid a political and ecological apocalypse, it is never too late to do the right thing. All of us can begin to plant seeds of a better future for our children’s children. For Christians today, that means suffering the consequences of refusing to bow to the dictator Christ of this culture.

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US 'biggest global peace threat'

BBC NEWS
US 'biggest global peace threat'

People in European and Muslim countries see US policy in Iraq as a bigger threat to world peace than Iran's nuclear programme, a survey has shown.

The survey by the Pew Research Group also found support for US President George W Bush and his "war on terror" had dropped dramatically worldwide.

Goodwill created by US aid for nations hit by the 2004 tsunami had also faded since last year, the survey found.

The survey questioned 17,000 people in 15 countries, including the US.

The latest in a series of annual polls by the Pew Global Attitudes Project interviewed respondents between 31 March and 14 May 2006.

Its release coincides with a surprise visit by President George W Bush to Baghdad in an effort to shore up support for US policy in the region.

'Fading goodwill'

The latest survey shows the worldwide reputation of the US continues to suffer over its prosecution of the "war on terror".

Sharp declines in the public perception of the US were particularly apparent in India, Spain and Turkey.

Goodwill towards the US had fallen from 71% to 56% in India, from 41% to 23% in Spain and from 23% to 12% in Turkey.

A majority of people in 10 of the 14 countries outside the US surveyed said the war in Iraq had made the world a more dangerous place.

Some 60% of people in the UK, which is the US biggest ally, felt the Iraq war had made the world less secure, while some 30% said it had made the world safer.

According to the survey:

* Worldwide support for the "war on terror" has remained the same or declined
* European confidence in Mr Bush has sunk even lower than it was last year
* A majority of people in most countries feel the US will not achieve its goals in the "war on terror"

The survey also found little remaining evidence of the goodwill the US had earned over its aid for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

In Indonesia, a major recipient of US tsunami aid, favourable opinions of the US had fallen from 38% in 2005 to 30% this year.

"Last year we saw some good news in countries like Russia and India," Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Centre, told the Associated Press news agency.

"That good news being wiped away is a measure of how difficult a problem this is for the United States."

Muslim differences

According to the survey, people in the US and Europe have grown increasingly concerned in the last year over Iran's nuclear programme.

The US has accused Iran of seeking to build a nuclear bomb - but Iran says its nuclear programme has a purely civilian objective.

Almost half of the Americans surveyed, 46%, viewed the current government in Iran as a "great danger" to stability in the Middle East and to world peace - a figure that has risen from 26% in 2003.

In Germany, Spain, France and the UK, the percentage of people who regard Iran as a great danger is roughly three times greater than it was three years ago.

However, the poll showed public opinion in predominantly Muslim countries was far less troubled by Tehran's nuclear programme.

Muslim people also appeared less concerned than Europeans and Americans by the victory of the Hamas militant group in Palestinian elections earlier this year.

The survey found concern over bird flu was largely confined to Asia, while two-thirds of people surveyed in each country said they were worried by global warming.

Concern over the greenhouse effect was highest in India and Japan and lowest in the US and China.

The survey interviewed people in China, Egypt, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Spain, Turkey and the US.

Its margin of error was two to six percentage points.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/5077984.stm

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EU-US "partners in crime" on CIA flights: Amnesty

Reuters
EU-US "partners in crime" on CIA flights: Amnesty
By Ingrid Melander

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Amnesty International urged European states on Wednesday to stop being "partners in crime" with the United States over the alleged kidnapping of terrorism suspects and their transfer to countries that use torture.

In a report and a letter addressed to EU leaders meeting on Thursday and Friday in Brussels, the human rights groups backed accusations that the U.S. Central lntelligence Agency ran secret transfer flights and that European countries were aware of it.

"There is irrefutable evidence of European complicity in the unlawful practice of renditions," Amnesty said in the letter.

"The European Council must therefore put a resolute stop to the attitude of see no evil, hear no evil that has prevailed so far," Amnesty said, referring to the EU summit.

The human rights group urged EU leaders to say in their meeting this week that the so-called rendition flights were "unacceptable" and to make sure their airspace and airports were not used for such flights in the future.

It asked EU leaders to raise the issue with President Bush when they meet him in Vienna on June 21, saying the bloc's credibility was at stake.

Amnesty's report draws largely the same conclusions as those issued by EU lawmakers on Monday, and last week by the Council of Europe, a European human rights watchdog. None produced hard evidence.

Amnesty reports on six suspected cases of CIA abuses in which it says seven countries -- Germany, Italy, Sweden, Britain, Bosnia Herzegovina, Macedonia and Turkey -- have been involved.

All these cases, and eleven others, have already been cited by Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty.

Amnesty does not produce "smoking gun" evidence either. But it says the "converging evidence" should be enough.

"The whole evidence question is overrated, it's a bit cynical," said Dick Oosting, director of Amnesty's EU office, accusing EU states of asking for much less evidence when they criticize abuses in other countries.

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Bush education policy to miss goals: Harvard study

Reuters
Bush education policy to miss goals: Harvard study
By Jason Szep

BOSTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush's signature No Child Left Behind education policy is failing to close racial achievement gaps and will miss its goals by 2014 according to recent trends, a Harvard study said on Wednesday.

It said the policy has had no significant impact on improving reading and math achievement since it was introduced in 2001, contradicting White House claims and potentially adding to concerns over America's academic competitiveness.

Bush's No Child Left Behind Act was meant to introduce national standards to an education system where only two-thirds of teenagers graduate from high school, a proportion that slides to 50 percent for blacks and Hispanics.

The study released by Harvard University's Civil Rights Project said national average of achievement by U.S. students has been flat in reading since 2001 and the growth rate in math has remained the same as before the policy was introduced.

The study follows results last month from the first nationwide science test administered in five years which showed achievement among U.S. high school seniors falling over the past decade -- a time when students in many other developed countries are outscoring U.S. students in science testing.

The Harvard report said only 24 to 34 percent of U.S. students will meet a reading proficiency target by 2014 and 29 to 64 percent will hit a math target under current trends.

Under No Child Left Behind, children in every racial and demographic group in every school must improve their scores on standardized tests in math and English each year. Failure to achieve annual progress can lead to sanctions against schools.

Children in poorly performing schools can switch schools if space is available. In extreme cases, schools can be closed.

But a surge in the number of schools identified as "needing improvement," including many considered top performers in their state, has stirred opposition to the law nationwide -- from a legal challenge in Connecticut to a rebellion by state legislators in staunchly Republican Utah.

U.S. officials counter the reforms are working.

"Across the country test scores in reading and math in the early grades are rising," Deputy Secretary for the Department of Education, Raymond Simon, testified in Congress on Tuesday.

"The 'achievement gap' is finally beginning to close."

That differs from Harvard's study, which predicts less than 25 percent of poor and black students will hit the 2014 target in reading proficiency and less than 50 percent in math, with the overall racial achievement gap barely closing by 2014.

The averages were based on the federal government's National Assessment of Educational Progress, considered the most accurate test for measuring achievement in core subjects.

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CBSNews.com
Redford To Democrats: Show Backbone

WASHINGTON, June 12, 2006(AP)
The Sundance Kid gathered up the nerve to jump off a cliff with Butch Cassidy. Now, he wants Democrats to show similar backbone.

"Democrats need to regain the courage that's lost with political compromises over the last few years," actor and environmental activist Robert Redford said Monday in an interview with The Associated Press. "They've got to get it together. If they don't, it will not only be a tragedy for them, but a tragedy for the country."

The Oscar-winning director was in Washington to discuss energy policy with the liberal group Campaign for America's Future and to present an award to Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, for his work on energy independence.

Redford addressed the group after Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada made a pitch for using less gasoline and taking global warming seriously. On energy, the actor said the first step is to acknowledge there is a crisis.

"It's hitting a tipping point, but so are the opportunities for solutions," Redford told the group.

Redford said efforts to talk with the Bush administration about energy policy is a waste of time. "Things will really improve when they're out of there, so the next elections are going to be very important," Redford said.

The actor, who turns 70 in August, has starred in numerous films, including "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Way We Were," "Out of Africa," and "All the President's Men." He won an Academy Award in 1980 for his direction of "Ordinary People."

Redford argued that Democrats who take a strong stand are often tarred as radicals, but they're just being reasonable.

"Republicans are not about substance, they're about strategy, and they're good at it," he said. "Democrats could learn a lot from the Republicans about strategy."

Redford, who also starred in "The Candidate," laughed when asked whether he's ever considered running for office. "If you saw that movie, you'd know that I would never enter that field."

During his speech to the Democrats, Redford recalled giving a passionate speech years ago about his political views, leaving the crowd silent. As he departed, someone in the crowd came up to him and asked: "Mr. Redford, did they make you jump off the cliff in Butch Cassidy?"

The crowd on Monday laughed loudly.

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'A Sad Way of Doing Big Science'

'A Sad Way of Doing Big Science'
Two of the nation's top universities recently announced plans to pursue embryonic stem-cell research. An expert explains why the news is so significant—and so controversial.
By Jennifer Barrett
Newsweek

June 12, 2006 - Last week, Harvard scientists announced that they have begun a privately funded program aimed at creating the world’s first cloned human embryonic stem cells. Their goal, they said, is to use the cells to study the development of several devastating diseases like diabetes and genetic blood disorders and, hopefully, to find treatments for them. Scientists say that embryonic stem cells hold the most promise for developing innovative new treatments for diseases, since the cells may be changed into any of the human body’s cells. But the process is not without controversy. To get the cells, scientists destroy days-old embryos, which religious and conservative critics equate with taking human lives. In 2001, President George W. Bush cut off federal funding for new embryonic stem-cell development and research. So Harvard and the University of California at San Francisco, which relaunched its embryonic stem-cell program earlier this year, must depend on private funding. That’s not the only challenge that U.S. embryonic stem-cell researchers face. Late last year, a South Korean scientist admitted that he had falsified research, after he and his team published a paper in the journal Science claiming to have produced 11 stem cell lines from cloned human embryos—an achievement hailed as a major breakthrough in scientific research (that turned out to be a lie). The admission raised concerns about unethical behavior in the field and calls for additional regulation and restrictions, and made it even more unlikely that federal funds would be restored anytime soon. NEWSWEEK’s Jennifer Barrett discussed the controversy and promise of embryonic stem-cell research with Christopher Thomas Scott, executive director of the Stanford University Program on Stem Cells and Society and author of ''Stem Cell Now: From the experiment that shook the world to the new politics of life," published by Pi Press last November. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Harvard University and the University of California at San Francisco both announced recently that they will pursue embryonic stem cells research through privately-funded programs. How significant are these announcements?
Christopher Thomas Scott: They’re significant because they are the first indication that embryonic stem-cell research is alive and well in the United States despite those who predicted its death after the South Korean scandal. Second, these are two blue chip organizations. These scientists are very good. You couldn’t have picked a better trio. And at UCSF, they’re building a world-leading stem-cell section. It’s all good news.

The Bush administration cut off federal funds for embryonic stem cell research in 2001. How much do you think that set back efforts to find new treatments for some of these diseases?
I think it has created some fairly pronounced effects, but proving it is another matter. It’s only been five years. My group at Stanford is looking really closely at this. We’ve been collaborating with Jennifer McCormick [a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics]. She compared the rate of announcements of new results in he United States against the rate of groundbreaking stem cell papers in other countries and found that, right after the 2001 Bush announcements—and, in particular, in 2004 through 2006—the rate of U.S. new results has started to taper off while the rate in other countries has started to increase. That confirms what a lot of us are kind of suspicious about. I go to a lot of international meetings for stem cell research. In 2002, U.S. scientists were prominent. Now, not so much. It’s folks from Israel, the United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore and China—places where stem cell research is permitted, even encouraged. This is just the first blush of effects of the policy. It will have a bad effect on the inventiveness of U.S. researchers. And new ways of doing research create new ways of doing products that become drugs and therapies for our citizens. If the process is thwarted or retarded, we don’t have the benefit of developing therapies at home. They go somewhere else.

What are the prospects for embryonic stem cell research in the United States now that some institutions are raising private funds?
This will go ahead for sure, despite the federal funds ban. The challenge for biologists is to go ahead, despite the current political environment. The good news is that this has always been a worldwide phenomenon. The world is doing a really good job of collaborating and having meetings and trying to figure it out. The bad news—from an American point of view—is that we may be playing a secondary role with this…I don’t think we’ll see government funding for this of any real sort, which means America in may need to take it state by state. It’s a sad way of doing big science but it may be the only way to get it done.

What exactly will the research at Harvard and UCSF entail?
This is embryonic stem-cell research versus adult. Stanford has both varieties, but we’re not doing nuclear transfer like they are. We’re using embryos donated by parents.

What makes nuclear transfer unique?
Nuclear transfer is a technique that produces lines of cells. One cool thing about it is that these cells can just go on and on and on, so you can keep doing tests. It’s a really nifty system for a laboratory… What Harvard and UCSF and some labs in England are doing is trying to duplicate the South Korean result—or the results the South Koreans lied about, to be more specific. It involves something called `therapeutic cloning,’ but it’s actually nuclear transfer [in which nuclei, which contain the cellular DNA or genes from egg cells, are removed from embryos and replaced with the nuclei of donor cells]. When it’s fully developed, it becomes a clone. That’s how Dolly the sheep was born.

But we’re not talking about cloning babies here, right?
Even saying you’re cloning embryos is a stretch. This is a technique that produces lines of cells. You’re making cells, not animals or babies. You’re harvesting the cells and making a stem cell line… When we’re talking about stem cell research, we’re talking about an embryo at 4 days—about 120 to 150 cells. In other countries, the embryo can be up to 12 to 14 days. But it’s certainly not a baby, or even a fetus.

So what is created?
You can actually create diseases in the lab. If you take the nucleus from a person with diabetes and put it into the egg, you’d have embryonic stem cells with diabetes. That’s what Harvard scientists are aiming for.

Why is embryonic stem cell research such a polarizing subject?
A colleague of mine says that it’s all tied to the embryo—to in vitro fertilization, abortion, and other issues. They’re all kind of wrapped in that moral tangle that conservatives use to drive the social conservative movement in the U.S. If you tease it out—the stem cell research—you can see how weak and thin it [the argument] really is. We’re trying to get people on the same page from a biological perspective, and even a moral perspective. We aren’t talking about an embryo with arms and legs.

Why not just use adult stem cells?
Embryonic stem cells are the most powerful cells we have. They can theoretically change into any cell in the body. That’s why they’ve got everybody so excited. You can have a powerful therapy to treat almost every disease. Adult stem cells have already been programmed to be a certain cell type. Blood stem cells, for example, become nine different kinds like white, red, platelets, etcetera. So they are good for some things, but not all things. Embryonic stem cells, in theory, are good for all things…With embryonic stem cells, you can observe how the cells become diseased as they develop. You can compare the processes of diseased cells to healthy lines, see what’s being turned on and off, how the disease progresses from molecular level. Also, you have model system on which to test drugs. You have a laboratory system for certain diseases—you can actually, in the cultured disease, test chemical agents and other drugs to see if you can interrupt the pathways in the disease.

This isn’t really what’s talked about in the press. The stem cell issue gets everybody so worked up, but these are the near-term horizon goals. It’s just stunning what they could do for medicine.

The Harvard scientists said they hope to develop, via nuclear transfer, embryonic stem cells from patients with blood diseases and diabetes. Why focus on these diseases?
Let’s take diabetes. It is a complicated disease. It’s an autoimmune disease—the white blood cells are attacking healthy organs like the pancreas—so it’s complicated and ugly. You have to figure out a way to repair the autoimmune problem and the pancreas. The theoretical treatment would use a combination of bone marrow transplant therapy and cell therapy for the pancreas.

What would it entail?
You give the patient a dose of chemotherapy and radiation or both, which destroys the cells that are attacking the pancreas, and then you transplant into the patient a healthy immune system—or the blood stem cells from a healthy patient. They are not rejected. Both the patient’s existing blood system and the new one exist in a kind of harmony. So you’ve also got an immune system of somebody else who could be a lifelong donor. Then you use the same source of embryonic stem cells to make new pancreatic cells. Get those to regenerate the pancreas that has been damaged from bad white blood cells. It’s dual therapy—embryonic stem cells can make white blood cells and pancreatic cells. This is a ‘Gee, whiz-oh wow!’ therapy. But it’s very possible that in a decade or so you could do something like this for many diseases in the autoimmune categories, like multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis as well as diabetes.

Aren’t stem cells already being used to treat some diseases?
Yes, adult stem cells are being used in joint repair on the East Coast. Umbilical cord blood cells are being used to actually cure certain childhood cancers successfully. But the problem with umbilical cord blood cells is that very small numbers are good for children, and not so much for adults. We need to find a way to make these cells do well in adults too or find a way to amplify these cells so you can use them in millions of patients.

How do these stem cells work to fight or treat diseases?
Stem cells in bone marrow transplants, for example, are the reason those transplants work. We know that now. It’s helping to improve our success, now that we have more information.

When could we see embryonic stem cells being used in treatment?
Embryonic stem cell therapies are still in the gate. And the first trials are expected to start in the next year or so. There’s a corporation in California, Geron, that’s using a line of embryonic stem cells to help patients with spinal cord injuries, for example. They claim to be able to take the line of stem cells into a special chemical cocktail and then change them to a type of adult stem cell that can be used for therapies.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13283561/site/newsweek/

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Flag-desecration amendment needs 1 more vote

USA TODAY
Flag-desecration amendment needs 1 more vote
By Andrea Stone, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The Senate is one vote away from passing a constitutional amendment that would ban desecration of the U.S. flag, the closest that amendment supporters have been to passage.

The American Legion, which supports the amendment, and the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes it, both say there are 66 votes to pass it.

Whether advocates can find the 67th vote to send the flag amendment to the states for ratification remains unclear. A Senate vote is set for the week of June 26.

Elections, post-9/11 patriotism and the Iraq war have improved the measure's prospects since the Senate last voted in 2000, says Patrick Brady of the Citizens Flag Alliance. "We're very hopeful we'll get it," he says.

The House of Representatives last year approved the flag amendment 286-130. It was the seventh time it had done so since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Texas law banning flag burning in 1989. The next year, the court ruled that the federal Flag Protection Act violated the First Amendment's free speech guarantee.

"The American flag is a unique symbol that should be protected," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the chief sponsor.

Paul McMasters of the non-partisan First Amendment Center, which works to protect that amendment's freedoms, says the Senate is trying to provide "a radical solution to a non-problem. It's unwise, unnecessary and un-American."

Four times in the Senate, the flag measure has failed to receive the two-thirds majority required of constitutional amendments. In 2000, the amendment came up four votes short with 63.

But as Flag Day approaches Wednesday, advocates on both sides of the issue say momentum has shifted. Reasons:

•Republican gains. Sens. George Allen of Virginia, John Thune of South Dakota, John Ensign of Nevada and Richard Burr of North Carolina, all supporters of an amendment, replaced Democrats who opposed one.

•Supportive Democrats. Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and at least 13 other Democrats have voted for or voiced support for the amendment. New Jersey's Robert Menendez voted for it as a House member, and his spokesman, Allyn Brooks-LaSure, says his "current intention" is to do so as a senator. Menendez replaced now-Gov. Jon Corzine, who had opposed it.

•State resolutions. All 50 states have approved non-binding resolutions endorsing an amendment. "That is unprecedented and shouldn't be ignored," American Legion legislative director Steve Robertson says. "We will see if the senators are listening to their constituents or not."

Thirty-eight, or three-fourths, of the 50 states must ratify the measure to make it the 28th Amendment.

It took a record 202 years for states to ratify the 27th Amendment, which says a congressional pay raise can't take effect until after the next election has been held. The 26th Amendment, guaranteeing 18-year-olds the right to vote, was the quickest to be ratified: It took 100 days in 1971.

For now, enough senators — including three Republicans — remain opposed to the flag amendment to keep it from getting to the states. Sen. Robert Bennett of Utah wants to write a law instead of rewriting the Constitution. Majority Whip Mitch McConnell of Kentucky objects to altering the First Amendment. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island also voted no in 2000.

John Vile, a constitutional law expert at Middle Tennessee State University, says some believe that the amendment "would be the first in U.S. history to restrict the Bill of Rights."

Despite ads by the Citizens Flag Alliance urging his support, Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., has no plans to vote yes and does not believe his re-election will be affected. Says spokesman Chris Thorne: "This is not an issue that people are talking to us about."



Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-06-12-senate-flag-amendment_x.htm?csp=34

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A Bush Aide's Blunt Words

washingtonpost.com
A Bush Aide's Blunt Words
New Adviser Pulled No Punches in His Magazine Pieces
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer

Bill Clinton is a "virtuoso deceiver" and Hillary Rodham Clinton a "true chameleon" guilty of "self-serving behavior, comparative radicalism, and dubious personal morality."

Al Gore is a "mad dog" known to "foam at the mouth." John McCain is given to "showboating." And Jacques Chirac, Nelson Mandela, Gerhard Schroeder and Kofi Annan are all "feckless fools."

Says who? President Bush's new chief domestic policy adviser. While most White House aides carefully trim their public commentary, they can't take back what they said before arriving in the West Wing, and few in this day and age arrive with a more provocative paper trail than Karl Zinsmeister, who started his new job yesterday.

For a dozen years until his appointment, Zinsmeister held forth on all manner of issues and personalities as editor in chief of the American Enterprise Institute's magazine. With a sharp pen, he skewered the left, taking special aim at environmentalists, anti-globalists, feminists, contemporary artists, university faculties, Hollywood, Broadway and particularly the media, composed mainly of "left-wing, cynical, wiseguy Ivy League types, with a high prima donna quotient."

A review of years of articles reveals a formidable thinker with a powerful sense of what he considers right and wrong. As Zinsmeister sees it, racial profiling by the police makes sense; the military, if anything, treats terrorist suspects too gently; and casual sex has led to wrecked cities, violence and "endless human misery." In a "soft, often amoral, and self-indulgent age," he warned, some children "will be ruined without a whip hand," and he assured that "things generally go better with God."

Although Zinsmeister wrote admiringly of Bush, his future boss was not exempt from remonstration when he seemed to stray. Zinsmeister chided candidate Bush for promising he would make it easier for legal immigrants to bring in relatives and questioned whether incumbent Bush "actually has a soft spot for big government."

"Though he talks a good line about battling government bloat," he wrote this year, "our current President has shown an eerie lackawanna when it comes to actually keeping a lid on the federal Pandora's box. Quite apart from Katrina or the war on terror, there has been a pattern of troublesome spending spikes right from the beginning of the Bush Administration."

For Zinsmeister, provocation has been his stock in trade. "That's kind of my M.O., for better or worse," he said by phone last week. "My main beef with much of the Washington discussion is you're forced to be so mealy-mouthed. I had the luxury as an outsider of being as blunt as I wanted. When you're outside trying to push the elephant even an inch, you have to be very crisp and uncouched."

But Zinsmeister said he understands that must change now that he advises the president. "When you're inside the tent, you have to shift gears. That's a double standard, but it's an appropriate one."

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joel D. Kaplan said he believes that Zinsmeister will be able to make that transition. "He's here because of his powerful intellect and reputation for outside-the-box solutions to public policy problems," Kaplan said. "An outside-the-Beltway perspective, we thought, would be helpful."

In his new post, Zinsmeister will oversee the president's domestic policy process and help shape White House positions on a wide array of issues, including immigration, Social Security and energy. The position has been key in past administrations, although in this White House, it has at times been overshadowed by other aides such as Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove. Zinsmeister's predecessor, Claude A. Allen, resigned after being accused of trying to fleece retail stores in a product-exchange scam.

With scant experience in government or campaigns, Zinsmeister seemed an unlikely choice for White House domestic policy chief. Until his appointment, he was little known in Washington. At 6 feet 5, he would have stood out in the capital, but he edited the American Enterprise magazine from Cazenovia in Upstate New York. He finds Washington so distasteful that even for his new job he plans to move his family no closer than Baltimore.

In fact, his antipathy for Washington got him in trouble when he was appointed. In a 2004 profile by the Syracuse New Times, Zinsmeister was quoted as saying, "People in Washington are morally repugnant, cheating, shifty human beings." But the New York Sun discovered last month that he doctored that and other quotes when he posted the profile on the AEI Web site. The edited quote said, "I learned in Washington that there is an 'overclass' in this country stocked with cheating, shifty human beings that's just as morally repugnant as our 'underclass.' "

Zinsmeister later said he was "foolish" to change the quotes and did so only because he had been misquoted. The New Times disputed that and denounced him for altering its account. White House spokesman Tony Snow defended him and described Zinsmeister as someone with "sharp elbows" who "expresses himself with a certain amount of piquancy."

Another question about Zinsmeister's past arose when the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, accused him of résumé padding. The White House release said he "founded" the American Enterprise, although the magazine had been around for four years when he took over in 1994. The White House took the blame, saying that Zinsmeister actually used the term "formulated" because he revamped the magazine but that a White House aide misunderstood and wrote "founded."

A native of Cazenovia, Zinsmeister, 47, is himself an "Ivy League type" who graduated from Yale University before working for Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) and serving on an Education Department advisory board. He has also worked as a writer, film producer and radio commentator.

At the American Enterprise Institute, Zinsmeister stood out in a think tank known for a more libertarian, economic conservatism. Beyond cultural and social issues, he also took a special interest in Iraq. Unlike most pundits, he embedded with U.S. troops four times to get a firsthand look. The result has been two books on the war, a Marvel Comics chronicle of soldiers in Iraq and a forthcoming PBS documentary.

His faith in U.S. power translated into an optimistic view of the war. In 2003, he mocked the BBC for asserting the United States "could take, bluntly, a couple to 3,000 casualties." Later that year, he wrote, "Not too far down the road, today's drumbeat about America's failure to bring instant recovery to Iraq may look quite rash."

A year later, he wrote a piece titled "How America Is Winning a Guerilla War." A year after that, he declared victory. "The War is Over, and We Won," announced a June 2005 piece. "With the exception of periodic flare-ups in isolated corners, our struggle in Iraq as warfare is over," he wrote. Although there will still be "egregious acts of terror," he said, "contrary to the impression given by most newspaper headlines, the United States has won the day in Iraq."

Media coverage of the war has been a favorite target. He called journalists who embedded in 2003 "whiny and appallingly soft," and later condemned the "relentlessly gloomy reporting." In March, he wrote, "More than perhaps any news event in a generation, coverage of the Iraq war has been unbalanced and incomplete."

Although Bush avoids casting terrorism as a battle with Islam, Zinsmeister has not been so reluctant. "First, let's recognize that we're in a full-blown war; that (contrary to mealy-mouthed platitudes) it is indeed a war against a considerable part of Islam," he wrote in 2001. Yet he fretted at American sensitivity. "Would you believe that the number of formal U.S. investigations of how terror detainees are being treated recently reached 189?" he wrote last fall. "What mad self-doubt and softness!"

Foreign policy won't fall under his new portfolio, but he has written extensively on social issues that will, such as race, class and culture. He has condemned "feminist absolutism," "Green irrationality," "limousine leftists" and "the dreary left-wing, homophilic P.C. propaganda that has dominated Broadway."

Zinsmeister lamented a "forced diversity crusade" that fuels more alienation than it solves and argued that "Americans should jettison affirmative action and all racial preferences." He dismissed reparations for slavery as "a clear absurdity" because "the U.S. already made a mighty payment for the sin of slavery. It was called the Civil War." He traces wrongheaded political correctness to colleges that have become "virtual one-party states, ideological monopolies, badly unbalanced ecosystems."

The Clintons in particular are anathema. He is "a chronic liar, an out-of-control adulterer, an obstructer of justice, a draft dodger, an all-round morally challenged sleazeball." She has shown "a disturbing pattern of reflexive truth-stretching and reality-doctoring."

At a time when Bush has lost support among some conservatives, Zinsmeister's appointment may reassure some of the disaffected in the party that a strong voice will be heard in the White House. Snow said Zinsmeister will be useful for his challenging viewpoints.

"You want interesting people who are smart, who have serious policy credentials and who are able to make other people think," Snow said. But not necessarily, he added, in public anymore. "I think he'll be careful with his words."

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"Karl Rove and New Hampshire GOP: Where criminals congregate."

ABC News
Rove: Republicans Should Address Iraq War
Karl Rove Says Republicans Facing Midterm Elections Should Discuss War in Iraq With No Qualms
By NORMA LOVE
The Associated Press

MANCHESTER, N.H. - White House adviser Karl Rove said Monday that Republicans facing midterm elections should campaign on the economy's strength and discuss the war in Iraq with no qualms.

"We have no excuses to make for it," Rove said during a fundraising dinner for New Hampshire Republicans. War supporters need not apologize for removing the threat of Saddam Hussein, and with so much work left to do, now is not the time to talk about leaving Iraq, he said.

Rove said Democrats pushing for the withdrawal of American troops should be the ones facing tough questions for wanting to "cut and run." He targeted Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha, both Democrats and vocal supporters of getting out of Iraq.

"They are profoundly wrong," he said.

More than 400 people paid $100 to have dinner and hear Rove rally the faithful to work to retain Republican dominance in a state now viewed as a swing state in presidential elections. Dinner and a private reception with Rove cost $250.

Democrats won New Hampshire in three of the last four presidential elections only narrowly losing in 2000. Also, Democrats have won four of the last five gubernatorial elections.

The shift at the top has raised hopes among Democrats and concerns among Republicans about eventual parity in the state House and Senate long Republican bastions.

Some are concerned President Bush's poor approval ratings will hurt Republicans in state races this fall.

At an event last month, Rove blamed the war in Iraq for hurting Bush's job approval ratings in national polls. Rove said people like Bush but don't like the war.

About two dozen to three dozen protesters gathered Monday across the street from the Center of New Hampshire, where the event was being held. Democratic protesters said New Hampshire Republicans needed a big draw like Rove to help pay legal fees in a phone jamming case. Three GOP officials have been convicted of charges stemming from the jamming of Democratic get-out-the-vote lines on Election Day 2002.

"Americans don't like cheaters, these people cheated," said Herb Moyer, 60, a Democrat from Exeter. The sign he carried read, "Karl Rove and New Hampshire GOP: Where criminals congregate."

State Democrats have sued Republicans, partly to try to force disclosure of who among national GOP officials might have had knowledge of the plot. Republicans insist the operation was strictly local.

State GOP Chairman Wayne Semprini said Friday the party will use half or more of Monday's proceeds to help candidates this fall. The rest of the money will pay for operating expenses, including legal fees racked up defending the Democratic lawsuit.

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Judges Press C.I.A. Lawyer Over Withheld Documents

The New York Times
Judges Press C.I.A. Lawyer Over Withheld Documents
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS

A federal appeals court panel in Manhattan questioned a lawyer for the federal government yesterday as to whether the Central Intelligence Agency had a legitimate national security interest in refusing to confirm or deny the existence of documents authorizing it to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects overseas.

The tough questioning came in oral arguments by the American Civil Liberties Union and lawyers for the C.I.A. before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The civil liberties group is trying to force the C.I.A. to disclose how much authority it has been given to interrogate detainees since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Through the Freedom of Information Act, the A.C.L.U. is seeking documents, including a directive said to have been signed by President Bush, giving the agency the authority to set up detention sites outside the United States and to interrogate prisoners. In its lawsuit, the group says the existence of these documents has been hinted at in news reports.

But the government has refused to confirm or deny the documents' existence, saying that to do so would jeopardize national security by revealing C.I.A. methods and activities. Last September, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of Federal District Court upheld that position, and yesterday's hearing was part of the A.C.L.U.'s appeal of his ruling.

The three-judge appeals panel seemed divided on the issue, with Judge John Gleeson asking the most forceful questions of the government lawyer, Peter Skinner. Judge Gleeson seemed to be trying to determine whether the A.C.L.U. was right in contending that the agency was acting to avoid political embarrassment, rather than out of national security interest.

The judge asked Mr. Skinner whether the C.I.A.'s position had "shifted a little bit" during the litigation. Initially, Judge Gleeson said, the government seemed to be refusing to disclose even whether the C.I.A. had an "interest" in the questioning of detainees abroad.

Now, he said, the C.I.A. seemed to be admitting it had an interest in helping other agencies question detainees. The government was arguing, he said, that the C.I.A. wanted to safeguard information about whether it had been granted any independent authority to set up detention centers and interrogate prisoners.

"Independent engagement as opposed to helping out other agencies," Judge Gleeson said.

Mr. Skinner denied that the government had shifted its argument, though he suggested that it had clarified it. The C.I.A., he said, acknowledged all along that it had helped other agencies in interrogations and that when it did so, it was governed by Justice Department rules.

But, Mr. Skinner said, the agency "never acknowledged an interest or ability to go beyond those legal limitations" and was not going to do so now.

Megan Lewis, the lawyer for the A.C.L.U., argued that any information that would be revealed by merely acknowledging the existence of the documents would be so general that it would not jeopardize national security or betray specific intelligence-gathering methods. To argue otherwise, Ms. Lewis said, is "tantamount to the C.I.A. attempting to deny its interest in spying."

Outside court later, she said the documents, if they existed — "and I believe they do" — might be revealing, but "that's another fight for another day."

The A.C.L.U. seeks disclosure of two documents. One is said to be a Justice Department memorandum "specifying interrogation methods that the C.I.A. may use against top Al Qaeda members." The second is the directive said to be signed by Mr. Bush authorizing the agency to set up detention facilities outside the United States "and/or outlining interrogation methods that may be used against detainees."

Although oral arguments in the appeals court are often delivered in legal shorthand, yesterday's seemed even more opaque than usual. Almost apologetically, Mr. Skinner told the judges he was "somewhat constrained" in his ability to explain his argument and "connect the dots" because some of the C.I.A.'s reasoning in the case was classified.

The agency has submitted papers to the court that even the plaintiffs have not been allowed to see.

As the hearing came to a close, Judge Joseph M. McLaughlin made a joke about the obscurity, quoting a Jesuit logician, Father John Gerard, who in 1597 told a British interrogator: "I do not know where he is. But if I did, I could not and would not tell you."

The Jesuit doctrine of equivocation, Judge McLaughlin said, "lives on."

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As Election Day Grows Nearer, Senior U.S. Commander Predicts Possible Troop Reductions in Iraq in Coming Months

ABC News
U.S. Gen. Sees Possible Troop Reductions
Senior U.S. Commander Predicts Possible Troop Reductions in Iraq in Coming Months
By NEDRA PICKLER
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The top U.S. commander in Iraq predicted Sunday that coalition troops gradually will return home in the months ahead as long as Iraq's government and security forces keep progressing.

Gen. George Casey would not say whether he will recommend a troop reduction plan during videoconference meetings with President Bush this week. Bush says he will make decisions about troop levels based on recommendations from commanders in Iraq, and Casey said he constantly evaluates the appropriate number necessary.

"I was waiting until we got a government seated before I gave the president another recommendation so we have some sense of what we've got," Casey said.

Iraq's new government is in place, with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki taking office last month and appointing key ministers last week.

"I think as long as the Iraqi security forces continue to progress and as long as this national unity government continues to operate that way and move the country forward, I think we're going to be able to see continued gradual reductions of coalition forces over the coming months and into next year," Casey said on "Face the Nation" on CBS.

With Baghdad's government in place, Bush plans to re-evaluate his Iraq policy this week with members of his national security team, along with Casey and other military commanders participating via videoconference.

Bush also plans to hear from outside experts and top ministers in Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's new government, participating via video from Baghdad.

White House officials have played down expectations of troop cutback announcements coming from the discussions, scheduled for Monday and Tuesday at Camp David.

Bush says he will make decisions about troops levels based on recommendations from Casey and other military commanders in Iraq. Although Casey said "it's not likely" that he would request more troops during the discussions, he did not rule out bringing in more to help secure Baghdad in the future.

"Right now we're not planning on it, but it's possible," Casey told "Fox News Sunday."

"I constantly evaluate the situation," Casey told Fox. "And if I think I need more, I'll ask for more. If I think I need less, I'll tell the president that I need less."

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Loophole a Spigot for E-Mail: Critics Fear Voters Will Be Deluged as Fall Elections Near

washingtonpost.com
Loophole a Spigot for E-Mail
Critics Fear Voters Will Be Deluged as Fall Elections Near
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer

A new loophole in election spending regulations is likely to produce a torrent of unsolicited e-mails to voters -- and widespread complaints about political spam -- as the midterm elections approach this fall, political consultants say.

Purveyors of private e-mail addresses and designers of campaign Web sites report that their businesses are booming this year as partisans take advantage of an exemption in election rules that allows wealthy individuals to pour unlimited sums into Internet communications without having to disclose their identities or total expenditures.

The loophole is "potentially breathtaking," said Roger Alan Stone of Advocacy Inc., an e-mail address retailer.

"It provides an enormous opportunity for political campaigns," agreed Max Fose of Integrated Web Strategy, which also sells e-mail addresses to political campaigns. Both men are expanding their staffs in anticipation of what they expect to be a multimillion-dollar surge in unregulated campaign spending via the Internet.

Critics worry that electoral e-mailing, which blossomed two years ago but is still in its infancy, could grow so quickly that millions of voters will be deluged with unwanted electronic messages before Election Day. Critics said the result could be a backlash against the candidates being advertised.

"I can't imagine this will be a particularly effective method of getting out the vote," said Jim Jordan of Thunder Road Group, a political consultancy. "It is spam after all, and there are few things that annoy us more than spam."

The e-mail exemption, which was approved by the Federal Election Commission in March, might become the next big avenue for campaign funding abuses, some experts warn. Heavy spenders, such as individuals or groups not affiliated with campaigns, could use mass e-mailings to alter the outcome of key congressional races and still remain anonymous, a result that runs counter to the intention of federal election laws.

Carol C. Darr, director of the nonpartisan Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, foresees "a complete free-for-all" because of the loophole. She added: "Sure, the FEC may still regulate the nickel-and-dime stuff. But . . . in the Hundred Years War against political money, big money has won."

The FEC voted unanimously March 26 not to regulate political communication on the Internet, including e-mails, blogs and the creation of Web sites. The commission had decided two years earlier to exempt all Internet activity from regulation, but that ruling was overturned by a federal judge who ordered the FEC to write rules that apply to at least some parts of cyberspace.

Bloggers, who are a fast-rising force in politics, pushed hard (with the help of their readers) to convince the commission that their writings should not be considered for the purposes of regulation the same as campaign contributions. In the end, they won. Only paid political advertisements placed on Web sites were ultimately subjected to campaign finance limitations.

Web site activists celebrated the decision as a significant advance for Internet freedom; political entrepreneurs recognized a commercial opportunity.

Fose, with offices in Virginia and Arizona, has more than doubled his staff to 12 people this year largely in response to the FEC ruling.

Advocacy Inc.'s Roger Alan Stone, who is not Republican media consultant Roger Stone, explained in a note to clients and associates why he is expecting a surge in revenue: "A wealthy individual could purchase all of the e-mail addresses for registered voters in a congressional district . . . produce an Internet video ad, and e-mail it along with a link to the campaign contribution page," he wrote. "Not only would this activity not count against any contribution limits or independent expenditure requirements; it would never even need to be reported."

Stone said that he is in discussions with representatives of wealthy individuals as well as state party officials about expanding their use of e-mails this year. He has contracted with at least three wealthy groups that e-mailed massively for primary campaigns this month.

Other political consulting groups are also feeling the impact of the FEC exemption. "We are hiring a new programmer or campaign specialist every three days," said John Aristotle Phillips, chief executive of Aristotle International Inc., which provides software and data services to electoral campaigns.

Voter Contact Services, which compiles lists of registered voters and matches them with e-mail addresses, expects its e-mail sales to double this year to more than 20 percent of its business, up from more than 10 percent in 2004.

The only impediments to growth, VSC chairman Bill Daly said, are increasingly sophisticated systems that block electronic spam and the dearth of middlemen to sell e-mail addresses for political uses. Campaigns can buy e-mail addresses for about 12 cents per name, retailers say.

"The e-mail loophole will be the vehicle that large donors will use at the last minute to get their message out this year," Fose predicted. "After they've put money everywhere else, the Internet will be the place where they will pour their funds at the end of the campaign season."

The election two years ago was the first in which a national list of registered voters was cross-referenced with multiple listings of e-mail addresses collected from magazine subscribers, catalogue shoppers, and online poll participants. As a consequence, lawmakers, candidates for office and interest groups were able to sell more than 25 million e-mail addresses of registered voters, and contact them at will.

SonicWall Inc., a California-based Internet security provider, estimated that more than 1.25 billion unsolicited political e-mails were sent to registered voters in 2004, up from virtually none during the presidential contest in 2000. SonicWall said it is too early to accurately predict the growth for this year, but for the presidential race in 2008, "there could be an exponential increase in the number of unsolicited political e-mails," SonicWall spokeswoman Mary McEvoy said.

With the FEC loophole, "everybody is looking at new ways to use the Internet to communicate," said R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "Not just us, but the unions and every interest group you can think of."

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