Sunday, June 18, 2006
Rove’s Trap: The president's strategist is politicizing the Iraq war for partisan political gain. Will the Dems figure out how to fight back?
Newsweek
Rove’s Trap
The president's strategist is politicizing the Iraq war for partisan political gain. Will the Dems figure out how to fight back?
By Eleanor Clift
June 16, 2006 - Our towel-snapping president is feeling better. He joked and jostled with the press for almost an hour, high on adrenalin after his secret trip to Baghdad. Thanks to skilled lawyering, his adviser Karl Rove is back in business framing the November election as a referendum on cut-and-run Democrats.
Rove is following a time-honored tactic: hang a lantern on your problem. Iraq is George Bush’s biggest problem, ergo Rove’s strategy: showcase the war, frame the choice between victory and defeatism, put the Democrats on the defensive. Moments after learning he had escaped indictment in the CIA leak investigation case, Rove told New Hampshire Republicans that Democratic critics of the war like John Kerry and John Murtha “give the green light to go to war, but when it gets tough, they fall back on that party’s old platform of cutting and running. They may be with you for the first few bullets, but they won’t be there for the last tough battles.”
It’s appalling that an administration led by chicken hawks dares to build an election strategy based on lecturing combat veterans, but it is devilishly clever, and it might work. The Swift Boat veterans destroyed Kerry in 2004; and in 2002, losing three limbs in Vietnam didn’t save Georgia Sen. Max Cleland from attacks on his patriotism. Rove told the GOP faithful that if the Democrats were in charge, Iraq would fall to the terrorists and Zarqawi would not be dead. As offensive as those words are, Rove is doing his job, which is sliming the Democrats so Republicans can cling to power on Capitol Hill. He is politicizing the war for partisan political gain, a strategy that could backfire if events on the ground in Iraq deteriorate.
“They’re risk-takers,” says Matt Bennett of Third Way, a Democratic centrist group. “Did they risk politicizing 9/11 by holding their convention in New York? Yes, and the risk paid off. It’s very Rovean; they’re trying to turn a weakness into a strength.” Another Democratic strategist noted the irony that after four years of no accountability on the mistakes made in prosecuting the Iraq war, the administration was hanging Democrats out to dry. This strategist called it “reverse accountability—shift the blame to those not in charge.”
Bush’s quick trip to Iraq was a symbolic handing over of power. In both message and visuals, he was saying to the new government, it’s your problem. He wrapped it in rhetoric about the U.S. commitment, but it’s clear that this is a last-chance government. If they can’t do it with American help, it’s over. Democrats fighting among themselves play into the GOP’s strategy, highlighting the opposition party’s inability to offer a credible alternative—or as Bush said in his Rose Garden press conference, “There’s an interesting debate in the Democratic Party about how quick to pull out of Iraq.” House Republicans staged a debate for the cameras on a meaningless resolution declaring the “United States will prevail in the Global War on Terror and the struggle to protect freedom from the terrorist adversary.” The idea is to corner the Democrats into taking a stand that could hurt them in November. A yes vote angers the Democratic base, which is increasingly antiwar; a no vote invites charges of cut and run.
Kerry is two years late in declaring he was wrong to vote for the war, and now he’s playing to the party’s antiwar base in the hope of resurrecting his presidential campaign. The GOP is gleefully framing Kerry’s amendment to bring the troops home by the end of this year as a choice between victory and a treasonous running away. None of the other big-name Democrats want to get behind Kerry’s plan because they’re also running for president, and they’ve got their own half-baked ideas. An honest reckoning on Iraq means choosing among bad and less-bad options, which don’t stir voter enthusiasm. There are no good options. People of good will can disagree about what to do next, but no one, except for the most blinkered Bush partisans, think Iraq is anything but a disaster.
There will be an antiwar candidate in ’08, probably Wisconsin Sen. Russell Feingold, and he’ll get a lot of support and cause real problems for the front runner, whoever it is. Feingold won’t be put on the ticket, but he could well throw the election to the Republicans if the Democrats don’t figure out how to deal with the antiwar sentiment in the party. Ignoring the antiwar left is the equivalent of a Republican disregarding the religious right in the primaries. Maybe we won’t have the Iraq war to kick around by ’08, but the more likely scenario is that Bush will leave enough troops there to keep it from dissolving into an uncontrolled civil war. Rove is setting the same trap for Democrats that worked so well in ’04 and ’02. There’s no surprise here; the only surprise will be if the Democrats figure out how to fight back.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13367209/site/newsweek/
Supreme Court allow no-knock searches
USA TODAY
Justices allow no-knock searches
By Joan Biskupic, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Drugs or other evidence seized at a home can be used in a trial even if police failed to knock and announce their presence, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a major shift in its rulings on illegal searches by police.
The 5-4 decision in a Detroit drug case undercuts a nearly century-old rule that says evidence found during an unlawful search cannot be used. The decision also offers a sign that the court might be more apt to strengthen the hand of police with Justice Samuel Alito in the place of retired justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
O'Connor, who was on the court when the case was first argued, had worried about "the sanctity of the home."
Alito sided fully with Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion, which emphasized that tossing out evidence acquired in violation of the knock-and-announce rule — but with a valid warrant — could mean "releasing dangerous criminals."
In a dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer called the decision "doubly troubling."
"It represents a significant departure from the court's precedents," he wrote, joined by John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. "It weakens, perhaps destroys, much of the practical value of the Constitution's knock-and-announce protection."
The rule is based on a centuries-old idea of home privacy and the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches. It requires police to knock, announce themselves and wait a "reasonable" time, which justices noted can be about 20 seconds, before entering. The practice shields occupants from surprise and property damage.
In the Detroit case, officers had a warrant to search for drugs and firearms in the home of Booker Hudson. They called out their presence and, after three to five seconds, entered through an unlocked front door.
Hudson tried unsuccessfully to suppress the evidence — rocks of cocaine — that police found and was convicted of drug possession. In an appeal, he argued that unless tainted evidence is suppressed, police will not be deterred from barging into homes. O'Connor was sympathetic to the view at January arguments.
After she retired, the eight remaining justices apparently were deadlocked. The case was re-argued in May with Alito on the court. His vote gave Scalia the majority. Joining them were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy.
Kennedy noted that he didn't agree with a section of Scalia's decision that would have more broadly weakened the rule requiring evidence from an improper search to be kept out, depriving Scalia of the necessary fifth vote to further curtail the Fourth Amendment.
Regarding the no-knock rule, Kennedy agreed with Scalia that police are sufficiently deterred from improper searches by the right of occupants to sue under civil rights law. Breyer countered that such lawsuits are rare and often do not bring much relief for victims.
Critics said the decision could lead to an increase in no-knock police raids. Jack King, a spokesman for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said, "The only sanction that police really care about is if the evidence is thrown out."
Tim Richardson, a senior legislative liaison for the Fraternal Order of Police, rejected the idea that police would change their practices. "There's a new professionalism among law enforcement officers. They want to have clean, successful, swift prosecutions."
Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/judicial/2006-06-15-scotus-knocking_x.htm?csp=34
DHS Stands By Anti-Terror Cuts; Official Tells House Committee That Reductions to D.C., New York Will Not Be Revisited
washingtonpost.com
DHS Stands By Anti-Terror Cuts
Official Tells House Committee That Reductions to D.C., New York Will Not Be Revisited
By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
A top official at the Department of Homeland Security said the agency will not reconsider its decision to cut anti-terror grants for Washington and New York by 40 percent, despite criticism and pointed questioning yesterday by congressional representatives from those regions.
George W. Foresman, DHS undersecretary for preparedness, stood by the complicated formulas used by a secret panel of reviewers to divide $711 million in 2006 funds for urban areas across the country. The result was that Washington and New York, the two areas targeted on Sept. 11, 2001, will get less than last year, while Omaha, Charlotte, Louisville and other cities will receive more.
"I feel confident in the risk analysis process and the peer review process," Foresman said at a congressional hearing, calling his agency's risk analysis "incredible." "What we need to do is a better job in communicating with the communities."
But Foresman appeared to have a difficult time communicating with the congressional panel. Lawmakers from both parties lambasted DHS and called its decision-making process "mind-boggling," "a mystery" and "goofy" and said it doesn't appear to meet its stated goal -- distributing federal dollars to regions that face the greatest risk of attack.
Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) called it "one of the greatest displays of incompetence."
More than two hours into the hearing, a top Maryland official attending the session said he still did not understand why his state is receiving only $24 million in a separate grant program when it expected as much as $40 million. "To be honest with you, I'm mystified still," said Dennis Schrader, Maryland's director of homeland security.
The Washington region, which received $77 million in the urban anti-terrorism program last year, is slated to get $46 million. It had requested $160 million.
Foresman, the former homeland security chief for Virginia, said it wasn't that the risk has dropped in New York or the Washington region but that federal officials have a better understanding of the national picture. The number of urban areas that federal officials consider under threat has grown from seven to more than 100, he said.
He tried to correct earlier statements by DHS officials that the District and New York got less money because of weak applications. "They were not deficient in their applications," he said. "Effectiveness measures were reviewed in relation to others around the country and ranked."
And Foresman dismissed recent statements from some area elected leaders that politics may have played a part. "It's an incorrect allegation that this was driven by politics," he said.
This marked the first time that DHS used risk as a key factor in evaluating competing requests for money from cities and states. The lawmakers and heads of homeland security in Virginia, Maryland and the District applauded that goal but not its execution.
Edward D. Reiskin, the District's deputy mayor for public safety, said the outcomes "don't seem to square with professional and common sense."
Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), who called the hearing as chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform, got into a back-and-forth with Foresman, pressing him to explain why the District will get less money than Montana in one grant program.
"Do you think Montana is at greater risk than D.C.?" Davis asked.
"We don't rate one community against another," Foresman said.
"Doesn't it seem on risk alone, D.C. would have a higher risk than Montana?" Davis said.
"On just risk, D.C. would have scored higher," Foresman said, adding that other factors were involved, including an analysis of the way each community intended to spend its grant, whether that plan would be effective and whether it advanced national homeland security goals.
Davis wasn't swayed. "How in the world is a risk or threat or anything in Montana or North Dakota or South Dakota higher than in the District?" he asked. "I don't think it passes the laugh test."
Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) calculated that his state was receiving $4.50 per resident while Wyoming was getting $16 per resident.
"We're protecting the grizzly bears in Wyoming, as opposed to the people who work around Fort Meade and NSA," Ruppersberger said.
Lobby Firm Disbands Because of Investigation; Some Partners Have Ties to Rep. Lewis
washingtonpost.com
Lobby Firm Disbands Because of Investigation
Some Partners Have Ties to Rep. Lewis
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
The Washington lobbying firm enmeshed in a federal investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, is breaking up because of publicity surrounding the probe, the company said yesterday.
The firm, Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White, has been a major player on K Street, particularly in winning narrow appropriations, known as earmarks, for military contractors, municipalities and others. Federal investigators last month subpoenaed many of the firm's clients to learn more about the relationship between Lewis and former representative Bill Lowery (R-Calif.), a partner in the firm since 1993 who is a friend and financial supporter of his.
The company's two Democratic partners, James M. Copeland and Lynnette R. Jacquez, this week told their GOP partners that they were leaving the firm that Copeland helped found in 1992. The reason, they said, was that ethical and legal questions surrounding Lowery and the firm threatened to destroy their professional reputations and ruin their commercial prospects.
The firm's relationship with Lewis is being scrutinized by U.S. prosecutors in Los Angeles. Lewis has denied any wrongdoing, and the firm has said it has complied with all rules and regulations governing its conduct.
Copeland Lowery is the second lobbying firm this year to become a casualty of congressional scandals. In January, Alexander Strategy Group, which was closely tied to former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, went out of business because of publicity about its involvement in the Abramoff investigations. The firm was owned by Edwin A. Buckham, DeLay's former chief of staff.
"Given the current media focus on the firm, Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White has made a strategic and mutually-agreed upon decision to separate its partnership into two groups," the company said in a written statement. "Partners Bill Lowery, Jean Denton, and Letitia White will continue to lead the existing full service consulting firm, while partners James M. Copeland and Lynn Jacquez will form a separate partnership."
In 2005, the firm reportedly grossed more than $7 million, making it one of Washington's top 50 lobbying firms. In addition to the five partners, the company has 14 employees.
The Democrats and the Republicans in the firm operate separately for the most part. The Republicans work on the eighth floor of the downtown District building they occupy, and the Democrats are on the fifth floor.
Several congressional aides who were briefed by the firm's departing Democrats about the breakup said the lobbyists expressed concern that they might lose longtime clients if they continued to be associated with the GOP part of the firm -- the apparent focus of the federal inquiry.
Patrick Dorton, a spokesman for the firm, declined to comment beyond the written statement, and said none of the partners would comment, either.
Authorities last month sought records regarding correspondence among Lewis, his staff and the firm. Lowery and some of his clients have donated heavily to Lewis's campaign committees, and Lewis has been a reliable benefactor of projects for Lowery's clients.
In 2005, those clients included defense heavyweights General Dynamics, Boeing and United Technologies. The firm also represented California localities such as the city of Redlands and San Bernardino County, which are in Lewis's district.
Copeland's personal clients include Alameda County, Pacific Life Insurance Co. and BART, the rapid transit system in the San Francisco area. Jacquez's clients include Merced County and the city of Riverside, Calif.
The firm attracted additional attention this month when it reported that it had paid a former partner, Jeffrey S. Shockey, nearly $2 million last year in a separation agreement when he left to become deputy staff director of the House Appropriations Committee, which Lewis chairs.
Shockey has reported earning $1.5 million in 2003 and $2 million in 2004 as a partner in the firm. The firm projected that Shockey would have earned $3 million in 2005 and based his payout on that estimate.
Researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.
Relative of Hill Panel Chairman Scrutinized; Firm Has Business Before Committee
washingtonpost.com
Relative of Hill Panel Chairman Scrutinized
Firm Has Business Before Committee
By Charles R. Babcock
Washington Post Staff Writer
A stepdaughter of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, has a second Washington job, working for a lobbyist who has business before the committee.
Julia Willis-Leon, who lives in Las Vegas, is a "strategic partner" in Potomac Partners DC LLC, President Richard Alcalde said in a recent interview. Alcalde said he has paid Willis-Leon $40,000 to $50,000 over the last year for advice on several clients.
News accounts disclosed recently that Willis-Leon was paid more than $40,000 by a political action committee operating out of a Capitol Hill townhouse half-owned by Letitia White, a former Lewis staff aide-turned-lobbyist. Willis-Leon's fees as PAC director were considerably higher than the PAC gave in donations to federal candidates.
Steven C. Tabackman, a Washington lawyer representing Willis-Leon, said last night that his client has a background in event planning and met the PAC leaders and Alcalde through earlier contacts, including White. That led to work with groups representing alternative fuel users and charter schools. She also has worked part time for General Atomics, a Southern California defense contractor, including on the magnetic levitation issue where she met Alcalde, he said.
Tabackman and Alcalde both said Willis-Leon does no lobbying in her Washington work.
Six of Alcalde's 13 clients have business before the Appropriations Committee, according to reports of his lobbying activity. Lewis had "nothing whatsoever" to do with his decision to hire Willis-Leon, Alcalde said, adding that he did not hire her in hopes of currying favor with the committee chairman.
"I'm not trying to get a racer's edge with the Lewises by her working here, because it wouldn't do any good. They aren't those kind of people."
Alcalde said he met Willis-Leon about a year ago when they were working for American Magline Group, private companies seeking federal funding for high-speed train service from Las Vegas to Anaheim, Calif. "Julie did some great work on the ground in Las Vegas, like with the mayor's office," he said. He noted that the Magline Group sought funding from the Transportation Committee, not Lewis's committee.
"You won't meet a more honorable person," Alcalde said of Willis-Leon.
Alcalde's clients include casinos, Indian tribes and public entities.
Lewis and his relationship to a Washington lobbying firm, Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White, are being investigated by federal prosecutors in Los Angeles who have been subpoenaing its clients. Lewis has denied wrongdoing. Copeland Lowery has said its lobbying is "consistent with the laws, rules and regulations that govern" the practice.
Phony Deficit Hawks
The New York Times
Phony Deficit Hawks
The Republican base is angry about deficits, and suddenly administration officials and tax-axing lawmakers cannot stop talking about fiscal discipline. If they were sincere, they would reinstate the pay-as-you-go budget rules that were enforced from 1990 through 2000 and were instrumental in creating budget surpluses from 1998 to 2001. Lawmakers had to pay for new tax cuts and new entitlement spending by raising other taxes or cutting programs.
But the foxhole fiscal conservatives do not really mean what they are saying. An audacious administration talking point — advanced most prominently of late by the new White House budget chief, Rob Portman — is that the original pay-go rules are biased against tax cuts and in favor of spending.
The complaint is ridiculous, but easy for the administration to make given the complexity of the details. Suffice it to say that pay-go would treat nearly all of the tax and spending laws passed by Congress in exactly the same way. The only difference occurs in an arcane area involving new entitlements with expiration dates. And even there, the pay-go system does not give any edge to spending over tax cuts.
Unwilling to submit to the fiscal discipline of pay-go, House Republicans are instead hashing out a line-item veto that would give President Bush the ability to delete specific items from budget bills. In the Senate, Judd Gregg, chairman of the Budget Committee, has proposed a kitchen sink of moldy ideas from the bad old days of budget deficits in the 1980's and early 1990's — none of which have ever shown much promise as a means of thwarting big budget deficits.
It's all a pathetic attempt to look tough while avoiding the tried-and-true — and truly tough — deficit fix: reinstating the original pay-as-you-go rules.
In Politics, Winning Isn't Everything. Running Is.
The New York Times
In Politics, Winning Isn't Everything. Running Is.
By MARK LEIBOVICH
WASHINGTON
TOM TANCREDO is not well known outside of Congress, a few C-Span junkies and the slab of Colorado he represents. But the four-term Republican representative says he might run for president anyway. Could he win? "No way," Mr. Tancredo says, neatly distilling the prevailing wisdom on his chances.
But that's beside the point. As a general rule, the only thing a politician loves more than getting attention is getting free attention — if that free attention isn't too embarrassing. And saying you might run is a surefire way to get free attention. This partly explains why Mr. Tancredo sounds so giddy on the phone, as if he's just stumbled onto a broken slot machine.
"I could not be happier," says Mr. Tancredo, a conservative immigration hawk who wants to publicize the issue, preferably with himself as a spokesman.
So far so good. Reporters have been approaching him in droves in recent months, he says, as have cable-television bookers, talk-radio producers and people seeking guest speakers. Some of this flows from Mr. Tancredo's role in the immigration debate, now front and center. But, he readily admits, his presidential gambit has helped a lot, too.
Indeed, the mantle of "possible presidential candidate" holds much more allure than "congressman" or "little-known congressman."
"Potential something is far better than past anything if you are interested in engagement in policy or politics," says Tom Daschle, the "past" Democratic leader of the Senate who was voted out of office by South Dakota voters in 2004.
Now he is a "potential" presidential candidate, which sounds a lot better.
The 2008 field could be immensely crowded, with possibly a dozen or more candidates running from each party. No doubt many hopefuls think they can prevail. But win or (more likely) lose, the experience can be a career boon, resulting in better speaking fees, book deals, job offers or political advancement.
The Rev. Al Sharpton says he never expected to win in 2004, but believes he is now viewed as a more serious figure because he ran. "I get invitations to speak at colleges from the political science departments and law schools," Mr. Sharpton says. "Before, I would only get invited by the black student union." He also has his own nationally syndicated radio and TV shows. Mr. Sharpton hasn't ruled out 2008 either, he says.
Neither has Al Gore, at least totally — or enough to get the political wise-guy set to stop speculating that he might run. This has earned Mr. Gore a great deal of recognition recently, a useful thing when you have a movie to promote.
Recent days have also seen a similar boomlet for Mayor Bloomberg, who replied "absolutely not" when asked last weekend if he was running for president before deviously adding, "and anybody who's running will say exactly that." The predictable "Bloomberg for President (?)" stories followed, buoying his efforts to become a national spokesman on issues like gun violence and public health.
The former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says he'll decide in a year or so whether he's running in 2008, but in the meantime he's happy to keep people guessing.
"If you're interested in defining the 'idea context' and the political context for the next generation, which I am, the most effective way is to be seen as potentially available," Mr. Gingrich told The Washington Post last week.
Beyond a short-term publicity hit, people who run are marked for life by the experience, usually for the better. "Unless something really weird or scandalous happens to you, most people will come out of a presidential campaign with their stature enhanced," says Bill Carrick, a Democratic strategist who managed former Representative Richard Gephardt's unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1988.
Note the caveat — "unless something weird or scandalous happens to you."
"The experience can be career-shortening if you do something really foolish," says former Senator Bob Kerrey, who ran for president in 1992. As an example, Mr. Kerrey cites "if you tell a lesbian joke or something." (Mr. Kerrey was overheard telling one to fellow candidate Bill Clinton in 1991.)
Senator Joseph Biden, Democrat of Delaware, doomed himself to the "do something foolish" category when he was forced to end his 1988 presidential campaign after appropriating the words of a British politician without crediting him. But Mr. Biden says he plans to run in 2008.
"I know I'm supposed to be coy, but I'm running," he says. Mr. Biden says he has recovered from 1988 thanks to the visible role he has played in the Senate as a member of the Judiciary Committee and as a ubiquitous spokesman on foreign affairs.
It's also inevitable that running for president again will call attention to how Mr. Biden's last campaign ended. The Senate is a big and heady stage, after all, but presidential campaigns are the ultimate platform, "the World Series of politics," Mr. Carrick says.
Except that only two baseball teams play in the World Series. In politics, anyone with a certain stature can run for president. A Tom Tancredo can sit on the same stage as a John McCain.
Mr. Tancredo even won a presidential straw poll in Michigan last weekend. A few days later, his fellow Republican House member Roy Blunt asked if he could be his driver. He was joking, presumably.
Former Antiterror Officials Find Industry Pays Better
The New York Times
Former Antiterror Officials Find Industry Pays Better
By ERIC LIPTON
WASHINGTON, June 17 — Dozens of members of the Bush administration's domestic security team, assembled after the 2001 terrorist attacks, are now collecting bigger paychecks in different roles: working on behalf of companies that sell domestic security products, many directly to the federal agencies the officials once helped run.
At least 90 officials at the Department of Homeland Security or the White House Office of Homeland Security — including the department's former secretary, Tom Ridge; the former deputy secretary, Adm. James M. Loy; and the former under secretary, Asa Hutchinson — are executives, consultants or lobbyists for companies that collectively do billions of dollars' worth of domestic security business.
More than two-thirds of the department's most senior executives in its first years have moved through the revolving door. That pattern raises questions for some former officials.
"People have a right to make a living," said Clark Kent Ervin, the former inspector general of the department, who now works at the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan public policy research center. "But working virtually immediately for a company that is bidding for work in an area where you were just setting the policy — that is too close. It is almost incestuous."
Federal law prohibits senior executive branch officials from lobbying former government colleagues or subordinates for at least a year after leaving public service. But by exploiting loopholes in the law — including one provision drawn up by department executives to facilitate their entry into the business world — it is often easy for former officials to do just that.
Michael J. Petrucelli, for example, who was once acting director of citizenship and immigration services, moved within months of leaving his post in July 2005 to a job in which he lobbied the Coast Guard, another unit of the department, to test a power-supply device made by his new employer, GridPoint.
Victor X. Cerda, within a few months of his 2005 departure as acting director of the agency that handles the detention of illegal immigrants, was hired by a company that is a top contractor for that agency. With Mr. Cerda's help, the company is now seeking millions of dollars in new agency business.
In their new roles, former department officials often command salaries that dwarf their government paychecks. Carol A. DiBattiste, who made $155,000 in 2004 as deputy administrator at the Transportation Security Administration, earned more than $934,000 last year from ChoicePoint, a Homeland Security Department contractor she joined in April 2005, the same month she left the agency.
Mr. Ridge, the former secretary, stands to profit handsomely now that Savi Technology, a maker of radio frequency identification equipment that the department pushed while he was secretary, is being bought by Lockheed Martin. He was appointed to the Savi board three months after resigning from the department and has been compensated with an undisclosed number of stock options that Lockheed will presumably need to buy back. In the coming weeks, Mr. Ridge says he plans to open his own domestic security and crisis management consulting firm.
The shift to the private sector is hardly without precedent in Washington, where generations of former administration officials have sought higher-paying jobs in industries they once regulated. But veteran Washington lobbyists and watchdog groups say the exodus of such a sizable share of an agency's senior management before the end of an administration has few modern parallels.
"It is almost like an initial public offering in the stock market," Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, based in Washington, said of the booming domestic security market. "Everyone wants a piece of it."
Anatomy of a Transition
For two years, Mr. Hutchinson, a onetime United States senator and a current candidate for Arkansas governor, served as under secretary for border and transportation security, supervising the 110,000 employees charged with guarding the nation's borders, ports and airports. His transition from public service to the for-profit world could serve as a primer for others.
Mr. Hutchinson began his negotiations to enter private industry months before he resigned. On March 2, 2005, the day after he officially left the department, he began work at Venable LLP, a Washington law and lobbying firm that represents major domestic security contractors like Lockheed Martin.
Federal law prohibits executive branch officials from negotiating for a future job with companies they oversee. Mr. Hutchinson complied with this provision by signing a waiver in December 2004, vowing to be "disqualified from participating personally in any particular matter that would have a direct and predictable effect on Venable."
Benjamin R. Civiletti, the chairman of Venable, made clear why Mr. Hutchinson was attractive to the firm.
"Asa was not only present at the creation of this vast new security infrastructure," Mr. Civiletti said when announcing Mr. Hutchinson's appointment as director of the firm's domestic security practice. "He was one of the chief architects and implementers."
Mr. Hutchinson was soon representing clients including Intelligenxia, a data-mining software company seeking domestic security business; ImmuneRegen BioSciences, a pharmaceutical company that sells anti-radiation drugs; and Global Computer Enterprises, which wants to expand its computer software and systems sales to the department.
Working with Mr. Hutchinson at Venable was Alison R. Williams, his special assistant at the Homeland Security Department, who was not senior enough at the agency to be subject to the one-year lobbying ban. Ms. Williams set up and attended a meeting between Global and Andrew B. Maner, then the department's chief financial officer, which Mr. Hutchinson did not attend. Mr. Maner was overseeing the introduction of a financial management system, and Global wanted a bigger piece of the job.
"We wanted to educate Homeland Security officials," said David Lucas, director of government relations at Global. "We wanted our view heard."
Mr. Hutchinson opened a second for-profit venture in Arkansas, his home state, starting a firm he called Hutchinson Security Strategies. Again, he enlisted a former department aide, Betty Anderson Guhman, who, like Ms. Williams, was not subject to the one-year lobbying ban.
Ms. Guhman says she interacts regularly with Homeland Security Department officials on visits to Washington, as she did recently, meeting with W. Ralph Basham after his nomination as commissioner of customs and border protection.
Mr. Hutchinson said the presence of his business partners at these meetings was not meant to circumvent the lobbying ban. "When I am not at a meeting," he said, "I am not at the meeting."
Nine months after leaving the department, Mr. Hutchinson moderated a private briefing and reception in Washington for senior domestic security officials and industry representatives given by Saflink, a Bellevue, Wash., manufacturer of fingerprint and other identification technology. The event focused on two transportation security programs that Saflink intended to bid on and that Mr. Hutchinson, who had been named to Saflink's board, helped create at the department.
Thanks to the participation by Mr. Hutchinson and others, the briefing achieved its goal of "solidifying Saflink's position as a leader in this area in the minds of key government decision makers," Glenn Argenbright, Saflink's chief executive, said in describing the event to industry analysts.
Mr. Hutchinson said he was convinced that the session did not violate the lobbying ban. "A panel discussion forum is not lobbying by any standard whatsoever," he said.
The biggest potential for profit among Mr. Hutchinson's ventures appears to come from his role as an investor in Fortress American Acquisition, a domestic security investment firm for which he also acts as an adviser. The company raised $42 million last year by selling stock through an initial public offering. Mr. Hutchinson, before the stock was sold publicly, bought 200,000 shares for $25,000. At Friday's trading price the stock was worth more than $1.2 million. (He cannot sell those shares for at least two years.)
Given the demands of running for office, Mr. Hutchinson chose not to renew a one-year contract with Venable in March. Calculating how much he earned through all these endeavors over the last year is difficult. His financial disclosure form filed in Arkansas in May as part of the governor's race says only that in 2005 he made more than $12,500 — the maximum amount available to check off on the state disclosure form — from at least four different domestic-security-related ventures, not including the department itself.
Mr. Hutchinson acknowledges that in one year he earned more than he ever did in one year as under secretary at the Homeland Security Department, but he declined to give an estimate of his earnings.
What troubles Mr. Amey of the Project on Government Oversight are not the lucrative paychecks earned by former officials like Mr. Hutchinson, but what he sees as an effort to disregard the spirit of the lobbying ban in pursuit of those rewards.
"It is a dirty way to get around the conflict-of-interest and ethics rules," Mr. Amey said. "It is legal. But is it appropriate? I don't think so."
Laws and Loopholes
The law that governs the so-called post-employment life for federal officials was enacted in 1962. It prohibits senior officials from "any communication to or appearance" before their former government department or agency on behalf of another for one year from the date they leave their job. There is also a lifetime ban on communicating with anyone at the department in connection with "a particular matter" in which the former official "participated personally and substantially."
A separate law prohibits certain former federal employees, like program managers or contracting officers, from accepting a job with a company they supervised for a year afterward if a contract involved exceeded $10 million.
Robert E. Coyle, the designated ethics official for the Homeland Security Department, said he believed that former department executives were almost universally honoring the rules. "We can argue about what the law should be," Mr. Coyle said, "but let's not tar people with misconduct because they are doing something that is permissible under the law."
Some former officials said the motivation to leave was not to cash in on their expertise but the sheer exhaustion they felt after setting up a new and often maligned agency. Others said they had unnecessarily arranged to work, for at least their first year outside government, on projects unrelated to department business.
"That was a precondition to the job," said Greg Rothwell, who stepped down earlier this year as the agency's chief contracting officer and now works for Booz Allen Hamilton, which recently won a $250 million, five-year technology consulting contract from the department.
But the experience in the short life of the agency shows that the law often does little to prevent former officials from moving quickly to lobby the government on domestic security matters on behalf of their new bosses or clients.
Perhaps the biggest loophole was created in late 2004 at the request of senior department officials, when the first big wave of departures began. The Office of Government Ethics approved a request by the department to split it into seven components for the purposes of the ethics rules. Once in the private sector, most former department officials were prohibited for one year from lobbying the same component where they once worked.
That meant that Mr. Petrucelli technically complied with the ethics rules even though he left the Homeland Security Department and within months started pitching GridPoint products to the Coast Guard. The reason: the Coast Guard is not part of the component that contained Mr. Petrucelli's former agency, Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Tom Blank's swift move into the private sector was made possible by a different loophole. Mr. Blank became vice chairman of the lobbying firm Wexler & Walker Public Policy Associates just two weeks after leaving the Transportation Security Administration in September 2005, where he had been the No. 2 official.
Mr. Blank set up a new practice within the lobbying firm representing an association of contractors including Lockheed Martin and General Electric that planned to bid on an airport checkpoint security program he had helped create while with the agency. In his new role, Mr. Blank also helped draft proposed technical standards for the checkpoint program that were submitted to his former subordinates at the security administration.
Mr. Blank pointed out that ethics rules allowed former officials to work behind the scenes in many areas where they were previously involved. He said he honored the one-year lobbying prohibition by having another partner at Wexler & Walker sign the document turned in to the Homeland Security Department.
For Mr. Cerda, the former acting director of immigrant detention operations, the saving grace was his relatively modest salary at the department. He left his government post in July 2005 to join a law firm specializing in immigration. One of his first lobbying clients was the Geo Group, which sells detention center bed space to his former agency. One Geo Group subsidiary had won a contract to operate a 1,000-bed detention complex in Texas while Mr. Cerda helped run the agency.
In his new role, he is helping Geo prepare to bid on more contracts, and he has directly represented Geo before the department, attending a meeting with Geo executives at his old agency, even though he has been gone less than a year. He can do this without violating the lobbying rules because he did not earn enough at the Homeland Security Department to be covered by the ban. According to federal records, Mr. Cerda earned $135,000 at the department in 2005, about $5,000 below the cutoff salary.
Steve Parsons's quick transition into the private sector appears to be possible because of another financial exemption. As a deputy program manager for the Transportation Security Administration, Mr. Parsons helped run an office that created identification cards for port workers. He quit last year to work as a sales manager for Senture, a small Kentucky subcontractor of the program.
Under ethics law, someone with Mr. Parsons's title cannot work for a subcontractor until after a year. But there is a loophole: Senture's subcontract was under the law's $10 million cap.
Iraq attacks kill 43
Reuters
Iraq attacks kill 43
By Ibon Villelabeitia
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A series of bombs killed at least 43 people in and near Baghdad on Saturday, police said, in one of the bloodiest days in Iraq since a U.S. military air strike killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi 10 days ago.
The violence, a day after a suicide bomber killed 10 people in a Baghdad Shi'ite mosque, came despite a security crackdown in the Iraqi capital and followed a vow by al Qaeda's new leader in Iraq to avenge the death of his predecessor on June 7.
The attacks, which included at least four Baghdad car bombs, posed a fresh challenge to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is under pressure to ease a violence that has killed thousands of Iraqis and complicated plans for a U.S. troop withdrawal.
In the deadliest attack, a car bomb struck an Iraqi police checkpoint in a Shi'ite area southwest of Baghdad, killing at least 12 people and wounding 38, police said.
Earlier, another car bomb targeting Iraqi army and police killed 11 people. A Reuters cameraman saw a charred body being taken on a stretcher to an ambulance. A man with blood on his face stood nearby looking stunned and smoking a cigarette.
Moving to fulfill promises he will use "maximum force against terrorism," Maliki launched a security operation on Wednesday with 50,000 Iraqi troops backed by 7,000 U.S. troops to pile pressure on al Qaeda in Iraq.
But the sweep, mounted one day after President Bush made a surprise visit to Baghdad to bolster Maliki's month-old government, has failed to stop attacks.
In a fresh reminder of the huge task Maliki faces despite a claim by Iraq's national security adviser that al Qaeda's days were numbered, militants hit security forces across the capital and bombed at least two crowded markets, including one in central Baghdad that left six people dead.
Attacks on crowded markets are a common tactic used by al Qaeda as part of what U.S. officials say is a campaign to ignite a sectarian civil war between majority Shi'ites and Saddam Hussein's once-dominant Sunni Arab minority.
In the town of Mahmudiya just south of the capital, a car bomb targeting an Iraqi army checkpoint killed seven people.
MISSING U.S. SOLDIERS
U.S. military helicopters and divers searched for two U.S. soldiers missing after an attack on Friday in which one American soldier was killed in the insurgent bastion of Yusufiya in the "Triangle of Death" south of Baghdad.
"We are using all available assets, Coalition and Iraqi -- ground, air and water -- to locate and determine the duty status of our soldiers," Major General William Caldwell, the spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq, said in a statement.
He said teams of divers were working the canals and Euphrates river near Yusufiya, a rural area which has seen fierce fighting between U.S. forces and al Qaeda militants.
More than 2,500 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Bush, facing sagging domestic support over the war, said on Saturday the United States had gone too far to abandon Iraq now and encouraged other nations to make good on $13 billion in pledges to help the new Iraqi government.
"It is vital for the Iraqi people to know with certainty that America will not abandon them after we have come this far," Bush said in his weekly radio address.
Bush gave no hint of any imminent drawdown of the 129,000 U.S. troops in Iraq despite domestic political pressure to do so before crucial congressional elections in November.
"We face determined enemies who remain intent on killing the innocent, and defeating these enemies will require more sacrifice and the continued patience of our country," he said.
The U.S. military has said it expects al Qaeda's new leader, who it identified as Abu Ayyub al-Masri, to use the same tactics as Zarqawi, a Sunni Arab militant.
(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed, Fredrik Dahl and Michael Georgy in Baghdad and Patricia Wilson in Crawford, Texas)
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen BlancoBlanco signs law that would ban abortions
Reuters
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen BlancoBlanco signs law that would ban abortions
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Louisiana Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed into law a ban on most abortions, which would be triggered if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns its 1973 ruling legalizing the procedure, a spokesman said on Saturday.
The ban would apply to all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest, except when the mother's life is threatened. It is similar to a South Dakota law that has become the latest focus of the abortion battle.
The South Dakota law was enacted partly to invite a court challenge in the hope a more conservative Supreme Court would overturn its Roe v. Wade decision that established a woman's right to abortion.
The Louisiana ban would take effect if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Medicaid, which provides health benefits for the poor and disabled, requires funding for abortions in cases of rape or incest. Louisiana would allow those exceptions so long as it was required for Medicaid funding.
Seven states have such abortion trigger laws, and Louisiana already had a trigger law, although abortion legislation has been blocked by courts. The new law would mean the ban would happen quicker in the case of a new Supreme Court decision.
Blanco cited "overwhelming" support for the bill in the state Legislature.
"The central provision of the bill supports and reflects my personal beliefs," she said in a statement, adding she had hoped for legislation with exceptions for rape and incest.
Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said lawmakers were focused on the wrong thing, especially as the state rebuilds from Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans last August.
"It is hard to believe that by passing this ban they are addressing what is most on the minds of most of the citizens of Louisiana," she told Reuters.
Most U.S. states have some limits on abortion linked to gestation of the fetus and often based on viability, essentially the ability to live outside the womb.
Saturday, June 17, 2006
Resolved: America great! Bin Laden evil! Go Bush!
Salon.com
Resolved: America great! Bin Laden evil! Go Bush!
Not even the inventor of "freedom fries" could stand to be present at the GOP-controlled Congress' absurd "debate" over Iraq.
By Michael Scherer
Rep. Walter Jones, the North Carolina Republican who invented the phrase "Freedom Fries," invited me into his Capitol Hill office Thursday morning, a cluttered space festooned from floor to ceiling with military memorabilia, Pentagon plaques and photographs of soldiers. Then he pulled out an e-mail he had recently received from an Army captain who served in Iraq.
The email quoted another American soldier serving in Iraq, a voice that Jones wanted people to hear. "Tell all those assholes in D.C. to get us the f--- out of here. This is bullshit," Jones said, reading from the email, but choosing not to pronounce the f-word in full. "Either that or tell them to tell Bush to send over the twins. They can bunk with me. That would be useful."
Jones is not a natural dove. He sits on the Armed Services committee and his district includes Camp Lejeune, the home base of nearly 47,000 sailors and marines. But Jones is one of a handful of Republican congressmen to break ranks with President Bush and the GOP leadership over Iraq. In recent months, he has been campaigning for a "full and honest" debate on the Iraq war.
Of course, none of that has happened. In April, Boehner told his colleagues that he would schedule a floor debate on Iraq, apparently bowing to pressure from Democrats and Republicans such as Jones. But this week, when the debate finally kicked off, Boehner and the Republican leadership pulled a bait and switch. Instead of an Iraq debate, they scheduled a debate on a resolution "declaring that the United States will prevail in the Global War on Terror." And then, in an election-year trick that is almost as old as the Congress itself, the GOP leadership barred any amendments on the resolution, effectively forcing Democrats to vote on whether or not they want Osama bin Laden to win.
Jones now says he feels duped by his own party's leadership. "Maybe I should have been less trusting, but I felt it would be a debate that would allow us to talk about policy," Jones told me. "I don't see how we would have gotten hurt if we had allowed members of both parties to go down to the floor to offer an amendment." To express his frustration, he appeared Wednesday at a press conference with Rep. Neil Abercrombie, a Democrat from Hawaii, who bound his own hands in yellow twine to dramatize the bonds under which members of Congress toil.
But such publicity stunts could not prevent the Republican majority from having its way. Just before noon on Thursday, Republicans opened 10 hours of debate, which is set to continue into Friday. It was a move that set a potentially dangerous trap for Democrats less than five months away from the midterm elections. If they vote against the resolution, Democrats will be on record opposing victory in the war on terror. If they vote for the resolution, they will be on record endorsing the president's prosecution of the war on terror. As policy, the resolution is virtually irrelevant -- it changes nothing. As politics, however, it's a powder keg, a spectacle ready-made for televised attack ads during this fall's campaign season. "When our freedom is challenged, Americans do not run," thundered House Speaker Dennis Hastert, openly baiting his Democratic colleagues. "Stand up for freedom, adopt this resolution."'
Just off the House floor, in the gilded speakers gallery, Majority Leader Boehner passed his time just before Hastert's address by chain-smoking his Barclay cigarettes with a small crowd of reporters. When asked how he thought the debate would shape the 2006 elections, Boehner kept his cards close to his well-cut suit. "That's irrelevant to me at this point," he said. "This is the biggest issue in America, and the House of Representatives, the people's house, has a responsibility to debate this issue."
Boehner appeared to have a different view on the politics of Iraq earlier this week. On Tuesday, he sent out a memo to his Republican colleagues advising them to "conduct this debate as a portrait of contrasts between Republicans and Democrats." The memo continued with a call to paint Democrats as defeatists who are not "dedicated to victory" and who lack "a coherent national security policy." In the memo, Boehner even quoted 1960s Democratic President John Kennedy as an example of the high standards of 21st century Republican principles: "The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it."
This apparently got the goat of Rep. Rahm Emanuel, of Illinois, who is orchestrating the 2006 campaign for House Democrats. When Emanuel stood up to speak his piece, he quoted his own Kennedy passage about the cost of liberty, before declaring, "Democrats will never put American service members in harm's way without a plan and without support. For that, you need to sit and watch the complacency of the Republican Congress."
This sort of tit-for-tat, at a level that would embarrass most high school debating teams, continued throughout the day. Both sides deftly demeaned each other, stopping just short of hurling spitballs, epithets or wagging their tongues. Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha took the lead in providing an unending stream of depressing facts and statistics about the war in Iraq. Electricity and oil production are down, he said, while the number of daily attacks, the monthly price tag and the estimated size of the insurgency were all growing. "This is rhetoric," he announced, after one Republican had given his statement. "Things are not getting better."
Hastert, meanwhile, opted for more R-rated fare in an effort to prove that, in fact, things had improved in Iraq. Under Saddam Hussein, Hastert said, "School girls were raped. Iraqi patriots were thrown alive into meat grinders."
For his part, Walter Jones chose to avoid the whole ordeal. "I don't want to give any credibility to what I think is a charade. My two minutes, maybe three, is not going to change anything," he told me in the morning. When called for a vote, he said he planned to vote "present." "It is not an honest debate," he explained. "If it was an honest debate I would vote one way or the other."
Before leaving his office, I asked him what it would take for the House to have a real debate about policy in Iraq. He paused a moment, and then appeared embarrassed by the answer. "I don't want to say this because I'm a Republican," he began. "But if things change, then obviously that could change the rule in the debate."
He was talking about the very real chance that Democrats will retake control of the House on Election Day.
Press aide knew online chat risks; called President Bush a "liar"
Yahoo! News
Records: Press aide knew online chat risks
In Internet and phone chats with someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl, a Department of Homeland Security press aide talked about underage sex, boasted about his job and called President Bush a "liar," according to transcripts released by prosecutors.
Brian Doyle, 56, of Silver Spring, Md., acknowledged his chat room pal — "Ashlynne" — could be a police officer "trapping" him, according to about 400 pages of records released this week. Undercover Polk County sheriff's detectives posed as the girl.
Doyle allegedly wrote that "law enforcement is very good at this ... i have soooo much to lose ... despite your denials that it was rape ... they would prosecute me. and i would go to prison."
Doyle resigned from his job shortly after his April 4 arrest on charges of trying to solicit sex with an underage child. He has pleaded not guilty and is free on $230,000 bond. If convicted on all counts, he could be sentenced to life in prison.
Doyle's lawyer, Barry H. Helfand, said Thursday he hadn't seen the court records and couldn't comment on them. He said Doyle is seeking psychological counseling.
The transcripts say Doyle wrote to the fictitious girl: "hey it is illegal ... and it would be exciting and forbidden ... you are young — illegal — and gorgeous. and it would be great. fun. food, laughter, talk and yes sex."
The transcripts also quote Doyle as saying he met Bush, adding, "nice guy but not a good president ... he is not very bright and it is evident ... bush is a liar ... there were NO weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. total lie to go to war."
After Doyle's arrest, he told detectives he wasn't attracted to children but had explicit conversations as a "kind of a power trip," documents show. He said he never intended to meet with the girl.
washingtonpost.com
White House Hotheads
By Dan Froomkin
Inspired by my fun-loving colleagues at Wonkette, who are compiling a list of White House Hotties , allow me to put forth today's contenders for the title of White House Hothead.
* There's Tony Snow, who yesterday made a particular mess of things in the White House briefing room.
* There's just-arrived domestic policy adviser Karl Zinsmeister, out with a new interview in which he talks about sex ("it's intense, it's fire"!) and its role in perpetuating what he has previously described as a "morally repugnant" underclass.
* And there's Vice President Dick Cheney making some controversial, unsupported assertions on right-wing talk radio.
Snow on the Rocks
We'll start with Tony Snow, who unleashed what may well have been the most inappropriate answer of his rocky one-month tenure at yesterday's briefing .
Here's a question Snow certainly knew was coming:
"Q Tony, American deaths in Iraq have reached 2,500. Is there any response or reaction from the President on that?"
And here is Snow's initial response:
"It's a number, and every time there's one of these 500 benchmarks people want something."
Yup, they sure do want something. Like maybe some sensitivity to the loss of life from the man speaking on behalf of the White House, for starters.
Snow also apologized yesterday for an earlier stumble: confusing one black congresswoman (Sheila Jackson-Lee, who attended a White House meeting last week) -- with another (Cynthia McKinney, who wasn't even there).
But more importantly, Snow yesterday amply illustrated his emerging -- and highly irritating -- modus operandi: When he doesn't want to answer a question, which is often the case, he either pleads ignorance or gets argumentative -- or both. And an increasingly common tactic: Demanding that reporters define the terms that he himself has just used.
Here's one exchange from yesterday, with Peter Baker of The Washington Post:
"Q Tony, the investigation of Karl Rove is now over. Why is it, then, inappropriate for the President of the White House, three years later, to finally give us some sort of explanation or assessment, judgment, of Karl Rove's actions when it had nothing to do with the Libby trial?
"MR. SNOW: Because, as you know, there is -- well, they may have. There is talk that he may be called . . ."
Rove played an important role in the leak of Valerie Plame's identity, but publicly denied it through then-press secretary Scott McClellan and in television interviews.
Pressing on, Baker noted that "Scott McClellan has nothing to do with the Libby trial, [Rove's] conversation with ABC News has nothing to do with the Libby trial.
"MR. SNOW: Well, that's fine. I will continue my statement first. I can't give you any texture or background on the Scott/Karl stuff, because I wasn't here. But the President made it pretty clear that a lot of this stuff -- and as you know, Peter, once you get up on the stand, and Karl may be called to the stand -- they can ask about anything.
"And so it is our view that we're simply not going to get involved in making comments on something that may be brought to trial, when Scooter Libby is still under indictment and is going to go to trial with the special prosecutor."
Baker of course was correct. His question had nothing to do with the Libby trial. But he moved on:
"Q Let me ask a general question then. In 2000, the President said it wasn't enough to simply not be indicted in the White House, that he had a higher ethical standard. Is that, in fact, still the ethical standard --
"MR. SNOW: Yes.
"Q -- or, in fact, should we interpret from his comments yesterday that as long as you're not indicted, everything is fine?
"MR. SNOW: Apparently, you've indicted Karl.
"Q No, I'm asking a question.
"MR. SNOW: And yes, the answer is, the ethical standard still applies.
"Q And what is the ethical standard?
"MR. SNOW: You tell me."
But the capper had to be Snow's obstinate obfuscation of the administration's position on permanent military bases in Iraq -- a highly contentious and significant issue.
According to Agence France Presse , Snow had addressed the issue quite directly at the off-camera morning gaggle: "At a morning exchange with reporters, spokesman Tony Snow said it was 'wrong' to say that the United States planned to keep troops in Iraq forever, even after Iraqi security forces are up and running.
"Prodded about the construction of permanent military facilities in the war-torn country, Snow replied: 'No permanent bases. Don't have permanent bases anywhere.' "
Sounds clear, huh? But when Hearst columnist and White House gadfly Helen Thomas brought the issue up again at the briefing, Snow was pugnatiatuis and equivocal.
"Q Would you like to reaffirm what you said earlier today, that the U.S. wants no permanent bases in Iraq?
"MR. SNOW: Well, I think -- let me -- because -- can you define what a permanent base is?"
At the end of the exchange, the administration's position was as unclear as ever.
The Zinsmeister
On Tuesday, Peter Baker wrote in The Washington Post: "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. . . .
"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.' . . .
"For Zinsmeister, provocation has been his stock in trade."
Yesterday, another interview with Zinsmeister emerged, adding to a portrait of a firebrand with an outright contempt for both the upper and lower classes of American society. And his contempt for the lower class, in particular, seems intertwined with his passionate interest in sex as a social issue.
In an interview with Ben Wattenberg on PBS's "Think Tank" show, taped before Zinsmeister was named to his high-level White House post, Zinsmeister also acknowledges that he "used to be a Marxist," but now, "if I had to put myself in any label I'd say I'm a militant middle American advocate."
Zinsmeister tells Wattenberg that "family breakdown . . . is the root not only of our poverty problem; it's the root of our crime problem, the root of our drug problem; it's the root of many of our social pathologies."
And he traces the family breakdown, at least in part, to one of his favorite topics: Sex. (Also see his April 2006 article on the topic.)
About sex, he tells Wattenberg: "It's something -- it's intense; it's fire. It drives people to insanity. . . . People fall in love with prostitutes. People kill prostitutes. All kinds of things happen in the heat of sexual passion, so my point is because it's fire it needs to be governed and treated with respect and treated carefully."
And, he says: "An awful lot of what we've been talking about earlier in this show, you know, family structure and crime rates and poverty levels grow directly out of sexual choices."
Just after Bush appointed Zinsmeister to his post, Josh Gerstein of the New York Sun reported that Zinsmeister had altered his own quotes in a Syracuse New Times profile of him, when he re-posted it on his own magazine's Web site.
One of the key quotes Zinsmeister changed was this one: "People in Washington are morally repugnant, cheating, shifty human beings."
Here's the "Zinsmeistered" version: "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.' "
But the second version may be an even more shocking and inappropriate thing for the White House's chief domestic policy advisor to say.
As one of my readers, Seth Green, e-mailed me at the time: "Personally, I am much more offended by his describing as morally repugnant all of the 'underclass' (generally a reference to the poor) than describing 'people in Washington' (which can legitimately, if not literally, be read to refer only to politicians) in that way."
Cheney's Assertions
Vice President Cheney, who consents to interviews almost exclusively with right-wing talk-show hosts these days, used Sean Hannity yesterday to put forth some highly contestable assertions, some new, some old, knowing he wouldn't be forced to support them.
The White House kindly transcribed the interview and e-mailed it to the press corps.
A new assertion, as reported by Agence France Presse : "Cheney said that the war in Iraq was 'in part responsible' for the absence of terrorist attacks in the United States since the September 11, 2001 strikes."
The full quote: "Iraq was a safe haven for terrorists, it had a guy running it who had started two wars, who had produced and used weapons of mass destruction. Taking down Saddam Hussein was exactly the right thing to do.
"It's also, I think, in part responsible for the fact that we haven't been hit again in nearly five years. That's no accident. The fact is, we've taken the battle to the enemy. That's been the key to the safety and security of the American people these last few years, and we need to continue to do it."
That's quite a claim -- but does he have any evidence to back it up? Hannity certainly didn't ask for any.
An old assertion, as reported by Jonathan Weisman and Charles Babington in The Washington Post: "Vice President Cheney weighed in, taking note of [Sen. John F.] Kerry's statement earlier this week urging fellow Democrats who joined him in authorizing force in 2002 to acknowledge that the war is a mistake. 'I'm not surprised at John Kerry switching his position yet again,' Cheney said on Sean Hannity's radio talk show. Kerry is charging 'that somehow he was misled,' the vice president said. 'He wasn't misled. He saw the same intelligence all the rest of us saw. He knew what an evil actor Saddam Hussein was.' "
But of course it's been repeatedly established that members of Congress did not get to see the same intelligence as Bush and Cheney -- not even close. Just for example, as reported by Murray Waas in the National Journal in March, there was a "classified one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, specifically written for Bush in October 2002. The summary said that although 'most agencies judge' that the aluminum tubes were 'related to a uranium enrichment effort,' the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department's intelligence branch 'believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons.' " Not only did Congress never get to see it, but the White House still doesn't want to acknowledge it existed.
Hannity didn't challenge Cheney's assertion, of course. And Greg Sargent , who writes the American Prospect's blog on political coverage, slams The Post for printing it without debunking it.
The War Over the War
Congress was debating the war yesterday, in a carefully scripted exercise directed by the Republican leadership.
Weisman and Babington write how the House Republicans were "bolstered by a 74-page document drafted by the White House and distributed by the Pentagon, replete with talking points, quotations and timelines to back administration policy."
Al Kamen writes in The Washington Post about how Traci Scott, who works in the Pentagon's legislative affairs office, sent that document out to the wrong mailing list -- one which included Democrats.
Liz Marlantes writes for ABC News: "Thursday afternoon, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) sent a letter to Rumsfeld complaining that his office had spent 'taxpayer dollars to produce partisan political documents.' Lautenberg also suggested that the document may have violated laws prohibiting the Executive Branch from using taxpayer dollars for lobbying and propaganda activities.
"The Pentagon later said the document was produced by the National Security Council -- but did not offer an explanation as to why it was sent out by the Office of the Secretary of Defense."
Americablogger John Aravosis Web-publishes the document .
Froomkin on the Radio
I'll be on Washington Post Radio shortly after 2 p.m. today.
Gift Watch
Olivier Knox reports for AFP: "World leaders showered US President George W. Bush in 2004 with gifts including guns, cases of wine and one 'Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook,' the US State Department reported.
"Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah gave Bush the $15 paperback guide -- which teaches readers how to escape a mountain lion or killer bees and 'How to Take a Punch' -- as well as DVDs of the classic movies 'Singing in the Rain' and 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' it said. . . .
"Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy gave Bush a braided brown leather whip, worth $125."
Brendan Murray and Ryan J. Donmoyer write for Bloomberg: "The vice president of China gave his U.S. counterpart, Vice President Dick Cheney, an out-of-print copy of Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War,' valued at $3,600."
The Smoking Gun Web site has an annotated list.
Poll Watch
The Bush presidency is apparently making Bill Clinton's look better by contrast, and Bush's father's look worse by association.
Jeffrey M. Jones writes for Gallup News Service: "A new Gallup Poll finds a significant increase in Americans' judgments of Bill Clinton's performance as president, as well as significant declines in reviews of the elder George Bush. Most other recent presidents' ratings have not changed in the last four years. John F. Kennedy remains the most positively rated of the former presidents tested, while Richard Nixon gets the lowest marks."
Rove on the Internet
Before his public appearance Monday night at a Republican fundraiser in New Hampshire, Rove gave an interview to the conservative VictoryNH.com Web site. One topic that came up was the Internet.
Rove: "I do also think that the Internet has proven to be a more powerful tool on our side than it has been for the other side. It has proven to be a tool on our side to sort of unite Conservatives and have a healthy intra-movement dialogue. But it's essentially been something that has helped us gain in influence and broaden our appeal. Among Democrats, my sense is that the blog world has tended to strengthen the far Left of the Democratic Party at the expense of liberal, but somewhat less liberal, members of their party. It has tended to sort of drive their party even further to the Left rather than focusing on good ideas that would help unite people around common goals and common purposes. Instead, the Internet for the Left of the Democratic Party has served as a way to mobilize hate and anger -- hate and anger, first and foremost, at this President and Conservatives, but then also at people within their own party whom they consider to be less than completely loyal to this very narrow, very out-of-the-mainstream, very far Left-wing ideology that they tend to represent.
"VNH: How do you see this affecting the next couple of cycles?
"Rove: You know, I don't know! Again, we're sort of feeling our way along. I do think the Internet is going to continue to be an enormously powerful tool for organization, which we're now only beginning to understand and apply. I think it's going to have a huge impact upon providing alternative means by which people collect political information on which they make decisions -- particularly talk radio on our side and the Internet on both sides. But again, and maybe I'm just too optimistic about it, I think it's going to tend to strengthen the Conservative movement because our focus is so much on ideas; and where, by nature, our movement is optimistic and forward-looking and, if you will, progressive: How can we help expand freedom and democracy? How can we expand markets? What are the game-changing reforms that we can build into public policy that will strengthen the power of the individual over their own lives and destiny? I think that's where our focus is. I think the Democrat focus, or at least the Internet blog world focus, if you will, is, 'How can we punish our enemies and express our anger?' "
The Union Leader on Rove
The fiscally conservative Manchester Union Leader was not impressed by Rove's visit to New Hampshire: "Karl Rove might not have lied to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald about his role in publicly identifying CIA employee Valerie Plame, but he told one heck of a whopper when he stopped in Manchester on Monday.
"Speaking of what separates Democrats from Republicans, President Bush's top political adviser said, 'They're for more spending. We're for less spending.'
"Republicans for less spending? Less than what?"
A Winning Decision
Bush yesterday signed a proclamation designating 140,000 square miles of sea and uninhabited islands northwest of Hawaii a national monument, affording federal protection for the home of 7,000 marine species.
The New York Times editorial board raved: "An unfamiliar but highly appealing side of President Bush showed itself at the White House yesterday. . . . Mr. Bush made exemplary use of presidential power yesterday. We hope he does more of it.
The Washington Post editorial board raved: "Mr. Bush's action offers an exciting example of assertive action to put essential areas beyond further human destruction."
Cartoonist Tom Toles was less impressed.
Late Night Humor
Jay Leno, via Agweb : "The sad part of President Bush's trip, he's so unpopular, he had to sneak back into this country."
Land Deal Hastert pushed through highway appropriation bill nets Hastert 300% Profit
ABC News
Land Deal Gives Hastert 300% Profit
Rhonda Schwartz Reports:
Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL) realized an estimated $2 million dollar profit last year on an Illinois land deal that included acreage near a future interstate highway Hastert pushed to build.
The land was sold just five months after Hastert inserted a $207 million appropriation bill for the Prairie Parkway highway during a closed-door Congressional budget conference.
The deal, representing a 300 per cent return on investment, was reported in Hastert's financial disclosure form filed this week, although the role of a secret trust set up by Hastert to sell the land was not disclosed.
A spokesman for Hastert, Ron Bonjean, confirmed the details, which were first reported by Bill Allison of the Sunlight Foundation, an on-line political watchdog group. The Speaker's spokesman said land in the Plano, Illinois area is "booming," and the future highway had no impact on the price.
Hastert and partners sold the land to developers who plan a large residential sub-division about five miles from the new highway.
Local citizens fighting the highway project were outraged to learn of the Hastert deal. "I think he clearly has his own personal interest and not the public's by buying and selling land to developers for personal profit, when it has a negative long-range effect on the community," said Jan Strasma, head of community group Citizens Against the Sprawlway.
Hastert's spokesman said that Hastert had been a proponent of the highway for 20 years, and there was nothing improper in the deal.
According to Hastert's disclosure form and county property records, a 69-acre parcel was put into a trust, Little Rock Trust #225, on May 2, 2005.
Two months later, in July 2005, Hastert pushed the highway appropriation bill through a conference committee.
On Aug. 6, 2005 President Bush appeared with Hastert at a ceremony in Illinois to celebrate the new highway's funding.
On Dec. 7, 2005 the trust sold the parcel of land to the developers.
The spokesman said, for tax reasons, Hastert used part of his $2 million profit to buy a 275-acre farm in Wisconsin that Hastert intends to use as a future retirement home.
Homeland Security Cuts Funding, the declares: Cities not prepared for disasters
Here is the beginning of my post.
Yahoo! News
Agency: Cities not prepared for disasters
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer
New Orleans is still woefully unprepared for catastrophes 10 months after Hurricane Katrina, and the two cities targeted by the 9/11 attacks don't meet all guidelines for responding to major disasters, a federal security analysis concluded Friday.
Ten states were rated in a Homeland Security Department scorecard as having sufficient plans to respond to disasters: Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New York, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Vermont.
Florida, accustomed to being whipped with hurricane winds, was the only state to meet all of the department's basic requirements for planning for catastrophes. Response plans for Louisiana, still devastated from hurricanes Katrina and Rita, were deemed insufficient to manage huge emergencies.
The shortcomings in emergency planning, including antiquated and uncoordinated response guidelines, are cause "for significant national concern," Homeland Security's analysis concluded.
President Bush ordered the review of state and city emergency plans in a visit to New Orleans last Sept. 15, weeks after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city. The report analyzes response and evacuation procedures for all 50 states, the nation's 75 largest cities and six U.S. territories.
The analysis is based on a complicated scorecard for each state and city, rating their plans for evacuations, medical care, sheltering of victims, public alerts and other emergency priorities.
More than half of New Orleans' plans — 58 percent — were described as insufficient to respond to catastrophes, and only 4 percent met the minimum federal guidelines.
New York and Washington, al-Qaida's targets on Sept. 11, 2001, received lukewarm ratings. Seventy-one percent of New York's emergency plans were described as only partially sufficient. In Washington, 67 percent of the plans were deemed partially sufficient and 2 percent insufficient.
Despite sending $18 billion in Homeland Security grants to spur local preparedness since 9/11, "very little of it has gone to planning, training and exercise," said department undersecretary George Foresman.
The report found that the 18 hurricane-prone states, from Maine to Texas, appeared to be better prepared for disasters than the rest of the country.
Those states hugging the Atlantic and Gulf coasts were judged by peers to have emergency plans "that were more likely to be rated sufficient ... than other states," the review noted. Plans by Hurricane Belt states to manage resources, health and medical issues and communications were noticeably stronger, it found.
Similarly, cities in these states also were more likely to be prepared to issue warnings, manage resources, distribute emergency public information and mass care.
But there was a major exception: The cities were judged comparatively not sufficient in planning for evacuations.
The review is the latest in a series of government and expert analyses since Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29. Nearly all have found preparedness levels lacking for large-scale disasters. The Sept. 11 commission and other panels also have found shortcomings in preparedness for another terrorist attack.
The latest report was released as the Senate sent Bush a $94.5 billion emergency spending bill that included funds for new aid for Gulf Coast hurricane victims.
The review noted several failings on the federal government's part, citing a need for clearer guidance and up-to-date preparedness data to state and local officials. It also urged better collaboration with private businesses to help evacuate disabled people and with charities and other non-governmental services to stockpile aid for disaster victims.
___
On the Net:
Homeland Security Department: http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/
Friday, June 16, 2006
US military deaths in Iraq hit 2,500
Reuters
US military deaths in Iraq hit 2,500
By Fredrik Dahl and Omar al-Ibadi
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq has reached 2,500, the Pentagon said on Thursday, and the military warned it expected the new leader of al Qaeda in Iraq to continue the bloody tactics of his slain predecessor.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis have also been killed since the U.S.-led invasion more than three years ago to overthrow Saddam Hussein, igniting an insurgency by his once-dominant Sunni Arab minority that is showing little sign of easing.
The U.S. military said it believed the real identity of al Qaeda's new leader in Iraq was Egyptian-born Abu Ayyub al-Masri who would adopt the same methods as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Zarqawi, blamed for a campaign of beheadings and suicide bombings that has killed hundreds of civilians, was killed in a U.S. air strike north of Baghdad on June 7.
"Our initial assessment is that (Masri) will probably continue on the same tactics and techniques that Zarqawi did," said Major General William Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman.
U.S.-led and Iraqi forces have killed more than 104 "anti- Iraqi elements" in hundreds of raids since the death of the Jordanian-born militant, a U.S. statement said.
On a day when at least 24 Iraqis lost their lives in five separate incidents, an Iraqi official said the security forces had seized documents giving key information about the militant group's network and its leaders in the country.
"We believe this is the beginning of the end of al Qaeda in Iraq," national security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said.
Rubaie said earlier this year the insurgency against the U.S.-backed, Shi'ite-led government had been defeated.
In Thursday's bloodiest attack, gunmen stopped a minibus taking 10 laborers to work in Baquba, forced them to get off and killed them, police in the town north of Baghdad said.
Reuters Television footage showed the dead men lying on stretchers in blood-soaked clothes. "Is this Islam? Is this Islam?" the father of one victim wailed.
Further west, attackers opened fire on a Sunni Arab mosque near Tikrit, Saddam's home city, killing four worshippers.
In the northern town of Tal Afar, which President Bush has held up as an example of progress in Iraq, three roadside bombs killed five Iraqi soldiers.
"PRESIDENT'S PAIN"
Al Jazeera television said an Iraqi group, the Imam Ali Battalion, had kidnapped a Turkish technician and his translator north of Baghdad and given Turkey a week to withdraw its envoy from Baghdad.
In Washington, the Pentagon said 18,490 U.S. troops had been wounded in the war, which began in March 2003. On an average day, about two U.S. military personnel are killed.
"Any president who goes through a time of war feels very deeply the responsibility for sending men and women into harm's way, he feels very deeply the pain that the families feel," White House spokesman Tony Snow said.
"One of the things the president has said is that these people will not die in vain."
About 50,000 Iraqi troops, backed by 7,000 U.S.-led troops, launched a crackdown in Baghdad this week aimed at putting pressure on insurgents in a city that sees daily carnage.
Analysts say al Qaeda militants, though behind some of the bloodiest attacks, only make up about 5 percent of insurgents, which are dominated by Saddam loyalists.
"The government is on the attack now ... to destroy al Qaeda and to finish this terrorist organization in Iraq," Rubaie said.
A copy of one of the seized documents, whose authenticity could not be independently verified, did not mention al Qaeda or give specific information about any planned attacks.
Instead, it suggested ways insurgents could counter U.S. raids and propaganda, for example by infiltrating Iraq's armed forces, recruiting new members and manufacturing more weapons.
It also said the best way to get out of "the crisis" was to foster conflict between the United States and another country, like Shi'ite Iran, and by stirring U.S.-Shi'ite tension in Iraq.
Al Qaeda has vowed to fight on and its new leader in Iraq, which it has named as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, vowed in a Web statement on Tuesday to avenge Zarqawi's death.
The name rang few bells and the U.S. military said the new leader was probably Masri, who it says trained in Afghanistan and formed al Qaeda's first cell in Baghdad.
(Additional reporting by Will Dunham in Washington and by Michael Georgy and Ibon Villelabeitia in Iraq)
Thursday, June 15, 2006
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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