US force in Iraq swells to 150,000: Pentagon

AFP
US force in Iraq swells to 150,000: Pentagon
By Jim Mannion

WASHINGTON - With the US death toll in Iraq passing 100 this month and mid-term elections just days away, the Pentagon said the US force in Iraq has grown to 150,000 troops, the biggest it has been since January.

A Pentagon spokesman attributed the growth to overlapping unit rotations, but it came amid surging violence that so far this month has claimed the lives of 101 US troops and many more Iraqis.

"Several units are transitioning out as several are transitioning in," said Lieutenant Colonel Mark Ballesteros, who said that as of Monday the number of US troops in Iraq was 150,000.

A Pentagon official, who asked not to be named, said the US Army's 4th Infantry Division was near the end of its year-long rotation.

US commanders in the past have timed the overlap of troop rotations to increase the US military presence during Iraqi elections and other critical milestones in the political process.

The increase this time follows the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which US military officials anticipated would bring higher levels of violence, and comes just ahead of the November 7 congressional elections in the United States.

Pentagon officials, echoing Vice President Dick Cheney, have expressed concern in recent days that Al-Qaeda is trying to step up the violence in Iraq to influence the outcome of the US vote.

Eric Ruff, the Pentagon press secretary, said he did not know why US troops levels were climbing.

"This is news to me," Ruff told reporters. "Talk to MNF-I (Multi-National Forces-Iraq). That's General Casey's decision."

The increase is noteworthy because US troop strength in Iraq is only 10,000 under the all-time high of about 160,000 reported in January after the Iraqi elections.

It had fallen to as low as 127,000 in June when US commanders still believed they could make troop cuts this year.

In late July, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reversed directions and ordered a combat brigade to be extended beyond a year as part of buildup to quell burgeoning sectarian violence in Baghdad.

In mid-September, General John Abizaid, the top US commander in the Middle East, said more than 140,000 troops would be needed through the first six months of 2007 to check the violence.

Since then, US troop levels have oscillated between 142,000 to 147,000, the level it reached last week.

But the stepped-up operations have so far failed to bring the violence under control in Baghdad or stop its spread to other cities, prompting a review of military tactics.

General George Casey, the commander of US forces in Iraq, had said earlier this month that it was an "open question" whether bringing in more troops would have a lasting effect on the violence.

But he left the door open to it last week at a press conference in Baghdad.

"Now, do we need more troops to do that? Maybe," he said. "And as I've said all along, if we do, I will ask for the troops I need, both coalition and Iraqis."

Rumsfeld, however, insisted two days later that Casey's comments had been mischaracterized in press reports.

"Listen, we're in the political season," he said. "People are trying to take what he said and turn it in a way that it plays the way they'd like to see it play."

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Wah!

Huffington Post
Greg Saunders
Wah!

Jeez, this Republican crybaby crap over John Kerry's comments is just pathetic. It's amazing to me that the GOP has a reputation for toughness when they throw temper tantrums over meaningless shit. Watching the President of the United States use his bully pulpit to shed crocodile tears is just embarrassing. Maybe the Democrats should just go silent in this last week before the election, lest we bruise the feelings of those delicate little flowers in the Republican party.

As far as the substance of Kerry's remarks, I don't give a damn what he said. The only reason this is getting any play at all is because the media and right-wing are desperate to turn Democratic momentum on its head. If the GOP can get people to spend the last week of the election obsessing over the smug jerk from Taxachussets, then they might change a few independent minds. Moreover, the media love, love, love the "Democrats are a house divided" storyline and will jump on any Democrat who says something like "I disagree with Sen. Kerry's remarks".

We've seen this exact same scenario unfold countless times in response to similarly "controversial" remarks by Howard Dean, Al Gore, and others. If Republicans were so concerned about civility, why would they support racist ads like the ones accusing Democrats of wanting to murder black babies? The GOP sickening and deliberate attempts to distract voters from the real issues in this race shows how little respect they have for voters.

The American people aren't stupid. They're tired of the GOP's manufactured outrage machine.

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Justices Weigh Limits on Punitive Damages

The New York Times
Justices Weigh Limits on Punitive Damages
By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 — The Supreme Court is accustomed to drawing fine lines. But during arguments on Tuesday on the limits the Constitution places on punitive damages, the proposed line between the permissible and the unconstitutional was so fine that the justices appeared close to giving up.

The result was that a case widely anticipated to produce the most important business ruling of the Roberts court so far looked likely instead to end with a trip back to the Oregon Supreme Court for clarification.

That court upheld an award of $79.5 million in punitive damages against the cigarette maker Philip Morris in a lawsuit brought by the widow of a man who smoked two packs of Marlboros every day for 45 years. The man, Jesse Williams, died five months after a diagnosis of inoperable lung cancer in 1996.

The jury had awarded his widow, Mayola, compensatory damages of $821,000, meaning that the ratio of punitive to compensatory damages was 97 to 1. That was far greater than the “single digit” ratio the Supreme Court placed at the outer limit of constitutionality three years ago, the last time it decided a punitive damages case.

Philip Morris’s lawyer, Andrew L. Frey, argued that the Oregon courts had allowed the jury to punish the company for the harm to other Oregon smokers who had not filed suit. Mr. Frey said this had allowed a single plaintiff’s case to be turned into “a one-way class action in which Philip Morris was exposed to global punishment by the jury without any of the protections of a class action.”

There was general agreement during the argument, including by Mrs. Williams’s lawyer, Robert S. Peck, that awarding damages on the basis of injury to nonplaintiffs was impermissible under the Supreme Court’s recent precedents.

But there was no agreement on whether that actually happened. Mr. Peck argued that the Oregon courts had simply permitted the jury to consider harm to others, not to impose “global punishment” but as part of its assessment of the “reprehensibility” of the cigarette company’s behavior, a factor that the Supreme Court’s precedents permit juries in punitive damages cases to consider.

The basis for the lawsuit was the claim that Philip Morris’s strategy of denying the connection between smoking and cancer deceived Mr. Williams into believing that he could safely keep smoking.

“This was a massive market-directed fraud driven by their rational and deliberate decisions at the highest levels of the company to deceive customers and knowingly endanger their health,” Mr. Peck told the justices. The Oregon Supreme Court, in upholding the award, called Philip Morris’s conduct “extraordinarily reprehensible, by any measure of which we are aware.”

The United States Supreme Court has been deeply split on the punitive damages question, with three justices, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, rejecting the idea that the Constitution’s guarantee of due process places a limit on what states can permit juries to award.

With the departure of William H. Rehnquist, the former chief justice, and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, both of whom supported due process limits on punitive damages, the known margin of support for the court’s precedents fell to 4 to 3, with the views of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. unknown.

The court’s decision last May to hear the Philip Morris appeal, Philip Morris USA v. Williams, No. 05-1256, suggested an effort to find a new center of gravity on an issue of considerable interest to the business community.

But the problem that emerged during Tuesday’s argument was the justices’ evident concern that they lacked a basis for deciding whether, on the one hand, the Oregon courts had improperly allowed jurors to take into account the harm to nonplaintiffs, or on the other hand, had properly allowed consideration of the reprehensibility of the conduct by Philip Morris, a unit of Altria. Finding the Oregon Supreme Court’s opinion insufficiently clear on this basic point, the justices would be unable to use the case as a vehicle for taking their consideration of punitive damages to the next level.

“What’s worrying me,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer said to Mr. Frey, “is that we’re going to be in a kind of bog of mixtures of constitutional law, unclear Oregon state law, not certain exactly what was meant by whom in the context of the trial, et cetera.”

And Justice David H. Souter, referring to the Oregon Supreme Court, asked Mr. Peck: “Isn’t perhaps the better course to send this back to them and say, ‘We don’t know what you mean?’ And let them tell us clearly.”

The confusion was evident at the beginning of the argument, when Mr. Frey said the Oregon trial court had improperly refused to use a jury instruction proposed by Philip Morris “which would have told the jury that it was not to punish for harm to nonparties.”

The proposed instruction said that “although you may consider the extent of harm suffered by others” in deciding whether the punishment bore a “reasonable relationship” to the injury to Mr. Williams, “you are not to punish the defendant for the impact of its alleged misconduct on other persons, who may bring lawsuits of their own.”

The failure to give this instruction was part of the denial of Philip Morris’s right to due process, Mr. Frey said.

But several justices said they found the instruction confusing and unlikely to have steered jurors away from an improper basis for awarding damages.

“You don’t think that would confuse the jury if they are first told that they may consider the extent of harm suffered by others, and then the next instruction seems to say they can’t?” Justice Ginsburg asked Mr. Frey.

“The concept may be abstract,” Mr. Frey replied, insisting that there was a “difference between considering and punishing” that a proper jury instruction would have made “quite clear to the jury.”

Tobacco Judgment Blocked

WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 (AP) — A federal appeals court blocked a landmark judgment against the tobacco industry on Tuesday, allowing the companies to continue selling “light” and “low tar” cigarettes until their appeals can be reviewed.

The decision by the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia also allows the companies to continue for now the advertising campaigns that a federal judge in August ruled were misleading.

Without comment, the appeals court granted the tobacco companies’ request to put Judge Gladys Kessler’s order on hold. They have argued that her far-reaching ruling could cost them millions of dollars and lead to a loss of customers.

In mid-August, Judge Kessler ruled that the companies had violated racketeering laws and conspired for decades to mislead the public about the health hazards of smoking.

She ordered tobacco companies to stop labeling cigarettes as “low tar,” “light,” “ultra light” or “mild,” because such cigarettes have been found to be no safer than others because of how people smoke them.

Judge Kessler’s ruling was appealed by Philip Morris USA, Lorillard Inc., Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation and British American Tobacco.

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Yeah, Right: Gas price rise undermines U.S. election conspiracy

Reuters
Gas price rise undermines U.S. election conspiracy
By Tom Doggett

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A widespread conspiracy theory that the White House engineered gasoline prices lower to influence next week's congressional elections was undermined by news of a small hike at the pumps last week, the industry's main trade group said on Tuesday.

Polls show that many Americans believe oil companies have been working with the Bush administration to keep gasoline prices lower in an effort to help Republican candidates. The White House has denied such a link.

"It's all supply and demand. The (oil) companies do not have the ability to manipulate the market in any way," said John Felmy, chief economist for the American Petroleum Institute trade group.

The Energy Department reported Monday that the national price for gasoline increased a penny to $2.22 a gallon last week, the first rise in three months.

Felmy said that if the White House were working with oil companies to control gasoline prices, they would not want them to go up a week before the election.

Since reaching a summer high of $3.04 a gallon in early August, the average price for gasoline had fallen a record 11 weeks in a row by 83 cents, mainly due to a steep decline in crude oil prices. Oil accounts for about half the cost of making gasoline.

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Investigation: At Least 2 Dozen Federal Judicial Candidates Donated Money To Bush, Key Republicans

salon.com
Money trails lead to Bush judges

A four-month investigation reveals that dozens of federal judges gave contributions to President Bush and top Republicans who helped place them on the bench. A Salon/CIR exclusive.

By Will Evans

Oct. 31, 2006 | At least two dozen federal judges appointed by President Bush since 2001 made political contributions to key Republicans or to the president himself while under consideration for their judgeships, government records show. A four-month investigation of Bush-appointed judges by the Center for Investigative Reporting reveals that six appellate court judges and 18 district court judges contributed a total of more than $44,000 to politicians who were influential in their appointments. Some gave money directly to Bush after he officially nominated them. Other judges contributed to Republican campaign committees while they were under consideration for a judgeship.

Republicans who received money from judges en route to the bench include Sens. Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Sens. George Voinovich and Mike DeWine of Ohio, and Gov. George Pataki of New York.

There are no laws or regulations prohibiting political contributions by a candidate for a federal judgeship. But political giving by judicial candidates has been a rarely scrutinized activity amid the process that determines who will receive lifelong jobs on the federal bench. Some ethics experts and Bush-appointed judges say that political giving is inappropriate for those seeking judicial office -- it can appear unethical, they say, and could jeopardize the public's confidence in the impartiality of the nation's courts. Those concerns come as ethics and corruption scandals have roiled Washington, and on the eve of midterm elections whose outcome could influence the makeup of the federal judiciary -- including the Supreme Court -- for decades to come.

The CIR investigation analyzed the campaign contribution records of 249 judges appointed by Bush nationwide since 2001. The money trail leading from Bush judges to influential politicians runs particularly deep through the political battleground states of Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Since 1990, Judge Deborah Cook, who was confirmed to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in May 2003, gave more than $10,000 to three Ohio Republicans who were instrumental in getting her on the bench. One was Sen. George Voinovich, who is chairman of the Select Committee on Ethics. Another was Sen. Mike DeWine, a member of the Judiciary Committee, which is critical to the confirmation of federal judges. The other was Gov. Bob Taft, who gained national notoriety after he was convicted of ethics violations in 2005 for not reporting gifts he received.

Cook's contributions included $1,000 to Voinovich and $1,500 to Taft after President Bush had nominated Cook, with their backing, in May 2001. Once on the bench, Cook continued giving, contributing $800 to DeWine in December 2005. Political giving while serving on the federal bench is a violation of the official Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges. The code says that "A judge should not ... solicit funds for or pay an assessment or make a contribution to a political organization or candidate." DeWine's campaign committee returned the money three weeks after Cook made the contribution.

Another judge, Christopher Boyko, gave $2,000 to Voinovich in August 2004 -- his first federal contribution on record since 1996 -- less than a month after Bush nominated him for the bench upon the recommendation of Ohio's senators.

Another, Judge John Adams, cut a $1,000 check received by Voinovich's campaign committee just two days before Voinovich and DeWine publicly recommended him to Bush in November 2001. "I've been supportive of the Republican Party and President Bush," Adams said, after DeWine and Voinovich recommended him for the judgeship, according to the Akron Beacon Journal. "I'm sure that had some bearing on the selection." About two months later, in January 2002, Adams gave DeWine $1,500, which was returned to him in February. Then, less than a month after his subsequent nomination by Bush in October 2002, Adams gave $250 more to Voinovich.

Brian Seitchik, a spokesperson for Sen. DeWine's current reelection campaign, confirmed that the money from Cook and Adams was returned because, at the time it was given, Adams was a judicial candidate and Cook was a sitting judge. "The campaign has operated out of an abundance of caution," Seitchik said, "and we thought it was the prudent thing to do."

Adams declined to comment. Cook's chambers faxed an unattributed one-sentence note that appeared to suggest that some of the donations in her name, as identified by public records, were made by her husband. Two written requests to Cook seeking further clarification were not answered.

The president selects most federal judges with significant input from U.S. senators of the same party. In Ohio, that process is "totally controlled by party politics," says Tom Hagel, a professor at the University of Dayton School of Law and a part-time trial judge. "If you don't have the blessing of the county and state party chairs you can stop right there," said Hagel, whose brother is Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. "Believe me, they've got to get approval all the way up the line." Hagel says campaign contributions could play into that process, as a demonstration of "how loyal and appreciative" a judicial candidate is. "That certainly has an appearance of impropriety," he said. "It gives the impression that the senators' decision-making process could be influenced by money."

In some cases from around the country, judicial candidates gave money directly to the president's campaign. Judge Thomas Ludington of Michigan gave Bush $1,000, after being nominated in September 2002. Judge P. Kevin Castel of New York gave Bush $2,000 after Bush nominated him in March 2003. Judge Paul Crotty of New York gave $1,000 to Bush in June 2003, the same month he met with Bush officials about the judgeship. Judge Mark Filip of Illinois, who had volunteered as a Republican election monitor in Florida during the disputed 2000 election, gave the president $2,000 after Bush nominated him in April 2003.

In a statement to Salon and CIR, White House spokesman Blair C. Jones said that "potential nominees" recommended to Bush are not based on "any consideration" of an individual's political contributions. He added, "We are not aware of any law or regulation that prohibits a federal judicial candidate or nominee from making political contributions."

In Pennsylvania, Sen. Arlen Specter has recommended dozens of judicial candidates to the president during his career. As a longtime member of the Judiciary Committee, and its chairman since 2005, he has helped oversee Bush's hundreds of appointments. Speaking by phone last week, Specter said political contributions are "not a factor" in who gets recommended in his home state or elsewhere. Citing the thousands of contributors and tens of millions of dollars raised in his 2004 campaign, Specter said that "it's just not possible to know everybody" who gives money.

However, in order to avoid any impression that the contributions carry influence, he said, "I think once an individual becomes a [judicial] prospect that that would be a cutoff point." In Pennsylvania, Specter said, that point would come when candidates apply for the job with a bipartisan selection committee set up by him and Rick Santorum, the state's other Republican senator. "I don't know of anybody who has made a contribution beyond that," Specter said.

In fact, the investigation revealed at least three judges in Pennsylvania who gave money to Specter, Santorum or President Bush after they were formally under consideration for the jobs.

The First Amendment protects the right of Americans to make political contributions. But there must be a balance, some ethics scholars and judges say, between that right and the responsibility of those seeking a judicial post to appear impartial. With the judiciary drawing increasing scrutiny and criticism in recent times, the American Bar Association is overhauling its judicial code of conduct to set new recommended ethical guidelines. The draft of the new code, to be voted on this February, would forbid political contributions by judicial candidates.

Political patronage certainly didn't start with the Bush administration. (There is an adage in legal circles that a federal judge is "a lawyer who knows a senator.") The investigation of Bush-appointed judges also turned up a Clinton-appointed district judge in California, Dean D. Pregerson, who, like Judge Cook of Ohio, made a political contribution in apparent violation of the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges. While serving on the bench in 2002, Pregerson gave $1,000 to Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, according to federal records. (A spokesperson from Pregerson's chambers claimed that the contribution was made by his wife.)

After being alerted to the forthcoming Salon/CIR story, the Committee for Justice, a conservative advocacy group in Washington with ties to Karl Rove and Santorum, looked into a sampling of President Clinton's judicial picks, according to Sean Rushton, the group's executive director. CFJ found 10 judges confirmed to the bench under Clinton who had given political contributions of some kind after they were nominated, according to information provided by Rushton.

Indeed, money and personal connections have long played into the selection process in both parties, says political science professor Sheldon Goldman, author of "Picking Federal Judges." "Why pick someone who hasn't supported you over someone who has?" Goldman asks. "It's been tradition," he said. "You reward your friends."

The status quo, however, is disturbing to some observers. Ethics concerns have been thrown into sharp relief in Washington, with a string of corruption scandals staining the Republican Party in particular. And the future shape of the nation's courts may hinge on the midterm elections, depending on which party controls Congress afterward. There are currently 49 vacancies on the federal bench -- and with a justice potentially retiring from the highest court, there is the possibility President Bush will nominate another Supreme Court Justice before leaving office.

Campaign finance is an area of particular concern, says Jeffrey M. Shaman, a judicial ethics expert at DePaul University College of Law. "We just have so many problems with contributions to judicial campaigns, and so many problems with campaign contributions to members of the legislature," he said. "If someone wants to be a judge, then they should, in their sound discretion and wisdom, voluntarily decide not to make these contributions anymore."

More than 50 Bush-appointed judges who made campaign contributions around the time of their nominations were contacted with written requests for comment, as were some other judges who gave money prior to their appointments. While many did not respond, some responded by phone or in written statements.

Boyko, the Ohio district judge who gave money to Voinovich after Bush had nominated Boyko, said in a statement that he had given the money at a Republican fundraising event attended by Bush. "I have always expressed thanks for Senator Voinovich's trust in me and have always publicly supported him. If I could ethically donate today, I would. And, because of a long standing mutual respect with Senator Voinovich, I saw no ethical improprieties donating after the recommendation." Boyko added: "If you believe for a minute that $240, $2,000 or $25,000 'buys' a federal judgeship, as you clearly intimate ... your naivete astounds me. Any such insinuations are a blatant insult to both Senators, denigrating their integrity and character. No one 'buys' either Senator DeWine or Senator Voinovich -- period."

Sen. Voinovich's press secretary, Garrette Silverman, said that participation in the political process is not a consideration. "To think that contributions would even enter the equation is absurd when we're taking about evaluating candidates for federal judgeships," she said.

Judge Lavenski R. Smith -- who contributed money to Republican Sen. Tim Hutchinson of Arkansas after Hutchinson had recommended him to Bush for a judgeship, and after Smith had publicly acknowledged that he was undergoing an FBI background check for a potential nomination -- said in a written statement, "The proximity of the timing between my donations and my nomination was largely coincidental." The $1,000 donation to Hutchinson in 2001, apparently Smith's first federal contribution since at least 1990, came three weeks before Bush announced his nomination.

Smith, who was confirmed to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in July 2002, also said, "Until nominated, potential nominees should retain their full first amendment rights to participate politically as ordinary citizens."

A number of Bush-appointed judges from around the country, however, said they consider political contributions by judicial candidates to be inappropriate.

"My thoughts are that it would probably be inappropriate for a lawyer who is a candidate for a federal judgeship to make a significant campaign contribution to a person having influence over the selection process, especially if the candidate had no prior history of making such contributions," wrote Judge Timothy C. Batten Sr., of Georgia, who was confirmed to the bench in March 2006. Even those who have a history of giving campaign money, Batten continued, "should realize that public disclosure of the contributions might ... raise unpleasant questions as to the purpose of the contributions."

Judge Roger W. Titus of Maryland, confirmed in November 2003, wrote: "From a personal standpoint, I do not believe that political contributions should be made to an appointing authority while under active consideration."

"I knew that federal judges were forbidden from making political contributions," wrote Judge Patrick J. Schiltz of Minnesota, confirmed in April 2006. "I thought that, as someone recommended or nominated for a federal judgeship, I should follow the same practice."

It's not always senators who make recommendations to the president for judgeships, and who receive political money that could look bad in the eyes of the public. In New York, because both senators are Democrats, Republican Gov. George Pataki has had an influential role under Bush in selecting nominees for the federal courts. Judge Richard J. Holwell, who was a law school classmate and former lawyer of Pataki's, met with the governor's judicial screening panel in March 2001 and was told he would be recommended for a judgeship. The next month, Holwell gave Pataki $10,000.

In Pennsylvania, as in Ohio, there are numerous examples of Bush appointees giving money to influential politicians as they were headed for the bench.

In March 2001, Judge Thomas M. Hardiman interviewed with a selection committee set up by Specter and Santorum for recommending judicial candidates to Bush. Between then and April 2003, when Bush nominated Hardiman for a district court seat, Hardiman contributed a total of $2,400 to Specter, $2,000 to Santorum and his political action committee, and gave thousands of dollars to other Republicans. Hardiman kept sending some of those donations even as he was interviewing with the White House, filling out forms for the Justice Department and undergoing his FBI background check. Hardiman was confirmed by the Senate in October 2003. This fall, he was nominated by Bush to be elevated to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals -- so he'll go before the Judiciary Committee, with Specter now in charge, again.

Specter dismissed the importance of the money he received from Hardiman. "He was a protégé of Santorum, not mine," Specter said. He added that if he had known Hardiman was donating while under consideration for the judgeship, "I would have told him not to do it."

As a Judiciary Committee member, Specter also helped oversee the confirmation of Judge Gene Pratter. Pratter gave Specter $1,500 between February and March 2003, and interviewed with the Pennsylvania selection committee in "spring" 2003, according to her Senate questionnaire. Pratter then interviewed with White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez in July and September 2003 -- and in September she contributed $2,000 to Bush.

The records of other federal judges appointed by Bush in Pennsylvania reveal a similar pattern. Judge John E. Jones of Pennsylvania gave $1,000 to Santorum after he was recommended by the senators' committee. Judge Michael Baylson, nominated and confirmed in 2002 after serving for decades as legal counsel and then treasurer for Specter's campaigns and committees, gave $2,000 to Specter after it was reported in the press that Baylson was a likely candidate for the judgeship.

"If I had known about it," said Specter, "I would have returned their contributions. I don't want anybody to think that it's relevant." He added, "You ought to look at all the others who were nominees who didn't make contributions. I don't think anybody would believe that those contributions would influence a decision on making anyone a judge."

But ensuring that the public won't see the money as tainting the selection of judges may not be so simple. "All campaign contributions are in some sense to buy influence," said William Hodes, a professor emeritus of law at Indiana University who helped draft the proposed ABA code. "Once you cross into the world of judging or being a candidate for judge you take on a new responsibility to begin living by the rules of your new job," said Hodes, who runs a legal ethics consulting practice. "Since sitting federal judges can't donate even a dime anyway, my guess is that it would be very comfortable for the federal system to say once you have had direct talks with the senator with an eye toward [a judgeship], or if the White House has contacted you, then you're a candidate and you have to back off."

Even some Bush judges who gave money as they were bound for the bench acknowledge the ethical concerns that it can raise.

"I was recommended [to the president] around August 2001," said Judge Jones of Pennsylvania. "Is that the point that I should have stopped making contributions? Maybe I should have." He added, "If you know you're being recommended by the screening panel, probably in retrospect it's better to say, 'That's it,' and not make any contributions after that. But that's the benefit of hindsight."

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Terrorists love Bush / Cheney

Huffington Post
RJ Eskow
Dick Cheney Is Right - And Good For My Love Life

There's no question about it. Dick Cheney is absolutely right when he says that terrorists are "very much aware of our political calendar here." After all, Cheney would not be Vice President today had Bin Laden not issued his video shout-out to the America people in 2004.

Under the Republicans, Iraq has become a combination job fair and training ground for the terrorist networks.

The policies of this Republican Administration have been a bonanza for the bad guys.

Leaving aside all other considerations about the war, it's fair to say that it has been the most spectacular national security failure in American history. Terrorist incidents ballooned from 3,192 in 2004 to 11,111 in 2005 alone. A third of those were in Iraq itself, while a distracted America failed to stop the other two-thirds elsewhere around the globe.

The report card is in on Republicans and America's safety, and they get an "F." The only way to measure progress on a global iniative like anti-terrorism is to look at success and failure on a global level.

So, when Cheney goes on to boast that "we've gone five years without another (homeland) attack" I imagine it's scant comfort to the families of more than 3,000 Americans killed in Iraq (counting contractors.) It probably doesn't provide much comfort to the victims of the bombings in Bali, Madrid, and London either. And as far as the homeland is concerned, I still say it's like driving blindfolded and bragging you haven't hit anything yet.

Of course, by Cheney's logic he's failed to match the accomplishment of the Clinton Administration. They went six years after the first World Trade Center attack without a homeland incident. And, who knows? We might be up to eleven years by now if Bush and Condi had bothered to read that "Bin Laden Determined to Strike ..." memo.

Cheney's also correct that " the ultimate threat is a group of terrorists in one of our cities with a nuclear weapon." That makes it all the more stunning to realize that our GOP-led government still doesn't examine 95% of the containers brought in through our ports.

It's been over a year since I wrote that the next Katrina could be a nuclear attack. Last year retired Admiral Richard Meis conducted an independent study of the GOP Administration and its crony-laden Department of Energy's handling of radiological materials, and here's what he said:

"Some radiological waste storage areas may lack adequate protection against sabotage which could cause wide-area radiological dispersal."

That's nothing less than disastrous incompetence in the face of nuclear terror - on Cheney's watch. (A big part of the problem is the Administration's outsourcing of our nuclear safety to private contractors.)

And how about this quote from a GAO study?

"The US Defense Department failed to secure sources of radiological material in Iraq for six months after the US invasion in 2003, during which period some were looted or scattered."

Let's face it: these guys are too cronied-up, greedy, and incompetent to keep us safe. They're a terrorist's dream come true.

So of course Cheney's correct when he says that the terrorists watch our electoral process. They don't want the gravy train to stop now. A well-run national security strategy based on renunciation of torture, strong international alliances, firmer inspection procedures, and a safe and well-ordered withdrawal from Iraq would take away their biggest recruitment bonanza and source of propaganda. It would also put the bad guys on the run, and make it harder for them to do their dirty deeds.

Dick's overreaching a little, though, when he says this:

... when the Democratic Party in Connecticut purged Joe Lieberman, in effect, drummed him out of the party on the grounds that he had supported the President in the global war on terror, that sends a message to the terrorists overseas that their basic strategy of trying to break the will of the American people may, in fact, work.

That's as overheated as his wife's soft-core porn. (She denied it was porn, of course, as she attacked Jim Webb's writing. Judge for yourself: "He reached down as if to tie it shut, but slipped his hand inside instead, inside her unbuttoned nightgown too ... They moved into the bedroom. 'Mmmmmm,' he agreed as they fell toward the bed." There's more here.)

If anything, the notion that America might develop a well-designed plan to withdraw from Iraq would disturb the terrorists, who don't want to be deprived of the war's ability to churn out more and more recruits.

As for this disgraceful new bill: Think the bad guys are afraid of a little torture? In their worldview, that - like martyrdom - helps buy a quick ride into paradise. It's the torture of the innocent that harms our interests, and there's widespread documentation that we've done exactly that many times in Iraq. Torture is yet another propaganda victory for Al Qaeda. To them (and many neutral Arab observers), it confirms the impression that the West is immoral and should be resisted.

That's why there's open talk about the possibility of another Bin Laden video, or a worse "October surprise," to help the GOP's sagging fortunes. (Dems should have an action plan in place for just such a possibility.)

For the GOP power brokers, an electoral repudiation of Bush/Cheney would be bad for business. And the Cheneys are all about business - whether it's allowing Halliburton to rip off the American soldier, or peddling a little blowsy smut (against their purported "family values") to pump up book sales. Sadly, they're representative of the Republican Party as a whole. Like their fellow GOP leaders, the Cheneys choose greed over ethics and self-interest over service to country.

"Honey," the beautiful redhead murmured to her blogger-husband, "won't a Democratic victory make us safer, both here at home and on that European 'second honeymoon' you've been promising?"

"Mmmm," he agreed as they fell toward the bed.

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E-Mail Voting Comes With Risks; Pentagon Warned on Security Issues for Overseas Ballots

washingtonpost.com
E-Mail Voting Comes With Risks
Pentagon Warned on Security Issues for Overseas Ballots
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer

Time was when soldiers, if they wanted to vote, had to request ballots by snail mail, fill them out and return them the same way.

The process typically took weeks.

This year, thousands of soldiers around the world have the opportunity to vote in the Nov. 7 elections by e-mail. It's part of a Pentagon effort to make it easier for overseas military personnel to cast ballots in federal and state elections, and it reflects how the Internet has changed life in the combat zone.

But computer security experts inside and outside the government warned that the Pentagon's Federal Voting Assistance Program ignores the risks associated with unencrypted e-mail: interception, hacking and identity theft.

"E-mail traffic can flow through equipment owned and operated by various governments, companies and individuals in many countries," Joel Rothschild, a Navy Reserve captain, said in an August report prepared for the Pentagon. "It is easily monitored, blocked and subject to tampering."

A separate report by four outside computer security experts released last week raised similar red flags and added that the use of unencrypted e-mail for registering overseas voters invited identity theft.

"No bank would ask their customers to send Social Security numbers over unencrypted e-mail," said the report's co-author, David Wagner, a professor of computer science at the University of California at Berkeley. But that is what the system allows, he said.

Rothschild's report noted that e-mails can be encrypted to reduce tampering risks. Pentagon officials said states would need to arrange for that provision.

States have options for getting ballots to and from voters. They can fax, e-mail or mail the ballots, or use a combination of the methods. The federal government began the use of faxed ballots in 1990, with troops stationed in the Persian Gulf for Operation Desert Shield. E-mail is an option in those states that allow it; at the moment eight do. Mississippi was the first, allowing troops overseas to vote by e-mail in a 2003 gubernatorial election.

Neither the Pentagon nor state officials say they track how many of the 294,000 military personnel overseas are voting by e-mail. That information is held at the county level, state elections officials said.

Anecdotally, the number of military personnel voting by e-mail appears limited.

In Colorado, Jefferson County elections official Shawna Weir said she has received three ballots that soldiers sent by e-mail. The service members -- two in Iraq and one on a ship -- e-mailed their ballots to a federal facility in Virginia, which then faxed them to the county.

They were all "very eager to vote," Weir said, noting that they had called her to make sure they could get their ballots.

The combination of faxing and e-mail "is about as dangerous as you can get," Wagner said. "It's got all of the problems with unencrypted e-mail, plus your ballot is being routed through the Department of Defense. Will soldiers feel free to vote their conscience when they know that the DOD may be able to see how they voted? How do we know that the DOD or their contractors haven't modified soldiers' ballots in transit?"

J. Scott Wiedmann, deputy director of the Federal Voting Assistance Program, said the operators at the federal facility cannot alter e-mail content, which is sent in "read-only" format. Voters are also encouraged to mail in an original copy of their ballot as a backstop, he said.

Soldiers faxing and e-mailing their ballots also must sign waivers saying they understand that somebody might see their ballot, Wiedmann said. "There's no U.S. constitutional guarantee to a secret ballot," he said.

Joni Ernst is a county elections official in Iowa and a major in the Iowa Army National Guard who served in Iraq from 2003 to 2004. She delivered mail to the troops and saw how long it could take, so she is glad that soldiers have the e-mail option. Most every camp has an Internet cafe for soldiers, and if the voting process is simple, she said, the troops are more likely to vote.

"Their time is very limited," Ernst said. "We don't want to detract from the mission. But we want to make sure their vote counts."

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Requests Hit Record For Absentee Ballots; Continued Delivery Delays Are Feared

Requests Hit Record For Absentee Ballots
Continued Delivery Delays Are Feared
By Steve Vogel and Rosalind S. Helderman
Washington Post Staff Writers

A record 166,000 Maryland voters had requested absentee ballots as of yesterday, spurred in part by suggestions from the governor and other state officials to abandon electronic voting for the security of a paper ballot.

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) and Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D), among others, urged voters to use absentee ballots in the wake of widespread voting problems during the Sept. 12 primary. The governor's running mate, Kristen Cox, voted by absentee ballot yesterday morning in Baltimore County, and Ehrlich has said he will vote absentee.

The crush of demand for absentee ballots has left local election officials overwhelmed and worried that late delivery of them will make it difficult for everyone to vote.

"The Democratic and Republican politicians are telling them that they should not trust the voting system," said Barbara L. Fisher, elections director for Anne Arundel County. "The whole scenario is ridiculous."

Yet despite widespread problems during the primary, a Washington Post survey shows that an overwhelming majority of Maryland voters are confident that their votes in the Nov. 7 election will be counted.

The poll of slightly more than 1,000 registered voters conducted last week found that 86 percent are confident -- 45 very confident and 41 somewhat confident -- that their votes will be counted.

Officials said the high demand for absentee ballots is also linked to a "no excuses" law passed in the spring that allows registered voters to request absentee ballots without giving a reason.

washingtonpost.com
Whatever the cause, the number of ballots requested is well above the previous high of 137,953, recorded for the 2004 presidential election, according to State Board of Election officials. In the 2002 gubernatorial election, 65,824 voted absentee. The deadline for requesting an absentee ballot is today. Voters can still request absentee ballots in person at local election boards through 8 p.m. Election Day.

The high number of absentee ballots could delay election results in close races. The first count of absentee ballots will begin at 10 a.m. on the Thursday after the election. Each envelope containing a ballot will have to be examined to make sure it has been postmarked by Monday, Nov. 6.

Ballots that are postmarked by Nov. 6 will continue to be accepted until Nov. 17, 10 days after the election, to give ballots mailed from overseas time to arrive.

If previous rates for gubernatorial elections hold, about 1.6 million people -- 60 percent of Maryland's 3.1 million registered voters -- could cast ballots in the election. In previous elections, about 85 percent of those who requested absentee ballots used them. Absentee ballots could therefore make up about 10 percent of the total vote, according to election officials.

"It's absolute hysteria," said John Willis, a Democratic former secretary of state. He warned that chances are far greater that an absentee ballot, rather than one cast via machine, will not be counted because of issues ranging from mail delivery problems to the possibility that a vote will be disqualified because the ballot was not properly filled out. "It'd be amusing if it wasn't so serious," he said.

Ehrlich's opponent in the election, Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley (D), has characterized the governor's advocacy of absentee ballots as a form of voter suppression, accusing him of "spending a lot of time trying to confuse people and discourage them from going to the polls and predicting that there are going to be all sorts of problems."

During a visit to Montgomery last week, Ehrlich denied trying to suppress the vote. "I've never figured out how that benefits me," he said.

Ehrlich and other candidates have factored the absentee voters into their campaign strategy, tracking how many of their supporters have requested the ballots and following up to ensure that they mail them. Campaign workers can then concentrate on bringing others out to the polls on Election Day.

As of yesterday morning, Democrats held an edge in the number of absentee ballots requested in Maryland -- 77,836 to 68,014. But the ratio is well short of the nearly 2 to 1 advantage Democrats hold among registered voters.

Because of uncertainty over how many ballots would be needed, election boards requested that 1.1 million be printed for absentee voters and for voters who cast provisional ballots.

Officials with Diebold Election Systems, which manufactures Maryland's electronic voting machines and is printing the ballots, told the state Board of Elections yesterday that they greatly underestimated the number needed.

Most outstanding ballots were sent to county boards over the past several days and the last should be delivered by today, the board was told by Tom Feehan, Maryland project manager for Diebold. But election officials said there may not be enough turnaround time for some voters.

In Prince George's County, officials struggled to fill requests for more than 13,000 absentee ballots -- more than twice as many as four years ago.

Interim Elections Administrator Robert J. Antonetti Sr. said the office had run out of several of the county's 37 ballot styles. More ballots were delivered yesterday, but he said Diebold had still not sent the county's full order.

Staff writers Robert Barnes and John Wagner contributed to this report.

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H5N1 strain could start wave of bird flu outbreaks

Reuters
H5N1 strain could start wave of bird flu outbreaks
By Tan Ee Lyn

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Scientists in Hong Kong and the United States have detected a new strain of H5N1 bird flu virus in China and warned it might have started another wave of outbreaks in poultry in Southeast Asia and move deeper into Eurasia.

The strain, called the "Fujian-like virus" because it was first isolated in China's southern Fujian province in March 2005, has increasingly been detected since October 2005 in poultry in six provinces in China, displacing other H5N1 strains.

The strain might also have become resistant to vaccines, which China began using on a large scale from September 2005 to protect poultry from H5N1, said the scientists.

The researchers are from the University of Hong Kong, including virologists Guan Yi and Malik Peiris, and Rob Webster of St Jude Children's Research Hospital in the United States.

"The predominance of this Fujian-like virus appears to be responsible for the increased prevalence of H5N1 in poultry since October 2005 and recent human infection cases in China," they said in an article published in the U.S.-based Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (www.pnas.org).

"It has already caused poultry outbreaks in Laos, Malaysia and Thailand, and human disease in Thailand. It is likely that this variant has already initiated a third wave of transmission throughout Southeast Asia and may spread further in Eurasia."

The first wave of H5N1 outbreaks occurred in late 2003 and 2004 in many parts of Asia. The second wave started in China's Qinghai Lake in May 2005 and that strain has since been found in parts of Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

The virus has killed more than 150 people since late 2003 and remains largely a disease among birds. But experts fear it could trigger a flu pandemic and kill millions of people if it mutates into a strain that can pass from human to human.

SUPER STRAIN

The researchers collected 53,220 fecal samples from chickens, geese and ducks in poultry markets in six Chinese provinces between July 2005 and June 2006. Of these, 1,294 tested positive for H5N1.

But genetic sequencing of viruses collected from October 2005 onwards showed the Fujian strain was clearly becoming predominant over other H5N1 strains. Between April and June this year, 103 out of 108 H5N1-positive samples were of the Fujian type.

"That's pretty conclusive proof that this new variant is predominant," said Gavin Smith, one of the researchers in the Hong Kong team.

To test how well vaccinated poultry could stand up to various strains of H5N1, the researchers collected 1,113 blood samples from chickens from November 2005 to April 2006.

Only 180 samples, or 16 percent, tested positive for H5N1 antibodies. They were exposed to 3 strains of H5N1 -- namely the Yunnan, Guiyang and Fujian-like strains.

The antibodies managed to neutralize the Yunnan and Guiyang strains, but had little or no effect on the Fujian virus.

"The market poultry, many of them don't have antibodies against H5 virus and those that do are not well protected against the Fujian virus, which is why we think the Fujian-like virus has been able to grow because other (strains) have been suppressed," Smith told Reuters in an interview.

"What happens with vaccines is that you basically introduce something that kills off most of the viruses, but there are always going to be some viruses that can escape from it."

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Apple-Bobbing at the Cheney's

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Stay the Benchmark

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Folks will think we're cutting and running

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The Bumber Stickers Are Here

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Rush Lamebrain

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Homebuying Incentives Out of Control

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Republican Mudslinging On An Industrial Scale

factcheck.org
Republican Mudslinging On An Industrial Scale
The NRCC attack-ad factory grinds out some smears we find to be misleading or false.

Summary

Both political parties are functioning in the 2006 House races as factories for attack ads, but the National Republican Campaign Committee's work stands out this year for the sheer volume of assaults on the personal character of Democratic House challengers.

The ads being aired by both the NRCC and its rival, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, are overwhelmingly negative. However, the DCCC ads generally attack Republican candidates on policy issues or their performance in office – accusing them of casting votes favorable to drug or oil companies, or of supporting President Bush's unpopular policies in Iraq or on Social Security. We've recently criticized factual inaccuracies we've seen in some of those, and we'll have more to say in a later article. Here we focus on the NRCC's ads, which are much more likely to demean an opponent's character. That's the very definition of political mudslinging.

The Republican ads variously accuse Democratic candidates of such things as charging an "adult fantasy" phone call to taxpayers, of being a "hypocrite," of being a "greedy trial lawyer," of being a "millionaire know-it-all," or of failing to pay local business taxes on time. One ad describes a Democrat's "ethical judgments" as "bad to bizarre" and claims he favored use of 50,000-volt Taser weapons on seven-year-olds.

A derogatory ad can be accurate, and when supported by facts can give voters information about a candidate that they may well find relevant. For example, one NRCC ad correctly states that a Democratic candidate wrote a letter asking a judge to go easy when sentencing a felon convicted of bank fraud in a scandal that bilked hundreds of homeowners. However, several of the NRCC's ads are smears that twist facts or ignore them. A sheriff running for the House is accused of having "fixed" a speeding ticket for his daughter, for example, when in fact the ticket was paid and the daughter got no special treatment. We found repeated examples of this sort of thing, and we detail them here.
Analysis

Attack-ad factories

First the numbers.
Spending by the two party committees tells part of the story. According to the Federal Election Commission, so far in this election cycle the NRCC has spent $41.9 million attacking Democratic opponents and $5 million supporting its own candidates, roughly an 8:1 negative-to-positive ratio. The DCCC has spent $18 million and $3.1 million, respectively, for a 5:1 ratio. Most of that money on both sides is spent on television advertising.

We zoomed in for a closer look, reviewing all ads by the DCCC and NRCC that appeared since Labor Day in any of the top 101 television markets, which reach 87 per cent of American TV viewers. Copies of the ads were supplied to us by the Campaign Media Analysis Group . Of the 115 NRCC ads, we judged 91 per cent to be purely negative. The DCCC's 104 ads included 81 per cent we found to be purely negative.We found very few on either side that were all positive, but the DCCC's contained more mixed or "comparative" ads –a mix of positive statements about the supported candidate and negative statements about the opponent.



What stood out in the NRCC's ads was a pronounced tendency to be petty and personal, and sometimes careless with the facts. We found 29 of the NRCC's ads to be assaults of a personal nature on a candidate's character or private professional dealings, rather than critiques of his or her views or votes while in federal, state or local office. Applying the same screen to the DCCC, we came up with 15 such ads, and several of those were comparative, rather than purely negative. We'd note, and leave for our readers to judge its relevance, that since there are more GOP incumbents than Democratic ones, the Republicans' opponents may be individuals who don't have voting records to attack.

We first noticed the NRCC's proclivity for hitting below the belt even before the fall campaign season kicked off, in the special election for convicted Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham's open seat in California last spring. Multiple NRCC attacks on Democrat Francine Busby included a mailer that likened her to "dangerous" and "irresponsible" teenage drunk drivers. She lost by 5 points in the June 6 special election and is currently the Democratic candidate in the Nov. 7 general election.

By late September, it was increasingly clear that this kind of attack was becoming a staple for the NRCC, and it was no accident. A New York Times story on Sept. 27 said that the Republicans' attacks were "the product of more than a year of research into the personal and professional backgrounds of Democratic challengers." Said Rep. Tom Reynolds, chair of the NRCC:

Reynolds: We haven't even begun to unload this freight train.

Well, the train is at the station, and the freight being unloaded isn't pretty, or necessarily true.

"Fantasy hotline"

New York Democrat Michael Acuri has learned that in spades. One of the NRCC's spots attacking him accuses him of billing taxpayers for a call to a "fantasy hotline." In fact, the evidence shows someone using the phone in Arcuri's hotel room misdialed and hung up in seconds, and the total charge to taxpayers was $1.25.

The ad is laden with sexual innuendo. A woman's voice says "Hi sexy, you've reached the live one on one fantasy line." Arcuri is pictured appearing to leer as the silhouette of a woman undulates suggestively in the background.

"The phone number to an adult fantasy hotline appeared on Michael Arcuri's New York City hotel room bill while he was there on official business," the announcer says. "Who calls a fantasy hotline and then bills taxpayers? Michael Arcuri."

The facts of this case paint a much different picture. The phone records indeed show a call to the number of an adult fantasy talk service at 3:26 p.m. on Jan. 28, 2004, but the very next minute – 3:27 p.m. – the records show another number was dialed. The second number was identical except for the three-digit area code, and was the number of the New York State Department of Criminal Justice Services. It was Sean Byrne, executive director of the New York Prosecutors Training Institute, who made both calls, according to Arcuri and Byrne. Both were attending a meeting of the New York State District Attorneys Association. The hotel's charge for the misdialed "fantasy" line call was $1.25.

Unindicted rapist

Another NRCC-produced ad hammers Arcuri with a claim that an accused rapist was freed after Arcuri's office "failed to indict him in time." Why? According to the local newspaper, the scheduled indictment hearing couldn't go forward because the 13-year-old victim didn't appear and a key witness had been admitted to a psychiatric facility. The ad doesn't mention that the accused man was indicted several days later. His freedom lasted eight days. Eventually he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge (Arcuri's case was weakened because the young victim was reluctant to cooperate) and was sentenced to 18 months to 3 years behind bars. The same ad says the "percentage of felony convictions" in Oneida County, where Arcuri is district attorney, "has fallen dramatically since 1998." That's false, according to our calculations from statistics available from New York State's Division of Criminal Justice Services. In 1998, 88.1 percent of felonies prosecuted in the county resulted in convictions. In 2005, it was 90.3. That's an increase of 2.2 percentage points, not a decrease, much less a dramatic one.

Name-calling

The NRCC ads show a tendency to turn policy differences into name-calling attacks on personal character. An NRCC ad in Arizona called Democratic candidate Gabrielle Giffords “a hypocrite on taxes.” The ad misrepresents her actual position on federal taxes, however. It says she falsely claims to favor tax cuts, when in fact she supports repealing some of the tax cuts Republicans gave to corporations and wealthy individuals. She does favor extending “middle class” tax breaks such as a deduction for college tuition.

In Iowa, another name-calling ad characterizes Democratic candidate Bruce Braley as a "greedy trial lawyer." The ad complains that he "supported the suit for a woman spilling hot coffee on her lap." But the famous lawsuit against McDonald's was actually more substantial than late-night comics made it out to be. Stella Leibeck, the 79-year-old plaintiff, suffered third-degree burns over 6 per cent of her body, spent eight days in the hospital and required skin grafts, and McDonald's served its coffee at a scalding 180 and 190 degrees Fahrenheit, much hotter than coffee served at home.

Still more name-calling NRCC ads refer to Wisconsin Democrat Steve Kagen as "Dr. Millionaire," and one even calls him "Dr. Millionaire Know-It-All." Kagen is certainly a prosperous physician. But if being a millionaire disqualifies somebody from serving in the House of Representatives a slew of members will have to resign – 136, to be precise, or almost one-third, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Eighty-seven of them are Republicans, versus 49 Democrats. The "know-it-all" line refers to Kagen's desire to scrap President Bush's Medicare prescription drug benefit for one of his own design.

More smears

Democrats are not innocent when it comes to making false or misleading attacks on personal character, as regular readers of this site are well aware. For one example see our Oct. 18 article on a DCCC ad accusing Florida Republican Clay Shaw of profiting from a "drug deal" by trading in a pharmaceutical company's stock, which we found to be based on flimsy evidence at best.

But the pattern of deceptive and unfounded personal allegations contained in this year's NRCC ads is one we judge to be truly remarkable. Other examples:

*
Sued his patients. NRCC ads say Dr. Kagen “took legal action against eighty former patients.” Misleading. It's true that Kagen hired a collection agency that took a total of 80 patients to small claims court for arbitration of unpaid bills, but that was over the course of a 25-year career in which Kagen estimates he has seen 50,000 patients. Kagen says the agency deemed them all able to pay.
*
"Not paying his taxes on time" A North Carolina ad says of Democratic candidate Heath Shuler, "He's been caught again not paying his taxes on time." False. The unpaid taxes weren't "his" and payment wasn't his responsibility. The delinquent taxes were the fault of businessmen who bought a real-estate brokerage from Shuler and his brother in 2003. It's true that The Associated Press found that the brokerage, which still bears Shuler's name, owed $69,000 and had been chronically behind in paying local taxes, but Shuler at that point retained only a minority interest and no management chores. The taxes and penalties were paid after Shuler's lawyer threatened to sue the current managers if they didn't, according to The AP .

*
"Seven-year olds, tased!" An NRCC ad in Ohio includes a charge that Democratic Challenger John Cranley "voted to allow children as young as seven to be tased. Seven-year-olds, tased! With 50,000 volts of electricity." Misleading. Cincinnati police regulations already permit use of the X26 Taser, designed as a non-lethal weapon to incapacitate rather than kill, to subdue resisting suspects between the ages of 7 and 70. The ad refers to Cranley's vote on the Cincinnati City Council against raising that age minimum to 10. The Council voted 5-4 against raising the age after opponents cited concerns that batons or pepper spray would be more likely to harm a resisting subject.

*
"Fixed ticket" An Indiana ad includes a claim by a local prosecutor that Democratic challenger Brad Ellsworth tried to get his daughter’s speeding ticket “dismissed” because of his “position” as sheriff of an adjoining town. The ad includes an on-screen graphic that says, "Fixed Ticket." False. The ticket was paid. The prosecutor alleging that Ellsworth sought special treatment is a Republican who broached the issue for the first time in mid-October, a year and a half after the fact, and who says he does not recall Ellsworth's exact words. Ellsworth says he was seeking to get his daughter into an existing program that allowed first-time offenders to keep their driving records clean in return for paying higher fines. In any event, the prosecutor said his daughter did not qualify and the ticket stood.


Attack ads work

Both the NRCC and the DCCC are running negative ads because they believe they work. When the New York Times asked the NRCC's Chairman Reynolds why he wasn't running more positive ads, he burst out laughing. "If they [positive ads] moved things to the extent that negative ads move things, there would be more of them," the Times quoted him as saying.

As we said earlier, negative ads can convey information that is useful to voters – provided they avoid distortion. Many of the NRCC's ads fall well short of that standard.

- by Brooks Jackson, Viveca Novak, Justin Bank, James Ficaro and Emi Kolawole


Sources

Gary Craig, "Fighting for Rochester's Future/Campaign 2003: DA foes grapple over ad on crime," Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 31 Oct 2003.

Mark Weiner, " Sex-Call Spot is Called a New Low ," The Post-Standard, 21 Oct 2006.

"Ad Watch: Arcuri 1995 Rape Prosecution ," Observer-Dispatch. 12 Oct. 2006.

Kagen 4 Congress, "The Kagen Public Health Policy: Steve Kagen - On the Problems We Face Together," Issue Brief, 2006 (PDF).
Nicole Duran, "Kagen, Target of NRCC Ad, Hits Back," Roll Call. 14 Sept 2006.

Director of State Courts, " Guide to Small Claims Court," Wisconsin Court System, July 2006. (PDF)

“Participating Physicians Directory,” US Department of Health & Human Services , Updated: 19 Oct. 2006.

Tim Whitmire, " Heath Shuler-Linked Firm Pays Back Taxes," The Associated Press , 22 Sep 2006.

Gavin Lesnick, "Prosecutor, Ellsworth Spar," Evansville Courier & Press, 15 Oct 2006.

Ryan Lenz, " GOP accuses Ellsworth of intervening in daughter's traffic ticket ," Associated Press, 15 Oct 2006.

Greg Korte, "Cincinnati Council defeats Teaser ban on kids a 3rd time," The Cincinatti Enquirer, 27 Jan 2005.

Kevin Osborne, "Council Locks 4-4 on Taser Limit," The Cincinnati Post, 6 Jan 2005.

McNair, James. "Erpenbeck Bankers Hope for Mercy," The Cincinnati Enquirer , 25 Jan. 2005.

Tom Duffy, "The enduring legend of McDonald's coffee," Lawyers Weekly USA , 22 Nov 2004.

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Documents Shed New Light on Pentagon Surveillance of Peace Activists; Defense Department Tracked Quakers, Student Groups

aclu.org
Documents Shed New Light on Pentagon Surveillance of Peace Activists
Defense Department Tracked Quakers, Student Groups

NEW YORK -- Documents released today (10/12/2006) by the American Civil Liberties Union reveal new details of Pentagon surveillance of Americans opposed to the Iraq war, including Quakers and student groups. The documents show that the Pentagon was keeping tabs on non-violent protesters by collecting information and storing it in a military anti-terrorism database.

"There is simply no reason why the United States military should be monitoring the peaceful activities of American citizens who oppose U.S. war policies," said ACLU attorney Ben Wizner. "When information about non-violent protest activity is included in a military anti-terrorism database, all Americans should be concerned about the unchecked authority this administration has seized in the name of fighting terrorism."

The documents come in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU earlier this year after evidence surfaced that the Pentagon was secretly conducting surveillance of protest activities, anti-war organizations and groups opposed to military recruitment policies. The Pentagon shared the information with other government agencies through the Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON) database.

The TALON database was intended to track groups or individuals with links to terrorism, but the documents released today show that the Pentagon gathered information on anti-war protesters using sources from the Department of Homeland Security, local police departments and FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces.

Among the documents are reports on protest activities across the country organized or supported by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker peace group. The source for the information is identified as "a special agent of the federal protective service, U.S. Department of Homeland Security," who is apparently on the AFSC e-mail list.

One document, which is labeled "potential terrorist activity," lists events such as a "Stop the War NOW!" rally in Akron, Ohio on March 19, 2005. The source noted that the rally "will have a March and Reading of Names of War Dead" and that marchers would pass a military recruitment station and the local FBI office along the way.

Also included in the documents is information on a series of protests mistakenly identified as taking place in Springfield, Illinois (the protests actually occurred in Springfield, Massachusetts). According to the document, "Source received an e-mail from the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), e-mail address: [REDACTED] that stated that on March 18-20, a series of protest actions were planned in the Springfield, IL area… to focus on actions at military recruitment offices with the goals to include: raising awareness, education, visibility in community, visibility to recruiters as part of a national day of action."

"Spying on citizens for merely executing their constitutional rights of free speech and peaceful assembly is chilling and marks a troubling trend," said Joyce Miller, AFSC Assistant General Secretary for Justice and Human Rights. "Our country is built upon a system of checks and balances. The Pentagon’s actions violate the rule of law and strike a severe blow against our Constitution."

Another document provides further details of surveillance of a protest planned by the Broward Anti-War Coalition during the Fort Lauderdale Air & Sea Show, which was previously revealed in an NBC news report. The document released today reveals that the Miami-Dade Police Department provided the Defense Department with information on the protest, and that the U.S. Army Recruiting Command and the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Miami were also briefed on the planned protest, which was intended to "counter military recruitment and the ‘pro-war’ message with ‘guerrilla theater and other forms of subversive propaganda.’"

The ACLU said it is concerned that the Defense Department cites acts of civil disobedience and vandalism as cause to label anti-war protests as "radical" and potential terrorist threats in some of the TALON reports. In a document listing upcoming Atlanta area protests by the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition, the Pentagon - citing the Department of Homeland Security as its source - states that the Students for Peace and Justice network poses a threat to DOD personnel.

To support that claim, the TALON report cites previous acts of civil disobedience in California and Texas, including sit-ins, disruptions at recruitment offices and street theater. Describing one protest in Austin, Texas, the document notes: "The protesters blocked the entrance to the recruitment office with two coffins, one draped with an American flag and the other covered with an Iraqi flag, taped posters on the window of the office and chanted, ‘No more war and occupation. You don’t have to die for an education.’"

"The Pentagon has gone too far in collecting information on Americans who pose no real threat to national security," said Wizner. "It is an abuse of power and an abuse of trust for the military to play any role in monitoring critics of administration policies."

The documents released today are online at:
www.aclu.org/safefree/spying/27047lgl20060828.html (Florida protests)
www.aclu.org/safefree/spying/27046lgl20060912.html (Georgia, California and Texas protests)
www.aclu.org/safefree/spying/27045lgl20060912.html (AFSC protests in Massachusetts and Ohio)

More information on government surveillance of Americans is online at: www.aclu.org/spyfiles.

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Military announces death of 97th GI

Military announces death of 97th GI
Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military said Friday a U.S. soldier had been killed northeast of the capital, raising to 97 the number of American forces killed in Iraq during October, now the fourth deadliest month since the war began.

The soldier was assigned to the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, was wounded in combat in Diyala province on Thursday, "and later died of wounds," the military statement said.

The soldier's name was not released pending notification of the family.

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House Investigators: Hastert's Office Hindered Corruption Probe

cq.com
Investigators Say Speaker’s Aide Hindered Inquiry of Hill Security Contracts
By Steven T. Dennis, CQ Staff

Two former House committee investigators who were examining Capitol Hill security upgrades said a senior aide to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert hindered their efforts before they were abruptly ordered to stop their probe last year.

The former Appropriations Committee investigators said Ted Van Der Meid, Hastert’s chief counsel, resisted from the start the inquiry, which began with concerns about mismanagement of a secret security office and later probed allegations of bid-rigging and kickbacks from contractors to a Defense Department employee.

Ronald Garant and a second Appropriations Committee investigator who asked not to be identified said Van Der Meid engaged in “screaming matches” with investigators and told at least one aide not to talk to them. Van Der Meid also prohibited investigators from visiting certain sites to check up on the effectiveness of the work, the investigators said.

Van Der Meid oversaw Capitol security upgrades for Hastert, R-Ill., and worked closely with the office that was charged with implementing them, the investigators said.

K. Lee Blalack, a lawyer for Van Der Meid, said Friday that neither he nor Van Der Meid would comment on the matter.

John Scofield, a spokesman for the Appropriations Committee, said the former investigators were taken off of the investigation, but denied that it was terminated.

“Nothing has been closed down on this study,” Scofield said. “It is a pending study.”

Scofield said it was a case of “sour grapes” because the investigators’ contracts were not renewed. He also said the case was assigned to more senior staff, whom he declined to identify.

The inquiry began in late 2003 or early 2004 and was authorized by former Appropriations Chairman C.W. Bill Young, R-Fla., and the panel’s top Democrat, David R. Obey of Wisconsin. The probe focused on the office entrusted with ensuring continuity of Congress in the event of a terrorist or other attack. That office had grown from a sleepy Cold War relic to one that was spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on numerous security upgrades on and off Capitol Hill in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strikes and anthrax attacks the following month.

The investigation was carried out by members of the Appropriations panel’s Surveys and Investigations team, which looks into charges of waste and abuse.

Robert Pearre, the team’s director, ordered the investigators to stop their work on the security contracts in the fall of 2005. Before that, the investigators said they were looking into allegations that security contractors had showered a Defense Department employee with kickbacks in the form of Redskins tickets, golf outings, a set of golf clubs and meals. The allegations of kickbacks did not implicate congressional aides.

The investigators also said they were looking into concerns expressed by contractors that some of the security upgrades would fail to work in the event of a terrorist attack.

The office in charge of the upgrades was funded through the Defense Department and overseen by the Capitol Police Board, but the Speaker’s office took a lead role because of Hastert’s status as third in line to the presidency, the investigators said.

According to the investigators, Van Der Meid sought to stop their investigation shortly after it began.

“We got called into his office,” said Garant, who served previously in the Defense Department’s Comptroller’s Office before becoming an investigator for the Appropriations Committee. Van Der Meid shouted at them, Garant said: “What the [expletive] are you looking at this for? . . . He wanted to shut the operation down right then and there.”

According to the investigators, Van Der Meid was reluctantly persuaded to allow the inquiry into the security upgrades to go forward but continually hindered the investigators’ work.

“They had resisted all along,” the other investigator said about the Speaker’s office. Nonetheless the investigator said he was “stunned” when the inquiry was shelved about a year ago. Pearre, a former FBI agent, had strongly backed the inquiry until shortly before he ordered them to stop their work on it.

The order was “get out of there by sundown,” Garant said, referring to the secure offices they had used for the probe because of its sensitive nature.

Garant said the investigators believed that the Speaker’s office had successfully pressured appropriators to stop their inquiry. “From our perspective it was obvious. . . . The only people who would give a [expletive] was the Speaker’s office because this was an organization very close to them.”

Scofield said that neither Van Der Meid nor the Speaker’s office had ordered that the investigation be shut down.

Rob Nabors, the committee Democratic staff director, declined through a spokeswoman to comment for this story.

Lisa C. Miller, a spokeswoman for Hastert’s office, would not comment directly on Van Der Meid’s role in the investigation. “What I can tell you is what John Scofield has told you is what I know to be true,” she said. “Beyond that, everything else is highly classified.”

The investigation was launched under Young, who had a rocky relationship with House leaders, after the secret continuity office failed to spend more than $100 million before the appropriations expired, prompting an urgent and tardy request to have the money re-appropriated just as another Defense spending bill was being finalized.

The committee and its staff had to scramble to find room in the budget, and launched its investigation of the office.

Young said he does not recall the details surrounding the start of the inquiry.

The former Appropriations chairman said that after the Sept. 11 attacks his panel initially oversaw improvements to the Capitol Hill campus, including protective coatings that were added to windows to reduce the potential damage from a truck bomb. At some point, oversight of upgrades was taken over by House leadership, Young said.

“We were in effect put out of the process by the leadership office,” Young said. “The last two years of my chairmanship they basically cut me out of the loop.”

By the time the investigators said they were ordered to drop their work, Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., had taken over as Appropriations chairman amid expectations by House GOP leaders that he would be more of a team player than Young.

Unsuccessful bidders were the source of some, but not all, of the allegations of problems with the security contracts.

One would-be vendor complained that bid requests drawn up by the Army Corps of Engineers were drafted in such a way that only one contractor would be eligible for the work, Garant said.

“You don’t know how much of it was sour grapes and how much of it was real, but there was enough of it that you started to think there was something here,” Garant said.

Investigators said that in addition to allegations of bid-rigging and kickbacks, they were looking into allegations that some security upgrades would fail to work.

“The word was that what they were trying to do was physically or technically impossible to do but that they were spending a heck of a lot of money trying to do it,” said Garant.

The other investigator said he was told that “people are going to die” because the upgrades would fail to do the job.

“That whole organization was very, very secret and very few people even knew that it existed, but it was a great dispenser of money,” said Garant, who was dismissed in March from his position as a contract investigator.

The Appropriations Committee’s investigation team, formed in 1943, has been in turmoil for several years. The upheaval culminated last week in Chairman Lewis’ decision to dismiss all 60 remaining contractors on the investigative staff, which included many retired investigators from the FBI, CIA and other government agencies. A permanent staff of 16 remains.

Scofield said last week that the contractors’ dismissals were part of a “bipartisan review” of the staff, and said the staff’s work recently “has not been that good.”

Committee Democrats have not commented on the dismissals.

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Lynne Cheney: LYING LIAR

Huffington Post
Martin Lewis
Lynne Cheney: LYING LIAR

"I have never written anything sexually explicit..." - Lynne Cheney on CNN "The Situation Room" - October 27th 2006.

Lynne Cheney - you are a liar. A lying liar. And as an author who is currently hyping a book targeted at children - you should be especially ashamed of the flagrant tissue of lies that spewed from your lips today.

Please explain the presence of the lesbian love affair, brothels and attempted rapes in your serious literary work "Sisters" (1981)

And what is the character of the Vice President in your book "The Body Politic" (1988) doing to his mistress at the precise moment when he has a heart attack? Playing mahjong perhaps?

Here's a link to "Sisters" - especially interesting to social conservatives and Virginia voters who wish to see how the Vice President's wife extols "family values":

Read the entire book online. (Kleenex not included)

Further Reading:

"Sisters" (1981) (ISBN 0-451-11204-0)
"The Body Politic" (1988) (ISBN 0-312-97963-0)

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