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Thursday, March 31, 2005

"BUSH'S MEDIA CO-CONSPIRATORS"

jimhightower.com

"BUSH'S MEDIA CO-CONSPIRATORS"
George W recently declared: "There needs to be a nice independent relationship between the White House and the press."

Lovely sentiment... except that even as he mouthed the words, he knew that his administration is stomping on press independence every chance it gets. The latest revelation is that various agencies under Bush are sending out hundreds of government-made "news videos" to local television stations. The videos use fake reporters, extol the virtue of Bush policies, and are aired with no mention that this "news" is Bushite propaganda.

George has been roundly and rightly blistered for this un-American scam – though he says he's going to keep doing it. But what about his co-conspirators? Hundreds of corporate-owned TV stations have willingly participated in his tax-paid media campaign.

Many of the pre-packaged videos arrive with government-written scripts for the local news anchors to use as introductions to the video segments – and, sure enough, the station managers have the anchors mindlessly read them. The managers even make the government's videos more deceptive by editing the tag lines used by the fake reporters. For example, WCIA in central Illinois routinely airs puff pieces produced by Bush's ag department. These video stories end with a sign-off by the department's fake reporter saying, "I'm Bob Ellison, reporting for the USDA." The station, however, got the agency to alter the sign-off so it now says: "With the USDA, I'm Bob Ellison, reporting for 'The Morning Show.'"

One of the fake reporters who's done several of these video segments for seven federal agencies bluntly calls herself a "paid shill for the Bush Administration." She used to be a real reporter – and, when asked if she would use one of these government reports if she were a local news director, said "Absolutely not."

To learn how you can help stop your local stations from using Bush's propaganda pieces, call Center for Media and Democracy: 608-260-9713

Sources:
"White House won't halt government-made news videos," Austin American-Statesman, March 15, 2005.
"Hidden News and Government Spin," New York Times, March 16, 2005.
"Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged News," New York Times, March 13, 2005.
Center for Media and Democracy, www.prwatch.org

originally published March 30, 2005

Army Vehicle Called Faulty

washingtonpost.com
Army Vehicle Called Faulty
Transport Deployed in Iraq Puts Troops at Risk, Study Says

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 31, 2005; Page A01

The Army has deployed a new troop transport vehicle in Iraq with many defects, putting troops there at unexpected risk from rocket-propelled grenades and raising questions about the vehicle's development and $11 billion cost, according to a detailed critique in a classified Army study obtained by The Washington Post.

The vehicle is known as the Stryker, and 311 of the lightly armored, wheeled vehicles have been ferrying U.S. soldiers around northern Iraq since October 2003. The Army has been ebullient about the vehicle's success there, with Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, telling the House Armed Services Committee last month that "we're absolutely enthusiastic about what the Stryker has done."

But the Army's Dec. 21 report, drawn from confidential interviews with operators of the vehicle in Iraq in the last quarter of 2004, lists a catalog of complaints about the vehicle, including design flaws, inoperable gear and maintenance problems that are "getting worse not better." Although many soldiers in the field say they like the vehicle, the Army document, titled "Initial Impressions Report -- Operations in Mosul, Iraq," makes clear that the vehicle's military performance has fallen short.

The internal criticism of the vehicle appears likely to fuel new controversy over the Pentagon's decision in 2003 to deploy the Stryker brigade in Iraq just a few months after the end of major combat operations, before the vehicle had been rigorously tested for use across a full spectrum of combat.

The report states, for example, that an armoring shield installed on Stryker vehicles to protect against unanticipated attacks by Iraqi insurgents using low-tech weapons works against half the grenades used to assault it. The shield, installed at a base in Kuwait, is so heavy that tire pressure must be checked three times daily. Nine tires a day are changed after failing, the report says; the Army told The Post the current figure is "11 tire and wheel assemblies daily."

"The additional weight significantly impacts the handling and performance during the rainy season," says the report, which was prepared for the Center for Army Lessons Learned in Fort Leavenworth, Kan. "Mud appeared to cause strain on the engine, the drive shaft and the differentials," none of which was designed to carry the added armor.

Commanders' displays aboard the vehicles are poorly designed and do not work; none of the 100 display units in Iraq are being used because of "design and functionality shortfalls," the report states. The vehicle's computers are too slow and overheat in desert temperatures or freeze up at critical moments, such as "when large units are moving at high speeds simultaneously" and overwhelm its sensors.

The main weapon system, a $157,000 grenade launcher, fails to hit targets when the vehicle is moving, contrary to its design, the report states. Its laser designator, zoom, sensors, stabilizer and rotating speed all need redesign; it does not work at night; and its console display is in black and white although "a typical warning is to watch for a certain color automobile," the report says. Some crews removed part of the launchers because they can swivel dangerously toward the squad leader's position.

The vehicle's seat belts cannot be readily latched when troops are in their armored gear, a circumstance that contributed to the deaths of three soldiers in rollover accidents, according to the report. On the vehicle's outside, some crews have put sand-filled tin cans around a gunner's hatch that the report says is ill-protected.

Eric Miller, senior defense investigator at the independent Project on Government Oversight, which obtained a copy of the internal Army report several weeks ago, said the critique shows that "the Pentagon hasn't yet learned that using the battlefield as a testing ground costs lives, not just spiraling dollars."

Asked about the report, Army officials who direct the Stryker program said they are working to fix some flaws; they also said they were unaware of some of the defects identified in the critique. "We're very proud of the Stryker team," said Lt. Col. Frederick J. Gellert, chief of the Army's Stryker Brigade Combat Team Integration Branch in Washington, but "it hasn't been something that's problem-divorced."

According to the latest Army figures, 17 soldiers in the Stryker combat brigade have died in Iraq in 157 bomb explosions, but no delineation is made for those who perished inside the vehicle and those who were standing outside it; an additional five soldiers have died in two rollovers. No current figure was provided for those who perished in grenade attacks, although one officer said he thought it was less than a handful.

Neither the lessons-learned report nor more recent Army data state how many soldiers have been wounded while inside the vehicle. The report states that in one case, a soldier was struck by shrapnel that penetrated both the vehicle's armor and his own body armor; in another case, an entire crew escaped with minor injuries after a vehicle sustained nine grenade hits.

The criticisms of the Stryker's first performance in combat seem likely to give new ammunition to critics of the Army's decision in 1999 to move away from more heavily armored vehicles that move on metal tracks and embrace a generation of lighter, more comfortable vehicles operated at higher speed on rubber tires.

Senior Army officers in Iraq, like those at the Pentagon, have been surprised by the intensity of hostilities there since mid-2003, and lately some officers have said they depend on heavy armor to protect their soldiers in urban warfare, even though tanks in Iraq have also suffered unexpected damage.

But Maj. Gen. Stephen M. Speakes, the Army's director of force development, said that when he rode in the Stryker for the first time, he "marveled at how much nicer it was" than riding in a Bradley vehicle or an older troop transport, the M113, which he likened to being inside an aluminum trash can being beaten by a hammer. He said the Stryker was "amazingly smooth" and quiet by comparison.

In a report completed at the time of deployment, the Pentagon's operational test and evaluation office rated the Stryker vehicles sent to Iraq "effective and survivable only with limitations for use in small-scale contingencies." Congressional auditors at the General Accounting Office in December 2003 said the first brigade "did not consistently demonstrate its capabilities, indicating both strengths and weaknesses."

Independent groups and a loose-knit group of retired Army officers who dislike the Stryker vehicle have alleged that the Stryker's 2003 deployment was motivated partly by the desire of the Army and the manufacturer, General Dynamics, to build congressional support for buying additional brigades. But Speakes said that was nonsense and that the brigade was deployed in Iraq simply because the Army needed it.

Researchers Bob Lyford and Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

Children 'starving' in new Iraq

bbc.com
Children 'starving' in new Iraq

Increasing numbers of children in Iraq do not have enough food to eat and more than a quarter are chronically undernourished, a UN report says.

Malnutrition rates in children under five have almost doubled since the US-led intervention - to nearly 8% by the end of last year, it says.

The report was prepared for the annual meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

It also expressed concern over North Korea and Sudan's Darfur province.

UN specialist on hunger Jean Ziegler, who prepared the report, blames the worsening situation in Iraq on the war led by coalition forces.

He was addressing a meeting of the 53-nation commission, the top UN rights watchdog, which is halfway through its annual six-week session.

When Saddam Hussein was overthrown, about 4% of Iraqi children under five were going hungry; now that figure has almost doubled to 8%, his report says.

Governments must recognise their extra-territorial obligations towards the right to food and should not do anything that might undermine access to it of people living outside their borders, it says.

That point is aimed clearly at the US, but Washington, which has sent a large delegation to the Human Rights Commission, declined to respond to the charges, says the BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva.

Increasing hunger

Mr Ziegler also says he is very concerned about the lack of food in North Korea, where there are reports that UN food aid is not being distributed fairly.

In Darfur, the continuing conflict has prevented people from planting vital crops, he says.

Overall, Mr Ziegler says, he is shocked by the fact that hunger is actually increasing worldwide.

Some 17,000 children die every day from hunger-related diseases, the report claims, which it says is a scandal in a world which is richer than ever before.

"The silent daily massacre by hunger is a form of murder," Mr Ziegler said. "It must be battled and eliminated."

Bush and Congress Rebuked in Schiavo Case

The New York Times
March 31, 2005
Bush and Congress Rebuked in Schiavo Case
By ABBY GOODNOUGH and WILLIAM YARDLEY

PINELLAS PARK, Fla., March 30 - A federal appeals court in Atlanta refused Wednesday to reconsider the case of Terri Schiavo, with one of the judges rebuking President Bush and Congress for acting "in a manner demonstrably at odds with our founding fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people."

Outside the hospice where Ms. Schiavo has gone almost two weeks without her feeding tube, the mood was quieter than in recent days. At one point her father, Robert Schindler, emerged to say that Ms. Schiavo looked good, given the circumstances, but the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who met with her parents for the second day in a row, later said he was urging them to accept her probably imminent death.

"They're hoping against hope but they know that you cannot live without food and water," Mr. Jackson said in an interview. "They are looking for every spark in the dark that could be her light. But these are very mature people, and they are looking at her real-life options."

Mr. Schindler and his wife, Mary, had asked the full United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on Wednesday to consider ordering their daughter's feeding tube reinserted. A three-judge panel declined to issue such an order last Friday, and after less than day's deliberation, the full court issued a 10-to-2 decision rejecting the latest request.

An emergency appeal the Schindlers filed with the Supreme Court Wednesday night, asking that Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube be reinserted while they made further appeals, was rejected. It was the sixth time the court declined to intervene.

The 11th Circuit court's decision, signed by Chief Judge J. L. Edmondson, was only a sentence long. But in a concurring opinion, Judge Stanley F. Birch Jr., appointed by the first President Bush in 1990, wrote that federal courts had no jurisdiction in the case and that the law enacted by Congress and President Bush allowing the Schindlers to seek a federal court review was unconstitutional.

"When the fervor of political passions moves the executive and legislative branches to act in ways inimical to basic constitutional principles, it is the duty of the judiciary to intervene," wrote Judge Birch, who has a reputation as consistently conservative. "If sacrifices to the independence of the judiciary are permitted today, precedent is established for the constitutional transgressions of tomorrow."

Judge Birch said he had not had time before now to consider the constitutionality of the law, which Congress passed and Mr. Bush signed before dawn March 21, because of "the rapid developments and sensitivities in this case." The 11th Circuit court considered and rejected several appeals from the Schindlers last week after Judge James D. Whittemore of Federal District Court in Tampa denied their motions.

In particular, Judge Birch wrote, a provision of the new law requiring a fresh federal review of all the evidence presented in the case made it unconstitutional. Because that provision constitutes "legislative dictation of how a federal court should exercise its judicial functions," he wrote, it "invades the province of the judiciary and violates the separation of powers principle."

David J. Garrow, a legal historian at Emory University who closely follows the 11th Circuit, said Judge Birch's opinion was striking because the judge was a conservative Republican, especially regarding social issues. Judge Birch wrote the ruling for a three-judge panel of the court last year unanimously upholding a Florida law that prohibits gay men and lesbians from adopting children.

"This is a Republican judge going out of his way to directly criticize the Congress and President Bush for what they've done," Mr. Garrow said.

Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at Duke University, said Judge Birch probably felt it important to address the constitutionality of the law because the opportunity might never arise again.

"When Terri Schiavo dies, this law expires because it was only about her," Mr. Chemerinsky said. "This raised an important constitutional issue that could come up again, and he's saying it's important that some judge be on the record about it."

Mr. Jackson returned to Woodside Hospice in Pinellas Park after meeting with Gov. Jeb Bush and state lawmakers earlier in Tallahassee. There, he pressed lawmakers to reconsider legislation the State Senate rejected last week that would outlaw the removal of feeding tubes from patients who had not left written instructions. Ms. Schiavo, who suffered severe brain damage in 1990, left no instructions. But a state judge accepted the testimony of her husband, Michael Schiavo, that on several occasions she had said she would not want to be kept alive artificially.

Mr. Schiavo, who has sought to remove his wife's feeding tube and let her die since 1998, has long battled with her parents, who believe she responds to them and could improve.

After meeting with Mr. Jackson in his office, Governor Bush praised him for lobbying on behalf of the Schindlers. Acknowledging the political differences between Mr. Jackson, a liberal Democrat, and many of the Schindlers' supporters, he described Mr. Jackson's efforts as "kind of like Nixon going to China."

Mr. Schiavo's lawyer, George Felos, arrived at the hospice Wednesday morning and stayed on the grounds all day, leading to speculation that Ms. Schiavo's death might be near. Yet in the early afternoon, Mr. Schindler told reporters that his daughter still looked good, bringing four relatives and friends who had seen her that morning to the microphones to back him up.

"I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw and encouraged," Mr. Schindler said of his morning visit with Ms. Schiavo. "She's still fighting, and we are still fighting for her."

Christine Jordan Sexton contributed reporting from Tallahassee, Fla., for this article.

Supreme Court Removes Hurdle to Suits Alleging Age Bias

The New York Times
March 31, 2005
Supreme Court Removes Hurdle to Suits Alleging Age Bias
By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON, March 30 - Workers who sue their employers for age discrimination need not prove that the discrimination was intentional, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday.

Adopting a pro-worker interpretation of the federal law that prohibits age discrimination in employment, the 5-to-3 decision held that employees can prevail by showing that a policy has a discriminatory impact on older workers, regardless of the employer's motivation.

The decision removed the requirement, imposed by a number of lower federal courts, that employees produce the equivalent of a smoking gun in order to win an age discrimination suit. Since discrimination on the job is often subtle, and proof of motivation often elusive, the need to demonstrate intentional discrimination has led to the dismissal of many lawsuits before trial.

But the Supreme Court's decision, in an opinion by Justice John Paul Stevens, did not leave employers defenseless. They will be able to defend themselves by proving that a challenged policy was based on "reasonable factors other than age."

In fact, the court accepted that defense in the case at hand, a lawsuit brought by a group of older police officers in Jackson, Miss., who challenged the city's decision to give proportionately more generous raises to officers with less than five years on the force, most of whom were younger.

In another case involving age discrimination in the workplace, a federal district judge on Wednesday blocked a Bush administration rule that would have allowed employers to reduce or eliminate health benefits for retirees when they reach age 65. [Page A14.]

The appeal by the officers in Jackson reached the Supreme Court after two lower courts - the federal district court in Jackson and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans - ruled that the law required them to prove intentional discrimination and that claims of a discriminatory impact were categorically unavailable.

In rejecting that interpretation of the statute, the Supreme Court nonetheless found that the city's rationale for the differential raises was "unquestionably reasonable." The city had said it needed to raise salaries in the junior ranks in order to become more competitive with other police departments in the region in recruiting and retaining officers. "While there may have been other reasonable ways for the city to achieve its goals, the one selected was not unreasonable," Justice Stevens said.

While the plaintiffs did not win their case, the result of their Supreme Court appeal, Smith v. City of Jackson, No. 03-1160, was to remove a significant ambiguity from a statute that is of growing importance to an aging American workforce. Within five years, half the labor force will be at least 40 years old, the age at which the law's protections apply.

The debate among the lower courts over how to interpret the statute "has been one of the great unresolved conflicts," James J. Brudney, a law professor at Ohio State University and an expert on labor law, said in an interview on Wednesday. He said the decision was surprising given the trend toward foreclosing what are known as "disparate impact" claims.

While it remains to be seen whether employees invoking these claims will prevail in substantially greater numbers, the decision will almost certainly result in more such cases going to trial, rather than being dismissed at the early stages on summary judgment. That prospect, in turn, will require employers to examine any policies that have different impacts on workers of different ages and to make sure that they can justify the policies on a basis other than age.

Professor Brudney said the decision left important questions to be addressed in future cases, such as whether cost-saving can be accepted as a reasonable justification for a policy that falls more harshly on older workers, who are usually among the highest paid. Judges have disagreed on this issue, he said.

While five justices agreed Wednesday that disparate-impact cases should be permitted, they did not agree on the reasoning. Justice Stevens was joined by Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer in concluding that the text of the statute, as well as its consistent interpretation by executive branch agencies, supported the conclusion that such cases should be permitted.

Justice Stevens cited the statute's prohibition of actions that "deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee." He noted that "the text focuses on the effects of the action on the employee rather than the motivation for the action of the employer."

Justice Antonin Scalia said the court did not need to examine the statute itself but should accept the views of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which adopted the disparate-impact interpretation of the statute in a formal rule-making proceeding soon after the law's enactment. "This is an absolutely classic case for deference to agency interpretation," Justice Scalia said.

One curiosity of the case was that the Bush administration did not appear in the Supreme Court to present the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's view of the statute. The solicitor general's office declined to file a brief defending the commission's regulation.

Justice Clarence Thomas, a former chairman of the commission, and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy joined a dissenting opinion by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist did not participate in the case. He had just begun his treatment for thyroid cancer with the case was argued on Nov. 3.

In her opinion, Justice O'Connor emphasized a different portion of the statute. She noted that the law prohibits employers from taking specific actions against an individual "because of such individual's age." The "natural reading" of the text, Justice O'Connor said, was that "an employer is liable only if its adverse action against an individual is motivated by the individual's age."

This was the second consecutive ruling from the court to give a broad interpretation to a federal civil rights law. On Tuesday, the court ruled that the law known as Title IX, which bars sex discrimination in schools and colleges, also prohibits retaliation against those who complain about sex discrimination.

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

No real look at causes of bulimia

thestar.com

No real look at causes of bulimia

By Antonia Zerbisias, Toronto Star

"It appears the parents of Terri Schiavo have run out of options ...
meaning the Schiavo feeding tube will soon be removed from the cable
news networks."

You can count on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart to inject cynicism
into what has been, you should pardon the expression, a media feeding
frenzy over a brain-damaged woman.

But then, once the White House and U.S. Congress entered the fray, it
was tough to fault news organizations for being all over this tragic
story of a beautiful young woman who so desperately wanted to be thin
that she destroyed her life, and the lives of those who love her.

Even coverage of the coverage has been copious.

Critics have correctly attacked CNN and other organizations for
distorting the presentation of opinion polls on the matter. An MSNBC
host intimated that Schiavo's husband Michael is a "Nazi'' for wanting
to remove her feeding tube. Fox News has come under fire for failing
to identify demonstrators as members of an anti-abortion group. It
even invited cancelled TV psychic John Edward to read Schiavo's mind.

And, if all that wasn't disgusting enough, how about the syndicated
radio host, Glenn Beck, who claims to have raised $5 million (U.S.) in
pledges "to buy" Schiavo from her husband "if he will divorce her and
give guardianship rights to her parents."

It was the perfect Easter week story, a life and death drama with talk
of miracles and resurrections mixed in with some of the worst coverage
of any event ever.

Doctors who never went near the patient were called upon to diagnose
her. Politicians spoke as if they were medical experts. Just about any
nurse who changed a bedpan in the same hospital at some time during
Schiavo's 15-year ordeal might have gotten facetime.

Meanwhile, the media, cowed by the "moral values" crowd, rarely asked
legitimate questions that needed asking. For example, how U.S.
President George W. Bush, who cut short his vacation to preserve the
"sanctity of life," can also justify the death penalty.

Much of the coverage was fuelled by clips from some 4 1/2 hours of
videotape shot by Schiavo's parents who made them public. They have
become a Rorschach in this debate. One sees what one wants to see —
and many see exactly what the parents hope they see.

That the segments represent only a few moments of Schiavo's life is
either ignored or glossed over. That they might be as
misrepresentative as, say, shooting one minor scuffle at the edge of a
massive but otherwise peaceful demonstration and then calling the
protest "violent" is also never said.

What they show is an apparently sentient Terri, vocalizing, tracking a
balloon and moving to music.

Kind of like a newborn really.

Which is probably the point.

Nobody can condemn the parents for resorting to manipulative measures
to keep their daughter close, and alive.

Yet this is a woman whose body image drove her to risk her health in
the first place, a woman who had a deadly obsession about her
appearance.

As her brother-in-law Scott Schiavo told the New York Times, Terri
would have been mortified by the video.

"She was very, very particular about the way she looked, very proud
when she walked out the door," he said last week. "She would be so
upset to have the world seeing her that way."

Not surprising.

A once fat teenager who had lost 65 pounds, Terri Schiavo was so
terrified of regaining her excess weight that she willingly purged her
body of sustenance, and in a rather violent fashion.

"The irony is very cruel indeed," observes Jean Kilbourne, an expert
on how women are portrayed in advertising, and author of Can't Buy My
Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel. "I don't
think it's an issue of vanity. I think it's much, much deeper.

"Women, young women, get the message that their value depends entirely
on how they look and, these days, on being extremely thin."

Of course, nobody knows what, if anything, is in Terri Schiavo's mind
right now. Maybe if, somewhere deep down inside, Terri really does
have consciousness, she wouldn't mind seeing herself on TV over and
over again looking slack-jawed and stupid.

Why care, if it saves her life?

Which brings us back to the media, who are profiting mightily from
Schiavo's terrible fate, with this perfectly made-to-measure big
ratings story.

Throughout this wrenching moral and political uproar, they alone have
escaped castigation.

Yet they have much to answer for. They and the advertisers that feed
them are the ones who promote unrealistic images of tall, willowy
women without an ounce of excess flesh — except of course in the two
right places.

"Imagine," says Kilbourne, "if all this energy and media attention
focused instead on the self-loathing and hatred of their own bodies
that our culture generates in women, and the rampant eating disorders
that often result. Now that might save the lives of many young women
for whom it is not too late."

Exposing prolife zealotry

Boston.com
The Boston Globe

Exposing prolife zealotry

By Robert Kuttner | March 30, 2005

SOME GOOD may yet come of Terri Schiavo's sad story. More of us will think hard about how we'd want to be treated if terminally incapacitated. More of us will write living wills, making clear who is in charge. And more people will gain a truer understanding of the religious right.

The Republican Party may also hesitate, out of its own life-support instincts, before rushing so recklessly to embrace extreme zealotry.

And the Democrats, often cowed by America's latest apparent romance with fundamentalism, may wake from their own persistent vegetative state. Much to the shock of Republican operatives and opportunists, polls show that most Americans deeply resent the plain meddling reflected in the right-wing dash back to Washington to write a one-woman law to keep Terri Schiavo on a feeding tube. Bill Frist, the doctor-senator, looked like a perfect idiot when he purported to diagnose her condition via videotape. Even Jeb Bush is backing off.

Most Democrats initially flinched, recoiling against Republican rhetoric branding them the ''party of death." They ducked a record vote on ''Terri's Law," deciding to stay out of the way while Republicans immolated themselves. Only a handful of Democrats had the nerve to point out the sheer hypocrisy of Republicans writing special legislation guaranteeing Schiavo medical treatment but letting tens of millions who really need treatment go without.

Representative Barney Frank famously declared, ''The right-to-lifers believe that the right to life begins with conception and ends at birth," meaning that if antiabortion militants truly cared about life, they might expend more effort on what happens to children once born. We should now extend Frank's insight to end-of-life care: The religious right should also devote more energy to how society treats its frail and elderly while they are conscious and begging for decent services. (When did you see the religious right lobbying for, say, better nursing care?)

But isn't the religious right winning? The press has been filled with stories of earnest communities where biblical literalism is central to most people's lives. These communities, apparently, are growing, while those that reflect the spirit of the Enlightenment -- rational inquiry, religious tolerance, plural identities, strong civic life -- are shrinking. Many liberals conclude that they must live in a bubble not representative of the country.

However, the public response to the Schiavo case tells a more complex story. While most Americans believe in God and attend church, synagogue, or mosque, few welcome the busybody behavior of the religious right, most recently in its morbid embrace of Terri Schiavo.

Too may of us have been through the agony of this kind of decision to want opportunistic politicians or religious crusaders to take it over. The right is at odds with 30 years of delicate progress in dealing with death and dying.

Three decades ago, the medical profession usually insisted that everything possible should be done to prolong life, however cruel, painful, and futile. The pioneers of the hospice movement gradually made inroads in demonstrating that a dying patient could be treated far more humanely via what came to be called ''palliative care." This meant attending to the patient's comfort, respecting the patient's wishes, and permitting strong painkillers that might, in some cases, even hasten death.

During the same period, states began passing living will legislation, giving people the right to stipulate in advance whether they wanted medical heroics in certain circumstances. Leaving aside the more controversial Oregon-style ''right to die" legislation, the living will and hospice movements represented immense progress largely supported by mainline religions. Many of the movement's pioneers were clergymen with ministries tending to the dying and their families. Many of the early direct caregivers in hospices were nuns.

Until the Schiavo case, the ''right-to-life" zealots pretty much left well enough alone when it came to end-of-life care. It's a harder sell to raid a hospice than an abortion clinic. Most Americans of all religious faiths, as well as the unaffiliated, want such decisions kept private.

Terri Schiavo's legacy could be the opposite of what the right intended. Americans are being reminded that the religious right and its politician-allies are zealots not just about abortion; they also want dogma to overrule science when it comes to stem cell research, contraception, and high school biology; they'd intrude on the most painful and intimate of family decisions -- all in the name of their own unchallengeable definition of God's will. Religious upsurge or not, this is not the country most Americans want.

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Globe.

Bush's hypocrisy truly unbearable

news-press.com

Bush's hypocrisy truly unbearable
The pols confused law with theology and allowed tabloidism to trump privacy.

By JONATHAN ALTER

As Texas governor, George W. Bush presided over 152 executions, more than took place in the rest of the country combined. In at least a few of these cases, reasonable doubts were raised about the guilt of the condemned. But Bush cut his personal review time for each case from a half hour to a mere 15 minutes (most other governors spend many hours reviewing each capital case to assure themselves no doubt of guilt exists). His explanation was that he trusted the courts to sort through the life-and-death complexities. That's right: the courts.

I bring up that story because it's just one of several ironies that have arisen in connection with the Terri Schiavo saga, in which the president said that the government "ought to err on the side of life." Fine, but whose life? The inmate who might not be guilty? The poor people across the country denied organ transplants (and thus life) because Medicaid — increasingly under the Bush budget knife — won't cover them?

The poor people across the world starving to death because we won't go along with Tony Blair when it comes to addressing global poverty?

IRONIES ABOUND

How about Sun Hudson? On March 14, Sun, a 6-month-old with a fatal form of dwarfism, was allowed to die in a Texas hospital over his mother Wanda's objections. Under a 1999 law signed by then-governor Bush, cost-conscious hospitals are empowered to decide when care is "futile." The Hudson case is the first time ever that a court has allowed bean counters to override the wishes of parents. "They gave up in six months," Wanda Hudson told the Houston Chronicle. "They made a terrible mistake." Wanda apparently was not "cable ready," as they say in the TV world, and she failed to get Randall Terry and the radical anti-abortionists on her side. Tom DeLay never called.

Could there be politics at work here? Knowing that they cannot deliver on a gay-rights amendment or abortion ban, Karl Rove & Co. settled on bonding to the base with the Schiavo case. The beauty part, as Ross Perot used to say, was that they could be cynical and sincere at the same time, even if it meant twisting themselves into ideological pretzels. The same conservatives who have spent the last generation attacking "judicial activism" and federal intrusion in state jurisdictions were suddenly advocating what they had so long abhorred.

They argue they had a moral duty to intervene. If Terri had been on a respirator, like Sun Hudson, no issue would exist, they claim; a feeding tube is different. Says who? Says the pope, for one. Of course the pope also says that the war in Iraq is wrong, the death penalty is wrong and the West has been too stingy in sharing its wealth. So never mind the pope.

WHAT TO DO

In a complex world, consistency is usually asking too much. (Seeing Democrats talk about "states' rights" last week was also a little rich.) But if you're going to accuse Michael Schiavo and the judiciary of murder (right-wing blogs and talk radio) or commit virtual malpractice by "examining" a patient long distance via outdated and heavily edited video (Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist) or advocate breaking the law by sending in state troopers to reattach the feeding tube (Pat Buchanan and William Bennett), you'd better be willing to look in the mirror.

I'm a father. I can sympathize with Terri's frenzied parents. Nothing must be harder in the world than watching your child die. And I still don't understand why Michael Schiavo didn't turn over custody and get a divorce. He says he's trying to carry out his wife's wishes and preserve her dignity. The endless litigation and public spectacle have hardly achieved that goal.

The right wing should be ashamed of the way it has treated this man, who spent the first seven years after Terri's collapse doing everything imaginable to save her — even training as a nurse. Fox and CNN gave air time and credibility to one Carla Iyer, who accused Michael of shouting "When is the bitch going to die?" and claimed hospital authorities doctored her nursing charts — preposterous, unsubstantiated charges.

When this excruciating circus leaves town, the only sensible conclusion is a morally and constitutionally nuanced one. It should be possible to argue both that Terri Schiavo's case didn't belong in court — and that the courts are the only place to resolve such wrenching disputes when families cannot. That custody laws should contain a little more flexibility where the wishes of the patient are unclear — and that the president and Congress did real damage to their own principles by sticking their nose in this mess. They replaced reason with emotion, confused law with theology and allowed politics and tabloidism to trump the privacy this agonizing family tragedy deserved.

— Jonathan Alter is senior editor at Newsweek. You can reach him at letters@newsweek.com or by fax at (212)445-4120.

Pharmacists balk at filling some prescriptions because of beliefs

Boston.com
The Boston Globe
Pharmacists balk at filling some prescriptions because of beliefs

By Rob Stein, Washington Post | March 30, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Some pharmacists around the country are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control and morning-after pills, saying that dispensing the medications violates their personal moral or religious beliefs.

The trend has opened a new front in the nation's battle over reproductive rights, sparking an intense debate over the competing rights of pharmacists to refuse to participate in something they consider repugnant vs. a woman's right to get medications her doctor has prescribed. It has triggered pitched political battles in State Houses across the nation as politicians seek to pass laws either to protect pharmacists from being penalized or force them to carry out their duties.

''This is a very big issue that's just beginning to surface," said Steven H. Aden of the Christian Legal Society's Center for Law and Religious Freedom in Annandale, Va., which defends pharmacists. ''More and more pharmacists are becoming aware of their right to conscientiously refuse to pass objectionable medications across the counter. We are on the very front edge of a wave that's going to break not too far down the line."

Clashes are occurring more frequently. Pharmacists often risk dismissal or other disciplinary action to stand up for their beliefs, while shaken teenage girls and women desperately call their doctors, frequently late at night, after being turned away by sometimes lecturing men and women in white coats.

''There are pharmacists who will only give birth control pills to a woman if she's married. There are pharmacists who mistakenly believe contraception is a form of abortion and refuse to prescribe it to anyone," said Adam Sonfield of the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York, which tracks reproductive issues. ''There are even cases of pharmacists holding prescriptions hostage, where they won't even transfer it to another pharmacy when time is of the essence."

That's what happened to Kathleen Pulz and her husband, who panicked when the condom they were using broke. The Walgreens pharmacy near their home in Milwaukee refused to fill an emergency prescription for the morning-after pill.

''I couldn't believe it," said Pulz, 43, who with her husband had long ago decided they could not afford a fifth child. ''How can they make that decision for us? I was outraged."

Supporters of pharmacists' rights see the trend as a welcome expression of personal belief. Women's groups see it as a major threat to reproductive rights. ''This is another indication of the current political atmosphere and climate," said Rachel Laser of the National Women's Law Center in Washington. ''It's outrageous. It's sex discrimination. It prevents access to a basic form of healthcare for women. We're going back in time."

The issue could intensify further if the Food and Drug Administration approves the sale of the Plan B morning-after pill without a prescription, a step that would probably make pharmacists the primary gatekeeper.

The question of healthcare workers refusing to provide certain services first emerged among doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers over abortions. The trend began to spread to pharmacists with the approval of the morning-after pill and physician-assisted suicide in Oregon, with support from such organizations as the Pharmacists for Life International.

''Our group was founded with the idea of returning pharmacy to a healing-only profession. What's been going on is the use of medication to stop human life," said Karen L. Brauer, the group's president, who was fired from a Kmart pharmacy in Delhi, Ohio, for refusing to fill birth control prescriptions.

No one knows how often that is happening, but cases have been reported across the country, including in Massachusetts, California, Washington, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Texas, New Hampshire, Ohio, and North Carolina. Advocates on both sides say the refusals appear to be spreading.

Eleven states are considering ''conscience clause" laws that would protect pharmacists like Noesen. Four states have laws that specifically allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions that violate their beliefs. At the same time, at least four states are considering laws that would require pharmacists to fill all prescriptions.

The American Pharmacists Association recently reaffirmed its policy that pharmacists can refuse to fill prescriptions as long as they make sure customers can get their medications some other way. That can include making sure another pharmacist is on duty or another pharmacy nearby is willing to fill the prescription.

Large pharmacy chains, including Walgreens, Wal-Mart, and CVS, have instituted policies that try to balance pharmacists' and customers' rights.

Women's advocates say such policies are impractical, especially late at night in emergency situations involving the morning-after pill, which must be taken within 72 hours.

Smith & Wesson chief quits over crime

CNNmoney
Smith & Wesson chief quits over crime
Chairman of the nation's No. 2 gun maker resigns over past armed robbery; company names new chief.
February 27, 2004: 4:10 PM EST

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - James Joseph Minder, chairman of handgun maker Smith & Wesson Holding Corp., resigned after a published report revealed he'd spent as much as 15 years in prison decades ago for armed robberies and a bank heist.

Smith & Wesson (SWB: up $0.11 to $1.65, Research, Estimates), the nation's second-largest gun manufacturer after Sturm Ruger (RGR: Research, Estimates), in a statement said Minder will stay on as an independent director.

Dennis Bingham, an independent Smith & Wesson board member since 2002, will assume the chairman role. Barry M. Monheit will also join the board and current board member Bob Scott will serve as vice-chairman.

"While recognizing the very serious mistakes in his early life, the board believes that Mr. Minder has led an exemplary life for 35 years

and has provided tremendous services to the community," the gun maker said in a statement.

"Based on this, and other successful business experience, the board believes he should and can continue to provide invaluable input to Smith & Wesson within both strategic planning and the ongoing drive toward operational excellence."

Minder's convictions were unknown to Smith & Wesson until the Arizona Republic newspaper chronicled Minder's criminal past earlier this month. Smith & Wesson is based in Scottsdale, Ariz.

The Republic article reported that Minder maintains he had never tried to cover up his past, and that the reason he failed to disclose his criminal past to Smith & Wesson earlier was because nobody had asked the question.

Minder, 74, had spent time in prison in the 1950s and 1960s for a string of armed robberies and an attempted prison escape, according to the Republic. During that time, the Detroit News said he was known for carrying a 16-gauge, sawed-off shotgun.

Minder was sentenced to 3-1/2 to 10 years in state prison for robbing a store while attending University of Michigan as a journalism student, he told the Republic.

Minder also told the paper that he turned his life around after finishing his prison sentence in 1969. He said he has spent his professional career trying to help kids after receiving a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering, a bachelor of arts in sociology and a master of arts in social work, all earned from the University of Michigan.

Minder, who served on the 152 year-old company's board since 2001, had run a successful non-profit agency serving delinquent and disabled Michigan youths for 20 years before retiring to Scottsdale in 1997, the Republic said.

Shortly before the Republic article was published, Smith & Wesson had named Minder as chairman, taking over the position from Roy Cuny, who remains on the board and continues to work as CEO and president of the company.

Cuny had been named to the top three posts in December, after Mitchell Saltz resigned as chairman and CEO. Also in December, Colt Melby stepped down as president amid a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into the late filing of earnings statements. Top of page

-- Reuters contributed to the story

Is "success" a failure for Bush?

salon.com

Is "success" a failure for Bush?

Why are George W. Bush's approval ratings sinking to all-time lows
?
There are plenty of explanations: Bush's decision to enter the Terri
Schiavo fray, his devotion to a Social Security that the public doesn't
want, rising gas prices and worries about inflation, and the "are you
still there?" ambivalence Americans sometimes show toward second-term
presidents.

Today's Christian Science Monitor
says it may
be all of those things, but then it offers another plausible
explanation: With the war in Iraq off the front pages, Americans may
not be thinking of Bush as their "war-time president" anymore. The
Monitor says that "progress in Iraq, starting with the holding of
elections, hasn't provided the kind of polling dividends Bush might
have expected. In fact, it's possible that the perception of success
and the spread of democracy in Iraq works against Bush in the way his
father, the first President Bush, failed to turn his own success in the
first Gulf War into victory come reelection time." Marshall Whitman, a
senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council, tells the Monitor
that, once Bush is "no longer seen as a struggling wartime commander,
the public focuses on more perhaps mundane matters, such as the price
of gas."

If that's what's happening, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise.
While voters in 2004 viewed Bush as a stronger military leader than
John Kerry, they didn't much like the direction in which Bush was
leading them otherwise. Six weeks before the election, an NBC News/Wall
Street Journal poll showed that
only nine percent of the electorate wanted a second Bush term to be "a
lot like" his first. Nearly 60 percent said Bush should make "major
changes" in his second term.

If Bush has made major changes -- and promoting your fiercest
loyalists to new jobs doesn't count -- we haven't seen them. But then,
Bush never promised big changes in a second term, either. In many ways,
his re-election campaign was all about the opposite. The question to
ponder is not why Bush hasn't changed, but why voters who suddenly find
themselves so disappointed ever thought that he would.

The Middle East's Leading English Language Daily

arabnews.com
The Middle East's Leading English Language Daily

Wednesday, 30, March, 2005 (19, Safar, 1426)

Arab Democracy Revisited
Fawaz Turki, disinherited@yahoo.com —

Here’s a classic case that rises to the level of “man bites dog”: The occupation of Iraq by the American military, we are told, has triggered the emergence of democracy movements around the Arab world, most notably in the Fertile Crescent, the Gulf countries and Egypt. Accept this spin that officials in Washington put on the story and you find yourself tipping your hat to the neocons.

Before you invite ridicule by reaching for your headgear, let’s take a closer look at America’s efforts to pitch democracy to the Arabs.

Look, there is no question about the fact that the times have changed in our part of the world. Arabs have entered a period of soul-searching, civil society is in a self-questioning mode and political regimes, long thought to be solidly established, are beginning — reluctantly in most cases — to loosen their autocratic grip on the public discourse.

Somewhat willy-nilly, the Middle East has become a proving ground for debate on topics ranging from the rule of law to freedom of the press, from representative government to equality, from universal suffrage to fair elections, from control by the ruled over public policy enacted by the rulers to the right of individuals to advocate and promote their interests around their political beliefs, and from protections for the poor and marginalized against discrimination to an independent judiciary — in short, ideal democracy.

Lest there be any misunderstanding of what this column is saying this week, I stress the point: Democracy is a moral good, indeed an imperative for a society that values political freedom and the life of the mind.

Yet for true democracy to thrive, it needs not only to be embraced but consolidated as well, systemically, where each subsystem of the social system, from public education to the public debate, dynamically interacts with the other, affecting and in turn be affected by it.

There are several so-called “democracies” in the world today where competitive, free and open elections were held, while at the same time lawlessness, corruption and abuse of power ran rampant, and decision-making was left to a handful of decision-makers.

The Philippines is a case in point. This was a country where democracy was given a head start in 1913, when the administration of Woodrow Wilson made preparations for the independence of the country 33 years later, endowing it with a solid familiarity with democratic values, institutions and processes.

Today the Philippines has a literate population, national identity is strong, the press is free, and the middle class is a significant political force to reckon with. Despite that, in the last four decades, only one president, Fidel Ramos, who served between 1992 and 1998, has entered and left office through a regular democratic process, and the national government remains, as Marc Plattner, director of the International Forum for Democratic Societies, wrote recently, “dominated by an unrepresentative elite that is more adept at advancing personal interests than at crafting coherent policies.”

There are other cases where nominally democratic regimes coexist with undemocratic practices, including several countries in Latin America that still have laws that discriminate against women, the poor, the disenfranchised and indigenous tribes, countries where prisoners of conscience endure torture while the privileged manage to exempt themselves from the law. “For my friends, everything,” proclaimed Getulio Varges, Brazil’s president (1950-1954). “And for my enemies, the law.”

As for Iraq, the Arab world’s putative “beacon of democracy,” Iraqi interrogators still torture Iraqi detainees, including the regime’s political opponents, in the same manner that Baathist thugs had done under Saddam Hussein.

I’m not saying that there exists, should exist, or has ever existed, a pristine, idealized democracy anywhere (heck, we’re human), for come to think of it, even ancient Greece, that invented democracy, was not above scrutiny in the way it failed to apply fully the rules of “demos” to protect those individual rights that we today consider the major building block of democracy. (Athens, along with the other Greek city-states, it will be recalled, had large communities of slaves.)

The Arab world today does indeed, and desperately so, need democracy. Arab societies are broken in back and spirit, and Arab citizens are helpless and adrift, bereft of political cohesion and cut off from all that is vibrant and dynamic in the global dialogue of cultures. And has been for many years.

To explain that phenomenon, some commentators in the West have fallen back on a racist canard: Arab culture, along with Islam itself, is resistant to democratic values, and violence forms a part of the “Arab character.”

Humbug. Those of us Arab activists, democrats one and all, who have agitated for meaningful reform all these years, began our campaign, often at great cost, back in the 1950s, when those commentators were in diapers. We had read John Lock and Karl Marx, Montesquieu and Ibn Khaldoun, the “Federalist” and the “Republic” in our college days, when American intellectuals, filmmakers and journalists were brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee to be grilled about their ideological beliefs. (“Have you no sense of decency, Sir,” one of them asked good, old Joe McArthy.)

There is, of course, more to it than that. To make the long crawl to democratic transition and then democratic consolidation, we have to dig ourselves out from the hole that the Euro-American world had put us in, and clean the mess it left us behind.

The authoritarian regimes that for well over half a century have thrust on us a legacy of lopsided development, that not only left societies unfree but left them in political, moral and cultural decay, were indeed made up of elites native to our world. But these elites were supported, and their survival underwritten, by the “free world,” that saw them as a bulwark against the “threat of communism” and as their pliant policemen whose primary job was the suppression of populist movements opposed to Western neocolonial influence and Israeli designs.

So don’t, I say, give us bunk about Iraq being the trigger for democratic movements in the Arab world, as if we’re a bunch of primitives happy for the glass beads handed out to us by Western explorers.

We have an important job ahead of us: Crawling out of that hole, and cleaning that mess, left us by the “free world”.

Just as in 1885, when the European powers met in Berlin to partition Africa, legalizing a land grab across the continent — leaving Africans 120 years later the task of overcoming the dreadful consequences of that historic event — these Europeans in like manner felt that our region was a “world for the taking” and, armed with the infamous Sykes-Picot agreement and the equally infamous Balfour Declaration, parceled out the Middle East, betrayed the cause of Arab freedom and supported Arab despots whose job assignment was to protect Western strategic designs.

And now they’re all busy, getting on their high, paternalistic horse, introducing us to democracy.

Oh, puleeeeze! Don’t these folks have better things to do with their time?

Convicted Terrorist Deported To Lebanon After Prison Term

washingtonpost.com
Convicted Terrorist Deported To Lebanon After Prison Term

Associated Press
Wednesday, March 30, 2005; Page A10

A Lebanese hijacker, the first terrorist convicted in the United States for an attack against U.S. citizens on foreign soil, was deported Monday after nearly 16 years in federal prison, authorities said yesterday.

Fawaz Yunis, a member of the Amal Militia in Lebanon, led the 1985 hijacking of Royal Jordanian Airlines Flight 402 in Beirut. Yunis and four gunmen unsuccessfully tried to fly to Cyprus before returning to Beirut, where they blew up the plane after releasing the passengers unharmed. Two of the hostages were U.S. citizens.

Yunis was apprehended overseas by U.S. officials in 1987 and convicted by a federal court in March 1989. Authorities with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said he was released from federal prison in Petersburg, Va., in February and deported to Lebanon Monday. He was deported because he is considered an illegal immigrant.

US Judge Bars Transfer of 13 Guantanamo Detainees

Yahoo! News
Reuters
US Judge Bars Transfer of 13 Guantanamo Detainees

Tue Mar 29, 5:52 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge on Tuesday barred the U.S. government from immediately transferring 13 Yemeni detainees from Guantanamo Bay to another country, where they fear they will be tortured or imprisoned indefinitely.

U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy granted a preliminary injunction that requires the government to give him and the attorneys for the detainees advance notice of 30 days before any of them are removed from Guantanamo.

Another federal judge on March 12 issued a similar temporary restraining order to keep the detainees at the U.S. military base in Cuba while Kennedy considered the issue.

Guantanamo Bay holds about 540 suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners, mainly from the U.S.-led Afghanistan war that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Pentagon has said that 214 prisoners have left the prison camp. Of that number, 149 were freed while 65 were turned over to foreign governments.

Attorneys for the detainees argued they might be mistreated if transferred to another country. Such a transfer also would effectively extinguish their pending U.S. court petition challenging the legality of their detention and seeking their release, the attorneys said.

Kennedy agreed with that argument and said the transfer of the Yemenis would deprive the court of jurisdiction over the dispute.

He rejected the argument by U.S. Justice Department attorneys who said that granting the request by the detainees would "encroach on the foreign relations and national security prerogatives" of the government's executive branch.

"At this point, we're looking at the ruling to determine the way ahead," said Maj. Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman.

(Additional reporting by Will Dunham)

Suit by Detainee on Transfer to Syria Finds Support in Jet's Log

The New York Times
March 30, 2005
Suit by Detainee on Transfer to Syria Finds Support in Jet's Log
By SCOTT SHANE

This article was reported by Scott Shane, Stephen Grey and Ford Fessenden and written by Mr. Shane.

WASHINGTON, March 29 - Maher Arar, a 35-year-old Canadian engineer, is suing the United States, saying American officials grabbed him in 2002 as he changed planes in New York and transported him to Syria where, he says, he was held for 10 months in a dank, tiny cell and brutally beaten with a metal cable.

Now federal aviation records examined by The New York Times appear to corroborate Mr. Arar's account of his flight, during which, he says, he sat chained on the leather seats of a luxury executive jet as his American guards watched movies and ignored his protests.

The tale of Mr. Arar, the subject of a yearlong inquiry by the Canadian government, is perhaps the best documented of a number of cases since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in which suspects have accused the United States of secretly delivering them to other countries for interrogation under torture. Deportation for interrogation abroad is known as rendition.

In papers filed in a New York court replying to Mr. Arar's lawsuit, Justice Department lawyers say the case was not one of rendition but of deportation. They say Mr. Arar was deported to Syria based on secret information that he was a member of Al Qaeda, an accusation he denies.

The discovery of the aircraft, in a database compiled from Federal Aviation Agency records, appears to corroborate part of the story Mr. Arar has told many times since his release in 2003. The records show that a Gulfstream III jet, tail number N829MG, followed a flight path matching the route he described. The flight, hopscotching from New Jersey to an airport near Washington to Maine to Rome and beyond, took place on Oct. 8, 2002, the day after Mr. Arar's deportation order was signed.

After seeing a photograph of the plane and hearing its path, Mr. Arar, 35, of Ottawa, said in a telephone interview: "I think that's it. I think you've found the plane that took me."

He added: "Finding this plane is going really to help me. It does remind me of this trip, which is painful, but it should make people understand that this is for real and everything happened the way I said. I hope people will now stop for a moment and think about the morality of this."

Records of the jet's travels also show a trip in December 2003 to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States holds hundreds of detainees, suggesting that it was used by the government on at least one other occasion.

If the plane was used to move Mr. Arar, it is the fourth known to have been used to transport suspected terrorists secretly from one country to detention in another.

Among the three identified in previous news reports is one owned by a company apparently set up by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to The Washington Post. Another, first described by The Chicago Tribune, is an ordinary charter jet that was also used by the Boston Red Sox manager between missions ferrying detainees and their guards to Guantánamo, with the Red Sox logo attached to the fuselage or removed, depending on who was aboard.

Maria LaHood, a lawyer for Mr. Arar, said the new information on the Gulfstream jet lent support to his lawsuit.

"The facts we got from Maher right after he was released are now corroborated by public records," said Ms. LaHood, who works for the Center for Constitutional Rights, a group in New York that advocates investigation of human rights abuses. "The more information that comes out, the better for showing that this is an important public issue that can't be kept secret."

She said Mr. Arar and his attorneys believe that American officials wanted him to undergo a more brutal interrogation than would be permitted in the United States in the hope of getting information about Al Qaeda.

After 10 months in a cell he compared to a grave, and 2 more months in a less confined space, Syrian officials freed Mr. Arar in October 2003, saying they had been unable to find any connection to Al Qaeda. The Syrian ambassador to the United States called the release "a gesture of good will toward Canada."

Charles Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, said the government had no comment on the case. The administration has refused to cooperate with the Canadian inquiry into Mr. Arar's case and has asked a judge to dismiss most of his lawsuit, saying that allowing it to proceed would reveal classified information.

President Bush has said it is United States policy neither to engage in torture nor to deliver prisoners to countries where they are likely to be tortured. Former intelligence officials say rendition is useful for cases in which secret information has identified a suspected terrorist but cannot be used for a public prosecution in an American court.

Mr. Arar has told a consistent story since his release: He was detained at Kennedy International Airport in New York on Sept. 26, 2002, while changing planes on the way back to Canada from a vacation in Tunisia. He was then held for nearly two weeks, awakened at 3 a.m. and taken to an airport in New Jersey, where he was put aboard a small jet.

Shackled in place, Mr. Arar says, he followed the plane's movements on a map displayed on a video screen, watching as it traveled to Dulles Airport, outside Washington, to a Maine airport he believed was in Portland, to Rome, and finally to Amman, Jordan, where he was blindfolded and driven to Syria.

According to F.A.A. flight logs for Oct. 8, 2002, only one aircraft flew from New Jersey to the Washington area to Maine to Rome: the 14-passenger Gulfstream III jet, operated by Presidential Aviation, a charter company in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The jet left Teterboro, N.J., for Dulles at 5:40 a.m.; proceeded at 7:46 a.m. to Bangor, Me.; and left Bangor for Rome at 9:36 a.m.

The only conflict with Mr. Arar's story is that the Maine airport was Bangor, not Portland. And the logs cover only flights departing from the United States, so they document the trip only as far as Rome. Court records show, however, that immigration officials ordered him deported to Syria.

Nigel England, director of operations for Presidential, said he would not divulge who rented the Gulfstream that day or discuss any clients.

"It's a very select group of people that we fly, from entertainers to foreign heads of state, a whole gamut of customers that we fly and wouldn't discuss one over the other," he said.

The plane flew about 50 flights a month to various destinations in 2002 and 2003, according to federal records. Presidential's Web site says a similar jet would now rent for about $120,000 for an itinerary like the one on which Mr. Arar apparently was flown.

Records show that the plane was owned in 2002 by MJG Aviation, a Florida company that lists its manager as Mark J. Gordon, an entrepreneur who also owned Presidential at the time. Mr. Gordon could not be reached. The plane has since been sold and the tail number has been changed to N259SK, records show.

As for Mr. Arar, he said he felt the identification of the plane helped establish his credibility. "I don't know for sure but probably people had some doubts about what I said," he said. "This goes to prove and corroborate at least part of my story. I hope even more information will come forward."

Shane Scott reported from Washington for this article, Stephen Grey from London and Ford Fessenden from New York. David Johnston contributed reporting from Washington and Margot Williams from New York.

US memo shows Iraq jail methods

BBC NEWS

US memo shows Iraq jail methods

The top US general in Iraq authorised interrogation techniques including the use of dogs, stress positions and disorientation, a memo has shown.

The document was obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through the US Freedom of Information Act.

The September 2003 document is signed by the then commander of US forces in Iraq, Gen Ricardo Sanchez.

The ACLU says the measures go beyond generally accepted practice and says Gen Sanchez should be made accountable.

The memo authorised techniques including putting prisoners in stressful positions, using loud music and light control, and changing sleeping patterns.

It also authorised the presence of muzzled military working dogs to, as the memo puts it, "exploit Arab fear of dogs while maintaining security during interrogations".

The presence of dogs and other measures, all of which required approval by Gen Sanchez, were rescinded a month later because of opposition from military lawyers.

Gen Sanchez says advance permission was required every time one of these techniques was requested, adding that he never gave such permission.

'Beyond army limits'

The Pentagon originally refused to release the memo on national security grounds, but passed it to the ACLU on Friday after the union challenged it in court under the Freedom of Information Act.

The ACLU says at least 12 of the 29 techniques listed in the document went far beyond limits established by the army's field manual.

"Gen Sanchez authorised interrogation techniques that were in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions and the army's own standards," ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh said in the union's statement.

"He and other high ranking officials who bear responsibility for the widespread abuse of detainees must be held accountable."

The techniques included "environmental manipulation" such as making a room hot or cold or using an "unpleasant smell", isolating a prisoner, and disrupting normal sleep patterns.

The memo also allowed the "false flag" technique of "convincing the detainee that individuals from a country other than the United States are interrogating him."

It was during Gen Sanchez's time as commander that Iraqi prisoners were abused by US troops at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison.

The cases - highlighted in photographs of hooded and naked inmates - sparked international outrage.

Army investigations have generally found that, where proven, abuses were not the result of policy set by senior leaders.

The ACLU is currently taking part in a lawsuit against Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accusing him of responsibility for torture and abuse of detainees in US military custody in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Fox News: Outsourcing: The Fault of One Guy from India

newshounds.us

Outsourcing: The Fault of One Guy from India

Under a banner reading "Behind the Outsourcing Boom," substitute host Stuart Varney interviewed Sam Pitroda today (March 29, 2005) on Your World w/Neil Cavuto (FOX NEWS). Pitroda is the former chief technology officer for the nation of India and is now the chairman of a company called Worldtel.

Introducing Pitroda, Varney said: "He's the man many credit, or depending on how you look at it, blame for the outsourcing boom." Varney asked Pitroda to "tell me how that is good news for American workers."

Pitroda said outsourcing is "part and parcel" of the globalization process. Pitroda said it "makes American industry more competitive." He said it is "a process which we all have to go through."

Varney asked if India is "about to become the service center of the world?" Pitroda said India needs to create 10 million jobs every year. He said outsourcing has created two or three hundred thousand jobs there, "almost nothing" compared to the number of jobs needed.

Varney asked, "If the situation were reversed and jobs were leaving India and coming to the United States, would you still be so keen on globalization?" Pitroda said he would be, that we must look at global economic issues, not "petty little issues like preserving 2,000 or 5,000 jobs." Varney said, "It's not a petty little issue if you're the senator or congressman representing those jobs which are lost or if you've lost one yourself." Pitroda said his point was that we "need to really look at the longer term perspective."

Varney smiled but got nastier: You're a "star" in India and in Europe but "this is your first network TV interview in the US even though you've lived here for 30 years." Pitroda corrected Varney, saying he'd lived here for 40 years. Varney continued: "Why do you keep such a low profile here? Do you think perhaps you're unpopular for all this outsourcing?" A flustered Pitroda said no, he travels, he's busy and that's the way its worked out.

Comment: Ah yes. The simple, simple, simple world of Fox News. Outsourcing boils down to one man from India. Don't ever let it be said that the (according to Fox) benevolent, patriotic, job-creating corporations in this country had anything to do with it.

Reported by Melanie at March 29, 2005 06:49 PM

Joe Scarborough's interview with Dr. Ronald Cranford

From mediamatters.org

Neurologist Cranford confronted Scarborough, MSNBC daytime anchor: "[Y]ou're asking me if a CAT scan was done? How could you possibly be so stupid?"

On the March 28 edition of MSNBC's Scarborough Country, host Joe Scarborough interviewed Dr. Ronald Cranford, one of the two neurologists selected by Michael Schiavo to examine Terri Schiavo pursuant to an October 2001 appellate court mandate. As part of that duty, Cranford "reviewed her medical records and personally conducted a neurological examination of Mrs. Schiavo," according to the June 2003 Florida appeals court review of that hearing.

Following is the transcript of the interview:

SCARBOROUGH: Now, the question on everybody's mind tonight is this: How is Terri Schiavo doing? You know, it's been 10 days. She is starting her 11th day now without food and water. Let's go back to Pinellas Park [Florida], where Lisa Daniels [MSNBC daytime anchor] is standing by -- Lisa.

DANIELS: Well, Joe, at this point, we are going to delve into the medical aspect of the story. I want to bring in Dr. Ronald Cranford. He's a neurologist at Hennepin Medical Center in Minneapolis. And, Doctor, before we continue, I want our viewers to understand what your role was in the legal case. I understand that Michael Schiavo and his team asked you to examine his wife. Is that correct?

CRANFORD: Yes. Yes, they did.

DANIELS: And from my understanding, I just want to be accurate, you examined Terri Schiavo for about 45 minutes. Is that right?

CRANFORD: I think 42 minutes, but 45 is fine, sure.

DANIELS: All right. Well, we want to be accurate here. What was your conclusion at the end of --

[crosstalk]

CRANFORD: Wait a minute. You are not accurate on a lot of things here. You're saying a lot of -- she's not starving to death. Do you understand that? She is dehydrating to death.

DANIELS: Well, why do you say that? Tell us how you came to that conclusion?

[crosstalk]

CRANFORD: Can I tell you why? Because I have done this 25 to 50 times. I don't know how many times Joe has done it, but I've done it 25 to 50 times in similar situations. And they die within 10 to 14 days.

Nancy Cruzan did not die in six days [as guest Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition suggested earlier in the program]. She died in 11 days, 11.5 hours. And Terri Schiavo will die within 10 to 14 days. And they are dying of dehydration, not starvation. And that's just a lie. And Joe doesn't have any idea what he is talking about. And you don't have any idea what you're talking about.

DANIELS: Well --

CRANFORD: I have been at the bedside of these patients. I know what they die from. I've seen them die. And this is all bogus. It's all just a bunch of crap that you are saying. It's totally wrong.

DANIELS: Well, with all due respect, Doctor, it sounds like you think that you know what you are talking about, so let's ask you about that.

CRANFORD: Sure.

DANIELS: Are you 100 percent correct in your opinion that Terri Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state? Do you agree with that?

CRANFORD: I am 105 percent sure she is in a vegetative state. And the autopsy will show severe irreversible brain damage to the higher centers, yes.

DANIELS: Why are you so sure, Doctor?

CRANFORD: Because I examined her. The court-appointed guardian examined her. Four neurologists at the hospital where she was has said she's carried a diagnosis of vegetative state for 12 years. Every neurologist that examined her, except for Dr. [William] Hammesfahr [a neurologist selected by Terri Schiavo's parents], who is a charlatan, has said she is in vegetative state. That's what the court found. Just because you don't like --

[crosstalk]

DANIELS: Doctor, was a CAT scan -- Doctor, your critics would ask you, was a CAT scan used? Was an MRI taken? Were any of these tests taken?

CRANFORD: You don't know the answer to that? The CAT scan was done in 1996, 2002. We spent a lot of time in court showing the irreversible -- you don't have copies of those CAT scans? How can you say that?

The CAT scans are out there, distributed to other people. You have got to look at the facts. The CAT scan is out there. It shows severe atrophy of the brain. The autopsy is going to show severe atrophy of the brain. And you're asking me if a CAT scan was done? How could you possibly be so stupid?

SCARBOROUGH: Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait a second.

[crosstalk]

SCARBOROUGH: Hold on a second, if I can interrupt here.

CRANFORD: Go ahead. Joe, interrupt me.

SCARBOROUGH: Why don't you go ahead and tell the rest of the story there? Why don't you tell us that the radiologist that looked at the two CAT scans said she showed improvement in 2002 over 1996? You know, you seem so sure of yourself. The Associated Press reported yesterday --

CRANFORD: Joe, the judge didn't believe him.

SCARBOROUGH: Hold on a second. Hold on a second. You're so sure of yourself -- respond to this. AP had a report yesterday. They said seven doctors have looked at her. Four said she was in persistent vegetative state. You were one of them, hired by Michael Schiavo to do that. There were three others that looked at her that disagreed. How can you be so absolutely sure that everybody that agrees with you is 100 percent accurate and everybody on the other side is a charlatan?

CRANFORD: Joe, Judge -- Judge [George W.] Greer disallowed, didn't believe what [Dr. William] Maxfield [a doctor selected by Terri Schiavo's parents] said. You got your numbers wrong. There were eight neurologists saw her. Seven of the eight said she was in a vegetative state. Only one said she wasn't.

SCARBOROUGH: I am quoting an Associated Press report from yesterday.

CRANFORD: Joe, you've got to get your facts straight.

SCARBOROUGH: I have got my facts straight.

CRANFORD: Get your facts straight. You've got your facts way off.

SCARBOROUGH: Why don't we talk about -- hold on a second.

CRANFORD: Go ahead.

SCARBOROUGH: You talked about a 1996 scan.

CRANFORD: No, 2002, 2002.

SCARBOROUGH: Let's talk about it. A radiologist told the court that the 2002 scan actually showed improvement over the 1996 scan. Is that inaccurate? Did the AP report that wrong?

CRANFORD: Absolutely. Maxfield said it was improved. And Judge Greer didn't buy it because the others said it wasn't improved. It was probably worse than it was before.

SCARBOROUGH: Is he a charlatan also?

CRANFORD: Yes. Maxfield is an HBO [hyperbaric oxygen], vasodilator -- look it up, Joe. See what vasodilator does. See what hyperbaric oxygen, see in these cases, and you tell me they are not charlatans. Just because you don't agree with me -- I don't call everybody a charlatan. I'm not calling [Dr. Richard] Cheshire [who has argued that Terri Schiavo is not in a persistent vegetative state] a charlatan. I think he's a reputable neurologist. I think he examined her, he interviewed her. So, just because I disagree, I don't call them charlatans. But you have got your facts so far off that it's unbelievable, Joe. You don't have any idea what you are talking about. You've never been at the bedside of these patients. And this will come out in the next three to five years about this condition and starvation.

SCARBOROUGH: You were there 42 minutes, Doctor.

CRANFORD: Yes, I was.

SCARBOROUGH: You are only one doctor that's been there. And somehow, in your 42 minutes of observing her, you have all the answers and everybody that disagrees is dead wrong, I guess.

CRANFORD: No, that's just a -- you know what? You've gotta see what Judge Greer said. You've gotta see what the appeals court said. If you read that, Joe, you will understand why the judge decided the way he did.

SCARBOROUGH: All right.

CRANFORD: He didn't believe Hammesfahr. He didn't believe Maxfield. And it's not starvation. And Nancy Cruzan did not die in six days. She died in 11 days and 11.5 hours, 11 days and 11.5 hours.

SCARBOROUGH: All right.

CRANFORD: OK?

SCARBOROUGH: Thank you, Doctor.

CRANFORD: My pleasure.

SCARBOROUGH: You know what? This is the disappointing thing. You try to have a conversation. You try to talk about what is going on. And I found this as an attorney, too. I have been attorneys for plaintiffs. I have been attorneys for defendants. And what I always find out is, there are certain doctors -- I am not claiming that this doctor is a charlatan. I don't know his body of work. I am not claiming that he is a hired gun.

But too many doctors out there can be bought off by attorneys on either side. And then they come out, instead of telling you the facts, you get into debate like you are talking to an attorney. It is very, very disappointing.

I want to apologize to Lisa for interrupting her, but the thing is, Lisa was getting attacked because of what I said. I think that is unfair.

A Party Inverted

The New York Times
March 30, 2005

A Party Inverted
By BILL BRADLEY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the Name of Politics

The New York Times
March 30, 2005

In the Name of Politics
By JOHN C. DANFORTH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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