High Court's Free-Speech Ruling Favors Government
High Court's Free-Speech Ruling Favors Government
Public Workers on Duty Not Protected By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 31, 2006; Page A01
The Supreme Court yesterday bolstered the government's power to discipline public employees who make charges of official misconduct, ruling that the First Amendment does not protect those who blow the whistle in the course of their official duties.
By a vote of 5 to 4, the court ruled that the Los Angeles County district attorney's office did not violate prosecutor Richard Ceballos's freedom of speech by allegedly demoting him after he wrote to supervisors charging that a sheriff's deputy had lied to get a search warrant.
Dissenters on the court, civil libertarians and public-employee unions said the ruling, which extends to all of the nation's public employees, could deter government workers from going to their bosses with evidence of corruption or ineptitude.
But, the court ruled, recognizing claims such as Ceballos's could turn bureaucratic policy disputes into federal constitutional lawsuits, disrupting public administration, clogging courts and making it hard for the government to speak with a single voice.
The Bush administration backed the district attorney's office, citing the U.S. government's interest as "the nation's largest public employer."
The ruling affects only constitutional free-speech claims related to work, the court said, not the rights of public employees off the job. Nor does it affect state and federal labor laws or whistle-blower protection statutes, the court said.
In his opinion for the court, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote that those "powerful" rules still "provide checks" on supervisors.
"We reject, however, the notion that the First Amendment shields from discipline the expressions employees make pursuant to their professional duties," Kennedy wrote. "Our precedents do not support the existence of a constitutional cause of action behind every statement a public employee makes in the course of doing his or her job."
Kennedy was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
But Kennedy's opinion drew a sharp dissent from Justice David H. Souter, who argued that statutory and other protections for whistle-blowers are weak. Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined Souter. Justice Stephen G. Breyer dissented in a solo opinion.
Instead of barring all free-speech claims relating to public employees' official duties, Souter wrote, the court should have let lower courts assess them case by case.
"[P]rivate and public interests in addressing official wrongdoing and threats to health and safety can outweigh the government's stake in the efficient implementation of policy," Souter wrote, "and when they do public employees who speak on these matters in the course of their duties should be eligible to claim First Amendment protection."
In a separate opinion, Stevens questioned the court's distinction between speech by public employees acting officially, which gets no free-speech protection, and speech by public employees acting as citizens -- such as in a letter to the editor -- which can still get protection.
"[I]t seems perverse to fashion a new rule that provides employees with an incentive to voice their concerns publicly before talking frankly to their superiors," Stevens wrote.
Souter raised the specter of threats to state university professors' free speech, but Kennedy said teaching and scholarship were beyond the scope of the case.
The case added a note of division to a Supreme Court term that had been marked by many unanimous opinions under Roberts, who has publicly called for more consensus on the court.
Indeed, it appears to have divided the court since it was first argued on Oct. 12. It was one of three cases set down for reargument after Justice Sandra Day O'Connor left the court on Jan. 31, with Alito taking her place.
Although the court did not say why it needed another hour of oral argument on March 21, the likeliest reason is that O'Connor had left behind a 4 to 4 tie.
Moreover, the case might well have gone the other way with O'Connor still on the bench because the court could have issued an opinion had there been five votes for Ceballos without her.
"It is fair to say, in an era of excessive government secrecy, this makes government coverups easier by discouraging whistle-blowers," said Steven Shapiro, national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which had supported Ceballos.
But Gene C. Schaerr, an attorney for the International Municipal Lawyers Association, an organization of local-government lawyers that supported the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, said the ruling "allows local and state governments the appropriate degree of oversight of their employees, without really impinging upon their First Amendment right to speak out as private citizens."
The case, Garcetti v. Ceballos , No. 04-473, now returns to a federal appeals court in California, which must use yesterday's ruling to assess the issues the Supreme Court did not decide, because, for technical reasons, it focused only on Ceballos's internal memo.
The loose ends include Ceballos's assertion that his supervisors retaliated against him not only because of his memo, but also because of what he had said at meetings with them, because he had testified for the defense on the search warrant and because he had spoken about the alleged misconduct at a public meeting.
The Los Angeles County district attorney's office denies that it retaliated against Ceballos over his allegations.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
Bush 'planted fake news stories on American TV'
Bush 'planted fake news stories on American TV'
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
Published: 29 May 2006 Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies' products.
Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are seeking information about stations across the country after a report produced by a campaign group detailed the extraordinary extent of the use of such items.
The report, by the non-profit group Centre for Media and Democracy, found that over a 10-month period at least 77 television stations were making use of the faux news broadcasts, known as Video News Releases (VNRs). Not one told viewers who had produced the items.
"We know we only had partial access to these VNRs and yet we found 77 stations using them," said Diana Farsetta, one of the group's researchers. "I would say it's pretty extraordinary. The picture we found was much worse than we expected going into the investigation in terms of just how widely these get played and how frequently these pre-packaged segments are put on the air."
Ms Farsetta said the public relations companies commissioned to produce these segments by corporations had become increasingly sophisticated in their techniques in order to get the VNRs broadcast. "They have got very good at mimicking what a real, independently produced television report would look like," she said.
The FCC has declined to comment on the investigation but investigators from the commission's enforcement unit recently approached Ms Farsetta for a copy of her group's report.
The range of VNR is wide. Among items provided by the Bush administration to news stations was one in which an Iraqi-American in Kansas City was seen saying "Thank you Bush. Thank you USA" in response to the 2003 fall of Baghdad. The footage was actually produced by the State Department, one of 20 federal agencies that have produced and distributed such items.
Many of the corporate reports, produced by drugs manufacturers such as Pfizer, focus on health issues and promote the manufacturer's product. One example cited by the report was a Hallowe'en segment produced by the confectionery giant Mars, which featured Snickers, M&Ms and other company brands. While the original VNR disclosed that it was produced by Mars, such information was removed when it was broadcast by the television channel - in this case a Fox-owned station in St Louis, Missouri.
Bloomberg news service said that other companies that sponsored the promotions included General Motors, the world's largest car maker, and Intel, the biggest maker of semi-conductors. All of the companies said they included full disclosure of their involvement in the VNRs. "We in no way attempt to hide that we are providing the video," said Chuck Mulloy, a spokesman for Intel. "In fact, we bend over backward to make this disclosure."
The FCC was urged to act by a lobbying campaign organised by Free Press, another non-profit group that focuses on media policy. Spokesman Craig Aaron said more than 25,000 people had written to the FCC about the VNRs. "Essentially it's corporate advertising or propaganda masquerading as news," he said. "The public obviously expects their news reports are going to be based on real reporting and real information. If they are watching an advertisement for a company or a government policy, they need to be told."
The controversy over the use of VNRs by television stations first erupted last spring. At the time the FCC issued a public notice warning broadcasters that they were obliged to inform viewers if items were sponsored. The maximum fine for each violation is $32,500 (£17,500).
Examples of the president's signing statements
Examples of the president's signing statements
April 30, 2006 Since taking office in 2001, President Bush has issued signing statements on more than 750 new laws, declaring that he has the power to set aside the laws when they conflict with his legal interpretation of the Constitution. The federal government is instructed to follow the statements when it enforces the laws. Here are 10 examples and the dates Bush signed them:
March 9: Justice Department officials must give reports to Congress by certain dates on how the FBI is using the USA Patriot Act to search homes and secretly seize papers.
Bush's signing statement: The president can order Justice Department officials to withhold any information from Congress if he decides it could impair national security or executive branch operations.
Dec. 30, 2005: US interrogators cannot torture prisoners or otherwise subject them to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
Bush's signing statement: The president, as commander in chief, can waive the torture ban if he decides that harsh interrogation techniques will assist in preventing terrorist attacks.
Dec. 30: When requested, scientific information ''prepared by government researchers and scientists shall be transmitted [to Congress] uncensored and without delay."
Bush's signing statement: The president can tell researchers to withhold any information from Congress if he decides its disclosure could impair foreign relations, national security, or the workings of the executive branch.
Aug. 8: The Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and its contractors may not fire or otherwise punish an employee whistle-blower who tells Congress about possible wrongdoing.
Bush's signing statement: The president or his appointees will determine whether employees of the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission can give information to Congress.
Dec. 23, 2004: Forbids US troops in Colombia from participating in any combat against rebels, except in cases of self-defense. Caps the number of US troops allowed in Colombia at 800.
Bush's signing statement: Only the president, as commander in chief, can place restrictions on the use of US armed forces, so the executive branch will construe the law ''as advisory in nature."
Dec. 17: The new national intelligence director shall recruit and train women and minorities to be spies, analysts, and translators in order to ensure diversity in the intelligence community.
Bush's signing statement: The executive branch shall construe the law in a manner consistent with a constitutional clause guaranteeing ''equal protection" for all. (In 2003, the Bush administration argued against race-conscious affirmative-action programs in a Supreme Court case. The court rejected Bush's view.)
Oct. 29: Defense Department personnel are prohibited from interfering with the ability of military lawyers to give independent legal advice to their commanders.
Bush's signing statement: All military attorneys are bound to follow legal conclusions reached by the administration's lawyers in the Justice Department and the Pentagon when giving advice to their commanders.
Aug. 5: The military cannot add to its files any illegally gathered intelligence, including information obtained about Americans in violation of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches.
Bush's signing statement: Only the president, as commander in chief, can tell the military whether or not it can use any specific piece of intelligence.
Nov. 6, 2003: US officials in Iraq cannot prevent an inspector general for the Coalition Provisional Authority from carrying out any investigation. The inspector general must tell Congress if officials refuse to cooperate with his inquiries.
Bush's signing statement: The inspector general ''shall refrain" from investigating anything involving sensitive plans, intelligence, national security, or anything already being investigated by the Pentagon. The inspector cannot tell Congress anything if the president decides that disclosing the information would impair foreign relations, national security, or executive branch operations.
Nov. 5, 2002: Creates an Institute of Education Sciences whose director may conduct and publish research ''without the approval of the secretary [of education] or any other office of the department."
Bush's signing statement: The president has the power to control the actions of all executive branch officials, so ''the director of the Institute of Education Sciences shall [be] subject to the supervision and direction of the secretary of education."
SOURCE: Charlie Savage
© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
Top Ten Signs of the Impending U.S. Police State
Top Ten Signs of the Impending U.S. Police State
Hey America! Freedom is just around the corner…behind you
Allan Uthman The Internet Clampdown
One saving grace of alternative media in this age of unfettered corporate conglomeration has been the internet. While the masses are spoon-fed predigested news on TV and in mainstream print publications, the truth-seeking individual still has access to a broad array of investigative reporting and political opinion via the world-wide web. Of course, it was only a matter of time before the government moved to patch up this crack in the sky. Attempts to regulate and filter internet content are intensifying lately, coming both from telecommunications corporations (who are gearing up to pass legislation transferring ownership and regulation of the internet to themselves), and the Pentagon (which issued an “Information Operations Roadmap” in 2003, signed by Donald Rumsfeld, which outlines tactics such as network attacks and acknowledges, without suggesting a remedy, that US propaganda planted in other countries has easily found its way to Americans via the internet). One obvious tactic clearing the way for stifling regulation of internet content is the growing media frenzy over child pornography and “internet predators,” which will surely lead to legislation that by far exceeds in its purview what is needed to fight such threats.
“The Long War”
This little piece of clumsy marketing died off quickly, but it gave away what many already suspected: the War on Terror will never end, nor is it meant to end. It is designed to be perpetual. As with the War on Drugs, it outlines a goal that can never be fully attained—as long as there are pissed off people and explosives. The Long War will eternally justify what are ostensibly temporary measures: suspension of civil liberties, military expansion, domestic spying, massive deficit spending and the like. This short-lived moniker told us all, “get used to it. Things aren’t going to change any time soon.”
The USA PATRIOT Act
Did anyone really think this was going to be temporary? Yes, this disgusting power grab gives the government the right to sneak into your house, look through all your stuff and not tell you about it for weeks on a rubber stamp warrant. Yes, they can look at your medical records and library selections. Yes, they can pass along any information they find without probable cause for purposes of prosecution. No, they’re not going to take it back, ever.
Prison camps
This last January the Army Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root nearly $400 million to build detention centers in the United States, for the purpose of unspecified “new programs.” Of course, the obvious first guess would be that these new programs might involve rounding up Muslims or political dissenters—I mean, obviously detention facilities are there to hold somebody. I wish I had more to tell you about this, but it’s, you know…secret.
Touchscreen Voting Machines
Despite clear, copious evidence that these nefarious contraptions are built to be tampered with, they continue to spread and dominate the voting landscape, thanks to Bush’s “Help America Vote Act,” the exploitation of corrupt elections officials, and the general public’s enduring cluelessness.
In Utah, Emery County Elections Director Bruce Funk witnessed security testing by an outside firm on Diebold voting machines which showed them to be a security risk. But his warnings fell on deaf ears. Instead Diebold attorneys were flown to Emery County on the governor's airplane to squelch the story. Funk was fired. In Florida, Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho discovered an alarming security flaw in their Diebold system at the end of last year. Rather than fix the flaw, Diebold refused to fulfill its contract. Both of the other two touchscreen voting machine vendors, Sequoia and ES&S, now refuse to do business with Sancho, who is required by HAVA to implement a touchscreen system and will be sued by his own state if he doesn’t. Diebold is said to be pressuring for Sancho’s ouster before it will resume servicing the county.
Stories like these and much worse abound, and yet TV news outlets have done less coverage of the new era of elections fraud than even 9/11 conspiracy theories. This is possibly the most important story of this century, but nobody seems to give a damn. As long as this issue is ignored, real American democracy will remain an illusion. The midterm elections will be an interesting test of the public’s continuing gullibility about voting integrity, especially if the Democrats don’t win substantial gains, as they almost surely will if everything is kosher.
Bush just suggested that his brother Jeb would make a good president. We really need to fix this problem soon.
Signing Statements
Bush has famously never vetoed a bill. This is because he prefers to simply nullify laws he doesn’t like with “signing statements.” Bush has issued over 700 such statements, twice as many as all previous presidents combined. A few examples of recently passed laws and their corresponding dismissals, courtesy of the Boston Globe:
Dec. 30, 2005: US interrogators cannot torture prisoners or otherwise subject them to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
Bush's signing statement: The president, as commander in chief, can waive the torture ban if he decides that harsh interrogation techniques will assist in preventing terrorist attacks.
Dec. 30: When requested, scientific information ''prepared by government researchers and scientists shall be transmitted [to Congress] uncensored and without delay."
Bush's signing statement: The president can tell researchers to withhold any information from Congress if he decides its disclosure could impair foreign relations, national security, or the workings of the executive branch.
Dec. 23, 2004: Forbids US troops in Colombia from participating in any combat against rebels, except in cases of self-defense. Caps the number of US troops allowed in Colombia at 800.
Bush's signing statement: Only the president, as commander in chief, can place restrictions on the use of US armed forces, so the executive branch will construe the law ''as advisory in nature."
Essentially, this administration is bypassing the judiciary and deciding for itself whether laws are constitutional or not. Somehow, I don’t see the new Supreme Court lineup having much of a problem with that, though. So no matter what laws congress passes, Bush will simply choose to ignore the ones he doesn’t care for. It’s much quieter than a veto, and can’t be overridden by a two-thirds majority. It’s also totally absurd.
Warrantless Wiretapping:
Amazingly, the GOP sees this issue as a plus for them. How can this be? What are you, stupid? You find out the government is listening to the phone calls of US citizens, without even the weakest of judicial oversight and you think that’s okay? Come on—if you know anything about history, you know that no government can be trusted to handle something like this responsibly. One day they’re listening for Osama, and the next they’re listening in on Howard Dean.
Think about it: this administration hates unauthorized leaks. With no judicial oversight, why on earth wouldn’t they eavesdrop on, say, Seymour Hersh, to figure out who’s spilling the beans? It’s a no-brainer. Speaking of which, it bears repeating: terrorists already knew we would try to spy on them. They don’t care if we have a warrant or not. But you should.
“Free Speech Zones”
I know it’s old news, but…come on, are they fucking serious?
High-ranking Whistleblowers:
Army Generals. Top-level CIA officials. NSA operatives. White House cabinet members. These are the kind of people that Republicans fantasize about being, and whose judgment they usually respect. But for some reason, when these people resign in protest and criticize the Bush administration en masse, they are cast as traitorous, anti-American publicity hounds. Ridiculous. The fact is, when people who kill, spy and deceive for a living tell you that the White House has gone too far, you had damn well better pay attention. We all know most of these people are staunch Republicans. If the entire military except for the two guys the Pentagon put in front of the press wants Rumsfeld out, why on earth wouldn’t you listen?
The CIA Shakeup
Was Porter Goss fired because he was resisting the efforts of Rumsfeld or Negroponte? No. These appointments all come from the same guys, and they wouldn’t be nominated if they weren’t on board all the way. Goss was probably canned so abruptly due to a scandal involving a crooked defense contractor, his hand-picked third-in-command, the Watergate hotel and some (no doubt spectacular) hookers.
If Bush’s nominee for CIA chief, Air Force General Michael Hayden, is confirmed, that will put every spy program in Washington under military control. Hayden, who oversaw the NSA warrantless wiretapping program and is clearly down with the program. That program? To weaken and dismantle or at least neuter the CIA. Despite its best efforts to blame the CIA for “intelligence errors” leading to the Iraq war, the picture has clearly emerged—through extensive CIA leaks—that the White House’s analysis of Saddam’s destructive capacity was not shared by the Agency. This has proved to be a real pain in the ass for Bush and the gang.
Who’d have thought that career spooks would have moral qualms about deceiving the American people? And what is a president to do about it? Simple: make the critical agents leave, and fill their slots with Bush/Cheney loyalists. Then again, why not simply replace the entire organization? That is essentially what both Rumsfeld at the DoD and newly minted Director of National Intelligence John are doing—they want to move intelligence analysis into the hands of people that they can control, so the next time they lie about an “imminent threat” nobody’s going to tell. And the press is applauding the move as a “necessary reform.”
Remember the good old days, when the CIA were the bad guys?
Kissinger told China communist takeover in Vietnam was acceptable: documents
Kissinger told China communist takeover in Vietnam was acceptable: documents
Calvin Woodward
Canadian Press Saturday, May 27, 2006
WASHINGTON (AP) - Former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger quietly acknowledged to China in 1972 that Washington could accept a communist takeover of South Vietnam if that evolved after a withdrawal of U.S. troops - even as the war to drive back the Communists dragged on with mounting deaths.
The late U.S. president Richard Nixon's envoy told Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai: "If we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina."
Kissinger's blunt remarks surfaced in a collection of papers from his years of diplomacy released Friday by George Washington University's National Security Archive. The collection was gathered from documents available at the U.S. government's National Archives and obtained through the research group's declassification requests.
Kissinger's comments appear to lend credence to the "decent interval" theory posed by some historians who said the United States was prepared to see Communists take over Saigon, as long as that happened long enough after a U.S. troop departure to save face.
But Kissinger cautioned in an interview Friday against reaching easy conclusions from his words of more than three decades ago.
"One of my objectives had to be to get Chinese acquiescence in our policy," he said.
"We succeeded in it and then when we had achieved our goal, our domestic situation made it impossible to sustain it," he said, explaining he meant Watergate and its consequences.
The papers consist of some 2,100 memoranda of Kissinger's secret conversations with senior officials abroad and at home from 1969 to 1977 while he served under presidents Nixon and Gerald Ford as national security adviser, secretary or state and both. The collection contains more than 28,000 pages.
The meeting with Zhou took place in Beijing on June 22, 1972, during stepped-up U.S. bombing and the mining of harbours meant to stall a North Vietnam offensive that began in the spring. China, Vietnam's ally, objected to the U.S. course but was engaged in an historic thaw of relations with Washington.
Kissinger told Zhou the United States respected its Hanoi enemy as a "permanent factor" and probably the "strongest entity" in the region.
"And we have had no interest in destroying it or even defeating it," he insisted.
He complained Hanoi had made one demand in negotiations he could never accept - that the United States force out the Saigon government.
"This isn't because of any particular personal liking for any of the individuals concerned," he said.
"It is because a country cannot be asked to engage in major acts of betrayal as a basis of its foreign policy."
However, Kissinger sketched out scenarios under which Communists might come to power.
While the United States could not make that happen, he said: "If, as a result of historical evolution it should happen over a period of time, if we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina."
Pressed by Zhou, Kissinger further acknowledged a communist takeover by force might be tolerated if it happened long enough after a U.S. withdrawal.
He said if civil war broke out a month after a peace deal led to U.S. withdrawal and an exchange of prisoners, Washington would probably consider that a trick and have to step back in.
"If the North Vietnamese, on the other hand, engage in serious negotiation with the South Vietnamese and if after a longer period it starts again after we were all disengaged, my personal judgment is that it is much less likely that we will go back again, much less likely."
The envoy foresaw saw the possibility of friendly relations with adversaries after a war that, by June 1972, had killed more than 45,000 Americans.
"What has Hanoi done to us that would make it impossible to, say in 10 years, establish a new relationship?"
Almost 2,000 more Americans would be killed in action before the last U.S. combat death in January 1973, the month the Paris Peace Accords officially halted U.S. action, left North Vietnamese in the South and preserved the Saigon government until it fell in April 1975.
Whether by design or circumstance, the United States achieved an interval between its pullout and the loss of South Vietnam but not enough of one to avoid history's judgment that it had suffered defeat.
Kissinger said in the interview he was consistent in trying to separate the military and political outcomes in Vietnam - indeed, a point he made at the time.
"If they agreed to a democratic outcome, we would let it evolve according to its own processes," he said Friday, adding to tolerate a communist rise to power was not to wish for it.
William Burr, senior analyst at the National Security Archive, said the papers are the most extensive published record of Kissinger's work, in many cases offering insight into matters that the diplomat only touched on in his prolific memoirs.
For example, he said Kissinger devoted scant space in one book to his expansive meetings with Zhou on that visit to Beijing, during which the Chinese official said he wished Kissinger could run for president himself.
At the time, Chinese-Soviet tensions were sharp and the United States was playing one communist state against the other, while seeking detente with its main rival, Moscow. Kissinger hinted to Zhou the United States would consider a nuclear response if the Soviets were to overrun Asia with conventional forces.
But when the Japanese separately recognized communist China with what Kissinger called "indecent haste," he branded them "treacherous."
© The Canadian Press 2006
Copyright © 2006 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.
Fallen troops' families split on Bush talk
Fallen troops' families split on Bush talk
By RUSS BYNUM, Associated Press Writer
Fri May 26, 5:24 PM ET It's been 10 months since a roadside bomb in Iraq killed Cathy Brunson's son and three fellow Georgia National Guardsmen — not long enough to heal, she says, and too late to take much comfort in President Bush's admission he's made mistakes in conducting the war.
"No matter what is said or done now, it's not going to bring back the 2,000-plus soldiers that were killed," Brunson of Sylvester, Ga., said Friday, a day after Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair offered sobering acknowledgments of missteps in their handling of Iraq.
Her son, 30-year-old Spc. Jacques "Gus" Brunson, a former prison guard, was among 11 Georgia citizen-soldiers killed over 11 days when the National Guard's 48th Infantry Brigade deployed to Iraq last year.
"For the families who have lost their sons, brothers, husbands, it is kind of late now to acknowledge that 'OK, we did make mistakes,'" said Brunson, who keeps a photo of her son on her desk at the tax assessor's office in south Georgia's rural Worth County.
The admissions by Bush and Blair drew strong, and divided, responses from families of soldiers killed in Iraq. More than 2,460 U.S. service members have died in the war since it began in March 2003.
Blair, calling the violence in Iraq "ghastly," acknowledged underestimating the insurgency's determination. Bush said he regretted some of his "tough talk" — such as saying Osama bin Laden was wanted "dead or alive" and challenging America's enemies to "bring it on."
Some family members criticized Bush for owning up to mistakes only after his poll numbers and public support for the war have reached all-time lows. Others said they forgave the president and continue to support the goal of establishing a stable Iraqi democracy.
Eddie Mae Owens of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., lost her nephew, Sgt. 1st Class Brett Eugene Walden, 40, last August in Iraq when a civilian fuel truck crashed into his Army vehicle. She says she still backs Bush's tough stance.
"I would rather have a president that's tough than trying to placate our enemy," Owens said. "You can always do Monday morning quarterbacking. You can always say you would have done things different if you knew what the outcome would have been."
Arnold Tyrrell, a machine operator in Polo, Ill., said Bush and his allies "are doing the best they can, for better or for worse." Tyrrell's 21-year-old son, Army Pvt. Scott Matthew Tyrrell, died in November 2003 from burns he suffered in Iraq.
"I feel the administration did the best they could with what information they had and they acted on it," Tyrrell said. "They're saying, 'OK, so we're not perfect.' You've got to jump sometimes and look back later."
John Adams of La Mesa, Calif., isn't as forgiving. His 27-year-old son, Navy Lt. Thomas Mullen Adams, was killed in the war's opening days when two Navy helicopters collided.
"There has been a horrific mismanagement of the whole operation" in Iraq, Adams said. "It might be a small step for someone who has demonstrated extreme arrogance to acknowledge there were miscues."
He added: "It's sort of like trying to unring a bell. It can't really be done."
John Prazynski of Fairfield, Ohio, refuses to judge Bush a year after his son, 20-year-old Marine Lance Cpl. Taylor Prazynski, died from shrapnel flung by an exploding mortar shell.
Prazynski has stayed active in support-the-troops efforts since his son's death. He joined Bush and two wounded soldiers on opening day of the Cincinnati Reds' baseball season for pregame ceremonies last month.
"I'm certainly not going to pass judgment," Prazynski said. "If you say, 'Oh, gosh, now it's hard, let's quit,' that would make us losers."
Celeste Zappala of Philadelphia has become a peace activist since her 30-year-old son, Army Sgt. Sherwood Baker, was killed by an explosion in Baghdad while deployed with the Pennsylvania National Guard.
She said she was pleased to hear Bush sounding "somewhat contrite."
"But I can't help but remember all the arrogance that has come before this day," said Zappala, who attended another soldier's funeral this week at Arlington National Cemetery. "I'm still really appalled that (Donald) Rumsfeld is still the secretary of defense. How many mistakes do you have to make before you step aside?"
The Rev. Marc Unger of Exeter Baptist Church in Exeter, Calif., mourned the second anniversary Thursday of the rocket attack that killed his son, 19-year-old Army Spec. Daniel Unger. They had been exceptionally close, playing together on the church band, ministering to inmates at the local juvenile hall, and even practicing karate — both were black belts.
Despite his grief, Unger remains as supportive of the war, and of the president, as his son was when he died.
"Bush is a good president, a good man trying to do the right thing," Unger said. "He really cares. He has our absolute support."
Carol McKeever of Buffalo, N.Y., supported the war early on, but now she says Bush made a huge error by not pulling out of Iraq after Saddam Hussein's capture. It's a mistake, she says, that cost her 25-year-old son his life. Army Sgt. David McKeever was weeks away from returning to his wife and baby son when he was killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in Baghdad.
"If he (Bush) acknowledged that he made mistakes, well then that's a good thing. Better late than never, as long as they learn from it," McKeever said. "I mean, everybody makes mistakes but these are costly ones. These are really costly ones."
___
Associated Press writers contributing to this story were Dan Sewell in Cincinnati; Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, N.Y.; Maryclaire Dale in Philadelphia; Tara Burghart in Chicago; Greg Risling in Los Angeles; Melissa Nelson in Pensacola, Fla; and Juliana Barbassa in Fresno, Calif.
Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Virginity or Death!
subject to debate posted May 12, 2005 (May 30, 2005 issue)
Virginity or Death!
Katha PollittImagine a vaccine that would protect women from a serious gynecological cancer. Wouldn't that be great? Well, both Merck and GlaxoSmithKline recently announced that they have conducted successful trials of vaccines that protect against the human papilloma virus. HPV is not only an incredibly widespread sexually transmitted infection but is responsible for at least 70 percent of cases of cervical cancer, which is diagnosed in 10,000 American women a year and kills 4,000. Wonderful, you are probably thinking, all we need to do is vaccinate girls (and boys too for good measure) before they become sexually active, around puberty, and HPV--and, in thirty or forty years, seven in ten cases of cervical cancer--goes poof. Not so fast: We're living in God's country now. The Christian right doesn't like the sound of this vaccine at all. "Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful," Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council told the British magazine New Scientist, "because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex." Raise your hand if you think that what is keeping girls virgins now is the threat of getting cervical cancer when they are 60 from a disease they've probably never heard of.
I remember when people rolled their eyeballs if you suggested that opposition to abortion was less about "life" than about sex, especially sex for women. You have to admit that thesis is looking pretty solid these days. No matter what the consequences of sex--pregnancy, disease, death--abstinence for singles is the only answer. Just as it's better for gays to get AIDS than use condoms, it's better for a woman to get cancer than have sex before marriage. It's honor killing on the installment plan.
Christian conservatives have a special reason to be less than thrilled about the HPV vaccine. Although not as famous as chlamydia or herpes, HPV has the distinction of not being preventable by condoms. It's Exhibit A in those gory high school slide shows that try to scare kids away from sex, and it is also useful for undermining the case for rubbers generally--why bother when you could get HPV anyway? In 2000, Congressman (now Senator) Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who used to give gruesome lectures on HPV for young Congressional aides, even used HPV to propose warning labels on condoms. With HPV potentially eliminated, the antisex brigade will lose a card it has regarded as a trump unless it can persuade parents that vaccinating their daughters will turn them into tramps, and that sex today is worse than cancer tomorrow. According to New Scientist, 80 percent of parents want the vaccine for their daughters--but their priests and pastors haven't worked them over yet.
What is it with these right-wing Christians? Faced with a choice between sex and death, they choose death every time. No sex ed or contraception for teens, no sex for the unwed, no condoms for gays, no abortion for anyone--even for that poor 13-year-old pregnant girl in a group home in Florida. I would really like to hear the persuasive argument that this middle-schooler with no home and no family would have been better off giving birth against her will, and that the State of Florida, which totally failed to keep her safe, should have been allowed, against its own laws, to compel this child to bear a child. She was too young to have sex, too young to know her own mind about abortion--but not too young to be forced onto the delivery table for one of the most painful experiences human beings endure, in which the risk of death for her was three times as great as in abortion. Ah, Christian compassion! Christian sadism, more likely. It was the courts that showed humanity when they let the girl terminate her pregnancy.
As they flex their political muscle, right-wing Christians increasingly reveal their condescending view of women as moral children who need to be kept in line sexually by fear. That's why antichoicers will never answer the call of prochoicers to join them in reducing abortions by making birth control more widely available: They want it to be less available. Their real interest goes way beyond protecting fetuses--it's in keeping sex tied to reproduction to keep women in their place. If preventing abortion was what they cared about, they'd be giving birth control and emergency contraception away on street corners instead of supporting pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions and hospitals that don't tell rape victims about the existence of EC. David Hager (see Ayelish McGarvey's stunning exposé, and keep in mind that unlike godless me she is a churchgoing evangelical Christian) would never use his position with the FDA to impose his personal views of sexual morality on women in crisis. Instead of blocking nonprescription status for emergency contraception on the specious grounds that it will encourage teen promiscuity, he would take note of the six studies, three including teens, that show no relation between sexual activity and access to EC. He would be calling the loudest for Plan B to be stocked with the toothpaste in every drugstore in the land. How sexist is denial of Plan B? Antichoicers may pooh-pooh the effectiveness of condoms, but they aren't calling to restrict their sale in order to keep boys chaste.
While the FDA dithers, the case against selling EC over the counter weakens by the day. Besides the now exploded argument that it will let teens run wild, opponents argue that it prevents implantation of a fertilized egg--which would make it an "abortifacient" if you believe that pregnancy begins when sperm and egg unite. However, new research by the Population Council shows that EC doesn't work by blocking implantation; it only prevents ovulation. True, it's not possible to say it never blocks implantation, James Trussell, director of the Office of Population Research at Princeton, told me, and to antichoice hard-liners once in a thousand times is enough. But then, many things can block implantation, including breast-feeding. Are the reverends going to come out for formula-feeding now?
"It all comes down to the evils of sex," says Trussell. "That's an ideological position impervious to empirical evidence."
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Lay, Skilling convicted in Enron collapse
Lay, Skilling convicted in Enron collapse
By KRISTEN HAYS, AP Business Writer
1 hour, 56 minutes ago HOUSTON - Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were known as visionaries, hands-on executives, corporate titans directing the high-flying ship at Wall Street darling Enron Corp. Add another title: convicted felons.
"Certainly we're surprised," a shaken Lay said Thursday after a jury capped a four-month-long fraud and conspiracy trial and in its sixth day of deliberations returned guilty verdicts against him and Skilling. "I think it's more appropriate to say we're shocked. This is not the outcome we expected."
Besides all six counts in the main trial, Lay, Enron's founder, also was convicted of four charges of bank fraud and making false statements to banks in a separate non-jury trial before U.S. District Judge Sim Lake related to his personal finances.
Skilling was convicted of 19 counts of fraud, conspiracy and insider trading at a trial spawned by one of the biggest business scandals in U.S. history, the toppling of a high-profile energy trader that once was the nation's seventh-largest company.
"Obviously, I'm disappointed," the former Enron chief executive said. "But that's the way the system works."
Lake set Sept. 11 as sentencing date for Skilling and Lay. Legal experts, while not questioning the pair eventually would be spending time behind bars, predicted another fierce courtroom battle over the duration of their likely prison time.
Skilling faces a maximum of 185 years in prison. For Lay, the fraud and conspiracy convictions carry a combined maximum punishment of 45 years. The bank fraud case adds 120 years, 30 years on each of the four counts.
While the reality is the sentences will be considerably less under federal sentencing guidelines, for Lay, 64, a likely double-digit term could be the equivalent of a life sentence, said Kirby Behre, a former federal prosecutor in Washington who wrote the government's white-collar sentencing guide.
"They're both facing 20-plus years," he said. "You do 20 years, and that's entirely conceivable, you're looking at life. And people don't age well in prison.
"Lay may catch a break, but Skilling doesn't have that. He's looking well north of 20 years."
"They'll each be in a prison uniform," agreed Douglas Young, a San Francisco-based white collar defense lawyer who's followed the case. "But I don't think 100 years or 50 years."
Whatever their incarceration, he said, it could be stalled for a year or more.
"They have excellent defense lawyers," Young said. "I think they performed extremely well. They tried a heck of a good case. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. That same quality is going to go into post-trial motions, advocacy motions.
"Expect the same level of intensity."
The common practice will be for lawyers to ask the judge to allow them to self report, giving them time to get their affairs in order and show up on their own.
"Whether the judge lets them depends on the strength of post-trial motions," Young said.
He said one avenue for appeal could be Lake's instruction to jurors that Lay and Skilling could be found guilty even if they did not know about the fraud if the facts showed they should have known and were willfully ignorant of it.
"Chances are very slight," Behre said of appellate success. "You need a total screwup and that would have been something you heard about, some outrage from the trial.
"Nothing has jumped out from what I've seen that would make it appear there's some very good appellate issues."
Jurors found the men, who received tens of millions in pay and stock options, repeatedly lied to cover up accounting tricks and business failures that led to the company's 2001 demise. The collapse wiped out more than $60 billion in market value, almost $2.1 billion in pension plans and 5,600 jobs.
The conspiracy conviction was a major win for the government, serving almost as a bookend to an era that has seen prosecutors win convictions against executives from WorldCom Inc. to Adelphia Communications Corp. and homemaking maven Martha Stewart. The public outrage over the string of corporate scandals led Congress to pass the Sarbanes-Oxley act, designed to make company executives more accountable.
"There's a lot of losers in this," Kathy Harrison, one of the Lay-Skilling jurors said. "There was obviously a winning side but there's too much hurt here."
She said she hoped companies would look at the verdict and "be more aware."
"They must be more conscientious in all the endeavors they carry out," she said.
"I did have admiration for both men, just what they accomplished in their careers," another juror, Wendy Vaughan, said. "It was sad to see that at end it wasn't accomplished in a respectful manner, having to hurt so many people to get there."
She worried, however, whether the panel's verdict and justice will "really prevail or will the almighty dollar be the winner again."
The pair's sentencing will come five years almost to the day after Skilling sold 500,000 shares of Enron stock for $15.5 million, for which he was convicted of insider trading. He was acquitted on the remaining nine insider trading charges.
Skilling remains free on $5 million bond, which restricts him to the continental U.S. Lay, whose friendship decades earlier with the family of former President George H.W. Bush earned him the nickname Kenny Boy from the future President George W. Bush, surrendered his passport and posted a $5 million bond secured with property at a hearing following Thursday's verdict.
The Enron founder also was ordered to stay in the Southern District of Texas or Colorado.
The government's victory caps a 4 1/2-year investigation that resulted in 16 guilty pleas from ex-Enron executives, including former Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow and former Chief Accounting Officer Richard Causey.
All are awaiting sentencing later this year except for two, who either finished or are still serving prison terms.
"You can't lie to shareholders, you can't put yourselves in front of your employees' interests," prosecutor Sean Berkowitz said outside the courthouse. "No matter how rich and powerful you are, you have to play by the rules."
___
AP Business Writer Kristen Hays and National Writer Erin McClam contributed to this report.
Cheney could be witness in CIA leak case
Cheney could be witness in CIA leak case
Thu May 25, 2006 01:31 AM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney could be called to testify in the CIA leak case involving his former chief of staff, a U.S. prosecutor said in a pre-trial filing made on Wednesday.
Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald told a federal court that Cheney's hand-written notes on a newspaper article referring to Valerie Plame shortly before she was exposed as a CIA operative were uniquely relevant to the issues in the case.
Fitzgerald was referring to a July 6, 2003, article written by Plame's husband, Bush administration critic and former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Shortly after the article appeared, Plame's identity as a covert CIA operative was leaked to journalists. Fitzgerald is investigating whether Bush administration officials broke the law by disclosing Plame's identity.
"At the time, the vice president, rather than other potential witnesses, was upset that his personal credibility had been attacked unfairly in his view," Fitzgerald said.
Cheney's former aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby was charged with obstruction of justice and lying to FBI agents and a grand jury during the investigation. He has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to go to trial in January.
Fitzgerald said understanding what conversations took place between Cheney and Libby in the week after Wilson's opinion piece was published was critical to determining whether Libby thought it was necessary or appropriate to disclose Wilson's wife's CIA status with reporters.
A spokesperson for Cheney was not immediately available for comment.
Cheney, whose name has surfaced in other court documents as well, told the Fox News Channel in February that he may be called as a witness in the case.
In the court filing, Fitzgerald said Libby has acknowledged that he and the vice president discussed Wilson's article.
"Here as defendant has acknowledged, the vice president communicated to defendant the facts he considered notable, and also directed defendant to get out to the public 'all' the facts in response to the Wilson Op Ed," Fitzgerald wrote in the court filing.
"The state of mind of the vice president as communicated to defendant is directly relevant to the issue of whether defendant knowingly made false statements to federal agents and the grand jury regarding when and how he learned about Ms. Wilson's employment and what he said to reporters regarding this issue," Fitzgerald said in the court filing.
However, Fitzgerald noted that the government has not commented on whether it intends to call Cheney as a witness.
© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.
Leave spy judgements to government: officials
Leave spy judgements to government: officials
Thu May 25, 2006 02:51 AM ET By Adam Tanner
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The United States government, not any court, is the best judge of whether to keep programs such as its controversial effort to eavesdrop on citizens a secret, an assistant attorney general said on Wednesday.
Peter Keisler, an assistant attorney general, and other U.S. officials made the claim in the latest filing to a lawsuit alleging that telecommunications firm AT&T illegally allowed the government to monitor phone conversations and e-mail communications.
"In cases such as this one, where the national security of the United States is implicated, it is well established that the executive branch is best positioned to judge the potential effects of disclosure of sensitive information on the nation's security," they wrote in a filing on Wednesday evening.
"Indeed, the Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that courts are ill-equipped as an institution to judge harm to national security."
The privacy rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation says the program allows the government to eavesdrop on phone calls and read e-mails of millions of Americans without obtaining warrants. The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction that would order the government to stop the program.
President George W. Bush has acknowledged a domestic spying program under which the National Security Agency, without court warrants, has listened to international calls and monitored e-mails by U.S. citizens if one party was thought to be linked to terrorism.
The U.S. government is asking a federal court in San Francisco to dismiss the case. The judge will review the motion on June 23.
U.S. officials are asking federal Judge Vaughn Walker to review classified materials they say bolster their case that U.S. national security is at stake. Under that proposal, the plaintiffs would not have access to those materials and thus could not directly argue against them.
"The Court should consider the materials submitted by the United States in support of its assertion of the state secrets privilege in order to fully understand and avoid the dangers that would result from any such litigation," the filing said.
"In sum, the Court has the inherent authority to consider classified information in camera and ex parte without violating plaintiffs' right to due process."
In a court filing on Monday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said their right to legal due process would be jeopardized if the judge alone reviewed the classified documents offered by the government.
"Unless a party can see and respond to evidence submitted against it, the Court's impartiality is jeopardized," they wrote. "Ex parte proceedings that limit a party's ability to participate in hearings, and to consider and even attempt to refute the government's evidence, violate the very spirit of due process."
© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.
FCC refuses to investigate NSA collection of phone records
FCC refuses to investigate NSA collection of phone records
By Colin Gibbs
May 24, 2006
WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission said it will not investigate whether telephone companies violated consumer-privacy laws by reportedly releasing millions of phone records to a U.S. spy agency.
In a letter released Tuesday, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said an inability to obtain classified material would prevent the agency from looking into a newspaper report that AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. handed over call records to the National Security Agency.
“The classified nature of the NSA’s activities makes us unable to investigate the alleged violations,” Martin said. “The commission has no power to order the production of classified information.”
Martin’s letter came in response to a request from Rep. Edward Markey, (D-Mass.), to look into a USA Today report that the three telecom companies handed over call records to the spy agency. Verizon and BellSouth denied turning over the records, and BellSouth has demanded the newspaper retract the story.
The FCC can fine phone companies more than $1 million for violating the 1934 Communications Act, which requires carriers to protect customer confidentiality unless the disclosure is in response to a court order or is approved by the consumer. Earlier this year, the FCC proposed fining AT&T and Alltel Corp. $100,000 each after private companies were found to be selling phone records over the Internet.
Martin’s refusal drew a pointed rebuke from Markey, who called for congressional intervention.
“The FCC… has taken a pass at investigating what is estimated to be the nation’s largest violation of consumer privacy ever to occur,” Markey said in a prepared statement. “If the FCC initiates an investigation and gets blocked by the White House, then the White House is stonewalling. But if the FCC refuses to even demand answers, then the White House never has to block the enforcement agency from getting to the bottom of this.”
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House speaker protests to Bush over raid
House speaker protests to Bush over raid
By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer
Tue May 23, 11:05 PM ET House Speaker Dennis Hastert complained directly to President Bush on Tuesday about the FBI's unprecedented raid on Rep. William Jefferson (news, bio, voting record)'s office, while officials said senior Democrats worked to ease the Louisiana lawmaker out of a powerful committee assignment, at least temporarily.
"My opinion is that they took the wrong path," Hastert, R-Ill., told reporters after meeting with Bush in the White House. "They need to back up, and we need to go from there."
White House officials said they didn't learn of the search of Rep. William Jefferson's office on Saturday night and Sunday until after it happened. They pledged to work with the Justice Department to soothe lawmakers' anger.
"We are hoping that there's a way to balance the constitutional concerns of the House of Representatives with the law enforcement obligations of the executive branch," said White House press secretary Tony Snow. "Obviously we are taking note of Speaker Hastert's statements."
FBI agents raided Jefferson's office over the weekend, and issued an affidavit saying they had earlier discovered $90,000 in cash wrapped and stashed in the freezer of his home.
Jefferson has not been indicted and has denied wrongdoing. But his predicament spread concern through the upper echelons of Republicans and Democrats in both houses.
House Democrats especially reacted quickly, in keeping with their election-year vow to campaign against what they call a Republican "culture of corruption."
Officials said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had discussed Jefferson's situation with several fellow senior lawmakers and there was a consensus that he should step aside, preferably voluntarily, at least until his legal situation was clarified. It was not clear whether she or an emissary had approached Jefferson. The officials who described the developments did so on condition of anonymity, citing the delicacy of the situation.
Pelosi had no immediate comment on Jefferson's situation.
Jefferson is a member of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, with jurisdiction over taxes, trade, Medicare and more.
Jefferson remained defiant late Tuesday.
"I will not give up a committee assignment that is so vital to New Orleans at this crucial time for any uncertain, long-term political strategy," Jefferson said in a statement. "If asked, I would respectfully decline."
His spokeswoman, Melanie Roussell, added that Jefferson will not resign from Congress.
Pelosi moved aggressively recently when questions were raised about financial dealings of Rep. Alan Mollohan (news, bio, voting record). The West Virginian quickly announced that he was voluntarily stepping aside as the senior Democrat on the ethics committee.
Whatever Jefferson's fate, the weekend raid stirred bipartisan expressions of concern.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales tried to strike a conciliatory tone, saying, "We have a great deal of respect for the Congress as a coequal branch of government." But he also defended the search: "We have an obligation to the American people to pursue the evidence where it exists."
Justice Department officials said the decision to search Jefferson's office was made in part because he refused to comply with a subpoena for documents last summer. Jefferson reported the subpoena to the House on Sept. 15, 2005.
Historians said the search, carried out on a warrant issued last Thursday by U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan in Washington, is the first in the 219-year history of the Congress.
The House and Senate Judiciary committees were looking at the ramifications of Hogan's action, but their respective chairmen, Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., and Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., both declined to comment Tuesday.
House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, also sharply criticized the search, telling reporters that Hastert's aides are reviewing several responses, including legal options.
"I've got to believe at the end of the day it's going to end up across the street at the Supreme Court," said Boehner. "I don't see anything short of that."
Across the Capitol, Senate Rules Committee Chairman Trent Lott, R-Miss., said he had asked aides to research the law, history and Senate procedure and find out whether and how any such searches might be conducted.
The search has aggravated already chafed relations between Congress and the White House over complaints by members in both parties about the Bush administration's use of executive power. Specter personally told Bush in April following disclosures about secret, warrantless eavesdropping "that the president doesn't have a blank check."
Top Democrats stood with Republicans in their protest of the FBI search's search of a congressman's office.
"No member is above the law, but the institution has a right to protect itself against the executive department going into our offices," said House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland.
For all the tough talk, lawmakers tread a thin, election-year line at a time when public opinion of Congress is sagging and lawmakers of both parties are ensnared in ethics or criminal investigations.
"When people commit crimes, they should be prosecuted, whether that person is a member of Congress or driving a cab or a lawyer some place," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "From the little bit that I know about it now, I'm not going to beat up on the FBI."
___
Associated Press writers David Espo and Mark Sherman contributed to this story.
Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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Bush Snubs Gore Film on Global Warming
Bush Snubs Gore Film on Global Warming
By TERENCE HUNT,
AP White House Correspondent
Mon May 22, 9:51 PM ET WASHINGTON - Is President Bush likely to see Al Gore's documentary about global warming?
"Doubt it," Bush said coolly Monday.
But Bush should watch it, Gore shot back. In fact, the former Democratic vice president offered to come to the White House any time, any day to show Bush either his documentary or a slide show on global warming that he's shown more than 1,000 times around the world.
"The entire global scientific community has a consensus on the question that human beings are responsible for global warming and he has today again expressed personal doubt that that is true," Gore said in an Associated Press interview from France where he attended the Cannes Film Festival.
Bush and Gore have had bitter disagreements about the environment and other issues. Bush defeated Gore in a disputed presidential election that was finally settled by the Supreme Court in 2000.
Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," chronicles his efforts to bring greater attention to the dangers of climate change.
"New technologies will change how we live and how we drive our cars, which all will have the beneficial effect of improving the environment," Bush said. "And in my judgment we need to set aside whether or not greenhouse gases have been caused by mankind or because of natural effects and focus on the technologies that will enable us to live better lives and at the same time protect the environment."
Gore said the causes of global warming should not be ignored.
"Why should we set aside the global scientific consensus," Gore said, his voice rising with emotion. "Is it because Exxon Mobil wants us to set it aside? Why should we set aside the conclusion of scientists in the United States, including the National Academy of Sciences, and around the world including the 11 most important national academies of science on the globe and substitute for their view the view of Exxon Mobil. Why?"
"I'm a grandfather and he's a father and this should not be a political issue," Gore said. "And he should ask the National Academy of Sciences ... whether or not human beings are contributing to global warming."
The White House said Bush already has acknowledged the impact of human behavior on global warming.
"The president noted in 2001 the increase in temperatures over the past 100 years and that the increase in greenhouse gases was due to certain extent to human activity," said White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino.
"Since then he has committed tens of billions of dollars to the science and technology programs that he initiated and we are well on our way to meeting the president's goal of reducing greenhouse intensity by 18 percent by 2012," she said.
Gore's movie debuted at last winter's Sundance Film Festival and opens in U.S. theaters Wednesday.
Thieves Steal Personal Data of 26.5M Vets
Thieves Steal Personal Data of 26.5M Vets
By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer Thieves took sensitive personal information on 26.5 million U.S. veterans, including Social Security numbers and birth dates, after a Veterans Affairs employee improperly brought the material home, the government said Monday.
The information involved mainly those veterans who served and have been discharged since 1975, said VA Secretary Jim Nicholson. Data of veterans discharged before 1975 who submitted claims to the agency may have been included.
Nicholson said there was no evidence the thieves had used the data for identity theft, and an investigation was continuing.
"It's highly probable that they do not know what they have," he said in a briefing with reporters. "We have decided that we must exercise an abundance of caution and make sure our veterans are aware of this incident."
Veterans advocates expressed alarm.
"This was a very serious breach of security for American veterans and their families," said Bob Wallace, executive director of Veterans of Foreign Wars. "We want the VA to show leadership, management and accountability for this breach."
Ramona Joyce, spokeswoman for the American Legion, agreed that the theft was a concern. "In the information age, we're constantly told to protect our information. We would ask no less of the VA," she said.
Nicholson declined to comment on the specifics of the incident, which involved a midlevel data analyst who had taken the information home to suburban Maryland on a laptop to work on a department project.
The residential community had been a target of a series of burglaries when the employee was victimized earlier this month, according to the FBI in Baltimore. Local law enforcement and the VA inspector general were also investigating.
"I want to emphasize there was no medical records of any veteran and no financial information of any veteran that's been compromised," Nicholson said, although he added later that some information on the veterans' disabilities may have been taken.
Nicholson said he does not know how many of the department's 235,000 employees go thorough background investigations. He said employees who have access to large volumes of personal data should be required to undergo such checks, but he does not believe the VA employee was involved in the theft.
"We do not suspect at all any ulterior motive," he said.
The department has come under criticism for shoddy accounting practices and for falling short on the needs of veterans.
Last year, more than 260,000 veterans could not sign up for services because of cost-cutting. Audits also have shown the agency used misleading accounting methods and lacked documentation to prove its claimed savings.
"It is a mystifying and gravely serious concern that a VA data analyst would be permitted to just walk out the VA door with such information," Illinois Rep. Lane Evans (news, bio, voting record), the top Democrat on the Veterans Affairs Committee, said in a statement signed by other Democrats on the panel.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who is a Vietnam veteran, said he would introduce legislation to require the VA to provide credit reports to the veterans affected by the theft.
"This is no way to treat those who have worn the uniform of our country," Kerry said. "Someone needs to be fired."
The VA said it was notifying members of Congress and the individual veterans about the burglary. It has set up a call center at 1-800-FED-INFO and Web site, http://www.firstgov.gov, for veterans who believe their information has been misused.
It also is stepping up its review of procedures on the use of personal data for many of its employees who telecommute as well as others who must sign disclosure forms showing they are aware of federal privacy laws and the consequences if they're violated.
Deborah Platt Majoras, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, said her task force has reached out to the three major credit bureaus to be alert to possible misuse.
___
On the Net:
Information for veterans suspecting identity theft:
http://www.firstgov.gov or 1-800-FED-INFO
Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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Mexico works to bar non-natives from jobs
May 21, 4:25 PM EDT
Mexico works to bar non-natives from jobs By MARK STEVENSON
Associated Press Writer
AP Photo/JENNIFER SZYMASZEK
MEXICO CITY (AP) -- If Arnold Schwarzenegger had migrated to Mexico instead of the United States, he couldn't be a governor. If Argentina native Sergio Villanueva, firefighter hero of the Sept. 11 attacks, had moved to Tecate instead of New York, he wouldn't have been allowed on the force.
Even as Mexico presses the United States to grant unrestricted citizenship to millions of undocumented Mexican migrants, its officials at times calling U.S. policies "xenophobic," Mexico places daunting limitations on anyone born outside its territory.
In the United States, only two posts - the presidency and vice presidency - are reserved for the native born.
In Mexico, non-natives are banned from those and thousands of other jobs, even if they are legal, naturalized citizens.
Foreign-born Mexicans can't hold seats in either house of the congress. They're also banned from state legislatures, the Supreme Court and all governorships. Many states ban foreign-born Mexicans from spots on town councils. And Mexico's Constitution reserves almost all federal posts, and any position in the military and merchant marine, for "native-born Mexicans."
Recently the Mexican government has gone even further. Since at least 2003, it has encouraged cities to ban non-natives from such local jobs as firefighters, police and judges.
Mexico's Interior Department - which recommended the bans as part of "model" city statutes it distributed to local officials - could cite no basis for extending the bans to local posts.
After being contacted by The Associated Press about the issue, officials changed the wording in two statutes to delete the "native-born" requirements, although they said the modifications had nothing to do with AP's inquiries.
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"These statutes have been under review for some time, and they have, or are about to be, changed," said an Interior Department official, who was not authorized to be quoted by name.
But because the "model" statues are fill-in-the-blanks guides for framing local legislation, many cities across Mexico have already enacted such bans. They have done so even though foreigners constitute a tiny percentage of the population and pose little threat to Mexico's job market.
The foreign-born make up just 0.5 percent of Mexico's 105 million people, compared with about 13 percent in the United States, which has a total population of 299 million. Mexico grants citizenship to about 3,000 people a year, compared to the U.S. average of almost a half million.
"There is a need for a little more openness, both at the policy level and in business affairs," said David Kim, president of the Mexico-Korea Association, which represents the estimated 20,000 South Koreans in Mexico, many of them naturalized citizens.
"The immigration laws are very difficult ... and they put obstacles in the way that make it more difficult to compete," Kim said, although most foreigners don't come to Mexico seeking government posts.
J. Michael Waller, of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, was more blunt. "If American policy-makers are looking for legal models on which to base new laws restricting immigration and expelling foreign lawbreakers, they have a handy guide: the Mexican constitution," he said in a recent article on immigration.
Some Mexicans agree their country needs to change.
"This country needs to be more open," said Francisco Hidalgo, a 50-year-old video producer. "In part to modernize itself, and in part because of the contribution these (foreign-born) people could make."
Others express a more common view, a distrust of foreigners that academics say is rooted in Mexico's history of foreign invasions and the loss of territory in the 1847-48 Mexican-American War.
Speaking of the hundreds of thousands of Central Americans who enter Mexico each year, chauffeur Arnulfo Hernandez, 57, said: "The ones who want to reach the United States, we should send them up there. But the ones who want to stay here, it's usually for bad reasons, because they want to steal or do drugs."
Some say progress is being made. Mexico's president no longer is required to be at least a second-generation native-born. That law was changed in 1999 to clear the way for candidates who have one foreign-born parent, like President Vicente Fox, whose mother is from Spain.
But the pace of change is slow. The state of Baja California still requires candidates for the state legislature to prove both their parents were native born.
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Taxes triple on teenagers' savings funds for college
Taxes triple on teenagers' savings funds for college
Despite his pledge, Bush plan raises rate
David Cay Johnston, New York Times Sunday, May 21, 2006
The $69 billion tax cut bill that President Bush signed last week triples tax rates for teenagers with college savings funds, despite Bush's 1999 pledge to veto any tax increase.
Under the new law, teenagers age 14 to 17 with investment income will now be taxed at the same rate as their parents, not at their own rates. Long-term capital gains and dividends that had been taxed at 5 percent will be taxed at 15 percent. Interest that had been taxed at 10 percent will be taxed at as much as 35 percent.
The increases, which are retroactive to the first day of the year, are expected to generate nearly $2.2 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, which issues the official estimates.
Overall, the tax bill that Bush signed Wednesday reduces taxes by $69 billion.
In 1999, Bush pledged to veto any bill that raised taxes. In response to a question about the tax increase on teenagers in the new legislation, the White House issued a statement Friday that made no reference to the tax increase, but recounted the tax cuts the administration has sponsored and stated that Bush had "reduced taxes on all people who pay income taxes."
Challenged on that point, the White House modified its statement 21 minutes later to say that Bush had "reduced taxes on virtually all people who pay income taxes."
The deputy White House press secretary, Kenneth Lisaius, declined to discuss the reasons Bush broke his pledge or anything else beyond the modified statement, which emphasized the $880 billion in tax reductions from tax laws Bush signed in 2001 and 2003.
Americans for Tax Reform, an influential lobbying group that seeks to reduce taxes, has led the drive to press politicians to pledge no new taxes. The pledge has been signed by 256 members of the House and the Senate, nearly all of them Republicans, and by thousands of candidates for state and local offices.
The pledge commits signers to "oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal tax rates for individuals and businesses." Bush went beyond the pledge when he was seeking the Republican presidential nomination seven years ago.
"If elected president, I will oppose and veto any increase in individual or corporate marginal income tax rates or individual or corporate income tax hikes," he wrote in June 1999 to Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.
Norquist, in an interview Thursday, said he was unaware the bill raised taxes and tax rates on teenagers with college savings funds, because "no one here noticed" the provisions.
However, he called the bill raising taxes on teenagers with investment income "a technical violation of the pledge" and noted that his group opposes all retroactive tax increases. He pledged to immediately begin a campaign to have the tax increases rescinded.
Some Iraq war vets go homeless after return to US
Some Iraq war vets go homeless after return to US
Fri May 19, 2006 2:44 PM ET
By Daniel Trotta
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The nightmare of Iraq was bad enough for Vanessa Gamboa. Unprepared for combat beyond her basic training, the supply specialist soon found herself in a firefight, commanding a handful of clerks.
"They promoted me to sergeant. I knew my job but I didn't know anything about combat. So I'm responsible for all these people and I don't know what to tell them but to duck," Gamboa said.
The battle, on a supply delivery run, ended without casualties, and it did little to steel Gamboa for what awaited her back home in Brooklyn.
When the single mother was discharged in April, after her second tour in Iraq, she was 24 and had little money and no place to live. She slept in her son's day-care center.
Gamboa is part of a small but growing trend among U.S. veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars -- homelessness.
On any given night the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) helps 200 to 250 of them, and more go uncounted. They are among nearly 200,000 homeless veterans in America, largely from the Vietnam War.
Advocates say the number of homeless veterans is certain to grow, just as it did in the years following the Vietnam and Gulf wars, as a consequence of the stresses of war and inadequate job training.
Homeless veterans have remained in the shadows of the national debate about Iraq, although the issue may gain traction from the film "When I Came Home," which won an award this month for best New York-made documentary at the city's Tribeca Film Festival.
The documentary tells the story of Iraq war veteran Herold Noel as he lived in his car. It will get a screening in June at the U.S. Capitol in Washington.
U.S. Rep. Bob Filner, a California Democrat, calls it a "national disgrace" that homelessness among veterans has not been solved and held an informal hearing on Thursday to highlight the issue.
"We've seen the same thing with Agent Orange and Gulf War syndrome," Filner said of ailments from prior wars. "The bureaucracy is denying that there's anything wrong. First it's deny, deny, deny. Then they admit it's a small problem. And later they admit it's a widespread problem.
"We're not talking about a lot of money (to solve the problem) compared with overall spending on the war in Iraq. We're spending a billion dollars every two and a half days," he told Reuters.
DISCHARGED AND FORGOTTEN
One theme of the documentary is that veterans who risked their lives in war are too easily discarded by society once they are out of the military. The film shows Noel being denied housing by New York City's housing agency.
Gamboa had a similar experience.
"They put me in this roach-infested hotel. I was there for 10 days," Gamboa said. "Then they said I wasn't eligible to stay in a shelter because I could stay with my sister, who lives in a studio apartment with her husband. And I haven't spoken to her in six years."
Now her luck is improving.
Unlike many low-ranking soldiers, Gamboa received army training with civilian applications -- logistics -- and started a job with a fancy Fifth Avenue clothing store this week.
And despite an Army snafu that nearly denied her U.S. citizenship, the Guatemalan-born Gamboa, who moved to Brooklyn as a child, took her oath before the U.S. flag on Friday.
Military recruiters target poor neighborhoods like Gamboa's Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Young adults with few job skills join the Army. When they get out, many have fallen behind their contemporaries, experts say.
The stresses of combat and military life contribute to post traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse and mental illness, which are especially taboo subjects to soldiers trained not to admit failure easily.
About half of all homeless veterans suffer from mental illness, and more than two-thirds suffer from alcohol or drug abuse problems, the VA says.
Gamboa has avoided those pitfalls, but female veterans are three times more likely to become homeless than women in the general population, the American Journal of Public Health reported.
Repeated deployments -- a hallmark of the Iraq war -- and separation from family can also portend future problems.
"Then the downward spiral begins with substance abuse and problems with the law," said Amy Fairweather of Iraq Veteran, which helps war veterans in San Francisco.
"If you wanted to put together all the repercussions that put people at risk for homelessness, you couldn't do better than the Iraq war."
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Couple Arrested For Asking For Directions
Couple Arrested For Asking For Directions
POSTED: 7:23 am EDT May 17, 2006
UPDATED: 10:52 am EDT May 17, 2006 BALTIMORE -- Baltimore City police arrested a Virginia couple over the weekend after they asked an officer for directions.
WBAL-TV 11 News I-Team reporter David Collins said Joshua Kelly and Llara Brook, of Chantilly, Va., got lost leaving an Orioles game on Saturday. Collins reported a city officer arrested them for trespassing on a public street while they were asking for directions .
"In jail for eight hours -- sleeping on a concrete floor next to a toilet," Kelly said.
"It was a nightmare," Brook said. "I was in there thinking I was just dreaming and waiting to wake up."
Collins reported it was a nightmare ending to a nearly perfect day. He said the couple went to a company picnic and watched the Orioles beat Kansas City. It was their first trip to Camden Yards and asked two people for directions to Interstate 95 South when they left.
Collins said somehow they ended up in the Cherry Hill section of south Baltimore. Hopelessly lost, relief melted away concerns after they spotted a police vehicle.
"I said, 'Thank goodness, could you please get us to 95?" Kelly said.
"The first thing that she said to us was no -- you just ran that stop sign, pull over," Brook said. "It wasn't a big deal. We'll pay the stop sign violation, but can we have directions?"
"What she said was 'You found your own way in here, you can find your own way out.'" Kelly said.
Collins said the couple spotted another police vehicle and flagged that officer down for directions. But Officer Natalie Preston, a six-year veteran of the force, intervened.
"That really threw us for a loop when she stepped in between our cars," Kelly said. "(She) said my partner is not going to step in front of me and tell you directions if I'm not."
Collins reported the circumstances got worse. Kelly pulled 40 feet forward parking next to a curb and put his flashers on while Brook was on the phone to her father hoping he could help her with directions. Both her parents are police officers in the Harrisburg, Pa., area.
"(Brook's father) was in the middle of giving us directions when the officer screeched up behind us and got out of the car and asked me to step out. I obeyed," Kelly said. "I obeyed everything -- stepped out of the car, put my hands behind my back, and the next thing I know, I was getting arrested for trespassing."
"By this time, I was completely in tears," Brook said. "I said, 'Ma'am, you know, we just need your help. We are not trying to cause you any trouble. I'm not leaving him here.' What she did was walk over to my side of the car and said, 'Ok, we are taking you downtown, too.'"
Collins said the couple was released from jail without being charged with anything. Brook is now concerned the arrest may complicate a criminal background check she's going through in her job as a child care worker.
Collins said police left Kelly's car unlocked and the windows down at the impound lot. He reported a cell phone charger, pair of sunglasses and 20 CDs were stolen.
Baltimore City police said they are looking into the incident.
Copyright 2006 by TheWBALChannel.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
FBI Acknowledges: Journalists Phone Records are Fair Game
FBI Acknowledges: Journalists Phone Records are Fair Game May 15, 2006 7:18 PM
Brian Ross and Richard Esposito Report:
The FBI acknowledged late Monday that it is increasingly seeking reporters' phone records in leak investigations.
"It used to be very hard and complicated to do this, but it no longer is in the Bush administration," said a senior federal official.
The acknowledgement followed our blotter item that ABC News reporters had been warned by a federal source that the government knew who we were calling.
The official said our blotter item was wrong to suggest that ABC News phone calls were being "tracked."
"Think of it more as backtracking," said a senior federal official.
But FBI officials did not deny that phone records of ABC News, the New York Times and the Washington Post had been sought as part of a investigation of leaks at the CIA.
In a statement, the FBI press office said its leak investigations begin with the examination of government phone records.
"The FBI will take logical investigative steps to determine if a criminal act was committed by a government employee by the unauthorized release of classified information," the statement said.
Officials say that means that phone records of reporters will be sought if government records are not sufficient.
Officials say the FBI makes extensive use of a new provision of the Patriot Act which allows agents to seek information with what are called National Security Letters (NSL).
The NSLs are a version of an administrative subpoena and are not signed by a judge. Under the law, a phone company receiving a NSL for phone records must provide them and may not divulge to the customer that the records have been given to the government.
May 15, 2006
'Bush speak' a sophisticated 'deception'
May 15, 2006'Bush speak' a sophisticated 'deception'
By Charmain Benton U.S. President George Bush has waged a verbal "operation of deception" that shows an impressive use of language, two University of Illinois authors say.
Far from being verbally challenged, so-called "Bush speak" has used deceptions and policies that are "a massive campaign to change the ways Americans think about democracy, globalization and empire," wrote authors Stephen Hartnett and Laura Ann Stengrim.
Their book, which says Bush colleagues also employ the practice, is titled "Globalization and Empire: The U.S. Invasion of Iraq, Free Markets, and the Twilight of Democracy."
The analysis says Bush administration statements often conflict with reality.
The statements show "the remarkably complicated ways" the administration has used the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks "as an elastic justification for waging wars of globalization and empire under the banner of free trade and democracy."
The authors said their book is offered "from positions of deep sadness and unflagging hope" to preserve the U.S. form of democracy.
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