Parents want to continue shock treatment on autistic son

Parents want to continue shock treatment on autistic son
Story Published: Mar 15, 2007 at 10:11 AM PDT
Story Updated: Mar 15, 2007 at 10:11 AM PDT
By Associated PressCHICAGO





(AP) - Bradley Bernstein's parents say an electric cattle prod is the only thing that stops him from banging his head and violently punching his eyes, nearly blinding himself.

The Illinois couple's fight to continue shock treatment on their severely autistic 48-year-old son and the uproar over a Massachusetts school that uses similar treatment, have pulled back the curtain on this extreme form of behavior modification. Critics call it outmoded, barbaric and unethical.

Even a leading supporter of the technique, Harvard-educated psychologist Matthew Israel, acknowledges, "The natural reaction is to be horrified."

"It always has been very controversial and is not politically correct, and if you want to advance your career, you try to stay away from it," said Israel, founder and director of the Judge Rotenberg Center, a residential school in Canton, Mass. The institution houses children and adults with autism, mental retardation and other behavioral and psychiatric disorders.

The school is under legislative and regulatory scrutiny for routinely using skin shocks on about half its 230 students to stop serious behavior problems, including self-injury.

Electric shocks and other painful or unpleasant treatments known as "aversive conditioning" were accepted more a generation ago. But mainstream psychiatry relies on new drugs and other methods that have proven effective.

Using this form of shock therapy is "cruel and unusual punishment," said Dr. Louis Kraus, an associate professor of psychiatry at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center. "The concept of doing that is frightening."

Some states, including Illinois last year, have banned or severely restricted use of electric shocks in mental health treatment.

But Israel favors the technique over psychiatric drugs that he says make students too drowsy to learn and says most critics "have never seen children who have blinded themselves, or banged their head to the point of brain injury, or bit a hole in their cheek."

Israel developed a device he calls a graduated electronic decelerator. It's carried in backpacks students at his school wear, and elicits shocks through electrodes strapped on their arms and legs.

"The beauty of it is there's no side effects," Israel said. "It's a temporary painful experience for two seconds."

His school's techniques are the subject of a bill pending in the Massachusetts Legislature and complaints including a lawsuit by a New York mother who says the shocks traumatized her now 18-year-old son.

The device used on Bradley Bernstein is a cattle prod. It used to be a long electrified rod, but the newer model is a handheld shocker about the size of a portable phone, with two short metal prongs.

Fran Bernstein, his mother, says it delivers a shock about as painful as a bee sting. Critics say it's considerably stronger, akin to sticking a finger in an electric socket.

Often just seeing the device was enough to make Bradley stop hurting himself, Mrs. Bernstein said.

Bradley Bernstein only says a few words and sometimes hurts himself in frustration or opposition to his caretakers' demands, his mother said. He is allergic to several drugs that could calm his behavior, she said.

The Bernsteins are fighting a Cook County judge's March 2 ruling that said Bradley's shock treatment violates an amendment to state law passed last May.

"Now we're not going to be able to control him and we don't know what's going to happen," said Mrs. Bernstein, of suburban Lincolnshire, Ill.

A therapist recommended the shocks when Bradley was a boy and he got the treatment routinely in group homes where he lived until the state law was enacted last year, his mother said.

Specialists at Trinity Services Inc., which took over the agency that used to care for Bradley, oppose shock treatment and helped change the law so it and other painful techniques are banned from group homes.

"This is something that our professional staff doesn't believe is ethical," said Trinity's president, Art Dykstra.

Bradley Bernstein is the only group home patient in Illinois known to have received shock treatment in recent years. His parents agreed to a compromise to gradually stop the treatment, but sued when Trinity officials abruptly stopped it after the law changed, according to the their attorney, Robert O'Donnell.

The judge's recent ruling said the change in Illinois law makes the Bernsteins' complaint moot. O'Donnell is appealing and has enlisted Matthew Israel to help evaluate Bradley and determine whether his shock treatment should resume.

"Anything that causes pain isn't necessarily cruel and inhumane," Israel said. "If you go to a dentist or a surgeon, you're going to be involved in temporary pain but have long-term hope of improvement."

Trinity officials dispute the Bernsteins' claim that their son's behavior has grown worse without the shocks.

Bradley looked away and did not respond to questions during an attempt to interview him this week at his group home in suburban Des Plaines. Wearing a maroon sweat shirt and khaki pants, the gray-haired man wasn't violent during the half-hour visit and had no visible bruises.

His mother said he started "beating himself up" during a recent visit home, however, and that his eye doctor worries he'll do permanent damage.

"The judge and the legislature are taking my son's life away," Mrs. Bernstein said. "If he doesn't stop hitting his head he's going to go blind."












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TJX breach involved 45.7m cards, company reports

Wednesday, March 28, 2007
TJX breach involved 45.7m cards, company reports



At least 45.7 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen by hackers who broke into the computer systems at the TJX Cos. in Framingham and the United Kingdom and siphoned off data over a period of several years, making it the biggest breach of personal data ever reported, according to security specialists.

TJX, the Framingham discounter that operates the T.J. Maxx and Marshalls clothing chains, also reported in a regulatory filing yesterday that another 455,000 customers who returned merchandise without receipts had their personal data stolen, including drivers’ license numbers. ‘‘It’s the biggest card heist ever,’’ said Avivah Litan, vice president of Gartner Inc. ‘‘This was obviously done over a long period of time, in many locations. It’s done considerable damage.’’

The filing provided the first detailed accounting on the breach since TJX publicly disclosed the problem in mid-January. TJX spokeswoman Sherry Lang said that about 75 percent of the compromised cards either were expired or had data in the magnetic stripe masked, meaning the data was stored as asterisks, rather than numbers. But the true extent of the damage likely will never be known, Lang said, because of the methods used by the intruder as well as file deletions by TJX done in the normal course of business.

‘‘There’s a lot we may never know and it’s one of the difficulties of this investigation,’’ Lang said. ‘‘It’s why this has taken this long and why it’s been so tedious. It’s painstaking.’’

The disclosure comes days after a ring of thieves were arrested in Florida and charged with using stolen credit-card numbers to buy more than $8 million worth of gift cards and electronics, allegedly using data from TJX. According to Gainesville, Fla., police, the suspects used the stolen data to make fake credit cards with magnetic stripes containing the real account information of TJX customers and the US Secret service tied the numbers to those that had been pilfered from the retailer.

Customers across the country have reported fraudulent use of their account information from as far away as Asia. The Framingham merchant, which runs more than 2,5000 stores worldwide, is facing an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission and numerous lawsuits from individuals and banks that accuse the company of failing to adequately safeguard private data and delaying disclosure of the breach.

In the filing, TJX for the the first time identified Dec. 18 as the it first learned of suspicious software on its computer system and provided the most extensive timeline to date of the problem. On Dec. 19, the company said it hired General Dynamics Corporate and IBM Corp. to investigate and by Dec. 21, they determined that the computer systems had been intruded and that an intruder remained on the systems. The next day, TJX notified the federal authorities and on Jan. 3, company officials and the US Secret Service met with its contracting banks and payment card and check processing companies to discuss the computer intrusion.
(By Jenn Abelson, Globe staff)

Posted by Boston Globe Business Team at 08:33 PM









© 2007 The New York Times Company

Public has almost no access to new police radios

Public has almost no access to new police radios
By Blanca Cantu /
March 27, 2007







A new police and fire communications system designed to help emergency crews stay in touch also means the news media has less access to information about incidents affecting the public.

Abilene police and fire departments recently ditched an 18-year-old dispatch system for a new $14 million system that has better encryption capabilities and keeps many of the conversations people using police scanners are accustomed to hearing off the air. Police and fire officials began using the new system this month.

New radios purchased by the Reporter-News, KTXS-TV, KRBC-TV and KTAB-TV that can pick up transmissions from the new system were programmed by the city's communication services department. Abilene media can listen to a police and fire dispatch channel and eight tactical fire channels.

Before the city upgraded its communication system, the media and the public could hear police and dispatchers chatter on multiple channels. Now, the media has limited access - but the public has almost none. Traditional police scanners cannot pick up transmissions on the new system, meaning it must rely more on the media to report police and fire news at a time when less information is available to the media on police radios.

Jim Berry, assistant chief of the Abilene Police Department, said the media no longer has access to the police service channels because the department decided ''it's best for operations.'' Service channels are used when officers in the field ask dispatchers to make a call for them or check a license plate number.

Berry said the media's inaccessibility to the service channels helps the department comply with an agreement the department has with the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Information transmitted over the service channel can contain information extracted from DPS' Texas Law Enforcement Telecommunication system - and that is not public information, he said.

''As a law enforcement officer, I cannot provide you with any information that comes out of the TLET system,'' Berry said. ''Due to the nature of police operations, there is information and communications that you should not have access to.''

Berry, representatives of the fire department and the media met last year to discuss radio accessibility. Berry said in the interest of maintaining a good relationship with the media, the police department granted the media access to the primary dispatch channel for patrol.

''We felt like that would meet your needs,'' Berry said. The agreement was more than media in Wichita Falls initially received (see below).

At last year's meeting in Abilene, Scott Martin, chief photographer for KTXS, said he asked for more access. But his request was denied.

News director Iain Munro said KTXS would like to have access to all channels so that his staff can hear everything and judge things more clearly.

''The last thing we want to do is get in the way of the police force doing their job,'' Munro said.

The news station's photographers were concerned they wouldn't hear certain things, he said. Not hearing chatter over the scanner forces more calls to dispatchers, further tying up the lines of communication.

''We want to be able to cover the story and do it so we're not interfering with the police officers' jobs,'' Munro said.

Tom Vodak, news director for KRBC and KTAB, said the change in access to police and fire communications hasn't affected the stations' news coverage.

Is there a basis for complaints?

Joe Larsen, board member of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, said media outlets can't argue for more access to police chatter on the basis of the Texas Public Information Act.

''Access has to rest on a statute or the Constitution,'' Larsen said. ''There is no statute that gives you access to a police scanner.''

When the Wichita Falls Police Department in 2005 upgraded from traditional police radios that many people could hear with a police scanner to the same digital radio system Abilene is using, it left the media and the public in the dark and denied them access to all police communication.

Two months later, the police department and the media in Wichita Falls came to an agreement that allowed the media to listen to fire and general police traffic, according to the Times Record News. The Times Record News is owned by The E.W. Scripps Company, parent company of the Reporter-News.

Abilene Assistant Police Chief Jim Berry said the decision to allow the media to listen in on police dispatch calls would be in the best interests of both the department and the media so that the good relationship they have established with each other could be maintained.

How do police communicate?

Abilene Police Department officers use about 25 ''talk groups'' when they use their radios to talk to each other. A combination of digital and traditional analog transmissions can be heard on police scanners.

Each police radio is programmed with a particular ''personality.'' Radio personalities have access to specific talk groups. Each channel on the dial represents different talk groups. Talk groups are accessible by officers in particular departments. For example, detectives in the Criminal Investigation Division have multiple talk groups that are not available to every police officer. Detectives, patrol officers and other divisions have their own groups.


Copyright 2007, Abilene Reporter News. All Rights Reserved.

© 1995-
20072003/2004 The E.W. Scripps Co. and the Abilene Reporter-News. All Rights Reserved.

Gonzales Aide to Invoke Fifth Amendment

Gonzales Aide to Invoke Fifth Amendment
Mar 26, 4:50 PM (ET)
By LAURIE KELLMAN




Monica Goodling, a senior Justice Department official involved in the firings of federal prosecutors, will refuse to answer questions at upcoming Senate hearings, citing Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, her lawyer said Monday.

"The potential for legal jeopardy for Ms. Goodling from even her most truthful and accurate testimony under these circumstances is very real," said the lawyer, John Dowd.

"One need look no further than the recent circumstances and proceedings involving Lewis Libby," he said, a reference to the recent conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff in the CIA leak case.

The White House, meanwhile, continued to stand by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales despite new calls over the weekend for his resignation and documents that indicate he may have been more involved in the dismissals than he has previously acknowledged.

Democrats have accused the Justice Department and the White House of purging the prosecutors for political reasons. The Bush administration maintains the firings were not improper because U.S. attorneys are political appointees.

Goodling was Gonzales' senior counsel and White House liaison until she took a leave of absence earlier this month. She was subpoenaed last week by the Senate Judiciary Committee along with several of Gonzales' other top aides.

There have been questions about whether Goodling and others misinformed Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty about the firings just before he testified before the Senate committee in February.

Dowd said that since then a senior Justice Department official had privately told a member of the Senate committee that he was misled by Goodling and others before testifying.

Gonzales' truthfulness about the firings of seven prosecutors on Dec. 7 and another one months earlier also have been questioned. On March 13 at a news conference, Gonzales denied that he participated in discussions or saw any documents about the firings, despite documents that show he attended a Nov. 27 meeting with senior aides on the topic, where he approved a detailed plan to carry out the dismissals.

Goodling was one of five senior Justice Department aides who met with Gonzales for that Nov. 27 discussion. Department documents released Friday to Capitol Hill show she attended multiple meetings about the dismissals for months.

She also was among aides who on Feb. 5 helped Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty prepare his testimony for a Senate hearing the next day - during which he may have given Congress incomplete or otherwise misleading information about the circumstances of the firings.

Additionally, Goodling was involved in an April 6, 2006, phone call between the Justice Department and Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who had complained to the Bush administration and the president about David Iglesias, then the U.S. attorney in Albuquerque. Domenici wanted Iglesias to push more aggressively on a corruption probe against Democrats before the 2006 elections.

The Justice Department appeared surprised Monday to hear of Goodling's decision on testifying.

Earlier Monday, addressing rumors that department aides would refuse to testify, Justice spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said: "That is incorrect."

Addressing the anticipated testimony of McNulty and Associate Deputy Attorney General Will Moschella - the two who recently appeared, respectively, in Senate and House hearings - Scolinos said the two men "are voluntarily making themselves available to the Hill and plan to fully answer all questions posed to them."

Scolinos had no immediate comment about Goodling's testimony.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Monday that Gonzales "might be accused of being imprecise in what he was saying," but maintained that the attorney general was not closely involved in the firings.

"I understand the concern. I understand that people might think that there are inconsistencies," Perino said. "But as I read it, I think that he has been consistent."The White House is placing the onus on Gonzales to explain his actions to lawmakers, but he is not scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee until April 17 - three weeks away.

Speaking to reporters in Orlando, Fla., Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said whether or not Gonzales was fully engaged, "he has lost all credibility with me." Nelson on Sunday joined the ranks of lawmakers in both parties calling for Gonzales to resign.

"Unless he has a good explanation for not only what he knew and when he knew it but also for the ineptitude of the department ... he is a goner," Nelson said of Gonzales. "I think there might be enough Republicans who are calling for his resignation, even before he takes the witness stand."

The Senate committee's senior Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, on Sunday said documents including a Nov. 27 calendar entry that placed the attorney general at a Justice Department meeting to discuss the dismissals "appear to contradict" Gonzales' earlier statements.

But his Nov. 27 schedule, included in a batch of memos sent to Capitol Hill late Friday, showed he attended an hour-long meeting at which, aides said, he approved a detailed plan for executing the purge.

Since the release of that calendar entry on Friday, Justice aides have said Gonzales meant he was not involved in selecting the prosecutors when he said he didn't participate in discussions about their firings.

---

Associated Press Writer Lara Jakes Jordan contributed to this report.










Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All right reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.


© 2007 IAC Search & Media. All rights reserved.

What, exactly, is the suggested retail price? Court decision could raise it

What, exactly, is the suggested retail price? Court decision could raise it
The Washington Post
Sunday March 25, 2007



WASHINGTON--Bargain hunters everywhere have an unwitting patron saint they've probably never heard of. His name is Dr. Miles. His days may be numbered.

It is because of Dr. Miles that anyone who has ever watched ``The Price Is Right'' knows that the manufacturer's retail price is only suggested. It is his unintended legacy that shoppers have developed the unshakable belief that if they only look hard enough, they can find the same product somewhere else for less money.

But on Monday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments that it should do away with its nearly century-old opinion in Dr. Miles Medical Co. v. John D. Park & Sons Co., a decision that has meant retailers are free to price products at less than what the manufacturer thinks they should. Miles Medical, which later changed its name to Miles Laboratories, wanted to set a minimum price for its elixirs.

Some economists argue that the Dr. Miles rule has outlived its usefulness and is unnecessary as an antitrust weapon in a modern economy. Consumer groups counter that the restriction has saved shoppers hundreds of billions of dollars.

Although the impact of reversing the rule at this point is debatable--many manufacturers who care to have already found ways around it--the reach of the Dr. Miles decision is vast.

``It really pertains to the whole economy. Everything from cars to computers to toothpaste,'' said Andrew Gavil, an antitrust expert at Howard University School of Law.

And so it makes sense that Monday's legal battle before the court has drawn a host of interested parties. On the side of doing away with Dr. Miles are the National Association of Manufacturers, makers of high-end goods such as Ping golf clubs and the Bush administration. Opposing the change are the Consumer Federation of America, discounters such as Burlington Coat Factory and the attorneys general of 36 states.

The issue at stake is the court's 1911 decision that a manufacturer's requirement that a reseller not price the company's goods below a set minimum violates the Sherman antitrust act. Proponents of a change argue that such requirements should not be categorically deemed violations but should be evaluated case by case, under a ``rule of reason,'' to decide whether they interfere with market competition.

The current case is about handbags.

Leegin Creative Leather Products is a California company that makes purses, belts and other accessories under the brand name Brighton. It said it would refuse to sell its goods to any retailer that didn't comply with its ``Brighton Retail Pricing and Promotion Policy,'' which mostly bans discount prices for Brighton products.

Leegin said that ``the typical retail strategy of putting products on and off 'sale' degrades a manufacturer's brand by causing customers to feel cheated when they buy at the wrong moment.''

But Kay's Kloset, a women's boutique in the Dallas suburb of Flower Mound, refused to abide by the rules and placed all of its Brighton products on sale. Leegin stopped selling to Kay's Kloset, the store's business suffered, and Kay's parent company, PSKS, sued.

A jury, finding that Leegin's actions were automatically a violation of the Sherman Act, awarded Kay's Kloset $1.2 million, damages that were tripled because the actions violated antitrust laws. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld the ruling.

Leegin contends in its brief to the court that the Dr. Miles decision is ``premised upon the antiquated common-law rule'' and that it ``squarely conflicts with the modern economic understanding that resale price maintenance agreements can have significant procompetitive effects.''

Such a free-market economic analysis holds that minimum resale pricing ensures retailers would make enough profit to provide better service to customers and promote the manufacturer's products. It would eliminate so-called free riding, in which a consumer might try out the latest tennis racket at the pro shop down the street and then hit the Internet to find the cheapest price.

Even if setting a minimum price hurts ``intrabrand'' competition by forbidding stores to set their own prices, free-market thinking holds, it doesn't affect ``interbrand'' competition. Not every manufacturer would take advantage of such a rule, they say, nor would any manufacturer price itself out of business.

But Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America, said the reality is that a change would mean higher prices for shoppers.

``Basically, they want to get rid of discounters, particularly Internet discounters,'' Cooper said. He added that if manufacturers' actions must be challenged on a case-by-case basis, ``the burden becomes immense.''

Cooper said that Congress has continually showed its approval of the current system and that it doesn't make sense to change what has worked because of theories that it can work better.

``When you make a change like this, you better expect the worst, not the best,'' he said.

The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission told the court that the debate shows why an automatic prohibition such as Dr. Miles creates is wrong. Because setting minimum prices ``can be either anticompetitive or procompetitive depending on the facts in a given case, a per se rule is clearly inappropriate,'' they wrote.

The court has shown little reluctance to relax and even reverse antitrust rulings in light of changing economic reality, and it seems unlikely that the justices would have decided to hear Leegin's direct challenge of the rule unless they were seriously considering a change.

``I think there's almost no chance that Dr. Miles will survive,'' law professor Gavil said.

The question is what rule will replace it.












© Copyright Charleston Daily Mail --

Police Handcuff and Arrest 7-Year-Old for Riding Dirt Bike

Police Handcuff and Arrest 7-Year-Old for Riding Dirt Bike
Mar 16th - 11:15am






BALTIMORE (AP) - Baltimore police arrested a 7-year-old boy, handcuffed him, then hauled him off to the station house where they took his mug shot and fingerprints.


The youngster's offense?


He allegedly rode a dirt bike on a sidewalk.


"They scared me," Gerard Mungo Jr. told The Baltimore Examiner before breaking down in tears.


The incident brought new heat on a department already under fire for making what critics call frivolous or unnecessary arrests.


Police commissioner Leonard Hamm, although noting the city's ongoing concern about the nuisance of dirt bikes, said in a statement Thursday that the arrest of the 7-year-old "was not consistent with my philosphy of trying to solve problems in the neighborhoods."


Mayor Sheila Dixon said she intended to look into the facts behind Gerard's arrest. "As a mother and as a parent, I am bothered by it," she said. "I will get to the bottom of this."


Dinkins, who turned 7 last month, was sitting on the bike with the motor off on a sidewalk near his home in east Baltimore when an officer grabbed him by the collar and pulled him off the bike, according to his mother Kikisa Dinkins, who witnessed the arrest.


"I told them to let go of my baby," Dinkins recalled. "Since when do you pull a 7-year-old child by his neck and drag him?"


Dinkins said she called for a police supervisor to intervene, but the confrontation continued to escalate after the supervisor arrived on the scene.


"They started yelling at him, 'Do you know what you did wrong, son?'" Dinkins said. "He was so scared he ran upstairs."


Police confiscated the dirt bike and placed her son under arrest.


At the station, young Gerard was handcuffed to a bench and interrogated, before he was released to the custody of his parents.


Police spokesman Matt Jablow said an officer saw Gerard riding his dirt bike on the sidewalk.


The zero-tolerance arrest policy of former Mayor Martin O'Malley, now Maryland's governor, has become a contentious issue in Baltimore, with State's Attorney Patricia Jessamy, some judges and civil rights activists complaining such arrests occur most often in poor, black neighborhoods.


Dixon, who planned to address the arrest at a press conference Friday, took office in January promising to put aside "simplistic" approaches to crime.


Dinkins said the incident has scarred her son. "This has changed his life," she said. "He'll never be the same."


___


Information from: The Baltimore Examiner, http://www.examiner.com
(Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)






Copyright 2006 Associated Press.

Will Gonzales Fall For Attorney Firings?

Will Gonzales Fall For Attorney Firings?
WASHINGTON, March 16, 2007




(CBS/AP) One of the eight recently fired U.S. attorneys at the center of a growing political scandal tells CBS News that he lost his job because he "did not play ball" with powerful Republicans.

"I believe, and I think all my colleagues believe, the real reason is partisan politics," the former U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico, David Iglesias told CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric. "I believe I was fired because I did not play ball with two members of the Republican delegation here in New Mexico. I did not give them privileged information that could have been used in the October and November time frame."

The fallout from the firings continues to grow in Washington, and sources tell CBS News that it looks like Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will take the fall.

Republicans close to the White House tell CBS News chief White House correspondent Jim Axelrod that President Bush is in "his usual posture: pugnacious, that no one is going to tell him who to fire." But sources also said Gonzales' firing is just a matter of time.

The White House is bracing for a weekend of criticism and more calls for Gonzales to go. One source tells CBS News he's never seen the administration in such deep denial, and Republicans are growing increasingly restless for the president to take action.

The Justice Department has said the attorneys were fired for performance issues, but CBS News has also obtained performance reviews for some of the fired U.S. attorneys. Nine months before John McKay was fired as the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington, he was described as an "effective, well-regarded and capable leader," Axelrod reports.

Bud Cummins, the former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, was called "very competent and highly regarded" in a January 2006 review obtained by CBS News.

Carol Lam, who was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California, was described as an "effective manager and respected leader" in February 2005.

"I got great office reviews," Iglesias told Couric. "I was not on any kind of resignation list until Nov. 15, 2006, and that was two weeks after I received two very inappropriate calls from two Republican members of Congress."

Meanwhile, the White House dropped its contention Friday that former counsel Harriet Miers first raised the idea of firing U.S. attorneys, blaming "hazy memories" as e-mails shed new light on Karl Rove's role.

Presidential press secretary Tony Snow previously had asserted Miers was the person who came up with the idea, but he said Friday, "I don't want to try to vouch for origination." He said, "At this juncture, people have hazy memories."

The White House also said it needed more time before deciding whether Miers, political strategist Rove and other presidential advisers would testify before Congress.

The Justice Department said late Friday that all of the documents requested by Congress will be delivered to Capitol Hill.

"Given the importance of the issues under consideration and the presidential principles involved, we need more time to resolve them," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. She also said White House Counsel Fred Fielding suggested to the House Judiciary Committee that he get back to members on Tuesday.

Fielding called a staff member of the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday afternoon, saying he needed to clear the White House's position with President Bush, according to an official who works for the panel. That official spoke only on condition of anonymity because the conversation had been private.

After receiving word of the delay, committee chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., said his panel would vote next week on subpoenas for Rove, Miers and other officials.

Snow's comments came hours after the Justice Department released e-mails Thursday night pulling the White House deeper into an intensifying investigation into whether eight firings were a purge of prosecutors deemed unenthusiastic about presidential goals.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kyle Sampson E-mails, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Snow said it was not immediately clear who first floated the more dramatic idea of firing all 93 U.S. attorneys shortly after President Bush was re-elected to a second term.

"This is as far as we can go: We know that Karl recollects Harriet having raised it and his recollection is that he dismissed it as not a good idea," Snow told reporters. "That's what we know. We don't know motivations. ... I don't think it's safe to go any further than that."

Asked if President Bush himself might have suggested the firings, Snow said, "Anything's possible ... but I don't think so." He said Mr. Bush "certainly has no recollection of any such thing. I can't speak for the attorney general."

"I want you to be clear here: Don't be dropping it at the president's door," Snow said.

Subpoenas demanding testimony from White House officials could come next week.

Conyers said the House Judiciary Committee "must take steps to ensure that we are not being stonewalled or slow-walked on this matter." He said, "I will schedule a vote to issue subpoenas for the documents and officials we need to talk to."

"We hope that this delay is not a signal they will not cooperate," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who is leading the Senate's probe into the matter. "The story keeps changing, which neither does them or the public any good."

More Republicans called for Gonzales' ouster late in the week.

Congressman Dana Rohrbacher became the latest Republican to say Gonzales should go, reported Axelrod.

"Even for Republicans, this is a warning sign … saying there needs to be a change," said Rohrbacher. "Maybe the president should have an attorney general who is less a personal friend and more professional in his approach."

Republican Sen. John Sununu of New Hampshire has called for Bush to replace Gonzales, and a Republican member of the House Judiciary Committee, speaking on condition of anonymity, has said he plans to do the same next week.

House Democratic Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina said the controversies reflected poorly on administration officials generally.

"They don't know anything about running government. They're just political hacks," Clyburn said at a news conference in Columbia, S.C. "Gonzales is just a political hack."

Other GOP lawmakers have joined Democrats in harsh indictments of Gonzales' effectiveness but have stopped short of saying he should be fired.

"I do not think the attorney general has served the president well, but it is up to the president to decide on (Attorney) General Gonzales' continued tenure," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

The latest e-mails between White House and Justice Department officials show that Rove inquired in early January 2005 about firing U.S. attorneys. They also indicate Gonzales was considering dismissing up to 20 percent of U.S. attorneys in the weeks before he took over the Justice Department.

In one e-mail, Gonzales' top aide, Kyle Sampson, said an across-the-board housecleaning "would certainly send ripples through the U.S. attorney community if we told folks they got one term only." The e-mail concluded that "if Karl thinks there would be political will to do it, then so do I."

Sampson resigned this week amid the uproar.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a vote for next Thursday on authorizing subpoenas for Rove, Miers and her deputy, William K. Kelley. The panel already has approved the use of subpoenas, if necessary, for Justice Department officials and J. Scott Jennings, a White House aide who works in Rove's office.

E-mails between the White House and the Justice Department suggest that Jennings was involved in setting up a meeting on a possible replacement for soon-to-be-fired New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias and in responding to "a senator problem" with the proposed replacement of Bud Cummins, then U.S. attorney for Arkansas.

Among the Justice Department officials named in the subpoenas is Associate Deputy Attorney General William E. Moschella. Lawmakers want him to testify about whether the White House consented to changing the Patriot Act last year to let the attorney general appoint new U.S. attorneys without confirmation.

In an interview with The Associated Press this week, Moschella said the change was not aimed at bypassing the Senate but ending meddling by judges in filling vacant prosecutors' jobs. Under the former law, federal judges could appoint interim U.S. attorneys in jobs that were vacant for more than 120 days.

"There's a conspiracy theory about this and it's nothing other than that," Moschella said.



© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Passport problems snarl travel plans

Passport problems snarl travel plans
Around the country, a crush of applications causes long delays
The Associated Press
Updated: 6:04 p.m. ET March 16, 2007








CHICAGO - Thirteen-year-old Eli Rogatz applied months ago for a passport so that he could fly to Israel with his family for his bar mitzvah. It finally came through on Friday, with just days to spare.

“Everybody has a passport except my son, the bar mitzvah boy,” Mitch Rogatz, a book publisher from the Chicago suburb of Glencoe, grumbled as he camped out in a federal office building for at least four hours. “Given what else is being spent, we want to make sure he’s there.”

Similar waiting games are being played out at passport processing sites across the country as the State Department wades through an unprecedented crush of passport applications. They are pouring in at more than 1 million per month.

Passport requests usually shoot up this time of year ahead of the busy spring and summer travel season. But the department has been really swamped since the government in late January started requiring U.S. airline passengers — including children — to show a passport upon their return from Mexico, Canada or the Caribbean.

Passport applications filed between October and March are up 44 percent from the same period a year ago, the department told lawmakers this week. In February alone, applications were up 25 percent.

Because of the glut, it could take 10 weeks instead of the usual six to process routine applications, according to the department. And expedited requests, which cost an extra $60 on top of the normal $97 fee, could take four weeks instead of two.

The State Department said it is working overtime to handle the load and hopes to have an additional 400 passport adjudicators by the end of next year.

That is little solace to travelers like Lisa Purdum, a newlywed from Yardley, Pa., who was told her husband’s passport would not arrive until weeks after their planned April 2 honeymoon to Mexico. Worse, her birth certificate, which accompanied her own passport application, was reported missing, she said.


She was one of dozens of people waiting in a line that spilled into the lobby in Philadelphia’s regional passport office Friday.

“My husband’s is a month behind and mine is missing altogether and our honeymoon is in two weeks, and I’m either losing half my money or all of my money,” she said.

People who had not received their passports two weeks before their trips were generally told to go to one of 14 big-city passport offices across the country. There, they were mostly confronted with long lines and no guarantee they would leave with a passport.

Jackie Moore drove overnight from Columbus, Ohio, to Chicago, hoping to pick up a passport for her 8-year-old grandson. The family had a 6 a.m. flight Saturday for a vacation in the Dominican Republic, and the boy was the only one whose passport had not arrived.

“My little grandson is going to be heartbroken if we don’t get him on this plane,” she said.
The line curled around the block outside the passport office in downtown Miami, where 29-year-old Qandeel Sakrani stood with her husband and their two young daughters, hoping to get a passport so she could travel to Pakistan next month.

“I haven’t seen my parents in 18 months, and I haven’t seen the rest of my family for five years,” she said.

Lawndale, Calif., accountant Emilia Moreno sent in an application to renew her passport four weeks ago, only to discover there were no records it ever got there. The 48-year-old woman spent most of the week fighting for an appointment with the passport agency in Los Angeles so she would be able to travel to Italy and France for vacation on Wednesday.

“My employer already told me she’s going to buy me a pizza, for me to think that I’m in Italy,” she said.

For others, it may already be too late.

Judith Jones was supposed to fly to Jamaica on Friday for a vacation with friends. Instead, she spent a second day in line in Chicago, trying to track down her passport.

“It’s supposed to be a girls’ trip. The girls are there, but I’m not yet,” said the 41-year-old from Griffith, Ind.

About 12 million passport applications were processed in 2006, and as many as 17 million are expected this year, according to the State Department said. Some 74 million Americans have valid passports.


© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.








© 2007 MSNBC.com

Lesbian kiss falls flatter than a pancake

Posted on Fri, Mar. 16, 2007
Lesbian kiss falls flatter than a pancake
By MIKE HENDRICKS
Columnist





Just one kiss. That’s all it took — to get thrown out of the IHOP in Grandview.

“It was a kiss I would share with my uncle,” Blair Funk told me. Except it wasn’t her uncle she kissed. It was her honey, Eva Sandoval.

Two young women sharing a kiss didn’t seem inappropriate to the other couple in the restaurant booth that night, Jackie Smith and the woman with whom she shares her life, Toni Smith. But someone watching the scene was offended.

So later, the manager confronted them in the lobby and told them to get out.

The way Blair tells it, “He said, ‘I have to tell you, we’ve had some complaints about public displays of affection, and we’re a family restaurant. We can’t accept it, and we won’t accept it.’

“The way he worded it was like: We don’t accept you.”

These days it’s rare for gays and lesbians to be denied service in restaurants for acting like who they are. Blair assures me that she and Eva did nothing that wouldn’t have been appropriate for a man and a woman to do at a dinner date. No heavy makeout. No groping.

However, incidents like this one are not unheard of, and the people affected often can do nothing about it.

There is no federal law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. Neither Kansas nor Missouri are among the few states that protect gay people from being discriminated against in areas of employment, housing and public accommodations.

Kansas City does have an ordinance protecting gays, as do St. Louis, Columbia and University City. But if you’re anywhere else in Missouri and you’re gay, you can legally be denied service in restaurant. Landlords can refuse to rent you a place to live.

You can even be canned from your job on the suspicion that you’re romantically inclined toward members of your own sex.

“Many people are shocked to hear that people can be fired from their jobs for being gay or being perceived to be gay,” says Julie Brueggemann, executive director of the Missouri gay rights group Promo.

That would change if bills pending in Kansas and Missouri would ever pass. It’s only the first year for Senate Bill 163 in Kansas. But the so-called Missouri Nondiscrimination Act, House Bill 819, has been up time and again.

And as in past years, it has almost zero chance in Jefferson City, says Rep. Jeneé Lowe, a Kansas City Democrat, the bill’s sponsor.

“It’s surprising to me,” Lowe says, “how many people think there’s federal legislation. But there is no law.”

No law, but there is power in public opinion. So the night that she and her friends were evicted from the restaurant, Jackie Smith started tapping furiously on her computer keyboard.

E-mails to the media yielded a TV report on Fox 4, as well as a call from me.

Promo and other civil rights groups responded with support. IHOP was apologetic.

“Thank you for taking the time to contact us concerning your experience at the IHOP in Grandview,” began the letter from someone identifying himself as the guest services representative at the company’s headquarters in Glendale, Calif.

“We are sorry to learn of the difficulties you encountered at this location. Please be assured that the matter will be shared with the proper individuals to address your concerns.”

When I called the Grandview restaurant for comment I was told to ring the company headquarters. But the P.R. director there failed to return my phone calls. However, I can tell you that the restaurant chain wants Blair, Eva, Jackie and Toni to come back for pancakes sometime.

“It is our hope,” the guest services rep wrote, “that you will once again allow us to earn your patronage.”

Jackie isn’t ruling it out entirely.

“But it’s not likely,” she said.


To reach Mike Hendricks, call (816) 234-7708, or send e-mail to mhendricks@kcstar.com.







© 2007 Kansas City Star and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.

Accounts of Prosecutors' Dismissals Keep Shifting

Accounts of Prosecutors' Dismissals Keep Shifting
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 17, 2007; A01






More than two weeks after a New Mexico U.S. attorney alleged he was fired for not prosecuting Democrats, the White House and the Justice Department are still struggling to explain the roles of President Bush, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and other key officials in the dismissals of eight federal prosecutors last year.

Yesterday, the White House retreated from its four-day-old claim that former counsel Harriet E. Miers started the process two years ago by proposing the firing of all 93 U.S. attorneys.

"It has been described as her idea . . . but I don't want to vouch for origination," press secretary Tony Snow said. "At this juncture, people have hazy memories."

In addition, D. Kyle Sampson, who resigned as Gonzales's chief of staff Monday, disputed the reasons given for his departure in a statement issued through his attorney last night.

"The fact that the White House and Justice Department had been discussing the subject for several years was well-known to a number of other senior officials at the department, including others who were involved in preparing the department's testimony to Congress," according to the statement by Sampson's lawyer, Bradford A. Berenson.

Snow's comments mark the latest revision of the administration's account of the firings, which has shifted repeatedly over the past week as new e-mails and other evidence have come to light in response to congressional demands for information. The precise roles of Gonzales, presidential adviser Karl Rove and the president himself remain unclear, even as calls for Gonzales's resignation continue to mount.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) yesterday became the third GOP lawmaker to call for Gonzales's ouster, saying that "it would benefit this administration if the attorney general was replaced with someone with a more professional focus rather than personal loyalty" to Bush.

The White House rebuffed demands yesterday from the House and Senate Judiciary committees for more information on the firings, saying the administration needs more time before turning over additional documents or deciding whether to allow key White House officials to testify. The Justice Department announced that it will provide new documents to the committees Monday.

The developments capped a tumultuous and difficult week for Gonzales and White House officials, who have attempted to play down the importance of more than 140 pages of documents and e-mails released so far that show the White House was closely involved in an effort to remove a group of federal prosecutors based, in part, on their loyalty to Bush. Officials had previously described the dismissals as "performance related" and handled within the Justice Department.

Seven U.S. attorneys were fired Dec. 7, and another was let go months earlier, with little explanation from Justice Department officials, who later told Congress that the dismissals were related to the attorneys' performance in office. Several former prosecutors have since alleged intimidation, including improper telephone calls from GOP lawmakers or their aides, and have alleged threats of retaliation by a Justice Department official.

While the firings themselves initially prompted questions from Congress, a major issue for lawmakers has since become whether they were misled in testimony by Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, and subsequently in public explanations by Justice and the White House.

Administration officials have acknowledged in recent days that, in Gonzales's words, "mistakes were made," but have defended the dismissals as justified by the prosecutors' performance and management issues. They have denied partisan motives in any of the firings.

The e-mails released this week show that the Justice Department had advocated ousting up to 20 percent of the U.S. attorneys in early 2005 and that Gonzales had discussed the idea of the firings even before he became attorney general. Rove also expressed an interest in the status of the effort in January 2005.

One January 2006 memo written by Sampson attributed the initial idea to Miers. "Harriet, you have asked whether President Bush should remove and replace U.S. attorneys . . . " he wrote.

Many of the documents released over the past week were sent or received by Sampson, whose resignation, Gonzales and other Justice officials said, was prompted by his failure to tell others in the department about his contacts with the White House, leading to testimony by McNulty and others that may have been misleading.

Sampson disputed that version of events in his statement last night, saying he "felt he had let the attorney general down in failing to . . . organize a more effective political response to the unfounded accusations of impropriety in the replacement process."

Sampson's statement also suggested that his contacts with the White House were well known within Justice. If the contacts were not brought to the attention of McNulty and others, the statement said, it was "because no one focused on it or deemed it important at the time."

The Justice Department had no immediate comment last night.

The department announced earlier that Sampson would be replaced by Chuck Rosenberg, the U.S. attorney in Alexandria, who previously served in similar roles for former attorney general John D. Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.

Snow and other administration officials previously said that Miers first suggested firing all U.S. attorneys after the 2004 elections, citing e-mails from Sampson and Rove's recollection of events.

Officials have said that Gonzales and Rove opposed that idea and that Justice embarked on a more limited effort that led to the firings of the eight U.S. attorneys.

Snow was asked yesterday whether Bush might have suggested the firings.

"Anything's possible . . . but I don't think so," he said, adding that Bush "certainly has no recollection of any such thing. . . . I want you to be clear here: Don't be dropping it at the president's door."

Democrats pounced on the latest shift in events.

"The story keeps changing, which neither does them or the public any good," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). "They ought to gather all the facts and tell the public the truth."

Democrats also criticized the White House for saying it needed more time to turn over records and decide whether senior aides, including Rove, should be allowed to submit to interviews with congressional investigators.

"The White House is playing a dangerous game of chicken," said Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), chairman of a Judiciary subcommittee leading an investigation into the firings.

Staff writers Michael Abramowitz and Jerry Markon and staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.







© 2007 The Washington Post Company

Gonzales Says ‘Mistakes Were Made’ in Firing of Prosecutors

March 13, 2007
Gonzales Says ‘Mistakes Were Made’ in Firing of Prosecutors
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and JEFF ZELENY




WASHINGTON, March 13 — Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, under criticism from lawmakers of both parties for the dismissals of federal prosecutors, insisted Tuesday that he would not resign, but said, “I acknowledge that mistakes were made here.”

The mea culpa came as Congressional Democrats, who are investigating whether the White House was meddling in Justice Department affairs for political reasons, demanded that President Bush and his chief political adviser, Karl Rove, explain their roles in the firings.

With Mr. Bush traveling in Mexico, the White House insisted that the president’s role had been minimal and laid the blame primarily on Harriet E. Miers, who was White House counsel when the prosecutors lost their jobs and who stepped down in January.

“The White House did not play a role in the list of the seven U.S. attorneys,” said Dan Bartlett, Mr. Bush’s counselor, referring to a roster of those who were fired.

Mr. Bartlett said it was “highly unlikely” that Mr. Rove would testify publicly to Congress about any involvement he might have had. “But that doesn’t mean we won’t find other ways to try to share that information,” he said.

With Democrats vowing to get to the bottom of who had ordered the firings and why, the White House scrambled to put its own spin on the controversy by releasing a stream of e-mail messages detailing how Ms. Miers had corresponded with D. Kyle Sampson, the top aide to Mr. Gonzales who drafted the list of those to be dismissed. [Page 16.]

Mr. Sampson resigned Monday. On Tuesday afternoon, at a press conference in an ornate chamber adjacent to his office, Mr. Gonzales pledged to “find out what went wrong here,” even as he insisted he had no direct knowledge of how his staff had made the firing decisions. He said he had rejected an earlier idea, which the White House said was put forth by Ms. Miers, that all 93 of the attorneys, the top federal prosecutors in their regions, be replaced.

“I felt that was a bad idea,” he said, “and it was disruptive.”

With Democrats, including the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, insisting that Mr. Gonzales should step down, his appearance underscored what two Republicans close to the Bush administration described as a growing rift between the White House and the attorney general. Mr. Gonzales has long been a confidant of the president but has aroused the ire of lawmakers of both parties on several issues, including the administration’s domestic eavesdropping program.

The two Republicans, who spoke anonymously so they could share private conversations with senior White House officials, said top aides to Mr. Bush, including Fred F. Fielding, the new White House counsel, were concerned that the controversy had so damaged Mr. Gonzales’s credibility that he would be unable to advance the White House agenda on sensitive national security matters, including terror prosecutions.

“I really think there’s a serious estrangement between the White House and Alberto now,” one of the Republicans said.

Already, Democrats are pressing the case for revoking the president’s authority, gained with the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act last year, to appoint interim federal prosecutors indefinitely, without Senate confirmation. The administration has argued that such appointments are necessary to speed the prosecution of terrorism cases. After the dismissals became a big political issue last week, Mr. Gonzales signaled that the administration would not oppose the changes being sought by the Democrats.

“We now know that it is very likely that the amendment to the Patriot Act, which was made in March of 2006, might well have been done to facilitate a wholesale replacement of all or part of U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who serves on the Judiciary Committee. “Who authorized all of this? Who asked for that change?”

Questions about whether the firings were politically motivated have been swirling through the administration since January. But they reached a fever pitch on Tuesday with disclosures by the White House that Mr. Bush had spoken directly with Mr. Gonzales to pass on concerns from Republican lawmakers, among them Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, about the way certain prosecutors were handling cases of voter fraud.

The White House took the unusual step of having Mr. Bartlett conduct a hurried briefing with reporters in Mérida, Mexico. He said the president had “all the confidence in the world” in Mr. Gonzales and traced the idea for the firings to Ms. Miers, saying she had raised the question of whether the Justice Department should clean house in Mr. Bush’s second term, as is common when a new president comes into office.

“What Harriet Miers was doing was taking a look and floating an idea to say, ‘Hey, should we treat the second term very similar to the way we treat a first term?’ ” Mr. Bartlett said.

White House officials reiterated Tuesday that Mr. Bush had not called for the removal of any particular United States attorney and said there was no evidence that the president had been aware that the Justice Department had initiated a process to generate a list of which prosecutors should lose their jobs.

But inside the White House, aides to the president, including Mr. Rove and Joshua B. Bolten, the chief of staff, were said to be increasingly concerned that the controversy could damage Mr. Bush.

“They’re taking it seriously,” said the other of the two Republicans who spoke about the White House’s relationship with Mr. Gonzales. “I think Rove and Bolten believe there is the potential for erosion of the president’s credibility on this issue.”

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers from both parties expressed anger about the administration’s handling of the matter. While Democrats voiced the loudest criticism, several leading Republicans — among them Senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, John Ensign of Nevada, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and George V. Voinovich of Ohio — said Tuesday that they also had concerns.

Mr. Ensign, ordinarily a strong supporter of the White House, said he was “very angry” at how the administration had handled the dismissal of the prosecutors, particularly Dan Bogden, the United States attorney in Nevada. Mr. Ensign said he had been misled or lied to last year when he asked the Justice Department about the firing of Mr. Bogden and was told that it had been connected to his job performance.

“I’m not a person who raises his voice very often,” said Mr. Ensign, who is also the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which works to elect Republicans to the Senate. Of his decision to speak out, he said, “I think there are times where you just have to do what you feel is right, and this is one of those times.”

Mr. Coburn said the firings had been bungled, calling them “idiocy on the part of the administration.”

Mr. Specter, in a speech on the Senate floor, referred to another of the dismissed attorneys, Carol C. Lam, who prosecuted Randy Cunningham, the former Republican congressman now serving an eight-year sentence in a corruption case.

Mr. Specter raised the question of whether Ms. Lam had been dismissed because she was “about to investigate other people who were politically powerful,” and he questioned the Justice Department’s initial explanation that those who had lost their jobs had received poor performance evaluations.

“Well,” he said, “I think we may need to do more by way of inquiry to examine what her performance ratings were to see if there was a basis for her being asked to resign.”


David Johnston, Eric Lipton and Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting from Washington, and John Holusha from New York.






Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Lacking Papers, Citizens Are Cut From Medicaid

March 12, 2007
Lacking Papers, Citizens Are Cut From Medicaid
By ROBERT PEAR





WASHINGTON, March 11 — A new federal rule intended to keep illegal immigrants from receiving Medicaid has instead shut out tens of thousands of United States citizens who have had difficulty complying with requirements to show birth certificates and other documents proving their citizenship, state officials say.

Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Ohio and Virginia have all reported declines in enrollment and traced them to the new federal requirement, which comes just as state officials around the country are striving to expand coverage through Medicaid and other means.

Under a 2006 federal law, the Deficit Reduction Act, most people who say they are United States citizens and want Medicaid must provide “satisfactory documentary evidence of citizenship,” which could include a passport or the combination of a birth certificate and a driver’s license.

Some state officials say the Bush administration went beyond the law in some ways, for example, by requiring people to submit original documents or copies certified by the issuing agency.

“The largest adverse effect of this policy has been on people who are American citizens,” said Kevin W. Concannon, director of the Department of Human Services in Iowa, where the number of Medicaid recipients dropped by 5,700 in the second half of 2006, to 92,880, after rising for five years. “We have not turned up many undocumented immigrants receiving Medicaid in Waterloo, Dubuque or anywhere else in Iowa,” Mr. Concannon said.

Jeff Nelligan, a spokesman for the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the new rule was “intended to ensure that Medicaid beneficiaries are citizens without imposing undue burdens on them” or on states. “We are not aware of any data that shows there are significant barriers to enrollment,” he said. “But if states are experiencing difficulties, they should bring them to our attention.”

In Florida, the number of children on Medicaid declined by 63,000, to 1.2 million, from July 2006 to January of this year.

“We’ve seen an increase in the number of people who don’t qualify for Medicaid because they cannot produce proof of citizenship,” said Albert A. Zimmerman, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Children and Families. “Nearly all of these people are American citizens.”

Since Ohio began enforcing the document requirement in September, the number of children and parents on Medicaid has declined by 39,000, to 1.3 million, and state officials attribute most of the decline to the new requirement. Jon Allen, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, said the state had not seen a drop of that magnitude in 10 years.

The numbers alone do not prove that the decline in enrollment was caused by the new federal policy. But state officials see a cause-and-effect relationship. They say the decline began soon after they started enforcing the new rule. Moreover, they say, they have not seen a decline in enrollment among people who are exempt from the documentation requirement — for example, people who have qualified for Medicare and are also eligible for Medicaid.

Wisconsin keeps detailed records listing reasons for the denial or termination of benefits. “From August 2006 to February of this year, we terminated benefits for an average of 868 people a month for failure to document citizenship or identity,” said James D. Jones, the eligibility director of the Medicaid program in Wisconsin. “More than 600 of those actions were for failure to prove identity.” In the same period, Mr. Jones said, the state denied an average of 1,758 applications a month for failure to document citizenship or identity. In 1,100 of those cases, applicants did not provide acceptable proof of identity.

“Congress wanted to crack down on illegal immigrants who got Medicaid benefits by pretending to be U.S. citizens,” Mr. Jones said. “But the law is hurting U.S. citizens, throwing up roadblocks to people who need care, at a time when we in Wisconsin are trying to increase access to health care.”

Medicaid officials across the country report that some pregnant women are going without prenatal care and some parents are postponing checkups for their children while they hunt down birth certificates and other documents.

Rhiannon M. Noth, 28, of Cincinnati applied for Medicaid in early December. When her 3-year-old son, Landen, had heart surgery on Feb. 22, she said, “he did not have any insurance” because she had been unable to obtain the necessary documents. For the same reason, she said, she paid out of pocket for his medications, and eye surgery was delayed for her 2-year-old daughter, Adrianna.

The children eventually got Medicaid, but the process took 78 days, rather than the 30 specified in Ohio Medicaid rules.

Dr. Martin C. Michaels, a pediatrician in Dalton, Ga., who has been monitoring effects of the federal rule, said: “Georgia now has 100,000 newly uninsured U.S. citizen children of low-income families. Many of these children have missed immunizations and preventive health visits. And they have been admitted to hospitals and intensive care units for conditions that normally would have been treated in a doctor’s office.”

Dr. Michaels, who is president of the Georgia chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said that some children with asthma had lost their Medicaid coverage and could not afford the medications they had been taking daily to prevent wheezing. “Some of these children had asthma attacks and had to be admitted to hospitals,” he said.

In Kansas, R. Andrew Allison, the state Medicaid director, said: “The federal requirement has had a tremendous impact. Many kids have lost coverage or have not been able to obtain coverage.” Since the new rule took effect in July, enrollment in Kansas has declined by 20,000 people, to 245,000, and three-fourths of the people dropped from the rolls were children.

Megan J. Ingmire, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Health Policy Authority, which runs the state Medicaid program, said the waiting time for applicants had increased because of a “huge backlog” of applications. “Applicants need more time to collect the necessary documents, and it takes us longer to review the applications,” Ms. Ingmire said.

The principal authors of the 2006 law were Representatives Charlie Norwood and Nathan Deal, both Georgia Republicans. Mr. Norwood died last month.

Chris Riley, the chief of staff for Mr. Deal, said the new requirement did encounter “some bumps in the road” last year. But, he said, Mr. Deal believes that the requirement “has saved taxpayers money.” The congressman “will vigorously fight repeal of that provision” and will, in fact, try to extend it to the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Mr. Riley said. He added that the rule could be applied flexibly so it did not cause hardship for citizens.

In general, Medicaid is available only to United States citizens and certain “qualified aliens.” Until 2006, states had some discretion in deciding how to verify citizenship. Applicants had to declare in writing, under penalty of perjury, whether they were citizens. Most states required documents, like birth certificates, only if other evidence suggested that a person was falsely claiming to be a United States citizen.

In Virginia, health insurance for children has been a top priority for state officials, and the number of children on Medicaid increased steadily for several years. But since July, the number has declined by 13,300, to 373,800, according to Cindi B. Jones, chief deputy director of the Virginia Medicaid program.

“The federal rule closed the door on our ability to enroll people over the telephone and the Internet, wiping out a full year of progress in covering kids,” Ms. Jones said.

State and local agencies have adopted new procedures to handle and copy valuable documents. J. Ruth Kennedy, deputy director of the Medicaid program in Louisiana, said her agency had received hundreds of original driver’s licenses and passports in the mail.

Barry E. Nangle, the state registrar of vital statistics in Utah, said, “The new federal requirement has created a big demand for birth certificates by a group of people who are not exactly well placed to pay our fees.” States typically charge $10 to $30 for a certificate.







Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Lockheed's F-22 Raptor Gets Zapped by International Date Line

Science
Lockheed's F-22 Raptor Gets Zapped by International Date Line
Brandon Hill (Blog) - February 26, 2007 10:28 AM
Six Lockheed F-22 Raptors have Y2K-esque glitch of their own over the Pacific





Lockheed’s F-22 Raptor is the most advanced fighter in the world with its stealth capabilities, advanced radar, state of the art weapons systems and ultra-efficient turbofans which allow the F-22 to "supercruise" at supersonic speeds without an afterburner. The Raptor has gone up against the best that the US Air Force and Navy has to offer taking out F-15s, F-16s and F/A-18 Super Hornets during simulated war games in Alaska. The Raptor-led "Blue Air" team was able to rack up an impressive 241-to-2 kill ratio during the exercise against the "Red Air" threat -- the two kills on the blue team were from the 30-year old F-15 teammates and not the new Raptors.

But while the simulated war games were a somewhat easy feat for the Raptor, something more mundane was able to cripple six aircraft on a 12 to 15 hours flight from Hawaii to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan. The U.S. Air Force's mighty Raptor was felled by the International Date Line (IDL).

When the group of Raptors crossed over the IDL, multiple computer systems crashed on the planes. Everything from fuel subsystems, to navigation and partial communications were completely taken offline. Numerous attempts were made to "reboot" the systems to no avail.

Luckily for the Raptors, there were no weather issues that day so visibility was not a problem. Also, the Raptors had their refueling tankers as guide dogs to "carry" them back to safety. "They needed help. Had they gotten separated from their tankers or had the weather been bad, they had no attitude reference. They had no communications or navigation," said Retired Air Force Major General Don Shepperd. "They would have turned around and probably could have found the Hawaiian Islands. But if the weather had been bad on approach, there could have been real trouble.”

"The tankers brought them back to Hawaii. This could have been real serious. It certainly could have been real serious if the weather had been bad," Shepperd continued. "It turned out OK. It was fixed in 48 hours. It was a computer glitch in the millions of lines of code, somebody made an error in a couple lines of the code and everything goes."

Luckily for the pilots behind the controls of the Raptors, they were not involved in a combat situation. Had they been, it could have been a disastrous folly by the U.S. Air Force to have to admit that their aircraft which cost $125+ million USD apiece were knocked out of the sky due to a few lines of computer code. "And luckily this time we found out about it before combat. We got it fixed with tiger teams in about 48 hours and the airplanes were flying again, completed their deployment. But this could have been real serious in combat," said Shepperd.











Copyright 2007 DailyTech LLC.

Mueller admits fault in FBI intrusions

Mueller admits fault in FBI intrusions
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer
Fri Mar 9, 6:48 PM ET





The nation's top two law enforcement officials acknowledged Friday the FBI broke the law to secretly pry out personal information about Americans. They apologized and vowed to prevent further illegal intrusions.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales left open the possibility of pursuing criminal charges against FBI agents or lawyers who improperly used the USA Patriot Act in pursuit of suspected terrorists and spies.

The FBI's transgressions were spelled out in a damning 126-page audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. He found that agents sometimes demanded personal data on people without official authorization, and in other cases improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances.

The audit also concluded that the FBI for three years underreported to Congress how often it used national security letters to force businesses to turn over customer data. The letters are administrative subpoenas that do not require a judge's approval.

"People have to believe in what we say," Gonzales said. "And so I think this was very upsetting to me. And it's frustrating."

"We have some work to do to reassure members of Congress and the American people that we are serious about being responsible in the exercise of these authorities," he said.

Under the Patriot Act, the national security letters give the FBI authority to demand that telephone companies, Internet service providers, banks, credit bureaus and other businesses produce personal records about their customers or subscribers. About three-fourths of the letters issued between 2003 and 2005 involved counterterror cases, with the rest for espionage investigations, the audit reported.

Shoddy record-keeping and human error were to blame for the bulk of the problems, said Justice auditors who were careful to note they found no indication of criminal misconduct.

Still, "we believe the improper or illegal uses we found involve serious misuses of national security letter authorities," the audit concluded.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller said many of the problems were being fixed, including by building a better internal data collection system and training employees on the limits of their authority. The FBI has also scrapped the use of "exigent letters," which were used to gather information without the signed permission of an authorized official.

"But the question should and must be asked: How could this happen? Who is accountable?" Mueller said. "And the answer to that is, I am to be held accountable."

Mueller said he had not been asked to resign, nor had he discussed doing so with other officials. He said employees would probably face disciplinary actions, not criminal charges, following an internal investigation of how the violations occurred.

The audit incensed lawmakers in Congress already seething over the recent dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys. Democrats who lead House and Senate judiciary and intelligence oversight panels promised hearings on the findings. Several lawmakers — Republicans and Democrats alike — raised the possibility of scaling back the FBI's authority.

"It's up to Congress to end these abuses as soon as possible," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee. "The Patriot Act was never intended to allow the Bush administration to violate fundamental constitutional rights."

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said the audit shows "a major failure by Justice to uphold the law."

"If the Justice Department is going to enforce the law, it must follow it as well," said Hoekstra, of Michigan.

The American Civil Liberties Union said the audit proves Congress must amend the Patriot Act to require judicial approval anytime the FBI wants access to sensitive personal information.

"The attorney general and the FBI are part of the problem, and they cannot be trusted to be part of the solution," said ACLU's executive director, Anthony D. Romero.

Both Gonzales and Mueller called the national security letters vital tools in pursuing terrorists and spies in the United States. "They are the bread and butter of our investigations," Mueller said.

Gonzales asked the inspector general to issue a follow-up audit in July on whether the FBI had followed recommendations to fix the problems.

Fine's annual review is required by Congress, over the objections of the Bush administration. It concluded that the number of national security letters requested by the FBI skyrocketed in the years after the Patriot Act became law. Each letter issued may contain several requests.

In 2000, for example, the FBI issued an estimated 8,500 requests. That number peaked in 2004 with 56,000. Overall, the FBI reported issuing 143,074 requests for national security letters between 2003 and 2005.

But that did not include an additional 8,850 requests that were never recorded in the FBI's database, the audit found. A sample review of 77 case files at four FBI field offices showed that agents had underreported the number of national security letter requests by about 22 percent.

Additionally, the audit found, the FBI identified 26 possible violations in its use of the letters, including failing to get proper authorization, making improper requests under the law and unauthorized collection of telephone or Internet e-mail records.

The FBI also used exigent letters to quickly get information — sometimes in non-emergency situations — without going through proper channels. In at least 700 cases, these letters were sent to three telephone companies to get billing records and subscriber information, the audit found.

___

On the Net:

The report is at: http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/reports/FBI/index.htm

Justice Department: http://www.usdoj.gov

FBI: http://www.fbi.gov



Copyright © 2007 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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Teens at California school getting high on medical marijuana

Teens at California school getting high on medical marijuana
Date created: 3/9/2007 1:04:50 PM
Last updated: 3/9/2007 3:38:43 PM




SAN DIEGO -- Officials at the Grossmont Union High School District have sent letters home to parents, notifying them that a number of students have been caught on campus with medical marijuana cards.Advertisement

District official Catherine Martin said they are concerned over the growing trend and the "apparent ease" with which teens are able to obtain the cards.

In the letters, parents, students and faculty are reminded that even if the cards are valid, it is against the law to have marijuana on school property.

Recently two East County teenagers were suspended for showing up at school high, with a medical marijuana card as their excuse, NBC 7/39 reported.

During a series of recent undercover sting operations, district attorney investigators identified four or five local doctors who are issuing cards or prescriptions without proper exams or follow up medical care.

Mission Valley is one location where officials said illegal drug trafficking has taken place.

San Diego District Attorney Narcotic Chief Damon Mosler told NBC 7/39 a bogus symptom and some cash is all a teenager needs to obtain a medical marijuana card.


Steven Luke, KNSD-TV, San Diego, California











Copyright ©2007 WBIR-TV Knoxville

China to increase military spending

China to increase military spending
By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer
Sun Mar 4, 10:09 AM ET





China will boost military spending by 17.8 percent this year, a spokesman for the national legislature said Sunday, continuing more than a decade of double-digit annual increases that have raised concerns among the United States and China's neighbors.

John Negroponte, the U.S. deputy secretary of state, urged China to be more open about its military buildup.

"We think it's important in our dialogue that we understand what China's plans and intentions are," said Negroponte, who was visiting Beijing on Sunday.

Underscoring the concerns about China's military, the legislature's spokesman, Jiang Enzhu, also accused the president of Taiwan of manipulating political divisions there to steer it toward formal independence. China's military spending is largely oriented toward possible conflicts over Taiwan, which split with the mainland in 1949 and has refused Beijing's offers for peaceful reunification.

Jiang said Taiwanese voters would abandon President Chen Shui-bian, whose pro-independence stance has drawn criticism from China.

"His manipulation of political issues, his attempt to exaggerate or exacerbate tensions among different communities on the island and his selfish agenda ... have been condemned by various political groups and parties as well as the general public in Taiwan," Jiang said at a news conference at the Great Hall of the People, where the legislature, formally known as the National People's Congress, will begin its 12-day session on Monday.

However, Jiang said the $44.94 billion military budget would mainly be spent on boosting wages and living allowances for members of the armed forces and on upgrading armaments "to enhance the military's ability to conduct defensive operations."

"China is committed to taking the path of peaceful development and it pursues a defensive military posture," Jiang said. "China has neither the wherewithal or the intention to enter into an arms race with any country and China does not and will not pose a threat to any country."

The 2007 budget marks an increase of $6.84 billion over last year. With its economy booming, China has announced double-digit annual increases in military spending every year since the early 1990s.

China's 2.3 million-strong military is the world's largest. The Pentagon believes China's total military spending may be much greater since the announced budget does not include weapons purchases and other key items.

Jiang defended spending as "quite modest" compared to what is spent by Britain, France, Japan, and the United States, where President Bush signed a bill authorizing $532.8 billion in military spending for the 2007 fiscal year that began Oct. 1.

"This increase is compensatory in nature in order to make up for the weak national defense foundation of our country," Jiang said.

In the past, Beijing has spent heavily on adding submarines, jet fighters and other high-tech weapons to its arsenal, which despite its size, lags well behind those of other major nations.




Copyright © 2007 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 © 2007 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

China to increase military spending

China to increase military spending
By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer
Sun Mar 4, 10:09 AM ET





China will boost military spending by 17.8 percent this year, a spokesman for the national legislature said Sunday, continuing more than a decade of double-digit annual increases that have raised concerns among the United States and China's neighbors.

John Negroponte, the U.S. deputy secretary of state, urged China to be more open about its military buildup.

"We think it's important in our dialogue that we understand what China's plans and intentions are," said Negroponte, who was visiting Beijing on Sunday.

Underscoring the concerns about China's military, the legislature's spokesman, Jiang Enzhu, also accused the president of Taiwan of manipulating political divisions there to steer it toward formal independence. China's military spending is largely oriented toward possible conflicts over Taiwan, which split with the mainland in 1949 and has refused Beijing's offers for peaceful reunification.

Jiang said Taiwanese voters would abandon President Chen Shui-bian, whose pro-independence stance has drawn criticism from China.

"His manipulation of political issues, his attempt to exaggerate or exacerbate tensions among different communities on the island and his selfish agenda ... have been condemned by various political groups and parties as well as the general public in Taiwan," Jiang said at a news conference at the Great Hall of the People, where the legislature, formally known as the National People's Congress, will begin its 12-day session on Monday.

However, Jiang said the $44.94 billion military budget would mainly be spent on boosting wages and living allowances for members of the armed forces and on upgrading armaments "to enhance the military's ability to conduct defensive operations."

"China is committed to taking the path of peaceful development and it pursues a defensive military posture," Jiang said. "China has neither the wherewithal or the intention to enter into an arms race with any country and China does not and will not pose a threat to any country."

The 2007 budget marks an increase of $6.84 billion over last year. With its economy booming, China has announced double-digit annual increases in military spending every year since the early 1990s.

China's 2.3 million-strong military is the world's largest. The Pentagon believes China's total military spending may be much greater since the announced budget does not include weapons purchases and other key items.

Jiang defended spending as "quite modest" compared to what is spent by Britain, France, Japan, and the United States, where President Bush signed a bill authorizing $532.8 billion in military spending for the 2007 fiscal year that began Oct. 1.

"This increase is compensatory in nature in order to make up for the weak national defense foundation of our country," Jiang said.

In the past, Beijing has spent heavily on adding submarines, jet fighters and other high-tech weapons to its arsenal, which despite its size, lags well behind those of other major nations.




Copyright © 2007 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 © 2007 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

Hospital Officials Knew of Neglect

Hospital Officials Knew of Neglect
Complaints About Walter Reed Were Voiced for Years
By Anne Hull and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 1, 2007; A01




Top officials at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, including the Army's surgeon general, have heard complaints about outpatient neglect from family members, veterans groups and members of Congress for more than three years.

A procession of Pentagon and Walter Reed officials expressed surprise last week about the living conditions and bureaucratic nightmares faced by wounded soldiers staying at the D.C. medical facility. But as far back as 2003, the commander of Walter Reed, Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, who is now the Army's top medical officer, was told that soldiers who were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan were languishing and lost on the grounds, according to interviews.

Steve Robinson, director of veterans affairs at Veterans for America, said he ran into Kiley in the foyer of the command headquarters at Walter Reed shortly after the Iraq war began and told him that "there are people in the barracks who are drinking themselves to death and people who are sharing drugs and people not getting the care they need."

"I met guys who weren't going to appointments because the hospital didn't even know they were there," Robinson said. Kiley told him to speak to a sergeant major, a top enlisted officer.

A recent Washington Post series detailed conditions at Walter Reed, including those at Building 18, a dingy former hotel on Georgia Avenue where the wounded were housed among mice, mold, rot and cockroaches.

Kiley lives across the street from Building 18. From his quarters, he can see the scrappy building and busy traffic the soldiers must cross to get to the 113-acre post. At a news conference last week, Kiley, who declined several requests for interviews for this article, said that the problems of Building 18 "weren't serious and there weren't a lot of them." He also said they were not "emblematic of a process of Walter Reed that has abandoned soldiers and their families."

But according to interviews, Kiley, his successive commanders at Walter Reed and various top noncommissioned officers in charge of soldiers' lives have heard a stream of complaints about outpatient treatment over the past several years. The complaints have surfaced at town hall meetings for staff and soldiers, at commanders' "sensing sessions" in which soldiers or officers are encouraged to speak freely, and in several inspector general's reports detailing building conditions, safety issues and other matters.

Retired Maj. Gen. Kenneth L. Farmer Jr., who commanded Walter Reed for two years until last August, said that he was aware of outpatient problems and that there were "ongoing reviews and discussions" about how to fix them when he left. He said he shared many of those issues with Kiley, his immediate commander. Last summer when he turned over command to Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, Farmer said, "there were a variety of things we identified as opportunities for continued improvement."

In 2004, Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) and his wife stopped visiting the wounded at Walter Reed out of frustration. Young said he voiced concerns to commanders over troubling incidents he witnessed but was rebuffed or ignored. "When Bev or I would bring problems to the attention of authorities of Walter Reed, we were made to feel very uncomfortable," said Young, who began visiting the wounded recuperating at other facilities.

Beverly Young said she complained to Kiley several times. She once visited a soldier who was lying in urine on his mattress pad in the hospital. When a nurse ignored her, Young said, "I went flying down to Kevin Kiley's office again, and got nowhere. He has skirted this stuff for five years and blamed everyone else."

Young said that even after Kiley left Walter Reed to become the Army's surgeon general, "if anything could have been done to correct problems, he could have done it."

Soldiers and family members say their complaints have been ignored by commanders at many levels.

More than a year ago, Chief Warrant Officer Jayson Kendrick, an outpatient, attended a sensing session, the Army's version of a town hall meeting where concerns are raised in front of the chain of command. Kendrick spoke about the deterioration and crowded conditions of the outpatient administrative building, which had secondhand computers and office furniture shoved into cubicles, creating chaos for family members. An inspector general attending the meeting "chuckled and said, 'What do you want, pool tables and Ping-Pong tables in there?' " Kendrick recalled.

Army officials have been at other meetings in which outpatient problems were detailed.

On Feb. 17, 2005, Kiley sat in a congressional hearing room as Sgt. 1st Class John Allen, injured in Afghanistan in 2002, described what he called a "dysfunctional system" at Walter Reed in which "soldiers go months without pay, nowhere to live, their medical appointments canceled." Allen added: "The result is a massive stress and mental pain causing further harm. It would be very easy to correct the situation if the command element climate supported it. The command staff at Walter Reed needs to show their care."

In 2006, Joe Wilson, a clinical social worker in the department of psychiatry, briefed several colonels at Walter Reed about problems and steps that could be taken to improve living conditions at Building 18. Last March, he also shared the findings of a survey his department had conducted.

It found that 75 percent of outpatients said their experience at Walter Reed had been "stressful" and that there was a "significant population of unsatisfied, frustrated, disenfranchised patients." Military commanders played down the findings.

"These people knew about it," Wilson said. "The bottom line is, people knew about it but the culture of the Army didn't allow it to be addressed."

Last October, Joyce Rumsfeld, the wife of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, was taken to Walter Reed by a friend concerned about outpatient treatment. She attended a weekly meeting, called Girls Time Out, at which wives, girlfriends and mothers of soldiers exchange stories and offer support.

According to three people who attended the gathering, Rumsfeld listened quietly. Some of the women did not know who she was. At the end of the meeting, Rumsfeld asked one of the staff members whether she thought that the soldiers her husband was meeting on his visits had been handpicked to paint a rosy picture of their time there. The answer was yes.

When Walter Reed officials found out that Rumsfeld had visited, they told the friend who brought her -- a woman who had volunteered there many times -- that she was no longer welcome on the grounds.

Last week, the Army relieved of duty several low-ranking soldiers who managed outpatients. This week, in a move that some soldiers viewed as reprisal for speaking to the media, the wounded troops were told that early-morning room inspections would be held and that further contact with reporters is prohibited.

Yesterday, Walter Reed received an unscheduled inspection by a hospital accreditation agency. Members of the Joint Commission, formerly the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, began a two-day visit "for cause" to examine discharge practices that have allowed soldiers to go missing or unaccounted for after they are released from the hospital.












© 2007 The Washington Post Company