Officials: Bush May Appoint Bolton Next Week (CNN.com) President may use recess appointment to get his man at U.N.

Thursday, July 28, 2005; Posted: 11:08 p.m. EDT (03:08 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush may use a recess appointment early next week to install John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations, two senior administration officials told CNN Thursday.

The move would likely inflame some Democrats who have said Bolton doesn't have the temperament to hold the U.N. post.

The administration officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, refused to put an exact time frame on when the recess appointment might occur.

But they suggested the White House is planning to make the move as early as next week.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan hinted at the scenario Monday, saying it might be need for "people ... that have waited far too long to get about doing their business."

"If the Senate fails to act and move forward on those nominees," McClellan said, "then sometimes there comes a point where the president has needed to fill that in a timely manner by recessing those nominees."

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  Bush Plans 50th Ranch Trip in Five Years (USATODAY.com) Posted 7/29/2005 1:40 PM Updated 7/29/2005 1:41 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) — Following the Congress in a midsummer exodus, President Bush plans a Texas ranch respite for several weeks, while Supreme Court nominee John Roberts has August to think about Senate confirmation hearings.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Friday that Bush will leave after signing into law the Central American Free Trade Agreement that Congress gave final approval to earlier this week.

It will be the president's 50th trip to the ranch since he was elected nearly five years ago.

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  French Family Values (NYTimes.com) By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 29, 2005

Americans tend to believe that we do everything better than anyone else. That belief makes it hard for us to learn from others. For example, I've found that many people refuse to believe that Europe has anything to teach us about health care policy. After all, they say, how can Europeans be good at health care when their economies are such failures?

Now, there's no reason a country can't have both an excellent health care system and a troubled economy (or vice versa). But are European economies really doing that badly?

The answer is no. Americans are doing a lot of strutting these days, but a head-to-head comparison between the economies of the United States and Europe - France, in particular - shows that the big difference is in priorities, not performance. We're talking about two highly productive societies that have made a different tradeoff between work and family time. And there's a lot to be said for the French choice.

First things first: given all the bad-mouthing the French receive, you may be surprised that I describe their society as "productive." Yet according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, productivity in France - G.D.P. per hour worked - is actually a bit higher than in the United States.

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  The Truth About Abu Ghraib (WashingtonPost.com) EDITORIAL

Friday, July 29, 2005; Page A22

FOR 15 MONTHS now the Bush administration has insisted that the horrific photographs of abuse from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were the result of freelance behavior by low-level personnel and had nothing to do with its policies. In this the White House has been enthusiastically supported by the Army brass, which has conducted investigations documenting hundreds of cases of prisoner mistreatment in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but denies that any of its senior officers are culpable. For some time these implacable positions have been glaringly at odds with the known facts. In the past few days, those facts have grown harder to ignore.

The latest evidence has emerged from hearings at Fort Meade about two of those low-level Abu Ghraib guards who are charged with using dogs to terrorize Iraqi detainees. On Wednesday, the former warden of Abu Ghraib, Maj. David DiNenna, testified that the use of dogs for interrogation was recommended by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the former commander of the Guantanamo Bay prison who was dispatched by the Pentagon to Abu Ghraib in August 2003 to review the handling and interrogation of prisoners. On Tuesday, a military interrogator testified that he had been trained in using dogs by a team sent to Iraq by Gen. Miller.

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  Think Again, Karen Hughes (WashingtonPost.com) By Anne Applebaum
Wednesday, July 27, 2005; Page A21

Only two senators were in the room when Karen Hughes testified at her confirmation hearings. When it came time for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to vote on her nomination yesterday, she was easily approved. And thus with no discussion and no debate, Hughes takes over the least noticed, least respected and possibly most important job in the State Department. Her formal title is undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. In plain English, her job is to fight anti-Americanism, promote American culture and above all to do intellectual battle with the ideology of radical Islam, a set of beliefs so powerful that they can persuade middle-class, second-generation British Muslims to blow themselves up on buses and trains.

Presumably, President Bush selected Hughes for this task because she was very good at running his election campaigns. And indeed, in the testimony she gave last week to a nearly empty room, she sounded like she was still running an election campaign. Like Hillary Clinton, she said she wanted people around the world to know that she would be "listening" to them: "I want to learn more about you and your lives, what you believe, what you fear, what you dream, what you value most." Like Jesse Jackson, she deployed alliteration, alluding to the four "E's": "engagement, exchanges, education and empowerment."

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  Energy Shortage (NYTimes.com) EDITORIAL

Published: July 28, 2005

The energy bill that has been six years in the making and is nearing the president's desk is not the unrelieved disaster some environmentalists make it out to be. But to say, as President Bush undoubtedly will, that it will swiftly move this country to a cleaner, more secure energy future is nonsense. The bill, approved by a House-Senate conference early Tuesday morning, does not take the bold steps necessary to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil, and it also fails to address the looming problem of global warming.

These shortcomings are chiefly the fault of the White House and its retainers in the House. To be sure, the Senate showed no more courage than the House in its refusal to increase fuel-economy standards for cars and trucks, even though higher standards, by common consent, are the easiest, quickest and most technologically feasible way to reduce oil demand and cut foreign imports.

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  Military's Opposition to Harsh Interrogation Is Outlined (NYTimes.com) By NEIL A. LEWIS
Published: July 28, 2005

WASHINGTON, July 27 - Senior military lawyers lodged vigorous and detailed dissents in early 2003 as an administration legal task force concluded that President Bush had authority as commander in chief to order harsh interrogations of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, newly disclosed documents show.

Despite the military lawyers' warnings, the task force concluded that military interrogators and their commanders would be immune from prosecution for torture under federal and international law because of the special character of the fight against terrorism.

In memorandums written by several senior uniformed lawyers in each of the military services as the legal review was under way, they had urged a sharply different view and also warned that the position eventually adopted by the task force could endanger American service members.

The memorandums were declassified and released last week in response to a request from Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. Mr. Graham made the request after hearings in which officers representing the military's judge advocates general acknowledged having expressed concerns over interrogation policies.

The documents include one written by the deputy judge advocate general of the Air Force, Maj. Gen. Jack L. Rives, advising the task force that several of the "more extreme interrogation techniques, on their face, amount to violations of domestic criminal law" as well as military law.

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  Judge Chides Bush Administration's Anti-terror Tactics (SFGate.com) By GENE JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, July 27, 2005

(07-27) 23:59 PDT Seattle (AP) --The sentence itself was fairly straightforward: An Algerian man received 22 years for plotting to bomb the Los Angeles airport on the eve of the millennium. It was what the judge said in imposing the term that raised eyebrows.

U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour said the successful prosecution of Ahmed Ressam should serve not only as a warning to terrorists, but as a statement to the Bush administration about its terrorism-fighting tactics.

"We did not need to use a secret military tribunal, detain the defendant indefinitely as an enemy combatant or deny the defendant the right to counsel," he said. "The message to the world from today's sentencing is that our courts have not abandoned our commitment to the ideals that set our nation apart."

He added that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have made Americans realize they are vulnerable to terrorism and that some believe "this threat renders our Constitution obsolete ... If that view is allowed to prevail, the terrorists will have won."

Critics of the Bush administration — mostly human-rights groups and Democrats — have long accused the U.S. government of unjustly detaining terror suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, as well as a small number of American citizens who have been designated enemy combatants.

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  Outspoken Judge Draws Praise, Respect (SeattlePI.com) He was appointed to the bench by Reagan in 1981

By SAM SKOLNIK
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

During the 2001 trial of Ahmed Ressam in Los Angeles, federal prosecutors were eager to have renowned French anti-terrorism investigator Jean-Louis Bruguiere explain how Ressam's status rose after being trained at Osama bin Laden's Afghanistan camps.

Prosecutors thought Bruguiere's testimony critical in convincing the jury that Ressam was conspiring to commit international terrorism, not just acting as a courier when he drove a car full of explosives into Washington state.

But U.S. District Judge John Coughenour said no, forbidding any mention by Bruguiere of bin Laden. He didn't want to taint the jury against Ressam.

If anything, that ruling and Coughenour's conduct throughout the Ressam case -- which ended yesterday when he sentenced the Algerian man to 22 years in prison -- has demonstrated his fierce commitment to fairness.

"He conducted a terrorism trial that will be perceived as fair by prosecutors, by defense lawyers, by the public and by the press," said veteran Seattle defense lawyer Irwin Schwartz, who said he has appeared before the judge dozens of times.

"There were no closed doors, no secret evidence," said Schwartz, who was not associated with the Ressam case. "This was American justice as it was intended to be."

(More ... Outspoken judge draws praise, respect)  ¶ 19:48 0 comments

  US Joins Asians in Climate Deal (news.BBC.co.uk) By Kylie Morris
BBC News, Vientiane

A layer of pollution haze hovers over Beijing, China
The nations do not want climate policies to affect economic growth

The six also include Australia, India, South Korea and Japan - who, with the US and China, account for nearly half the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

The US-led initiative promises to fight global warming through new technology, supplied to the countries in most need.

Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, the new compact is non-binding, with no enforcement mechanisms.

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  Toyota, Moving Northward (NYTimes.com) By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 25, 2005

Modern American politics is dominated by the doctrine that government is the problem, not the solution. In practice, this doctrine translates into policies that make low taxes on the rich the highest priority, even if lack of revenue undermines basic public services. You don't have to be a liberal to realize that this is wrong-headed. Corporate leaders understand quite well that good public services are also good for business. But the political environment is so polarized these days that top executives are often afraid to speak up against conservative dogma.

Instead, they vote with their feet. Which brings us to the story of Toyota's choice.

There has been fierce competition among states hoping to attract a new Toyota assembly plant. Several Southern states reportedly offered financial incentives worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

But last month Toyota decided to put the new plant, which will produce RAV4 mini-S.U.V.'s, in Ontario. Explaining why it passed up financial incentives to choose a U.S. location, the company cited the quality of Ontario's work force.

What made Toyota so sensitive to labor quality issues? Maybe we should discount remarks from the president of the Toronto-based Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, who claimed that the educational level in the Southern United States was so low that trainers for Japanese plants in Alabama had to use "pictorials" to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech equipment.

But there are other reports, some coming from state officials, that confirm his basic point: Japanese auto companies opening plants in the Southern U.S. have been unfavorably surprised by the work force's poor level of training.

There's some bitter irony here for Alabama's governor. Just two years ago voters overwhelmingly rejected his plea for an increase in the state's rock-bottom taxes on the affluent, so that he could afford to improve the state's low-quality education system. Opponents of the tax hike convinced voters that it would cost the state jobs.

But education is only one reason Toyota chose Ontario. Canada's other big selling point is its national health insurance system, which saves auto manufacturers large sums in benefit payments compared with their costs in the United States.

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  Behind-the-Scenes Battle on Tracking Data Mining (NYTimes.com) By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: July 24, 2005

WASHINGTON, July 23 - Bush administration officials are opposing an effort in Congress under the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act to force the government to disclose its use of data-mining techniques in tracking suspects in terrorism cases.

As part of the vote in the House this week to extend major parts of the antiterrorism law permanently, lawmakers agreed to include a little-noticed provision that would require the Justice Department to report to Congress annually on government-wide efforts to develop and use data-mining technology to track intelligence patterns.

But a set of talking points distributed among Republican lawmakers as the measure was being debated warned that the Justice Department was opposed to the amendment because it would add to the list of "countless reports" already required by Congress and would take time away from more critical law enforcement activities.

The government's use of vast public and private databases to mine for leads has produced several damaging episodes for the Bush administration, most notably in connection with the Total Information Awareness system developed by the Pentagon for tracking terror suspects and the Capps program of the Department of Homeland Security for screening airline passengers. Both programs were ultimately scrapped after public outcries over possible threats to privacy and civil liberties, and some Republicans and Democrats in Congress say they want to keep closer tabs on such computer operations to guard against abuse.

"We have wasted millions and millions of dollars on implementing database-mining activities which, when they became public, produced such an outrage they were canceled," Representative Howard L. Berman, a California Democrat who sponsored the amendment requiring a report to Congress, said this week during the House debate.

"We do not want to tie the hands of our security agencies in gathering this information," Mr. Berman said. "We simply want to provide a logical mechanism to gather the information so that the American people can feel more comfortable that what is being done is protected."

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  Democrats Concerned by Prospects of a Labor Schism (NYTimes.com) By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: July 24, 2005

With several of the nation's largest unions threatening to quit the A.F.L.-C.I.O., Democratic leaders say they fear that the possible schism might hurt their party's chances by making labor a less potent political force.

Democratic leaders said a split could hurt their candidates because it could keep unions from coordinating their political efforts as well as they did before and could mean that unions devote less energy to politics and more to fighting among themselves.

"To the extent your allies are fighting among each other, it's not helpful," Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said.

Steve Elmendorf, a deputy campaign manager for Senator John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, said, "It's obvious that it would have a very negative impact on the Democratic Party if the labor movement is in turmoil and fighting with each other."

The A.F.L.-C.I.O., with 13 million union members, has long provided the Democrats with their most effective get-out-the-vote operation. In the 2004 election, households with union members accounted for 24 percent of all votes, and among voters from those households, Mr. Kerry had a 5.8 million majority.

In last year's campaign, unions mailed out more than 30 million pieces of literature and ran 257 phone banks with 2,322 lines in 16 states. Although unions splintered in the primaries behind Mr. Kerry, Mr. Dean and John Edwards, they ultimately rallied behind Mr. Kerry and worked hard for him. Union members voted two-to-one for Mr. Kerry in the general election.

The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, an umbrella group comprising 56 unions, coordinated campaign efforts nationwide, and many political leaders said a schism would inevitably undermine such coordination.

"If this split happens, it will obviously disrupt our efforts," said Richard Trumka, the labor federation's secretary-treasurer.

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  Houses Divided on Warming (NYTimes.com) EDITORIAL

Published: July 23, 2005

It's going to be hard enough to find common political ground on global warming without the likes of Representative Joe Barton harassing reputable scientists who helped alert the world to the problem in the first place.

Mr. Barton is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and thus has great influence over energy strategy, which badly needs updating to address issues like warming. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Mr. Barton has also been a leading beneficiary of campaign funds from the oil, gas and utility industries, which have belittled the warming threat and resisted regulatory efforts to control the burning of fossil fuels. Mainstream scientists believe such fuels are responsible for the warming trend in the last century.

Mr. Barton, a Texas Republican, has zeroed in on three climatologists - Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes - who have presented influential data showing a sharp rise in global temperatures in recent decades.

Their conclusions have never been convincingly challenged, and indeed have received strong support from other researchers taking different analytical paths. Nevertheless, Mr. Barton has peppered the three scientists and the National Science Foundation, which underwrote some of their research, with endless demands for documentation, including, in the foundation's case, checks and bank statements. A Barton spokesman says such requests are a "common exercise" of committee responsibility.

But Sherwood Boehlert of New York - a fellow Republican who is chairman of the House Science Committee and an enlightened moderate on environmental issues - seemed much closer to the truth when he described Mr. Barton's inquisition as "an effort to intimidate scientists rather than learn from them, and to substitute Congressional political review for scientific peer review."

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  China Unpegs Itself (NYTimes.com) By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 22, 2005

Thursday's statement from the People's Bank of China, announcing that the yuan is no longer pegged to the dollar, was terse and uninformative - you might say inscrutable. There's a good chance that this is simply a piece of theater designed to buy a few months' respite from protectionist pressures in the U.S. Congress.

Nonetheless, it could be the start of a process that will turn the world economy upside down - or, more accurately, right side up. That is, the free ride China has been giving America, in which the world's richest economy has been getting cheap loans from a country that is dynamic but still quite poor, may be coming to an end.

It's all about which way the capital is flowing.

Capital usually flows from mature, developed economies to less-developed economies on their way up. For example, a lot of America's growth in the 19th century was financed by investors from Britain, which was already industrialized.

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  The Dropout Puzzle (NYTimes.com) By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 18, 2005

Many seemingly authoritative figures, not all of them partisan shills, say that the American economy has fully recovered from the recession that began in 2001. They point to the unemployment rate, which has fallen from a peak of 6.3 percent in 2003 to 5 percent last month. That's not quite as low as the 4.2 percent unemployment rate in February 2001, when the recession began, but it's fairly low by historical standards.

For some reason, however, the public isn't feeling prosperous. Gallup tells us that only 3 percent of Americans describe the economy as "excellent," and only 33 percent describe it as "good."

Maybe people are just ungrateful. Maybe they've been misled by negative media reports. Maybe they're grumpy about their paychecks: adjusted for inflation, average weekly earnings have been flat for the past five years.

Or maybe the figures on unemployment are giving a false signal.

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  Bush Praises Australia's Howard (CNN.com) Tuesday, July 19, 2005; Posted: 2:11 p.m. EDT (18:11 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Tuesday defended his country's continuing troop presence in Iraq and refused to put a timetable on bringing soldiers home from the U.S.-led campaign, echoing the position of his host, President Bush.

"We will stay the distance in Iraq," Howard told reporters in a joint White House news conference with Bush, whom he praised as a friend. "We won't go until the job has been finished."

Bush and Howard said they understand that people in both their countries want to know when troops will leave Iraq, where insurgent violence has steadily escalated since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his Shiite-dominated government in April.

"There's a great temptation to get me or John to put a timetable on our actions there, but that doesn't make any sense," Bush said. "Why would you tell the enemy how long you're going to stay somewhere? Why would you -- we're at war and during a war you do the best you can to win the war. And one way to embolden an enemy is to give him an artificial timetable."

Australia has 1,400 troops in and around Iraq. Just last week, Howard said he would send 150 elite troops to Afghanistan by September to help quell insurgent violence there.

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  No Policy from Us, Says U.S. (NewstalkZB.co.nz) 22/07/2005 16:20:02

The United States is reassuring New Zealanders that it does not have any involvement with a political party in New Zealand.

The statement follows claims by Labour's Trevor Mallard that National's policies are being written in Washington and not in Wellington.

Mr Mallard also claimed there was an American fund raising campaign for National.

Outgoing American Ambassador to New Zealand Charles Swindells says the US Government has neither asked for, nor received policy commitments of any kind from any political party in New Zealand.

Mr Swindells says he made it clear in his recent farewell speech that the United States stands willing to work with whoever New Zealanders choose to represent them.

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  N Korea Calls for US Peace Treaty (news.BBC.co.uk) Friday, 22 July, 2005, 03:24 GMT 04:24 UK

North Korea has called for a peace treaty with the US, ahead of the resumption of talks aimed at ending the stand-off over its nuclear weapons.

Pyongyang said in a statement that a full treaty replacing the armistice signed at the end of the Korean War in 1953 was needed to resolve the crisis.

The North has made similar calls in the past, but peace negotiations quickly became bogged down.

Six-nation talks are due to resume in Beijing on Tuesday.

North Korea walked out of the talks in February 2004, and has since admitted stockpiling atomic weapons.

The North has in the past demanded a non-aggression pact with the US - but Washington refuses to talk about this until North Korea agrees to shut down its weapons programme.

The Korean War ended with an armistice - not a peace treaty - and thus the peninsula is technically still at war.

The border between the North and the South is one of the world's most heavily armed.

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  Guantanamo Detainees Refuse Food (news.BBC.co.uk) Friday, 22 July, 2005, 00:49 GMT 01:49 UK

Fifty-two detainees at the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are staging a hunger strike in protest at their detention and treatment.

So far, the men have refused nine consecutive meals over three days, the US military said in a statement.

The detainees are being monitored by medical professionals and their vital signs are being checked daily.

More than 500 inmates are currently being held at Guantanamo. Only four have been charged.

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  Memo with Plame's Name Marked Secret (CNN.com) Administration officials questioned about State Dept. document

Thursday, July 21, 2005; Posted: 11:20 p.m. EDT (03:20 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A classified State Department memorandum that has been the subject of questioning in a federal leak probe identifies a CIA agent by name in a paragraph marked "S" for secret, sources told CNN Thursday.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is investigating the revelation of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, which was published by syndicated columnist and CNN contributor Robert Novak in July 2003.

Novak's column came days after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, publicly questioned part of President Bush's justification for invading Iraq.

Plame is mentioned by her married name, Valerie Plame Wilson, in the memo dated June 10, 2003, said two government sources who have seen the document.

The paragraph, they said, did not indicate that she was undercover or that her identity was protected.

Nevertheless, a former homeland security adviser to President Bush said the rules on such matters are clear.

"Anything in a paragraph marked 'secret' needs to be deemed secret, and revealing it to someone without proper security clearance or without a need to know is not authorized and is a violation," said Richard Falkenrath, a CNN security analyst who has not seen the memo.

(More ... CNN.com - Memo with Plame's name marked secret - Jul 21, 2005)  ¶ 19:15 0 comments

  House Votes to Extend Patriot Act (Guardian.co.uk) By GLEN JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer
Friday July 22, 2005 7:16 AM

WASHINGTON (AP) - The House voted to extend indefinitely the anti-terrorist USA Patriot Act, while limiting to 10 years two provisions of the law that have become linchpins in the ongoing congressional debate: allowing federal agents to use roving wiretaps and to search library and medical records.

By a 257-171 margin, lawmakers who earlier Thursday had watched reports of attempted terrorist bombings in London, agreed to renew key provisions of the Patriot Act that were set to expire at the end of this year.

Forty-three Democrats joined 214 Republicans in passing the bill, which dropped 14 of 16 expiration dates on provisions initially drafted into the law shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Hours earlier, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved its own general extension of the law, but it called for Congress to re-examine the wiretap and library provisions after another four-year time period. The full Senate likely will vote on the bill this fall, before the competing measures are reconciled in a conference committee.

President Bush cheered the House vote.

(More ... Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | House Votes to Extend Patriot Act)  ¶ 19:14 0 comments

  Bush Nominates Federal Judge Roberts (SFGate.com) By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, July 19, 2005

(07-19) 17:01 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) -- President Bush chose federal appeals court judge John G. Roberts Jr. on Tuesday as his first nominee for the Supreme Court, selecting a rock solid conservative whose nomination could trigger a tumultuous battle over the direction of the nation's highest court, senior administration officials said.

Bush offered the position to Roberts in a telephone call at 12:35 p.m. after a luncheon with the visiting prime minister of Australia, John Howard. He was to announce it later with a flourish in a nationally broadcast speech to the nation.

Roberts has been on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since June 2003 after being picked for that seat by Bush.

Advocacy groups on the right say that Roberts, a 50-year-old native of Buffalo, N.Y., who attended Harvard Law School, is a bright judge with strong conservative credentials he burnished in the administrations of former Presidents Bush and Reagan. While he has been a federal judge for just a little more than two years, legal experts say that whatever experience he lacks on the bench is offset by his many years arguing cases before the Supreme Court.

Liberal groups, however, say Roberts has taken positions in cases involving free speech and religious liberty that endanger those rights. Abortion rights groups allege that Roberts is hostile to women's reproductive freedom and cite a brief he co-wrote in 1990 that suggested the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 high court decision that legalized abortion.

"The court's conclusion in Roe that there is a fundamental right to an abortion ... finds no support in the text, structure or history of the Constitution," the brief said.

In his defense, Roberts told senators during his 2003 confirmation hearing that he would be guided by legal precedent. "Roe v. Wade is the settled law of the land. ... There is nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying that precedent."

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  Court Gutting in Congress (NYTimes.com) EDITORIAL

Published: July 16, 2005

Congress is quietly considering whether to destroy one of the pillars of constitutional law: the habeas corpus power of the federal courts to determine whether an indigent defendant has been unjustly sentenced to death in state courts.

A bill making alarming progress in committee would effectively strip federal courts of most review power and shift it to the attorney general. That's right: the chief prosecutor of the United States would become the judge of whether state courts behave fairly enough toward defendants appealing capital convictions. If a state system was certified as up to snuff, then the federal courts would lose their jurisdiction and condemned defendants their last hope.

It is appalling that lawmakers would visit such destruction on a basic human right that's been painfully secured across three centuries of jurisprudence. Repeatedly, federal court scrutiny has laid bare the shoddy state of capital justice in the states. DNA science has drawn attention to the frequency of false convictions.

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  Chinese General Sees U.S. as Nuclear Target (IHT.com) By Joseph Kahn
The New York Times
Saturday, July 16, 2005

BEIJING China should use nuclear weapons against the United States if the American military intervenes in any conflict over Taiwan, a senior Chinese military official has said.

"If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons," the official, Major General Zhu Chenghu, said at an official briefing Thursday.

Zhu, considered a hawk, stressed that his comments reflected his personal views and not official policy. Beijing has long insisted that it will not initiate the use of nuclear weapons in any conflict.

But in extensive comments to visiting correspondents based in Hong Kong, Zhu said he believed that the Chinese government was under internal pressure to change its "no first use" policy and to make clear that it would employ the most powerful weapons at its disposal to defend its claim over Taiwan.

"War logic" dictates that a weaker power needs to use maximum efforts to defeat a stronger rival, he said, speaking in fluent English. "We have no capability to fight a conventional war against the United States," Zhu said. "We can't win this kind of war."

General Zhu said in a brief telephone conversation Friday that he feared that his remarks had been taken out of context. He said he mainly meant to emphasize that both the United States and China were prone to "misjudging each other's intentions" and that he did not expect that tensions between the two countries would lead to war.

Whether or not the comments signal a shift in Chinese policy, they come at a sensitive time in relations between China and the United States.

(More ... Chinese general sees U.S. as nuclear target - Asia - Pacific - International Herald Tribune)  ¶ 17:18 0 comments

  NYC, Other Cities Angry Over Chertoff's Remarks (USATODAY.com) Posted 7/16/2005 12:07 AM Updated 7/16/2005 12:37 AM

NEW YORK (AP) — In New York and other big cities, some commuters fumed Friday about Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's remarks that cities will have to pay to protect trains and buses because airplanes are a higher priority.

"I think it stinks," psychologist David Amarel said as he boarded the subway.

Like many New Yorkers, he said he felt the government's foreign policy makes the city a target, so the government should assume responsibility for its security.

But cities will be largely on their own when it comes to securing trains and buses, Chertoff told The Associated Press on Thursday, explaining that airplanes are a higher priority for Washington.

"Michael Chertoff is a very smart guy, but I couldn't disagree more," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

The free subway tabloid amNew York summed up the secretary's comments Friday: "Pay Your Own Way," the headline declared over a close-up of a grim-faced Chertoff.

(More ... USATODAY.com - NYC, other cities angry over Chertoff's remarks)  ¶ 17:11 0 comments

  Karl Rove's America (NYTimes.com) By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 15, 2005

John Gibson of Fox News says that Karl Rove should be given a medal. I agree: Mr. Rove should receive a medal from the American Political Science Association for his pioneering discoveries about modern American politics. The medal can, if necessary, be delivered to his prison cell.

What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we're not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts. Instead, we're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.

I first realized that we were living in Karl Rove's America during the 2000 presidential campaign, when George W. Bush began saying things about Social Security privatization and tax cuts that were simply false. At first, I thought the Bush campaign was making a big mistake - that these blatant falsehoods would be condemned by prominent Republican politicians and Republican economists, especially those who had spent years building reputations as advocates of fiscal responsibility. In fact, with hardly any exceptions they lined up to praise Mr. Bush's proposals.

But the real demonstration that Mr. Rove understands American politics better than any pundit came after 9/11.

(More ... Karl Rove's America - New York Times)  ¶ 08:31 0 comments

  Rehnquist Silences Retirement Speculation (CNN.com) Thursday, July 14, 2005; Posted: 11:42 p.m. EDT (03:42 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Chief Justice William Rehnquist announced Thursday night that he has no plans to step down from the Supreme Court and will continue to serve as long as he can.

"I want to put to rest the speculation and unfounded rumors of my imminent retirement," Rehnquist said in a statement released through his family. "I am not about to announce my retirement. I will continue to perform my duties as chief justice as long as my health permits."

A Bush administration official involved in the judicial selection process said the White House is aware of Rehnquist's statement, which was sent to the White House counsel's office.

"We take him at his word," the official said.

(More ... CNN.com - Rehnquist silences retirement speculation - Jul 14, 2005)  ¶ 20:55 0 comments

  Clinton and Other Democratic Leaders Urge Young Liberals to Get Involved (WashingtonPost.com) By Brian Faler
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, July 14, 2005; Page A04

Some of the biggest names in Democratic politics convened yesterday to focus on what they believe is the long-term remedy to their party's woes: cultivating a new generation of activists.

Former president Bill Clinton and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) were the headliners among a host of operatives, writers and artists who gathered at the Washington Convention Center for a day-long series of speeches and panel discussions designed to energize about 600 visiting students.

"You don't have to wait until your party is in power to have an impact on life at home and around the world," Clinton told a hushed crowd, urging them to embrace grass-roots organizing. "This ain't supposed to be easy, and you have to work at it. I promise you our adversaries work at it."

The suspicion that the right is working harder at it, in fact, is what led the liberal Center for American Progress to organize the event. David Halperin, a former speechwriter in the Clinton White House and the conference's coordinator, estimated that conservative groups spend more than $35 million a year on such efforts. By contrast, he said, the left has invested comparatively little effort or money in cultivating the next generation of activists and would-be leaders.

"We've been on the defensive for 25 years," Halperin said. "There's been a lot of focus on the day-to-day -- just getting through the day -- without having a rollback on civil rights or environmental protections. The idea that you could do that and, at the same time, invest in the future seems a little daunting. . . . We've learned some things from what conservatives have done better, particularly in developing and communicating ideas, in promoting news leaders and in trying to bring people together who are interested in different issues but who have the same general political orientation."

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  Parties Failing in Joint Effort to Review Patriot Act (NYTimes.com) By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: July 12, 2005

WASHINGTON, July 11 - Efforts in Congress to reach a bipartisan compromise over the future of the USA Patriot Act appear to have splintered, with Republican leaders on the Senate and House Judiciary Committees moving ahead on their own with proposals to extend the government's counterterrorism powers under the hotly debated law.

Some Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee said they thought they had reached a tentative compromise in recent weeks on a joint bill that would have extended the law while imposing tougher restrictions on the government's ability to use some surveillance powers against terror suspects.

While negotiations to broker a bipartisan deal continued late Monday, Democratic officials said the compromise appeared to have stalled because of disagreement over whether to impose new restrictions on the government's ability to demand library records and other powers.

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and other Republicans on the panel are planning to introduce a proposal as early as Tuesday. No Democrats have signed on in support of the proposal, which would make permanent provisions of the law that are set to expire at the end of the year.

On the House side, meanwhile, Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Wisconsin Republican who leads the Judiciary Committee, introduced a similar proposal on Monday.

Frictions on the House Judiciary Committee over the act spilled into public view a month ago at a hearing on the law that degenerated into chaos, as Mr. Sensenbrenner gaveled the session to an end prematurely and stormed out after Democrats made accusations about the administration's policies on torture.

House Democratic officials said Monday that while they were actively involved in negotiations on the original passage of the Patriot Act in October 2001, they felt shut out now.

"There's an incredible contrast this time around," said a senior Democratic aide on the House Judiciary Committee, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of political tensions surrounding the issue.

(More ... Parties Failing in Joint Effort to Review Patriot Act - New York Times)  ¶ 19:57 0 comments

  U.S. Says It Will Release American Held in Iraq (NYTimes.com) By TIM GOLDEN
Published: July 10, 2005

WASHINGTON, July 9 - Military officials have agreed to free Cyrus Kar, an aspiring American filmmaker who has been imprisoned without charge for nearly two months at a United States military detention center in Iraq, lawyers and relatives of Mr. Kar said Saturday.

The news of the planned release came as government lawyers prepared for a hearing on Monday afternoon in federal district court in Washington, where they had been ordered to show cause for his continued detention.

Last week, after his lawyers sued the government for his release through a petition for habeas corpus, Defense Department officials said Mr. Kar, 44, had been detained on May 17 with his Iranian cameraman, Farshid Faraji, on suspicion of involvement with the Iraqi insurgency.

The two men, who relatives said were in Iraq working on a historical documentary, were arrested after a search of a taxi they had taken from a Baghdad hotel turned up dozens of washing-machine timers of a type sometimes used by Iraqi insurgents to make improvised explosive devices, the officials said.

Spokesmen for the Defense Department and the United States military forces in Iraq said Saturday that they could not confirm that Mr. Kar's and Mr. Faraji's release was imminent. But his relatives said a consular official at the United States Embassy in Baghdad had telephoned them Saturday to tell them that the two would be freed within two days, and his lawyers said the embassy official later told them the same thing.

(More ... U.S. Says It Will Release American Held in Iraq - New York Times)  ¶ 19:54 0 comments

  The Dangerous Comfort of Secrecy (NYTimes.com) EDITORIAL

Published: July 12, 2005

The Bush administration is classifying the documents to be kept from public scrutiny at the rate of 125 a minute. The move toward greater secrecy has nearly doubled the number of documents annually hidden from public view - to well more than 15 million last year, nearly twice the number classified in 2001 - as bureaucrats have invented more amorphous categories like "sensitive security information." At the same time, the declassification of documents required under the Freedom of Information Act has been choked down to a fraction of what it was a decade ago, leaving the government working behind an ever darker, ever denser screen.

Thomas Kean, the co-chairman of the independent commission on the 9/11 attacks, warns that the official twilight could not be more counterproductive for security.

"The best ally we have in protecting ourselves against terrorism is an informed public," Mr. Kean said. The government's failure to prevent 9/11 was linked to barriers in the sharing of information between agencies and with the public, he said, not to leaks of sensitive information.

The White House has also been increasing the number of offices empowered to classify information, extending the privilege to agencies like the Agriculture Department. Terrorist attacks on agriculture are a legitimate worry, but we somehow suspect that the power may prove more useful for cloaking nonlethal cases of mismanagement and bureaucratic embarrassment. The federal Information Security Oversight Office finds secrecy reaching such ludicrous levels as classifying information already in school textbooks and Supreme Court decisions.

(More ... The Dangerous Comfort of Secrecy - New York Times)  ¶ 19:43 0 comments

  Evangelicals Are a Growing Force in the Military Chaplain Corps (NYTimes.com) By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: July 12, 2005

COLORADO SPRINGS - There were personal testimonies about Jesus from the stage, a comedian quoting Scripture and a five-piece band performing contemporary Christian praise songs. Then hundreds of Air Force chaplains stood and sang, many with palms upturned, in a service with a distinctively evangelical tone.

It was the opening ceremony of a four-day Spiritual Fitness Conference at a Hilton hotel here last month organized and paid for by the Air Force for many of its United States-based chaplains and their families, at a cost of $300,000. The chaplains, who pledge when they enter the military to minister to everyone, Methodist, Mormon or Muslim, attended workshops on "The Purpose Driven Life," the best seller by the megachurch pastor Rick Warren, and on how to improve their worship services. In the hotel hallways, vendors from Focus on the Family and other evangelical organizations promoted materials for the chaplains to use in their work.

The event was just one indication of the extent to which evangelical Christians have become a growing force in the Air Force chaplain corps, a trend documented by military records and interviews with more than two dozen chaplains and other military officials.

Figures provided by the Air Force show that from 1994 to 2005 the number of chaplains from many evangelical and Pentecostal churches rose, some doubling. For example, chaplains from the Full Gospel Fellowship of Churches and Ministries International increased to 10 from none. The Church of the Nazarene rose to 12 from 6.

At the same time, the number of chaplains from the Roman Catholic Church declined to 94 from 167, and there were declines in more liberal, mainline Protestant churches: the United Church of Christ to 3 from 11, the United Methodist Church to 50 from 64.

(More ... Evangelicals Are a Growing Force in the Military Chaplain Corps - New York Times)  ¶ 19:40 0 comments

  Values Conundrum (WashingtonPost.com) Will the U.S. and China Play by the Same Rules?

By David J. Rothkopf
Monday, July 11, 2005; Page A15

A debate over values is coloring the most important relationship on the planet. It is a debate that transcends in importance even the chasm between the U.S.-led West and radical Islam. This debate is the one that is at the fault line in the relationship between the United States and China.

In recent weeks we have seen new fissures emerge in the relationship. The two giants are eyeball to eyeball on the commercial playing field, and not only has neither blinked but both are seeing just how complex their problem really is.


On one front, U.S. tech companies are grappling with how much market share their souls are worth as they have been asked by the communist leadership to help censor the Internet in exchange for a better shot at tapping the Chinese market. Naturally, when this behavior draws criticism, both the Chinese government and the companies argue that it is a private-sector deal and an internal affair for the Chinese government to decide.

Meanwhile, American legislators are reacting in horror as a Chinese national oil company makes a bid to buy U.S.-owned Unocal. Consequently, even as we urge free-market reforms in China, we send the message that we're still undecided about how free is free at home.

In many respects the big question in this growing confrontation is not whether the values of one side will win out but whether we end up with an international system in which all are required to play by common rules.

(More ... Values Conundrum)  ¶ 19:25 0 comments

  Sir Edmund Urges Climate Care (news.BBC.co.uk) Sunday, 10 July, 2005, 03:22 GMT 04:22 UK

By Richard Black
BBC News environment correspondent

Conqueror of Everest Sir Edmund Hillary has urged world governments to protect the Himalayas from climate change.

The World Heritage Committee, which supervises protection of sites of special interest, meets this week.

Environmental campaigners, backed by Sir Edmund, want the committee to put the Sagarmatha National Park in the Himalayas on its danger list.

This would mean governments are legally bound to protect it - which, they say, means cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

In May 1953 Sir Edmund Hillary joined forces with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay on the first successful ascent of the world's highest mountain.

(More ... BBC NEWS | South Asia | Sir Edmund urges climate care)  ¶ 19:22 0 comments

  Free to Choose Obesity? (NYTimes.com) By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 8, 2005

The obvious model for those hoping to reverse the fattening of America is the campaign against smoking. Before the surgeon general officially condemned smoking in 1964, rising cigarette consumption seemed an unstoppable trend; since then, consumption per capita has fallen more than 50 percent.

But it may be hard to match that success when it comes to obesity. I'm not talking about the inherent difficulty of the task - getting people to consume fewer calories and/or exercise more may be harder than getting people to stop smoking, but we won't know until we try. I'm talking, instead, about how the political winds have shifted.

Public health activists were successful in taking on smoking in part because at the time corporations didn't know how to play the public opinion game. By today's standards, the political ineptitude of Big Tobacco was awe-inspiring. In a famous 1971 interview on "Face the Nation," the chairman of the board of Philip Morris, confronted with evidence that smoking by mothers leads to low birth weight, replied, "Some women would prefer having smaller babies."

Today's food industry would never make that kind of mistake. In public, the industry's companies proclaim themselves good guys, committed to healthier eating. Meanwhile, they outsource the campaigns against medical researchers and the dissemination of crude anti-anti-obesity propaganda to industry-financed advocacy groups like the Center for Consumer Freedom.

(More ... Free to Choose Obesity? - New York Times)  ¶ 21:20 0 comments

  Democrats Fear Extremist on High Court (CNN.com) Saturday, July 9, 2005; Posted: 2:27 p.m. EDT (18:27 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Contending that President Bush's far-right allies are pushing him to appoint an extreme conservative to the Supreme Court, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid pointed to liberal icon Earl Warren as a model.

In his party's weekly radio address, Reid, D-Nevada, noted that Saturday marked the anniversary of the 1974 death of Warren, a Republican whose court established a liberal tradition with its 1954 school desegregation ruling and other decisions. Reid said Warren had been able to forge a consensus on the court that would become the national consensus.

"Mr. President, that's the kind of justice we hope you'll nominate," Reid said in Saturday's broadcast. "Someone who will bring us together. A mainstream justice who won't use their judicial robe as a cloak to impose their political ideology on the country."

Bush is considering a nominee to succeed Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. The Senate, under the Constitution's directive that it offer "advice and consent" on such appointments, must vote on his choice.

(More ... CNN.com - Democrats fear extremist on high court - Jul 9, 2005)  ¶ 21:13 0 comments

  Senator Slams National Guard on Spy Claim (Reuters.com) Wed Jul 6, 2005 9:42 PM ET

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - A state senator said on Wednesday a federal probe into the California National Guard may hamper his own investigation into allegations that the Guard spied on anti-war protesters.

"I fear that what may occur here is that the federal authorities, if they find damning evidence of the Guard acting outside the law, may very well take possession of that material and take it out of the state of California depriving us of any access to that information," said state Sen. Joe Dunn.

"If that's what's happening, it is a cover up, plain and simple and that's what we want to prevent."

Dunn, who controls funding for California's National Guard, plans to hold hearings into whether a Guard unit that analyzes terrorism threats spied on people at a May 8 anti-war rally.

Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Douglas Hart said the Guard would cooperate with Dunn's requests if they are coordinated with requests by federal investigators.

Hart said the threat assessment unit did not spy on the rally, but its joint-operations center had been asked to record the protest if it appeared on local television news.

The Guard had expected protesters to demand that troops be ordered home from Iraq, Hart said. "If we're the subject of a news story then we like to know about it."

(More ... Politics News Article | Reuters.com)  ¶ 07:43 0 comments

  Overwhelming Majority of Americans Favors Emission Limits (PIPA.org) An overwhelming majority of Americans supports the US agreeing to limit greenhouse gas emissions in concert with other members of the G8 Summit. The new PIPA-Knowledge Networks poll asked, if, at the G8 Summit, “the leaders of these other countries are willing to act to limit the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, President Bush should or should not be willing to act to limit such gases in the US?” Eighty-six percent said that he should. Eighty-one percent of Republicans supported this as well as 89% of Democrats.

Virtually all respondents—94%—said the US should limit its greenhouse gases at least as much as the other developed countries do on average. Nearly half—44%—think the US should do more than average.

Steven Kull, director of PIPA, comments, “Going into the G8 Summit, nearly all Americans feel that the US should not be a laggard, but should be ready to do as much as most other developed countries to reduce emissions that cause climate change.”

Consistent with this support for international cooperation on climate change, a large majority—73%—said the US should, “participate in the Kyoto agreement to reduce global warming.” Curiously, 43% still assume, incorrectly, that President Bush favors US participation in the Kyoto Treaty and another 14% are not sure. Only 43% are aware that he opposes US participation.

(More ... American attitudes: Program on International Policy Attitudes)  ¶ 23:04 0 comments

  US and UK Set Out Climate Agenda (news.BBC.co.uk) Thursday, 7 July, 2005, 10:33 GMT 11:33 UK

The US and UK leaders have called for a new consensus on how to tackle climate change as the G8 summit gets down to its first full day of business.

They said it was time to replace a focus on Kyoto-style curbs on greenhouse gas emissions with research into clean technology.

President Bush said fast-developing nations must take a role, and welcomed India and China's attendance at the G8.

Along with climate issues, G8 leaders are due to discuss global trade.

Mr Blair is "closely monitoring" events in London where explosions have closed the underground rail network and police are reporting casualties, Downing Street said.

He is continuing to chair the G8 summit.

(More ... BBC NEWS | Business | US and UK set out climate agenda)  ¶ 23:00 0 comments

  Girth of a Nation (NYTimes.com) By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 4, 2005

The Center for Consumer Freedom, an advocacy group financed by Coca-Cola, Wendy's and Tyson Foods, among others, has a Fourth of July message for you: worrying about the rapid rise in American obesity is unpatriotic.

"Far too few Americans," declares the center's Web site, "remember that the Founding Fathers, authors of modern liberty, greatly enjoyed their food and drink. ... Now it seems that food liberty - just one of the many important areas of personal choice fought for by the original American patriots - is constantly under attack."

It sounds like a parody, but don't laugh. These people are blocking efforts to help America's children.

I've been looking into the issues surrounding obesity because it plays an important role in health care costs. According to a study recently published in the journal Health Affairs, the extra costs associated with caring for the obese rose from 2 percent of total private insurance spending in 1987 to 11.6 percent in 2002. The study didn't cover Medicare and Medicaid, but it's a good bet that obesity-related expenses are an important factor in the rising costs of taxpayer-financed programs, too. Fat is a fiscal issue.

But it's also, alas, a partisan issue.

First, let's talk about what isn't in dispute: around 1980, Americans started getting rapidly fatter.

Some pundits still dismiss American pudge as a benign "affliction of affluence," a sign that people can afford to eat tasty foods, drive cars and avoid hard physical labor. But all of that was already true by 1980, which is roughly when Americans really started losing the battle of the bulge.

(More ... Girth of a Nation - New York Times)  ¶ 21:22 0 comments

  US Detains Five Americans in Iraq (news.BBC.co.uk) Thursday, 7 July, 2005, 06:34 GMT 07:34 UK

The Pentagon has confirmed that five US citizens are being held in Iraq on suspicion of having links to insurgents or other criminal activity.

The detainees have not been charged, and have not had access to a lawyer. A Pentagon spokesman declined to release their names.

However, one was identified by his family as Cyrus Kar, an Iranian-US film-maker and US navy veteran.

A US human rights group is suing the US government for his release.

The US spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said he had been found in a car which was also carrying several dozen washing machine timers - components that can be used in making bombs.

Officials said he was arrested with a cameraman and a taxi driver.

(More ... BBC NEWS | Middle East | US detains five Americans in Iraq)  ¶ 21:15 0 comments

  As Bolton Battle Continues, A Steady Hand at the U.N. (WashingtonPost.com) As Bolton Battle Continues, A Steady Hand at the U.N.

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 7, 2005; Page A17

UNITED NATIONS -- The face of American power here is a 5-foot-1 woman who can charm foreign envoys even when she is enforcing policies that infuriate them. Anne W. Patterson, the acting U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, represents a stark contrast to the confrontational John R. Bolton, whom President Bush has nominated to represent the United States at the world body.

With Bolton's confirmation at risk, Patterson is leading U.S. efforts to grapple with a series of U.N. scandals, monitor the 191-member institution's multibillion-dollar peacekeeping enterprise, and reorient it to halt terrorism and the spread of the world's deadliest weapons.

Senior U.N. delegates say they value her pragmatism and they are in no hurry to see her replaced by Bolton.

"There are plenty of people who would like to see Bolton delayed indefinitely," one senior U.N. official said. "I haven't heard anyone saying we'd rather work with her than him, but obviously that's implicit."

John C. Danforth, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the U.S. mission "clearly suffers" from not having an ambassador in place. But he noted that Patterson had exhibited the skills to run the large mission when she served as his deputy.

(More ... As Bolton Battle Continues, A Steady Hand at the U.N.)  ¶ 21:15 0 comments

  US Detains Five Americans in Iraq (news.BBC.co.uk) Thursday, 7 July, 2005, 06:34 GMT 07:34 UK

The Pentagon has confirmed that five US citizens are being held in Iraq on suspicion of having links to insurgents or other criminal activity.

The detainees have not been charged, and have not had access to a lawyer. A Pentagon spokesman declined to release their names.

However, one was identified by his family as Cyrus Kar, an Iranian-US film-maker and US navy veteran.

A US human rights group is suing the US government for his release.

The US spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said he had been found in a car which was also carrying several dozen washing machine timers - components that can be used in making bombs.

Officials said he was arrested with a cameraman and a taxi driver.

(More ... BBC NEWS | Middle East | US detains five Americans in Iraq)  ¶ 21:12 0 comments

  CAFTA Reflects Democrats' Shift From Trade Bills (WashingtonPost.com) By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 6, 2005; Page A01

Twelve years ago, amid heated rhetoric over job losses and heavy union pressure, the House passed the North American Free Trade Agreement with 102 Democratic votes. This month, as President Bush pushes the far less economically significant Central American Free Trade Agreement, he will be lucky to get more than 10.

A long, slow erosion of Democratic support for trade legislation in the House is turning into a rout, as Democrats who have never voted against trade deals vow to turn their backs on CAFTA. The sea change -- driven by redistricting, mounting partisanship and real questions about the results of a decade's worth of trade liberalization -- is creating a major headache for Bush and Republican leaders as they scramble to salvage their embattled trade agreement. A trade deal that passed the Senate last Thursday, 54 to 45, with 10 Democratic votes, could very well fail in the House this month.

But the Democrats' near-unanimous stand against CAFTA carries long-term risks for a party leadership struggling to regain the appearance of a moderate governing force, some Democrats acknowledge. A swing toward isolationism could reinforce voters' suspicions that the party is beholden to organized labor and is anti-business, while jeopardizing campaign contributions, especially from Wall Street.

Without control of the White House or either chamber of Congress, the "competition for the microphone" has intensified in the party, said Dave McCurdy, a former Democratic congressman from Oklahoma who heads the Electronic Industries Alliance. And the moderates are losing.

"It's difficult for Democrats to get through a message that we're pro-trade when we're voting no," said Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), who plans to vote against a trade agreement for the first time in his nearly 20 years in the House. "That is a clear risk that we're running, but I don't think we have the opportunity to avoid it."

(More ... CAFTA Reflects Democrats' Shift From Trade Bills)  ¶ 20:23 0 comments

  Democrats Challenge GOP on Ethics (WashingtonPost.com) New Ads Target Six Republicans

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 6, 2005; Page A04

Democrats took their first formal step yesterday toward trying to nationalize next year's midterm House elections around the issue of ethics, buying ads in the local papers of six Republican lawmakers calling on them to "start working for us" instead of special interests.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is spending $36,000 on the ads -- a virtually meaningless sum, by itself -- but calls it the beginning of a campaign to fuel an anti-incumbent fever like the one that swept its party out in 1994.

"There's a question about the conduct and the culture that goes beyond the individuals," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), the committee's chairman. "The speaker's gavel is supposed to open the people's house, not the auction house."

(More ... Democrats Challenge GOP on Ethics)  ¶ 20:19 0 comments

  Senators Clash on Questioning a Court Nominee (NYTimes.com) By CARL HULSE and ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: July 4, 2005

WASHINGTON, July 3 - With a White House nomination of a new Supreme Court justice at least a week away, members of the Senate began sharpening their differences on Sunday as lawmakers battled over the proper line of questioning at confirmation hearings and the right of Democrats to filibuster a nominee they deem unacceptable.

As senators sparred in interviews, op-ed columns and television appearances, the Bush administration sought to keep its deliberations over a potential successor to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor out of public view. White House officials were privately encouraging lawmakers not to get drawn into speculation over candidates' names but to concentrate on calling for quick and fair consideration of whomever President Bush nominates. [Page A11.]

Conservative groups, meanwhile, continued to press their opposition to one frequently mentioned presidential favorite, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.

Democrats called for a deliberate review of any nominee and pledged to press the eventual candidate on issues including abortion and same-sex marriage, while Republicans declared that such specific inquiries were out of line.

"All questions are legitimate," Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee, said in an interview. "What is your view on Roe v. Wade? What is your view on gay marriage? They are going to try to get away with the idea that we're not going to know their views. But that's not going to work this time."

(More ... Senators Clash on Questioning a Court Nominee - New York Times)  ¶ 22:34 0 comments

  Filibuster Deal Puts Democrats In a Bind (WashingtonPost.com) Pact May Hinder Efforts to Block High Court Nominee

By Charles Babington and Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, July 4, 2005; Page A01

Democrats' hopes of blocking a staunchly conservative Supreme Court nominee on ideological grounds could be seriously undermined by the six-week-old bipartisan deal on judicial nominees, key senators said yesterday.

With President Bush expected to name a successor to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor next week, liberals are laying the groundwork to challenge the nominee if he or she leans solidly to the right on affirmative action, abortion and other contentious issues. But even if they can show that the nominee has sharply held views on matters that divide many Americans, some of the 14 senators who crafted the May 23 compromise appear poised to prevent that strategy from blocking confirmation to the high court, according to numerous interviews.

The pact, signed by seven Democrats and seven Republicans, says a judicial nominee will be filibustered only under "extraordinary circumstances." Key members of the group said yesterday that a nominee's philosophical views cannot amount to "extraordinary circumstances" and that therefore a filibuster can be justified only on questions of personal ethics or character.

The distinction is crucial because Democrats want to force Bush to pick a centrist, not a staunch conservative as many activist groups on the political right desire. Holding only 44 of the Senate's 100 seats, Democrats have no way to block a Republican-backed nominee without employing a filibuster, which takes 60 votes to stop.

(More ... Filibuster Deal Puts Democrats In a Bind)  ¶ 22:31 0 comments

  Increase in the Number of Documents Classified by the Government (NYTimes.com) By SCOTT SHANE
Published: July 3, 2005

WASHINGTON, July 1 - Driven in part by fears of terrorism, government secrecy has reached a historic high by several measures, with federal departments classifying documents at the rate of 125 a minute as they create new categories of semi-secrets bearing vague labels like "sensitive security information."

A record 15.6 million documents were classified last year, nearly double the number in 2001, according to the federal Information Security Oversight Office. Meanwhile, the declassification process, which made millions of historical documents available annually in the 1990's, has slowed to a relative crawl, from a high of 204 million pages in 1997 to just 28 million pages last year.

The increasing secrecy - and its rising cost to taxpayers, estimated by the office at $7.2 billion last year - is drawing protests from a growing array of politicians and activists, including Republican members of Congress, leaders of the independent commission that studied the Sept. 11 attacks and even the top federal official who oversees classification.

The acceleration of secrecy began after the 2001 attacks, as officials sought to curtail access to information that might tip off Al Qaeda about America's vulnerabilities. Such worries have not faded; just this week the Department of Health and Human Services sought unsuccessfully to prevent publication of a scientific paper about the threat of a poisoned milk supply on the ground that it was "a road map for terrorists."

(More ... Increase in the Number of Documents Classified by the Government - New York Times)  ¶ 21:01 0 comments

  Abducted Imam Aided CIA Ally (ChicagoTribune.com) Last month, Italian authorities charged 13 CIA operatives with kidnapping an Islamic cleric known as Abu Omar. Now former Albanian intelligence officials reveal that the imam was once an informant valued by the CIA.

By John Crewdson and Tom Hundley
Tribune correspondents
Published July 2, 2005, 10:30 AM CDT

MILAN, Italy — Among the multiple mysteries swirling around the abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr in Italy, one stands out as by far the most perplexing.

Why would the U.S. government go to elaborate lengths to seize a 39-year-old Egyptian who, according to former Albanian intelligence officials, was once the CIA's most productive source of information within the tightly knit group of Islamic fundamentalists living in exile in Albania?

Neither the Bush administration nor the CIA has acknowledged any role in the operation. But U.S. government officials privately paint Nasr, better known as Abu Omar, as a dangerous terrorist who once plotted to kill the Egyptian foreign minister and was worthy of an audacious daylight abduction involving more than 20 operatives, weeks of planning and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

One senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition that she not be identified, asserted: "The world's a better place with this guy off the streets."

But evidence gathered by prosecutors here, who have charged 13 CIA operatives with Abu Omar's kidnapping, indicates that the abduction was a bold attempt to turn him back into the informer he once was.

As a result, Italian-American relations are at their lowest point in years, 13 Americans are fugitives from Italian justice, and Milanese prosecutors and police, who had been closely monitoring Abu Omar and knew nothing about his planned abduction, are furious.

"Instead of having an investigation against terrorists, we are investigating this CIA kidnapping," a senior prosecution official fumed last week.

According to the prosecutor's application for the 13 warrants, when Abu Omar reached Cairo on a CIA-chartered aircraft, he was taken straight to the Egyptian interior minister.

(More ... Chicago Tribune news : Nation/World)  ¶ 20:53 0 comments

  Help From France Key In Covert Operations (WashingtonPost.com) Paris's 'Alliance Base' Targets Terrorists

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 3, 2005; Page A01

PARIS -- When Christian Ganczarski, a German convert to Islam, boarded an Air France flight from Riyadh on June 3, 2003, he knew only that the Saudi government had put him under house arrest for an expired pilgrim visa and had given his family one-way tickets back to Germany, with a change of planes in Paris.

He had no idea that he was being secretly escorted by an undercover officer sitting behind him, or that a senior CIA officer was waiting at the end of the jetway as French authorities gently separated him from his family and swept Ganczarski into French custody, where he remains today on suspicion of associating with terrorists.

Ganczarski is among the most important European al Qaeda figures alive, according to U.S. and French law enforcement and intelligence officials. The operation that ensnared him was put together at a top secret center in Paris, code-named Alliance Base, that was set up by the CIA and French intelligence services in 2002, according to U.S. and European intelligence sources. Its existence has not been previously disclosed.

Funded largely by the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, Alliance Base analyzes the transnational movement of terrorist suspects and develops operations to catch or spy on them.

Alliance Base demonstrates how most counterterrorism operations actually take place: through secretive alliances between the CIA and other countries' intelligence services. This is not the work of large army formations, or even small special forces teams, but of handfuls of U.S. intelligence case officers working with handfuls of foreign operatives, often in tentative arrangements.

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  Not a Campaign (WashingtonPost.com) EDITORIAL

Sunday, July 3, 2005; Page B06

SECONDS AFTER President Bush announces his choice to replace Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor -- whenever that happens and whoever the nominee is -- liberal interest groups will release a blast of e-mails promising a "rollback" of American liberties if the person is confirmed. Conservative groups, at the same moment, will blitz with e-mails proclaiming the nominee a modern John Marshall. Ads will appear on television. Journalists will be hit with distorted "reports" attacking or defending the nominee's "record," as groups release their opposition research or their defensive spin. Both camps, in short, will unleash the huge sums they have raised in what will be, for all intents and purposes, a political campaign -- a political campaign, unfortunately, for an office that is meant to be not merely apolitical but actively insulated from politics.

The campaign, in reality, began long ago. It began when both sides made the judgment that they had to invest in judicial appointments -- particularly Supreme Court appointments -- to make sure they got the results they wanted from the courts. At this point, the war has become a Washington industry, fed by both sides' wounds from the past, real and imagined, and fears for the future, realistic and fantastical. Barely had Justice O'Connor announced her retirement Friday when the liberal People for the American Way was promising to "help lead the fight against any terrible changes to the Supreme Court." The conservative Family Research Council vowed that the "public is primed for the fight it will take to confirm a nominee" and promised "significant grassroots support for the President's nominees." A lot of people on both sides actively want a fight.

The war is about money and fundraising as much as it is about jurisprudence and the judicial function. It elevates partisanship and political rhetoric over any serious discussion of law. In the long run, the war over the courts -- which teaches both judges and the public at large to view the courts simply as political institutions -- threatens judicial independence and the integrity of American justice.

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  Surprise Retiree Raises the Stakes of Battle to Come (WashingtonPost.com) By Charles Babington and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, July 2, 2005; Page A12

After preparing for months for a battle to replace Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, conservative and liberal groups were caught by surprise yesterday and immediately began reworking their strategies for a fight that they believe will be even more ferocious and carry higher stakes.

Activists on both sides said the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has been a crucial swing vote compared with Rehnquist's reliable conservatism, gives conservatives an unexpected chance to shift the court rightward. Liberals, anxious to prevent such a move, said they must pour more money and energy into a campaign to educate Americans about the role O'Connor played and the importance of replacing her with a fellow centrist.

The multimillion-dollar campaigns, which activists say will nearly rival presidential candidacies in their scope and sophistication, kicked off within an hour of O'Connor's announcement. Both sides launched ads designed to build momentum for their causes before President Bush names his nominee, which some senators expect during the week of July 11.

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  Senate Prepares for Fierce Judicial Battle (SFGate.com) By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer
Friday, July 1, 2005

WASHINGTON (AP) -- With the loss of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's swing vote, senators are readying a fierce battle over President Bush's first Supreme Court nominee — a person who could determine the fate of several important court precedents in the future.

While the Senate is in a holding pattern until President Bush makes a nomination — which the White House said won't be until after he returns from Europe next Friday — Republicans and Democrats already are jockeying for advantage in a confirmation battle they say will reshape the courts.

"This is the first Supreme Court vacancy in more than a decade, and Justice O'Connor's replacement will greatly influence the future of this country," Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said after O'Connor announced her retirement Friday.

Bush said he will consult with senators of both parties about his selection, something Democrats asked for repeatedly for months. The GOP-run Judiciary Committee is expected to start hearings within a month to six weeks after Bush sends the nomination to the Senate.

Democrats are resigned to Bush nominating a conservative, but they are hoping to push him into picking someone like O'Connor, who showed an independent streak on the court despite being a lifelong Republican and a Reagan appointee.

(More ... Senate Prepares for Fierce Judicial Battle)  ¶ 18:56 0 comments

  O'Connor's Path Led to Center of the Court (WashintonPost.com) By Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 1, 2005; 12:45 PM

In interviews, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor routinely dismissed the notion that she was a crucial "swing vote," the justice who could sway the nation's highest court one way or the other. Every vote on the court is equal, she would say, no one counting more than any other.

She could afford to scoff. But the litigants and their lawyers could not.

In fact, they crafted their arguments carefully with her in mind, scouring all her writings to make sure they addressed any specific concerns she might have, believing that if they won her, they were considerably more likely to win the case.

It wasn't because she was intrinsically more important than the others. Rather, as she once said, she was "open to persuasion" while some others were not.

Sandra Day O'Connor's influence on the nation's highest court was so great that some academics had come to call it not the "Rehnquist Court," after the Chief Justice, but the "O'Connor Court."

(More ... O'Connor's Path Led to Center of the Court)  ¶ 12:42 0 comments

  Democrats and Republicans React to O'Connor's Resignation (NYTimes.com) By DAVID STOUT
Published: July 1, 2005

WASHINGTON, July 1 - Senators from both parties heaped praise on retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor today, and Democrats warned President Bush not to try to replace her with someone whose views they consider extreme. Republicans, meanwhile, signaled that they were girding for a fight.

"Justice O'Connor has been a voice of reason and moderation on the court," said Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the minority leader. "It is vital that she be replaced by someone like her, someone who embodies the fundamental American values of freedom, equality and fairness."

Mr. Reid said the president should respect the Senate's "advice and consent" role spelled out in the Constitution and nominate "a highly qualified candidate whose views are within the broad constitutional mainstream and who will make all Americans proud."

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Justice O'Connor's departure "will leave a tremendous void in the highest court of the land." The senator urged President Bush to confer with leaders of both parties before announcing a nominee. "We should replace Sandra Day O'Connor with a consensus candidate, not an ideologue," Mr. Schumer said.

(More ... Democrats and Republicans React to O'Connor's Resignation - New York Times)  ¶ 12:40 0 comments

  Justice Sandra Day O'Connor Retires (NYTimes.com) By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
and LINDA GREENHOUSE
Published: July 1, 2005

WASHINGTON, July 1 - Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court and a crucial swing vote on abortion and a host of other divisive social issues, announced today that she was resigning, setting up what is sure to be a tumultuous fight over confirming her successor.

Justice O'Connor is widely viewed as the critical swing vote on abortion, affirmative action and other hot-button issues that have divided the Supreme Court.

After months in which speculation about the Supreme Court focused on the likelihood of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's stepping down, the resignation of Justice O'Connor, 75, caught much of Washington, including the White House and her own colleagues on the court, off guard. Even so, the armies of ideological activists from both sides who had massed in anticipation of a battle over replacing the chief justice, a reliable conservative, quickly pivoted to what they agreed was an even higher-stakes showdown for control of a seat that could alter the court's balance on an array of polarizing topics.

Justice O'Connor's decision creates the first vacancy on the court in 11 years, ending the longest period without a change in the line-up of justices in almost two centuries, and it provides President Bush with his first opportunity to name a Supreme Court justice. The chief White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said the president would not make a selection until after returning from a summit meeting next week in Scotland.

It is still not clear whether Chief Justice Rehnquist, who is battling thyroid cancer, will step down this summer, creating another vacancy and expanding the confirmation battle to two fronts.

(More ... Sandra Day O'Connor Retires - Supreme Court Vacancies - The New York Times - New York Times)  ¶ 12:34 0 comments

  India can be America's best friend (IHT.com) EDITORIAL

By Brahma Chellaney
Friday, July 1, 2005

NEW DELHI At a time when anti-Americanism has spread across the globe, a new poll shows that more people in India have a positive view of the United States than in any other nation surveyed. The poll, conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, raises a larger question: How long will it be before the courtship between India and the United States leads to a strategic partnership?

Despite a congruence of vital national interests and a shared political goal to build a long-term strategic relationship, the United States has yet to forge a true partnership with India.

To be sure, there have been important shifts in U.S. thinking, largely on account of India's rising geopolitical importance, its abundant market opportunities and its role in ensuring power equilibrium in Asia.

The United States and India are discussing cooperation on missile defense, nuclear energy, space and high technology. The two have also opened a quiet dialogue on India's largest neighbor, China, whose rise is likely to pose the single biggest challenge to world security in the years to come.

(More ... India can be America's best friend - Editorials & Commentary - International Herald Tribune)  ¶ 08:43 0 comments

  Guantánamo Thorny Issue for Democrats on Committee (NYTimes.com) By NEIL A. LEWIS
Published: June 30, 2005

WASHINGTON, June 29 - A hearing before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday provided a stark display of how Democrats and Republicans are reacting in different ways to accusations about abuse at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

For Republicans, the mission was simple and direct: defend the military's detention center at Guantánamo as humane and deserving of admiration throughout the world.

For some Democrats, the task was more complicated: to praise the patriotism and work of the vast majority of military personnel at Guantánamo, while raising questions about abuse of detainees.

Representative Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who is the committee chairman, suggested in his questioning of Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, the Guantánamo commander, that it was probably the finest military detention facility in history. Mr. Hunter led a hastily arranged delegation of 16 committee members to Guantánamo on Saturday.

"What we saw was not the 'gulag of our times,' " Mr. Hunter said, referring to recent criticism from Amnesty International. It was, instead, "a world-class detention facility where detainees representing a threat to our national security are well fed, given access to top-notch medical facilities and provided an opportunity to obtain legal representation."

The trip and Wednesday's hearing were planned as a response to increasing calls to shut down the Guantánamo facility.

(More ... Guantánamo Thorny Issue for Democrats on Committee - New York Times)  ¶ 08:40 0 comments

  Italy Summons U.S. Ambassador Over Kidnapping (Reuters.com) Thu Jun 30, 2005 11:10 AM ET

By Phil Stewart

ROME (Reuters) - The Italian government denied on Thursday that it authorized an alleged CIA-led kidnapping of a terrorism suspect in Milan, and summoned the U.S. ambassador to discuss the 2003 abduction.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Carlo Giovanardi told the Senate that Rome had no prior knowledge of any such operation. He denied suggestions that authorities gave the CIA a green light to fly the Muslim cleric to Egypt, where prosecutors believe he was tortured.

"The prime minister has summoned the U.S. ambassador, who is currently off-base. As soon as he returns to Italy, probably tomorrow, he will go to Palazzo Chigi," Giovanardi said, referring to the prime minister's offices.

It was the first official comment by the Italian government since Milan Judge Chiara Nobili last week issued arrest warrants for 13 people who judicial sources say are linked to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

The suspects, who prosecutors believe have left the country, are all tied to the kidnapping of cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar.

Nasr was already under investigation in Italy for terrorism when he was grabbed off a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003 and shoved into a white van.

The Italian prosecutors' office says evidence suggests he was then flown home to Egypt, handed over to authorities and subjected to "physical violence" meant to help interrogation.

(More ... Top News Article | Reuters.com)  ¶ 08:35 0 comments

  Troops Put Lives on Line to Be Called Americans (USATODAY.com) Posted 6/29/2005 11:26 PM Updated 6/30/2005 5:52 AM

By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY

It is the hardest way to become an American citizen: fighting for a country that is not yet yours, and in some cases dying for it.

Catalin Dima took this path, and his family has no regrets. Born in Romania, where he served in the military, Dima immigrated to America in 1996 and came to adore his new country. Living in Queens, N.Y., and later upstate, he married, fathered three children and worked as a big-rig truck driver.

After becoming a legal resident in 2001, he joined the Army Reserve in response to the Sept. 11 attacks. "I tried talking him out of the Army because I was afraid, but there was no talking him out of it," says his wife, Florika Dima. "He said he had to do it."

"He bought the whole package," says his uncle, Peter Danciu. "He loved this country."

While deployed in Iraq last October, Dima, 36, took the oath of allegiance administered by Eduardo Aguirre Jr., outgoing head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. In a fit of joy, he shouted "USA, USA," as he left the ceremony. Six weeks later, the day he was promoted to sergeant, Dima died in a mortar attack near Baghdad.

Aguirre says, "The moral of the story for me is he died as he would have liked to have died: a U.S. citizen and an officer in the U.S. Army."

(More ... USATODAY.com - Troops put lives on line to be called Americans)  ¶ 08:31 0 comments